Daniel Stern postulated six internal
formats that pick up various aspects of the incoming sense data. Probably not
aware of it, Stern repeats Aristotle’s problem of how the pieces from different
sensory channels are parsed together. By being so distinct and clear, Stern
finds exactly the right words to show the problem. I must repeat the passage
from my previous post:
...the diverse
events and feelings are tied together as necessary elements of a single unified
happening that, at one of its higher levels, assumes a meaning. The problem
with this and other such solutions is how
the meaning, even a very primitive one, slips in or gets assigned or is
constructed from the pieces. (Stern: The motherhood constellation, p. 89,
my italics)
Indeed, by what mental function does
meaning become attached to the representation, or the internal perceptual form
of an object or an event? This is a typically Aristotelian problem, as Kaukua
and Kukkonen pointed out in their article. An interesting Medieval attempt to
solve it was presented by Ibn Sina (the Latin Avicenna), a Persian physician
who lived around the turn of the first millennium (980–1037). He was an
important developer of Arabian philosophical psychology and a link in the
subsequent Western Medieval adoption of Aristotle’s philosophy.
Much in the same manner as Stern, Ibn Sina
recognised the need to postulate a number of internal functions, or internal
senses, that processed the elemental data, received by the five sense organs. I
managed to retrieve a translated excerpt
in which Ibn Sina enlists the five internal senses that perform various
synthetic operations on the incoming forms.
One of the animal
internal faculties of perception is the faculty of fantasy, i.e., sensus
communis, located in the forepart of the front ventricle of the brain. It
receives all the forms which are imprinted on the five [external] senses and
transmitted to it from them. Next is the faculty of representation located at
the rear part of the front ventricle of the brain, which preserves what the
sensus communis has received from the five senses even in the absence of the
sensed object. … Next is the faculty of the 'sensitive imagination' in relation
to the animal soul, and the 'rational imagination' in relation to the human
soul. This faculty is located in the middle ventricle of the brain near the
vermiform process, and its function is to combine certain things with others in
the faculty of representation, and to separate some things from others as it
chooses. Then there is the estimative faculty located in the far end of the
middle ventricle of the brain, which perceives the non-sensible intentions that
exist in the individual sensible objects, like the faculty that judges that the
wolf is to be avoided and the child is to be loved. Next there is the retentive
and recollective faculty located in the rear ventricle of the brain, which
retains what the estimative faculty perceives of the non-sensible intentions
existing in individual sensible objects. (Avicenna, translated in Rahman, F.(1952). Avicenna's psychology. London: Oxford University Press, p. 31)
Ibn Sina is surprisingly modern by
regarding these internal faculties as brain modules. Certainly, current brain
imaging studies have shown that these modules
of the “sensible soul” do not reside in the ventricles, but the
contemporary modular theories of mind follow exactly the same logic of analysis
as Ibn Sina does in the excerpt. Going back to Stern’s question about
constructing meaning of events I want you to pay attention to the estimative
faculty that is capable of perceiving the non-sensible intentions that exist in
sensible objects.
Ibn Sina understood well the impoverished
character of the Aristotelian sensible forms. He asked, why does the lamb flee
when perceiving a wolf. The grey, hairy form does not “inform” a particular
danger. Something had to be added, and here we have a conception of meaning
that “exists in the individual sensible objects” and is recognised by the
estimative faculty (cf. Stern’s “protonarrative envelope”). Thus, in addition to forms, objects seem to
“emit” intentions that are perceived by an internal mental faculty. Actually,
the currently popular research on the “theory-of-mind”, or "mind-reading" module represents a
truly Avicennian approach to understanding how we make sense of others. I will
return to this topic in due course.
According to Kaukua and Kukkonen, Ibn Sina
had a sophisticated understanding of intentions. He did not, actually, regard them as properties of
objects or events that they "emit" and are then sensed by the estimative faculty. Instead, intentions vary according to the reciprocal positioning of
the agent an object. Kaukua and Kukkonen
illustrate this by an example of the hunter’s way of perceiving a wolf. While
the lamb flees, the hunter has a rifle and this alters the intentional balance.
Now it is rather the wolf who must escape. But the hunter may be an
environmentalist and does not want to harm the wolf. “Acts of meaning” (in
Bruner’s terms) are not anything as such. They receive their meaning only in
the concrete relationships that are established between the actor and the
object.
