| Summary: | <p>This thesis defends the view that, for Aristotle, perception is a mode of cognition
capable of grasping particulars, including (and especially) under value descriptions.
It begins by identifying the Two Worlds Problem that motivates Aristotle’s
repeated deference to perception. Deliberation alone will never reach the concrete
individual captured in a demonstrative thought standardly expressed as ‘This loaf
here’. But without such a cognition, we would never be able to act in the world.
I then defend the view that perceptual content includes kind properties and so is
sufficient to provide the object acquaintance necessary for demonstrative thought.
I do this by showing that Aristotle is committed to the Conscious Attention Thesis,
which entails the Content View, the view that our perceptual experiences have
structure and content and, therefore, contain kind properties since to attend to
something is to grasp it as a such-and-such. I then argue that perceptual content
also includes value properties. I do this by showing that Aristotle’s account of
the passions entails a commitment to the Perception of Value Thesis. Therefore
perception can grasp not only that this is a man or that is a loaf but it can also
grasp that this man is brave or that loaf is baked just right. This is how Aristotle
avoids his own Two Worlds Problem: we have two modes of cognition that can
be coördinate. I confront a major objection to this picture, which is that the
psychic faculty of phantasia performs the work of grasping evaluative appearance
(and appearance more generally). I reject this interpretation and argue for a
deflationary view of phantasia. Finally, I show a major advantage to my view,
which is that it solves a riddle in Aristotle’s account of akrasia in NE 7.3.</p>
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