A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action: Volume 4:- Anscombe’s Philosophical Psychology.

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Elisabeth Anscombe’s work is not easy to characterise. It is clearly influenced by the later work of Wittgenstein but it also manifests a resemblance to the work of medieval scholars working in the Neo-Aristotelian tradition. The Greek idea of “psuche” underlies some of her reasoning about our human nature. There is also clear reliance on the classical principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason in her treatment of philosophical arguments. The presence of a spirit of Aristotle, is, then, clearly present in her writings but there is a question-mark hanging over her relation to Kantian metaphysics. There is also a clear and concise commitment to the Wittgenstein methodology of examining the intricacies of the grammar of our language which can be found in the writings of Aristotle but not in Kant who thought language to be nothing but a medium for the presentation of ideas without any commitment to their truth or rationality.

In an essay entitled “The Intentionality of Sensation”, we are presented with Anscombe’s views on Logic and Language but her relation to Metaphysics remains unclear. “Sensation” is, of course a key concept in Psychological Theory and Anscombe submits the concept to a logical and grammatical critique. In connection with this discussion Anscombe discusses the changes in meaning of the terms “subject” and “object”. One common sense approach to the meaning of the term “object” is to think of it as denoting:

“the objects found in the accused mens pockets” Metaphysics and The Philosophy of Mind, G. E., M., Anscombe, Oxford, Blackwell, 1981(P.3)

Objects are at the very least sensory-motor entities that naturally insert themselves into spatial contexts of perception and manipulation. They can also be the abstract entities of thought discussed by scholastic thinkers and they can be the entities discussed by Freud under the category of “object of desire”. Anscombe approaches the discussion about the nature of objects strategically via reference to the grammatical idea of an object. Here the question “What?” dominates the discussion. “What did John give Mary?” is a question asked in a grammatical parts of speech lesson whilst analysing the sentence “John gave Mary a book.”. Anscombe points out in this discussion that we are not dealing with a piece of language and here she does not mention, but is clearly relying on the Wittgensteinian claim, that the concept of the essence of “objects” is provided by grammatical remarks and investigations. Anscombe, like Wittgenstein is eager to steer a course that does not sail too close to metaphysics. She claims that the direct object is not merely a part of the structure of a sentence but also “gives”(pictures?) the object(the book). In Philosophy a book is a physical thing, an artefact, and a cultural object communicating thought for various purposes. In grammar the term “book” is classified or categorised as a “noun”, Wittgenstein claimed that much of ones language has to be understood(mastered) before one can understand fully the use of a term, whether it be a noun or a proper name. From an Aristotelian point of view spoken words are affections of the soul which in turn are likenesses (pictures?)of what they are affections of. Written language symbolises these spoken words, though we should note with Ricoeur that the logic of a book is that it explodes the dialogical face-to-face context. Many Hylomorphic Aristotelian powers, capacities and dispositions are implied by Aristotles claim that the subject -predicate structure is analogous to the thought structure of thinking something about something. The term sumbolon is a designation of the expressive power of voiced sounds in relation to affections of the soul. For Aristotle the complete meaning of a sentences is its logos and may require hermeneia or interpretation, whether it be a declarative, an interrogative , an imperative or a sentence expressive of wants or wishes. For Aristotle this hermeneutic activity cannot occur at the level of the name/noun. It is the verb that brings additional mental powers into the picture via its reference to time and of being an indication of something said about something. It is this latter indication that allows the true and the false to emerge as an element of logos in the declarative case. The imperative case also allows the good and its opposite to emerge in the relation of actions and intentions to the agents of these actions and intentions. Aristotle , of course added another dimension to this discussion when he claimed that Being is said in many ways and articulated his 10 categories of existence which Kant felt was rhapsodic(possibly because it appeared to be merely a prologue to his own categories of judgements). Wittgenstein for his part, at least in his later work, fixated upon the expressive function of language and spent much time exploring the philosophical consequences of the role of language in philosophical thought. Anscombe’s account appears to regard the object of the book as having an intentional existence, a form of existence that has a complex logical relation to the material existence of the object referred to. On the other hand, objects related to actions(e.g. giving) have a clear and obvious relation to the action. This relation is not as clear and obvious when it comes to thought. Upon being asked “What are you thinking?” and being told “I was thinking of Winston Churchill” no one for example will ask if this is possible given the fact that he is dead. This possibility of referring to non-existent objects becomes more controversial if one answers instead “I was thinking of Apollo” or “I was thinking of Zeus”. These “objects” may never have existed in the way in which Winston Churchill did. All names can be described, e.g. “The sun-god” or “The son of Chronos”. Neither the names nor the descriptions have any obvious relation to present or past sensory-motor experience, even if they can be brought to life in the sensory dream-like scene of the imagination. In these latter cases there is no possibility of consulting relatives of Apollo or Zeus, reading their letters, documents that they have signed, or documents containing facts about them (as one can in the case of Winston Churchill). Zeus and Apollo may well be literary creations(fictions) and no less important for being so. The meaning of these names terminate therefore in the use of their names and descriptions in literary documents. Anscombe also takes up the issue of the worship of fictional objects such as “the sun-god” in the light of her discussion of the hylomorphic distinction between formal(intentional) and material objects. The sun-god worshippers are clearly not worshipping a gravitationally bound body of hydrogen and helium gas made self luminous by an internal process of nuclear fusion. What then are they worshipping? The role of the sun in their lives, both real and imagined? Zeus in particular was imagined to be a standard bearer of wisdom, courage and self control–a sort of demiurge of the ethical values and moral space of humankind, acting in the mysterious ways in which supernatural agencies act. So, if to the question “What are you thinking about?” I respond “I am thinking about Zeus, the son of Chronos”, there may well be an epistemological question to raise concerning whether there is a material object of my thought, but this does not for Aristotle disturb the logos of the thought because there is certainly an intentional object located in the realm of ethical discourse that is the subject matter of the discourse. Anscombe does not appear to attribute too much significance to the epistemological concern that may be raised about the status of fictional intentional objects. This might be because this is of no import for the connection between the being of a subject of discourse and the rules connected to the categories of grammar. In this universe of discourse there is no validity to the distinction between subjective and objective entities as construed by science and analytical philosophers. Why, one can wonder, does the subject-object distinction focus upon a putative primacy of the material object locatable by sensory motor encounters and locatable in a space-time continuum. Intentional objects such as the debt of five pounds that Jack owes Jill appears not to be a sensory-motor object or locatable in space(open to ostensive definition). Instead what we appear to be dealing with is a transactional exchange of money and a promise to repay the money. These are indeed sensory motor activities locatable in a space-time continuum but it is the promise that appears to be the most important element of the transaction, conferring as it does the obligation upon Jack to repay the debt. When he does so it is not the physical money but the act of repayment that is the element that makes the promise meaningful. The honouring of the obligation is also connected to the truthfulness of the promise and actualises Jack’s intention. The act of the promise and the act of the repayment fall under both the aspect of the true and the aspect of the good. For Aristotle both aspects are connected to Logos.It is not clear that Anscombe would go this far in her account of what is happening in the case of the incurring and the discharging of the debt. The above account transcends the kind of account she gave in an earlier essay(“OnBrute Facts” in Ethics, Religion, and Politics” (Blackwell, Oxford, 1981) relating to a grocery bill for potatoes. In this essay she speculates upon the relation of the intention to discharge the debt and its relation to brute facts such as delivering some potatoes and the institution of buying and selling. Here we are clearly in the realm of the hypothetical imperative: “If you buy potatoes, the act suffices to generate a debt that you have an obligation to discharge”. There is clearly in this context an implied promise to pay the money given the facts. Were I to refuse to pay and this matter ended up in court, the case would consist of a rehearsal of certain brute facts such as whether I intended to buy the potatoes and they actually came into my possession. In this case where no explicit promise has been made its truthfulness will not be an issue. The transactions themselves will determine the judgement of the case. For Anscombe, the intention is the pivot of the generation of the debt and this is not an interior private matter but an external public matter that is justified in terms of the hylomorphic distinction between the material and the intentional object of the action in question. Truth is an important part of this account because the intentional object is “given” by the description which the agent or a judge and jury would accept as truly describing ones intention, e.g. “I shot at a moving dark object in the foliage believing it to be the deer I was stalking”. Given the fact that my father was shot, the other facts obviously have to bear this description out. It has to be clear what was mistaken for what, and the universal element in this process is, that anyone could have made the same mistake in just these circumstances. The focus here is obviously upon a particular action in particular circumstances and this was neither the case for Aristotelian nor Kantian moral Philosophy. The problem with Anscombes account is that it would appear that the philosophical account of the promise or the debt appears almost instrumental, a matter of following a rule in a way that can be compared with following the rules of chess. For both Aristotle and Kant, the term Logos is related to categorical necessity, a type of necessity connected with the attempt to generate the goods for the soul in which we treat each other as ends. rather than as means to personal ends, a type of necessity related to the general attitude toward being both the potential legislator of a law or principle as well as being subject to this law or principle. The emphasis Anscombe places on intention is a descriptive emphasis and it does not appeal to the necessity specified in the Kantian Categorical Imperative in which it is asserted that it is our duty to act so that we are able to universalise the principle lying behind the maxim(the intention) of our action. It is this appeal to duty that in fact suffices to generate the expectation that we have a right to be treated as an end in ourselves and not as a means to some other persons or institutions needs. This is the metaphysical realm of moral law: a realm far removed from the transactional accounts where appeal is made to “following rules” in moral situations.

It would seem, then, that neither the categories and processes of the external physical world nor the categories and processes of normative moral activity and judgement are easily translatable into the categories and processes of grammar: but all three categories and processes are characterisable in terms of the Greek idea of “logos”, even if parsing sentences is a rule following activity, resembling the game of chess more than the moral creation and discharging of a debt by means of a promise. The grammatical and linguistic investigations of Wittgenstein have philosophical substance because they are grounded in the Aristotelian notion of forms of life but even these failed to provide satisfaction for Wittgenstein who described his own work in the “Philosophical Investigations” as an “album of sketches”. Pointing out, however, to his analytically minded colleagues that the language-game we play with imperatives is different to the language game of reporting was an important milestone in loosening the grip the “new men” of Hegel, Science, and Analytical Philosophy had on the throat of our cultures. These new men dedicated themselves to the questioning the validity of intentional objects of worship, claiming the demise of the notion of “form” that philosophy inherited from Aristotelian and Kantian Philosophy. Worshipping is an activity embedded in a general attitude of reverence and awe for “forms” or “principles”. The disappearance of this activity is clearly linked to the disappearance of this contemplative attitude and the powers of mind connected to it. Worshipping of the sun is intentional to its core and is so partly because it is an activity embedded in a system of ought concepts and principles that has an important relationship to a source of light and life that has helped to shape all life forms of the planet.

Anscombe claims that perception also has an intentional aspect in which objects are given in sensory experience. The description of what is seen plays a very important constitutive role insofar as the identity of objects of perception are concerned. In perceptual situations it is also the case that the object phrase can be taken materially and indeed this might even be the primary use of the verb “to see”. The secondary use of this verb is also important, e.g. “He who sees must see something”(Plato). This something can be a physical external object but also a formal intentional object. In the latter case there does not have to be a material or physical something to be seen. Anscombe interestingly situates perceptual activity in a wider context of aiming at something such as a dark patch(figure) against a background of lighter foliage. Shooting at the object and subsequently finding out that I have shot my father is the example used by Anscombe to distinguish between the intentional object aimed at(dark patch against background of foliage) and the material object(my father). The intentional object is given via the question “What were you aiming/shooting at?”. This is a particularly illuminating discussion of a distinction important to the law in its consideration of whether any crime has been committed in the performance of this action in relation to the “material object” of my father. So, I aim at this dark patch and shoot and it turns out to be my fathers deer stalker hat. I have undoubtedly shot my father irrespective of what intentions I may have had. If I land in court over this mistake and am asked the question “What were you aiming/shooting at?”, my truthful answer will pick out the intentional object of the act. My defence is obviously that it was not my intention to shoot my father because I did not know that it was him I was aiming at. This highlights the importance of knowledge for the correct attribution of intention to an agent or an action.

Anscombe also raises the question of inner perception and asks whether there is any such thing as an inner perception of myself in which I become aware of myself, become conscious of myself. Kant, we have argued, claimed that prior to spontaneously using the term “I”, the child relates to himself via the medium of feeling. The use of this personal pronoun announces, Kant argues, the dawn of thought in the user, announces the beginnings of the use of a higher mental power. How does Consciousness fit into this account? Animals, for Kant, are conscious beings but are not able to reach the level of self-consciousness achieved by the higher level of thought referred to. Kant is, in the context of this discussion, presenting a personality theory as well as a cognitive theory relating to the battery of cognitive powers, capacities, and dispositions that a “person” possesses. These powers, capacities and dispositions build a circle of conditions that are in a logical relation of mutual implication. O’Shaughnessy has the following contribution to make to this discussion:

“When we speak of “persons” we have in mind beings endowed with a distinctive set of properties, consisting mostly of capacities such as thought and reasoning, but also in the knowledge of certain fundamentals like self, world, time, truth.”(Consciousness and the World, P.103)

In this account, there is an incipient commitment to many of the assumptions of hylomorphic Philosophy, in particular to the bodily conditions that support this circle of relatively abstract conditions. For O Shaughnessy this circle evolved into existence with the assistance of principles and laws of sexual and natural selection over very long periods of time. All forms of life have the principle of psuche in common, driving actualisation processes through different stages of development. The essence specifying definition of the human form of life, namely rational animal capable of discourse, undoubtedly implies reference to a form of self consciousness. Kant referred to this aspect of the human form of life in transcendental terms, to an “I” that thinks truths, to an “I” that knows both the world and itself. We should recall in the context of this discussion that the Ancient Greeks believed that the search for self-knowledge was the most difficult kind of investigation. Wittgenstein and Anscombe contributed to this kind of investigation by claiming that the Philosopher could use the medium of language to assist in this search.

Anscombe’s contribution to the task of condensing a cloud of the Philosophy of self consciousness into a drop of grammar in the quest for self-knowledge is firstly, to classify the term “I” as an indirect reflexive pronoun(what Paul Ricoeur calls a “shifter”). Grammatical analysis reveals that this grammatical category does not share the properties of proper names or demonstratives. In this investigation the idea of truth is used but these truth conditions are not inextricably tied to the technical concept of reference. Rather there is in these reflections more than a passing resemblance to Aristotelian reflections upon language conceived in terms of thinking something about something. For Aristotle the subject-predicate structure is characterised in terms of a subject being designated and then something is said about that subject, thereby creating that synthesis Heidegger called a veritative or truth-making synthesis. The subject for Aristotle is tied to his ten categories of existence that provide a context for this synthesis. Aristotelian “forms” or principles also help to determine what he calls the logos or the account of the sentence.Should the sentence contain the subject “I”, a Kantian extension of this analysis would refer to the operation of thought and the idea of a something that is a cause of itself(not an even caused by something else). This causa sui is not then directly accessible to the exploratory operations of observation and introspection.

The Wittgrnsteinian notion of the self being at the limit of the world and not an object or entity in the world, ought also to be considered in this discussion. As a causa sui, the self in its relation to the world is analogous to the relation of the eye to the visual field it “causes”. The eye is clearly no part of that visual field. The kind of causation involved is formal-final causation as outlined in Aristotelian hylomorphic theory. The difference between these accounts is that in the case of the eye it is natural, if one is a biologist, to also immediately ask why- questions relating to the material and efficient causation of this organ and arrive at the Darwinian theory of evolution(its principles and laws).

In an essay entitled “The First Person” Anscombe seeks to combat the view of many logicians that the term “I” names an entity in the same or a similar way in which proper names name an individual located phenomenally in space and time. She rejects immediately the Cartesian notion of an ego that can coherently doubt the existence of its own body and also the Cartesian idea of consciousness being certain of itself in all its forms. She refers instead to St Augustine’s account of the mind knowing itself in its thought and of its being certain of its own being(De Trinate, Book X(De Civitate Dei)). Anscombe explores the nature of self knowledge by reference to the psychological verbs connected to:

“thoughts of actions, posture, movement and intended actions”(P.35)

Because:

“only those thoughts both are unmediated, non-observational, and also are descriptions which are directly verifiable or falsifiable about the person.”(P.35)

Description, of course, is an important element of discourse. In terms of action, description of what one is doing, is of primary importance for Anscombe. Description in this context is connected to the interrogative activity of questioning, e.g. “What are you doing?”–“I am standing here”–“Why?”–“Because I am waiting for X to come”. The former question on Anscombes account is perhaps what she means by posture and the latter means to inquire into a persons intentions. The former question is definitely requesting a description, but the latter appears to be requesting an explanation with a logical connection to the description of what one is doing: perhaps there is also a logical relation of the explanation to the body and its way of disposing itself in relation to its world. Augustine’s account refers to the mind, and the concept of mind we encounter here is more Platonic than Aristotelian. If this is a correct reflection then, we are probably involved here with a problematic dualistic relation of the body to the mind. On the Aristotelian account “forms” inhabit the body as they do all matter, but only in the way in which the soul “inhabits” a body by providing us with the principle of all the movement and activity of the body. But what then am I doing by saying or thinking “I am standing here”? According to Wittgenstein’s later work I am drawing attention to myself in this act of discourse in much the same way as I do when I am in pain, groan and perhaps say “I am in pain”. In neither of these cases is it true that I am attempting to name or identify anything. The substratum of my sayings and thinkings in these contexts is grounded in my learning or being initiated into the technique of language that enables me to make true statements about my state or condition. The result of this learning is that we can say or think things that were not possible prior to the learning process. So, the grammatical notion of an indirect reflexive pronoun is a way of speaking or thinking about myself that helps to illuminate the mysterious operation of an entity that can will itself to will, or in other words “causes” itself to actualise various powers or capacities. Anscombe ends this essay by claiming that self knowledge is knowledge of the (human) form of life that one is, and that of course is no simple matter to characterise correctly. Neither is it a simple matter to acquire this kind of knowledge.

When we are drawing attention to ourselves, this activity is less like pointing to oneself and more like waving to someone else to attract attention. This is a form of activity not shared by other life forms. The wave is a gesture that begins discourse and the words “I am in pain” may well be related to the gesture of the wave. Here it is not the reference of the word “I” that is at issue but rather its use–a use which the grammarians categorise as the work of an indirect reflexive pronoun. The Kantian “I think” may well be drawing attention to the activity of thinking, which in this case is the combining and differentiating of representations at the same time as drawing attention to the operation of mental powers and capacities that constitute the activity of the understanding. The activity of the understanding is clearly distinguished from the activity of the faculty of Sensibility(affection, perception, imagination) in the critical Philosophy of Kant. The faculty of reason is the third of the faculties of Kant’s personality theory or “theory of persons”. Kant delegated the concrete investigation of these faculties and their relation to each other to the discipline of Anthropology which divides Psychological investigation into two ontological types, namely what the world makes of man, and what man makes of himself . The former is the concern of what Kant calls Physical Anthropology and the latter the concern of Pragmatic Anthropology. The I that thinks obviously plays a larger role in the latter ontological type of investigation. For Aristotle, the search for self knowledge probably extends over a number of mental powers and capacities explored by a number of disciplines spread over three forms of science: theoretical, practical and productive.

In Kant’s critical Philosophy there is very little role for Cartesian first person certainty in relation to the knowledge we have of ourselves. The truth that Kant extracts from the Cogito argument is that the spontaneous use of the term “I” signifies the dawning of a kind of thinking directed at truth and knowledge and the role of consciousness in this account is obscure. For Wittgenstein, the claim that human beings are conscious and knowledge bearing animals are grammatical remarks. My attitude towards a person, Wittgenstein states, is an attitude toward a soul. An attitude is not an experience but rather part of a power or capacity. Such an attitude is obviously tied up with an “I think” that provides us with forms of representation that in turn provide us with “pictures” or narratives related to the being of a human being. It is important to remember that in our grammatical investigations we are not dealing directly with phenomena but rather with what he calls the “possibilities” of phenomena(i.e., the concept of the phenomenon). There is no place for observation or perception(an activity of Sensibility) in such investigations because the issue here is not that of identifying a phenomenon but rather one of understanding a phenomenon. In such a context of explanation/justification rationality or the operation of reason is a better tool than that of the sensory based imagination insofar as both Aristotle and Kant are concerned. It is not clear however, that rationality is the primary tool of understanding for either Wittgenstein and Anscombe.

It is possible, it has been argued, that human beings can be imagined to be automatons. Critics of this position have doubted whether this kind of characterisation contributes to the understanding of the human form of life. Life, it has been argued, is a necessary condition of consciousness and machines can not be conceived to be alive. Perhaps doubting that one has a body as Descartes recommended is the beginning of creating such a science fiction scenario. The Aristotelian idea of a soul as a principle or set of principles motivating the human form of life appears to do much to clear away the philosophical smog surrounding this issue. This idea of the soul as a principle is also a central element in Kant’s investigations into the logic of metaphysics and its relation to experience and thought. For Kant however, the drop that condenses from the Philosophical cloud of Aristotelian hylomorphism is the good will causing itself to act freely as part of an interrogative attitude of awe and wonder at the size of the universe and the moral law residing within. For Kant, the “substance” of our soul was neither something nor something about which nothing could be said. The soul was a “form” manifesting itself in all forms of conscious and mental activity in the faculties of sensibility, understanding and reason. O Shaughnessy’s contribution to this discussion comes in the form of the claim that:

“self-knowledge is a functionally active necessary condition of both rationality and self determination or “freedom”. In short I surmise that self knowledge operates causally at a relatively deep level in the setting up of the circle of developed traits.”(P.103)

Presumably the above reflection also has implications for our relation to others as part of the account of the attitude we have towards other persons that Wittgenstein provides us with. O Shaughnessy cites the translucence of the Cartesian cogito and the Freudian unconscious (a vicissitude of instinct) as important testimony for the proclamation of the significance of self knowledge or self consciousness in relation to the circle of conditions underlying our human form of life. He discusses the limited insight into the workings of our mind when we are dreaming. In the dream we may well believe that we are seeing a figure in a white shirt approaching but the limitation consists in the fact that we are unaware of the fact that this seeing is an imagining. In waking life, O Shaughnessy argues, there is natural insight into the mind which manifest itself in the fact that if we see a figure in a white shirt approaching, we know that we are seeing this phenomenon and not imagining it. We know of the existence, character and content of our mental processes non-observationally, it is argued. This extends the range of psychological verbs relevant to our self knowledge beyond the range suggested by Anscombe. O Shaughnessy further argues that self consciousness of this kind is necessary for grasping consciousness of the world under the aspect of the truth. Seeing lightning strike a tree on this account, immediately and naturally leads to the belief that “lightning has struck the tree”. This is even the case with the use of the indirect reflexive pronoun “I”. I know that I am standing here non-observationally in the same way in which I know “I am hungry”. The child, O Shaughnessy argues, knows that he is hungry because he knows that it is true that he is hungry. Animal forms of life and consciousness lack both an understanding of language and an understanding of its categories and truth conditions. We, humans, on the other hand desire understanding of the form of “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”. Consciousness “aims at the truth” not in terms of external observation and correctness but rather in terms of aletheia in terms of the revelation of the nature or essence of things. The truth of “I am standing here” or “I am hungry” is not then a matter of impressions I am having which refer to something else or some object. Anscombe argues that the impressions I experience are not cognitively “correct” but rather possess a self evident incorrigibility. She argues that my sensation of the secondary quality of colour is an appearance concept(p.47) and we know of this concept because of the function of colour language which operates in accordance with the following rule:

“Colours that keep on looking the same to the same eye against the same backgrounds, and in the same light and orientation are the same.”(P47)

An attempted justification for this rule is given by the example of doctors matching blood samples with a colour chart to determine the degree to which the blood examined is anaemic. Anscombe argues that this kind of judgment is not objectively certain but is nevertheless subjectively incorrigible. She notes interestingly, that we are in the realm of Aristotelian “proper sensibles” but fails to note the Aristotelian distinction between the different kinds of change implied by perception and thought respectively . Sensible changes registered by perception relates obviously to particular sensible objects whereas thought relates to more generic intellectual objects. The judgement “This red here” is obviously a very different kind of judgement to the categorical essence specifying judgement “Colour is a function of the interplay of light and darkness.” The former judgement is obviously related to the occurrence of an event in the context of exploration/discovery and the latter refers to no particular event but rather to a category of experience in the context of explanation/justification: a context in which principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason play decisive roles in the truth of the judgement. Matching a blood sample to a colour chart is obviously a perceptual activity at a level higher than the “This red here” judgment, but it is not a judgement requiring the kind of contemplation Aristotle claims is present in rational thinking. On the other hand, determining whether and how a colour is a form of electro-magnetic radiation does require contemplation in a context of explanation/justification. A different region of the mind is required for determining universal truths about objects. All that may be required in the case of “This red here” kinds of judgement may be an opening up of the windows of the soul and the receiving of impressions of particulars. In such cases we let nature take its course with the possible help of the sensible power of attention.

Memory is a higher form of sensible function which Locke regarded as a vicissitude of consciousness. For him individual memories determined the identity of individual human beings: Nestor was Nestor in virtue of his individual memories. The continuity of these memories and their relation to each other guaranteed the identity of Nestor but des not suffice to guarantee (without the presence of other conditions) the fact that Nestor was a rational animal capable of discourse. That Nestor’s form of self consciousness is regulated by the three hylomorphic Freudian principles (ERP, PPP, AND RP) is more concerned with the being of Nestor than his identity. Aristotle’s Metaphysics confirms this account or Logos of Nestor’s being with the opening remark that “All men desire to know”. A condition for this striving is that there is both a form of life and a consciousness that is striving to both understand the world and itself under the aspect of the truth and the good. Nestor fits these conditions being a person with knowledge of the world, other people and the organic form of the City. This knowledge was understood by the Greek mind via areté, arché and diké.