The Human Question

I haven't the time to write this down right now, but hopefully I'll remember what the insight was when I read the heading. It has to do w what STAq said (in commentary on De sensu) re mere sensation as judgment (think Husserlian synthesis here).  This is the condition for the possibility of perception at the highest level (thinking of vis cogitativa/estimativa here)... and it has to do with the fact that perception is never of just this or that form of this or that thing, but of the whole concrete environment in relation to the perceiver (to misquote Phillipians: "...as something to be grasped at.")  In other words, it has to do with holism vs. particularism, being strongly in in support of a view of perception as holistic... and it has to do with Aristotle's mention somewhere in De anima that the unity of perceptual powers in the same subject makes possible our perception of the unity of perceptual objects in the same object thing...but it extends this poin...

What's amazing about evolution is how mutation would enable an animal not simply to behave in a new way, but to judge situations in a new way: that is to judge instinctively that something desirable or undesirable is to engaged in a certain way. When I think of how much more difficult it is to imagine the cause of alteration of judgment, I can see why Darwin gave in to the temptation to resort to the Lamarkian notion of use/disuse to explain how human cognition evolves. To treat evolution merely in behavioral terms is them like robots or near zombies rather than as judging and experiencing animals.