Sensation is fundamentally defined as a species of alteration

Evidence

We must now revisit De Anima to look at section 5 of Book II, entitled ‘The Faculty of Sensation’. The overall problem is as follows: ‘Sensation depends on a process of movement or change from without …, for it is held to be some sort of alteration (/λλ ωσ ς τις).’ Initially Aristotle will explain why it is not possible to understand the general mechanism of sensation without involving, at least hypothetically, the couple of being affected and being active. But the issue he must clarify is the question of ‘alteration’. What is of real importance is the detailed characterization of the type of alteration (/λλ ωσις) produced by sensation in general. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 429

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Establishes that sensation for Aristotle is to be defined as alteration — the precise type of which is the whole problem.

Related

• Sensory alteration is an achievement enabling sensation’s actualization (similarity 0.95)
• Sensation requires an object other than the sense acting on it (similarity 0.84)
• Sensation is the first stage through which substance awakens into subjectivity (similarity 0.83)
• Alteration has a privative and a conserving sense (similarity 0.83)
• Sensation is constituted as an inert exteriority whose reason for being lies outside itself (similarity 0.82)
• Sensation only occurs through affection by an external sensed object (similarity 0.81)
• Aristotle models thought on sensation, both being acts of receiving form (similarity 0.81)
• Aristotle explains perception and thought through analogies to wax-imprinting and writing tablets (similarity 0.79)
• Perception requires original receptivity that is neither identity nor radical alterity (similarity 0.78)
• Aristotle distinguishes alteration that fulfills a subject from alteration that corrupts it. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Sensation requires an object other than the sense acting on it #expands (0.82) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 431
• Sensation and action cannot be cleanly separated in bodily experience #complicates (0.75)