Internal Senses

Abstract

AbstractOur perceptual experience is far from being completed by the operations of the external senses. It is not a simple process through which we perceive isolated ‘sense data’ or discrete psychological atoms, such as colours, sounds, odours and sapours. Beside the external senses, which perceive the proper sensibles, and derivatively also the common and in concreto incidental sensibles, there are several post-sensory operations contributing significantly to the formation, retention and combination of our unified percept. We perceive the sensibles belonging to different modalities in a combined way as belonging to one and the same sensible object. At the level of sensory perception, we recognize agreements and distinctions not only within the sensible qualities of a particular sensory modality such as white and black in the case of sight but also among the sensibles belonging to the different external senses. We perceptually judge that white is not sweet or that what is white, for example, milk is also sweet. Moreover, we often apprehend these combined perceptual wholes with an additional aspect that is expressed in terms of the object’s convenience or inconvenience. We do not perceive objects ‘neutrally’ or from a purely theoretical point of view. In fact, only when perceived as convenient or inconvenient can sensible objects stimulate operations of the sensory appetite and be ‘supervised’ and commanded by the higher appetite, namely the will, and followed by a behavioural response executed by the locomotive power. Accordingly, our perception is frequently ‘tinted’ by practical intentions that are not detected as being separate from the perceived sensible wholes. Such separation can only be performed by the intellect. Concrete sensible wholes are apprehended also according to other aspects. We perceive this white man as Thaddeus and this small girl as Mary. Moreover, not only do we perceive present objects, we are also aware of absent or even impossible objects that do not and cannot exist extramentally.