Victor Caston

Aristotle's discussion of perceiving that we perceive has points of contact with two contemporary debates about consciousness: the first over whether consciousness is an intrinsic feature of mental states or a higher-order thought or perception; the second concerning the qualitative nature of experience. In both cases, Aristotle's views cut down the middle of an apparent dichotomy, in a way that does justice to each set of intuitions, while avoiding their attendant difficulties. With regard to the first issue?the primary focus of this paper?he argues that consciousness is both intrinsic and higher-order, due to its reflexive nature. This, in turn, has consequences for the second issue, where again Aristotle seeks out the middle ground. He is committed against qualia in any strong sense of the term. Yet he also holds that the phenomenal quality of experience is not exhausted by its representational content

The study of Aristotle’s psychology has long been dominated by metaphysical concerns, centering above all on the relation between the soul and the body. For centuries, this was inevitable, given the widespread preoccupation with immortality and considerable puzzlement as to whether Aristotle’s views about the intellect committed him to it or not. But in the twentieth century the soul-body relation has continued to be the main focus, even when talking about perception. The debate over perception that raged from the 1980s until the last decade was almost entirely restricted to the question of whether Aristotle was a functionalist.It is a welcome change, then, to have a book whose primary concern is the content of..