This volume is a collection of essays on a special theme in Aristotelian philosophy of mind: the internal senses. The first part of the volume is devoted to the central question of whether or not any internal senses exist in Aristotle’s philosophy of mind and, if so, how many and how they are individuated. The provocative claim of chapter one is that Aristotle recognizes no such internal sense. His medieval Latin interpreters, on the other hand, very much thought that Aristotle did introduce a number of internal senses as shown in the second chapter.
The second part of the volume contains a number of case studies demonstrating the philosophical background of some of the most influential topics covered by the internal senses in the Aristotelian tradition and in contemporary philosophy of mind. The focus of the case studies is on memory, imagination and estimation. Chapters introduce the underlying mechanisms of memory and recollection taking its cue from Aristotle butreaching into early modern philosophy as well as studying composite imagination in Avicenna’s philosophy of mind. Further topics include the Latin reception of Avicenna’s estimative faculty and the development of the internal senses as well as offering an account of the logic of objects of imagination.
Table of Content
Introduction: Jakob Leth Fink and Seyed Mousavian.- Central Questions.- Chapter 1: Internal Senses and Aristotle’s Cognitive Theory: Deborah Modrak.- Chapter 2: Stop Making Sense(s): some Late Medieval and Very Late Medieval Views of Faculty Psychology: José Filipe Silva.- Case Studies.- Chapter 3: Movements, Memory, and Mixture: Aristotle, Confusion, and the Historicity of Memory: John Sutton.- Chapter 4: Representation in Avicenna’s Doctrine of Knowledge: Meryem Sebti.- Chapter 5: Estimative Power as a Social Sense: Juhana Toivanen.- Chapter 6: Jodocus Trutfetter (c. 1460–1519) on Internal Senses: Pekka Kärkkäinen.- Chapter 7: Imagination, Non-Existence, Impossibility: Graham Priest.
About the author
Jakob Leth Fink (Ph D Copenhagen 2009) is a postdoctoral researcher in Representation and Reality in the Aristotelian Tradition at Gothenburg University. His research interests cover Aristotle, the Aristotelian Tradition, ethics and dialectic. He has recently published on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and its medieval reception.
Seyed N. Mousavian (Ph D Alberta, 2008) is a research fellow in Representation and Reality at the Department of Philosophy, Linguistics, and Theory of Science, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden and an associate professor of philosophy at the School of Analytic Philosophy, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM), Tehran, Iran. His research interests include philosophy of language, metaphysics and Medieval Arabic philosophy. He has published in
Mind and Language,
Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly,
Canadian Journal of Philosophy, and
Synthese among other places.
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