1 1 Perceiving that we see and hear: Aristotle on Plato on judgement and reflection Mary Margaret McCabe 1. Perceiving that we see and hear: the opening gambit I begin with a short, and famously vexed, 1 passage from Aristotle’s de anima: Since we perceive that we see and hear, it is necessary either to perceive by sight that one sees 2 or by some other (sense). But the same sense will be of the sight and of its underlying colour. Then either there will be two senses of the same object or the same sense will be of itself. Further, if indeed the perception of sight is other [sc. than sight] then either the perceptions will go to infinity 3 or some sense will perceive itself. So we should assume the latter in the first place. But this involves a puzzle: for if perceiving by sight is seeing, and what is seen is colour or what has colour, then if some sight is going to see the seer, 4 the first seer will have colour. 1 See, for example, Ross (1961) ad loc.; Hamlyn (1968) ad loc.; Hicks (1907) ad loc.; Kosman (1975); Osborne (1983); Caston (2002, 2004); Sisko (2004); Johanssen (2005). I translate the text of Ross’ OCT (1956) except at 425b19, where I follow his (1961). In what follows, I have tired to avoid elephantiasasis of the footnotes by only mentioning points from the commentators which directly affect my argument. 2 The Greek shifts from ‘we perceive that we see….’ at 425b12 to a third person formula (‘to perceive that one sees’ at 425b13) which allows the construal that it is sight that perceives that it sees. 3 Kosman argues that the infinite regress implies that second-order perception must be a necessary condition of first-order perception; so too does Caston (2002, 2004). Johanssen disagrees; but argues that his interpretation (that this is an account of an ‘inner sense’) goes through anyway (2005). More below, §3. 4 Ross (1956) prints horan here, twice, with less authority than the majority of mss, which have horwn; contrariwise he prints the latter in his (1961). Support for the latter is supplied by horwn at 425b22, provided we can understand the role of the intervening sentence. Ross makes the proviso that in 19 the reference is to the faculty of sight, seeing, and to the absurdity of the faculty’s being coloured; while in 22 Aristotle must be talking about the organ’s being coloured. See Caston (2002, 2004) and Johanssen (2005) for different views of this issue.