Paloma Hernández Rubio

In Physics 1. 1, 184b11–12, Aristotle says that "a child begins by calling all men father, and all women mother, but later on distinguishes each of them". Aristotle uses this observation to explain why, in physical sciences, one should begin with the more general to advance to the more particular. In explaining what Aristotle means with this assertion, Albert the Great (in Physics, I, 1, 6) develops his own version of Avicenna's notion of 'the vague individual', which is intended to explain why our first acquaintance with physical objects is confused and indeterminate. Albert uses his sophisticated theory on sense-perception developed in De homine. A remarkable point of this theory is that it depends a lot on the physiology of the brain. Thus, all perceptual phenomena should be explained considering this physiology. In explaining how the perception of the vague individual happens, Albert uses an Avicennian example: when we see a physical object that is too far, we cannot recognize what the object it is. As the object approaches, we can grasp more details: that it is an animal, that it is a person, and so on. Thus, Albert must explain why children's brains grasp worldly objects as they were too far from them. In this talk, I want to show how Albert uses his knowledge of brain physiology to explain a perceptual phenomenon, which has important consequences in his epistemology and his theory of science.

The development of the concept of “concept,” in a Fregean sense, was a major philosophical achievement. In antiquity and the Middle Ages, the notion of concept had not been clearly defined, and rationality was delimited by the ability to access universal representations. Nowadays we associate rationality with the ability to manipulate concepts and we assume that animals are irrational because they have none and, therefore, we think, they cannot speak. However, for Aristotle and the Peripatetic philosophers, animals were irrational, because they lacked an immaterial intellect that could give them access to universal forms or intentions and therefore were unable to make inferences. In the Peripatetic context the cognitive contents available to animals were limited only in that they excluded universals; however, they had many characteristics similar to those of concepts. It was these characteristics that Avicenna and Albert the Great exploited to explain the behavior of irrational animals. An example of this is Avicenna’s introduction of the estimative power in his inner senses theory which can be used to explain a wide range of cognitive phenomena (Black, 1993); among these, the explanation of how the sensible soul can access what Avicenna calls “third degree abstraction intentions”, that is, cognitive content that under certain circumstances can be abstracted and considered in a universal way, but in the sensible soul is always linked to an individual representation and its appendices of matter. Albert the Great’s inner faculties theory is inspired by Avicenna’s Liber de anima. In his works De homine (1242) and De anima (1254–57), Albert takes the number and the name of the inner senses, the name of each faculty’s cognitive object, and even the same examples from Liber de anima. However, his explanation is different in that he develops further Avicenna’s notion of the third degree of abstraction and introduces the notion of sensible or confuse universals (Physica, I, 1, 6) which are universals attached to the individual representation of the thing. One of Albert’s goals in De animalibus is to prove, that the apparently rational behavior of animals described by Aristotle in De historia animalium are actually irrational and can be explained by his theory of sense perception. The greatest challenge he faces are the Pygmies, who according to Albert are non-rational animals that can speak. The fact that Albert considers such a language possible, makes evident, as I will show, the great amount of conceptual content that he grants to sense perception in non–rational animals.

According to Aristotle’s De anima, human senses can recognize individual things qua individuals. This implies that they can apprehend individual forms, i.e., substances. However, substance is not sensible in itself. Although incidental perception accounts for the connection between intellectual and sensible properties, the question remains how intellect-lacking animals can perceive individual things. Avicenna advances an inner-sense theory to explain how animals interact with individuals without perceiving substance. Averroes’s belief that the human senses grasp the intentio individualis, i.e., the individual substantial form, presupposes that animal and human senses are different. Albert the Great’s solution, in his Commentary on the De anima, retains Averroes’s intentio individualis but agrees with Avicenna’s claim that rational and non-rational animals share identical sensitive apparatuses. Albert arrives at his solution in three main steps. First, he redefines the concept of abstraction from Avicenna’s Liber de anima, part II, chapter 2, to separate the individual thing from its signification, i.e., its intention. Secondly, he applies his forma totius theory asserting that each of the five Porphyrian universals can be predicated of an individual thing because they refer to the totality of that thing. Thirdly, he uses the concept of praedicatio per se tertio modo from Posterior Analytics to argue that the Porphyrian universal accident refers to the totality of an individual thing. The resulting theory makes it possible to explain how the senses can apprehend the individual thing qua individual without the necessity of perceiving its substance.