Caston’s Interpretation Of Aristotle’s Theory Of Perception

In response to the contemporary scholarly researches on Aristotle’s theory of perception,Victor Caston criticized two mainstream interpretations: literalism and spiritualism,absorbed the theoretical advantages of both sides and took a new blend interpretation with information transmission as the key.Therefore,this dissertation tries to elaborate the new blend interpretation.Contemporary scholars generally believe that Aristotle’s discourse on perception is controversial.Perception,as a particular change,according to Aristotle’s description,depends on the “receiving perceptible form” and “a similarity to the object of perception”.But what actually receive perceptible form lacks further clarification,which leads to two different interpretations: some believe that the sensory organs receive form and undergo physiological changes,becoming literally like the perceiving object,which is called the “literal interpretation”;Others believe that the senses themselves receive the form and awaken the underlying consciousness of the sense object in the sense organ and become analogically the same as the perceiving object,which is called the “spiritualism”.Neither interpretations,however,faultlessly correspond to Aristotle’s description of perception.Based on the criticism of the two explanations,Caston proposes to offer a more detailed compromise position between literalism and spiritualism.According to the investigation of the literal interpretation and the spiritual interpretation,he attributed the errors of the two interpretations to two points: the similarity,between the perceiver and perceiving object,is explained as a replica and physiological change is excluded from the perception.On the one hand,from Aristotle’s argument against Empedocles,Caston concluded that Aristotle denies that there is always a replica in perception,and the perceiver needs to be the same as the perceiving object merely in an analogical sense.On the other hand,Caston paraphrased and refuted four arguments of spiritualism,and made four conclusions as follow: “the perceiving is a special change” that cannot preclude physiological changes in perception;physiological change in perception does not eliminate the causal effect of sensible properties;admitting physiological change in perception does not mean leading to anachronism;a lack of textual evidence does not mean a lack of the thesis.Thus,Caston concluded that physiological change play a necessary role in Aristotle’s theory of perception.Then,Caston made a new interpretation in a way that wax theory shows.When the wax block is printed on the ring,it also obtains the authority to represent the owner of the ring,beyond a simple figure of the ring.As regards the authority,wax block “receives its form without matter”.When this model is applied to the perception,then,perceiving is explained as: when perceiving power receives a perceptible form without matter,it would not become another perceptible object in a way that perceptible object has the perceptible form,but only represent perceptible form in a different way by the received information.And the key of the information is ratio.Finally,based on the blend interpretation,this dissertation makes some attempts to solve the problems that plague both literalists and spiritualists,and to respond to the questions to the blend interpretation.The purpose is to further defend the validity of the blend interpretation.