Form without Matter Empedocles and Aristotle on Color Perception Mark Eli Kalderon 2 i Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see. James Joyce, Ulysses “Quand nos yeux se touchent, fait-il jour ou fait-il nuit?” Jacques Derrida, Le toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy ii Contents 1 Empedocles 1 1.1 Dialectic .................................... 1 1.2 The Answer in the Style of Gorgias .................... 4 1.3 Empedocles’ Theory of Vision ....................... 7 1.4 Empedoclean Puzzlement .......................... 12 1.5 Definition ................................... 15 2 Perception at a Distance 17 2.1 The Sensible Qualities of Remote External Particulars ........ 19 2.1.1 External ................................ 20 2.1.2 Particular ............................... 26 2.1.3 Remote ................................ 30 2.2 Against the Empedoclean Principle .................... 31 2.3 The Generalized Form of Empedoclean Puzzlement .......... 39 3 Transparency 41 3.1 Motive and Method ............................. 41 3.2 Transparency in De Anima .......................... 42 3.3 Transparency in De Sensu ........................... 54 4 Color 65 4.1 Aristotle’s Explanatory Strategy ...................... 65 4.2 The Objects of Perception ......................... 66 4.3 The Definition of Color ........................... 76 4.4 Color and Transparency ........................... 93 5 Light and Dark 97 5.1 Chromatic Harmony ............................. 97 5.2 Empirical Support .............................. 99 5.3 Parmenides ................................... 104 5.4 Empedocles .................................. 107 iii iv CONTENTS 6 The Generation of the Hues 121 6.1 Aristotle’s Three Models .......................... 121 6.1.1 Juxtaposition ............................. 122 6.1.2 Overlap ................................ 127 6.1.3 Mixture ................................ 131 6.1.4 Two Puzzles about Mixture .................... 134 6.2 Chromatic Ratios of Light and Dark ................... 137 6.3 Assessment ................................... 145 7 The Eye 153 7.1 The Soul of the Eye .............................. 153 7.2 Transparency and the Anatomy of the Eye ................ 158 7.3 Interior Illumination ............................. 165 8 Two Transitions to Actuality 169 8.1 The Problem .................................. 169 8.2 The Endoxa ................................... 169 8.3 Distinctions and Refinements ....................... 175 8.3.1 The Triple Scheme ......................... 175 8.3.2 Destructive and Preservative Change .............. 178 8.3.3 Privative Change and Change to a Thing’s Disposition and Nature ................................. 181 8.4 The General Characterization of Perception .............. 184 9 Form Without Matter 189 9.1 The Capacity to Assimilate ......................... 189 9.2 The Wax Analogy ............................... 190 9.2.1 Assimilation of Form ........................ 191 9.2.2 Without Matter ........................... 199 9.2.3 Sensory Presentation as a Mean .................. 204 9.3 The Resolution of Empedoclean Puzzlement .............. 210 Preface This is an essay in the philosophy of perception written in the medium of histori- ography. My motives for writing the present essay, for pursuing the philosophy of per- ception through its history, derive from a number of sources. Let me take this opportunity to describe some of them. For a number of years, over a series of papers (Kalderon, 2007, 2008, 2011b,a,c) that followed on from an earlier collaboration (Hilbert and Kalderon, 2000), I have defended an antimodern conception of color and color perception. According to that conception, colors are mind-independent qualities of material surfaces, trans- parent volumes, and radiant light sources, and color perception is the presentation of particular instances of these qualities in the visual awareness afforded by the sub- ject’s perceptual experience. This is how,I argue, our color experience presents it- self as being, and I undertook to defend this conception from challenges that arise from the problem of conflicting appearances—what Hume (1748) regarded as the “slightest bit of philosophy” required to reject any such conception of color and color perception. This conception is an antimodern conception of color in that, in the face of a consensus that persisted for four centuries—remarkable indeed in philosophy—colors are not conceived to be secondary qualities. Indeed, they are on a par with shape. And this conception is an antimodern conception of color perception in that color perception is not merely a mental reaction, a conscious modification of the perceiving subject, but the presentation of mind-independent qualities of spatiotemporal particulars located at a distance from the perceiving subject. Defending an antimodern conception of color and color perception prompted me to investigate premodern conceptions of color and color perception. I had, at any rate, been drawing on ancient sources in thinking about the problem of con- flicting appearances as it arises in its contemporary guise. However, just because the conception defended was antimodern, did not make it premodern. I turned to premodern sources for at least two reasons. First, to further loosen the grip of the modern conception of color and color perception. Though thoroughly convinced of its error, it had been my experience v vi CONTENTS that the effects of this dominant paradigm lingered in my thinking, and I engaged with premodern thinkers to counteract this. In this regard, I was self-consciously following the example of Deleuze whose early historical studies were an attempt to break free from what was, within his tradition, the then dominant structuralist paradigm. Second, not only did I seek alternative perspectives in order to see the subject matter with fresh eyes—to think outside the modern paradigm, but I was also pre- pared to learn from my predecessors. Both about color and color perception, but also about problems or challenges that had been obscured by the modern paradigm. Aristotle was a natural figure for me to focus on. He was the great defender of the manifest image in the classical world. And like Aristotle, I was engaged in just such a reconciliationist project. The problematic relationship between contemporary philosophy of perception and its history provided an additional motive. Approximately forty years ago phi- losophy of perception remained a central and relatively active area of concern. For various reasons, philosophy of perception ceased to be an area of active concern and was no longer regularly taught as part of the core curriculum. There was thus a period of forgetting. I have mixed feelings about this. The present renaissance in the philosophy of perception perhaps owes its renewed energy precisely to this forgetting. On the other hand, I was frustrated that hard won insights had been lost. To address this, at least for myself, I undertook to study its history. The present essay grew out of that study. There were more specific motives as well. For example, I have long been puz- zled by the prevalence of a primordial family of tactile metaphors for visual aware- ness. Thus the objects of perception are said to be “grasped” or “apprehended”. Visual experience puts us into perceptual “contact” with its objects. Broad (1965), for example, speaks of visual awareness as a mode of “prehension”. What unites these metaphors is that they are all a mode of assimilation and ingestion is a nat- ural variant. I wanted to understand what would make these metaphors apt. Most contemporary philosophers deploy these metaphors with little self-consciousness. They are lifeless in their hands. Looking at earlier occurrences of these metaphors, when they were more vivid and powerful, could, however, provide guidance. As Nietzsche insightfully observed: The relief-like, incomplete presentation of an idea, of a whole philoso- phy, is sometimes more effective than its exhaustive realization: more is left for the beholder to do, he is more impelled to continue work- ing on that which appears before him so strongly etched in light and shadow, to think it through to the end, and to overcome even that constraint which has hitherto prevented it from stepping forth fully CONTENTS vii formed. (Nietzsche, 1996, §178 92) With that in mind, I undertook what might be described as a conceptual geneal- ogy. That is to say, I looked at early historical occurrences of these metaphors, when they remained strongly etched in light and shadow, in order to interpret their significance for us. Unsurprisingly, in their very earliest occurrences, they do not occur as metaphors at all. Thus according to Empedocles, color perception is literally a form of ingestion. Colors are understood to be effluences, fine material bodies, that must be taken within the interior of the eye in order to be presented to the organ of sight and so be seen. For early thinkers, deploying tactile descriptions for