Andrew Halliday Douglas

“ Sense receives the sensible form," and we need not assume that Pomponazzi departed from his deliberate finding that "sensation is not an activity, rather it is passivity; in its essential nature, it is neither." ”

“ In tracing the intellectual activity of the human soul from its foundations in sense, Pomponazzi dwells upon the "common sensibles" those qualities, namely, which are perceived by the different senses and at the same time are not the direct object of any one of them as the first objects which lie beyond the pure particularity of mere sensation. He quotes the Aristotelian enumeration of motion, rest, number, figure, and magnitude. ”

“ This, then, was Pomponazzi's final answer to the arguments against the "passivity" of the mind in sense-experience. He asks that the question should be treated not as physical, but as psychological 3 . But while the act of knowledge is essentially removed from the categories of "active" and "passive," or, as we should say, of cause and effect, there is a relative or analogical sense in which the human mind is passive in sensation; yet without prejudice to the characteristic superiority of consciousness to the unconscious. ”

“ To which Pomponazzi replied that it is not the special sense, touch, which apprehends any contrast of tangible qualities, but the common sense acting on occasion of touch. " To this we may reply that it is not touch which declares the difference between the contrarieties of tangible things, nor is there any single tactual faculty which pronounces judgment on more than a single contrariety of tangible things, but it is common sense which judges all those objects. ”

“ He noticed however the fact of a conscious ness of sensation, and ascribed it in some way to sense. " For certainly it is not with sight in the strict sense that the mind sees that it sees... but with some organ common to all the sensoria 1 " And Pomponazzi follows this language pretty closely, except that he identifies the " faculty of sense " expressly with sensus communis: " For the sensitive soul is conscious of itself, wherefore by one part it is conscious of another part, and by common sense is aware of the external senses 2 ." ”

“ When it is said the object concurs actively to produce the sensation, I reply that sensation, qua cognition, does not essentially mean activity or passivity: and granted that the object, in so far as it acts, is more perfect than sense, which is acted on, nevertheless it is not more perfect without qualification, because sense perceives, whereas the object does not: but what perceives is more perfect than what does not perceive 2 . ”

“ Pomponazzi offers a complete account in physical terms of the whole mental process, both of the occurrence and of the non-occurrence of sensation. When it is added that he immediately goes on to distinguish the physical from the cognitive relation, to disclaim the categories of actio and passio in reference to a mental fact as irrelevant, and in short to define the act of cognition as, in comparison with physical relations, something sui generis we are in a position to estimate Pomponazzi's contribution to the problem of sense-perception. ”

“ How is it possible that an external object of sense, which has a material existence, should produce a sensible form, which has a higher mode of existence than its object 1?" species sensibilis being thus regarded as a mental fact. But, again, in describing the case in which the object of sense is present to the sense-organ, and yet there is no sensation, he speaks of the species sensibilis as being then present 2 . Now on Aristotelian principles where there is no sensation there is no species sensibilis, and can be none 3 . ”

“ In disposing of them Pomponazzi combats the notion that those general characteristics of sensible objects, which in an abstract analysis figure as magnitude, motion, number, are real independent objects of sense-perception. Thus if one grasps a hand at precisely the same temperature as his own he does not perceive heat or cold in the hand, yet he perceives magnitude. Again, if a man be cut with a sword he may not perceive the coldness or other qualities of the steel ”

“ By the external senses we apprehend only the particular and that only when the sensible object is present at least by the direct action of those senses; but by the internal senses we apprehend in some sort the universal; for though we cannot reach abstract universality by the internal senses, yet we can reach a certain indeterminate knowledge, intermediate as it were between particular and universal, which is called knowledge of the vague individual 1 . ”

“ Thus when the attention of the mind is fixed elsewhere, the sensible object may be present to the senses, and yet sensation does not take place. Pomponazzi explains the presence or absence of sensation by the supply or deficiency of spiritus for the sensitive powers: " For if the sensible form is in sense when it is depleted of energy, there is no cognition, and this because the recipient is not in the right condition 3 ." ”

“ Pomponazzi's conception of a synthetic element in sensation, or (to come nearer to his own way of thinking) a synthetic power in sense, is further illustrated by the manner in which, following a suggestion of Aristotle s, he attributes to a " faculty of sense," namely sensus commitnis, the consciousness of sensation. It is, I think, doubtful whether Aristotle so far represented common sense as a " faculty " as to assign to it this function ”

“ So too for smelling: "A similar argument is made about smell, that the sense itself apprehends magnitude 2 ."
Therefore, " In this view it seems necessary to say that all the senses apprehend magnitude: and therefore Aristotle says that all the common sensibles are common to all the senses, as Themistius has well said in this place 3 ."
Yet only touch and sight apprehend magnitude perfectly: " But I think, as is said in the De Sensu et Sensato, that magnitude is completely apprehended by touch and by sight: for they apprehend with certainty what the magnitude is, and how great it is. ”

“ Not so, says Pomponazzi; the impressions in question are preceded by a motion, it is true, in nature; but not by a perception of motion, in us 2 .
We have already seen in what sense alone Pomponazzi assigns to sensus communis the apprehension of the common sensibles. He does so, but not in Alexander's sense that the common sensibles are apprehensible by interior sense as particular sensible qualities by exterior sense. He is aware that Aristotle had described them as perceptible in themselves by common sense (___) , whereas the special senses only perceive them incidentally (___) . ”

“ Every form, in so far as it is form, acts
spiritually Objects act spiritually by virtue of the higher powers It should not excite wonder that the object produces the form by virtue of the higher powers."
In the second Quaestio, "Whether the sensible form and sensation are identical in existence," Pomponazzi alludes again to the metaphysical explanations of an "agency" in sense 5 , but he does no more than mention them, and devotes his attention now to theories of a different character. ”

“ But species sensibilis meant in this case the physical impression on the sense-organ 4 . And we have the twofold interpretation of species sensibilis, almost in so many words, in the doctrine ascribed to Albert and adopted by Pomponazzi: "Albert would seem to hold that every form, in so far as it is form, acts spiritually, but that in so far as it is in matter, it acts physically. ”

“ Consequently, in so far as it is possessed by sensus communis, that name must designate something spiritualis, " The characteristic of repre senting both itself and its object implies a high degree of spirituality... but sense (i.e. external) , just because it is least spiritual and very imperfect, cannot be conscious of itself V
1 Aristotle, De Somno, 455 a 17. ”

“ At a later period, after Averroes and St Thomas and their schools had recovered some apprehension of the logical intention of Aristotle's original language, the phrase species sensibilis might be employed in both senses at once to denote
1 Thus, f. 84 r.: "Tune est dubitatio quae est mota ab Averroe...quomodo est possibile ut sensibile ad extra, quod habet esse in materia, producat speciem sensi- bilem, quae est perfectior objecto: cum tamen nihil producat aliquid perfectius se." ”

“ Cum dicis, Aristoteles numeral ea inter sensibilia per se, dico quod sunt per se ad mine sensum, quia sensus interior non potest ea (sell, sensibilia per se) cognoscere sine motu et quiete." Ibid.
2 "Completa et perfecta comprehensio numeri est virtutis interioris, sed initiative est in sensu exteriori: unde pueri et lethargici, qui non habent bonam memoriam, bene sentiunt horas, non tamen possunt eas numerare. " Op. cit. f. 88 r.
3 " Utrum sensibilia communia comprebendantur per proprias species." Op. ”

“ Aliis non placet hoc, quia tune non solveretur, si anima non concurrit ad sensationem, quomodo sensatio sit actus immanens; ideo alii aliter dicunt, et (inter eos) est Albertus, quod sensatio producitur a sensu, mediante specie sensibili." Comm. de An. f. 85 v.
2 "Albertus videretur tenere quod omnis forma, ut forma est, agit spiritualiter." Op. cit. f. ”