Abstract

This paper offers a new interpretation of Aristotle’s account of basic perceptual discrimination in On the Soul II 11. This is the discrimination of single perceptible qualities like, e.g., ‘red’, ‘sweet’, ‘hot’ of which even the simplest animals on the scala naturae are capable. It is argued that, for Aristotle, basic perceptual discrimination is largely—but not entirely—a causal process in the course of which a perceptible quality is isolated from the matter of a sensory input. That isolation is interpreted as the result of a juxtaposition of the sensory input with a neutral perceptual value provided by the perceptual soul. The contrast resulting from that juxtaposition is basic phenomenal content like, e.g., ‘red’, ‘hot’, ’sweet’. Basic perceptual discrimination is thus interpreted as the production of phenomenal content in the animal organism. The paper ends with a discussion of the underlying notion of ‘juxtaposition’ of perceptual input with the soul and an interpretation of basic perceptual awareness as the reception of discriminated content.