The very notion / ennois / nous – its got a long history.
What’s its relationship to language? Depends who you ask. In philosophy, which is generally “based on words + definitions and their relationships”, word-language (and a glossary) is needed.
But is notion something deeper than language?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nous
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That communication even works at all when it does amazes me.
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n6esis: the operation of nous (g.v.), thinking (as opposed
to sensation) ,intuition (as opposed to discursive
reasoning) “
Just downloaded a copy of
Greek philosophical terms: A historical lexicon
F.E. Peters.
so I’ll be digging deeper into noesis. Might come up for air someday this was a good find, inspired by trying to understand the notion of notion.
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I don’t know those names but I had a brief experience in my 20s (5 years) with the Eastern Orthodox church and I got deep into the monastic philosophical texts and learned about nous and noetic stuff from that perspective.
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Ah I think I read something by Florensky. – that was a lot of years ago for me to be honest. [I’m 45, this is when I was 24-29]
At the time, the Philokalia was being translated into English and I eagerly awaited each new one as I wanted to get as “close to the sources” as I could. I definitely was going through ‘convertitis’ but I enjoyed every bit of it. Not part of it now but the experience was good for me.
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At the end I had about a year long flirt with Osho, diving deep into a bunch of his stuff. Never regretted any of these pursuits.
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noesis: the operation of nous (g.v.), thinking (as opposed to sensation), intuition (as opposed to discursive reasoning)
1. Subtle differences between the mere perception of an object or objects, i.e., sensation (aisthesis, q.v.) and another kind of psychic awareness that goes beyond the sense data and perceives less tangible things, like resemblances and differences between objects, is already present in Homer and is identified with the organ called nous.
With the philosophers the difference becomes a problem.
Heraclitus suspects the unreliability of sensation for the perception of the true nature of things.
He is tireless in his assertion that “nature loves to hide” (see fro 123 and logos 1), and this hidden reality is clearly beyond the reach of men who trust too implicitly in their senses (fr. 107).
How the other faculty that is capable of discerning the hidden logos of things might operate is not immediately apparent, though we are told (Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math. VII, 129) that the nous that is within us is activated by its contact, via the channels of sensation (aisthetikoi poroi), with the divine logos in the universe, a contact that is maintained in an attenuated fashiou duriug sleep by breathing (see pneuma).
The senses, then, are obviously some sort of condition for noesis, though not, as is clear from fr. 107 and its congeners, identical with it.
2. Aristotle remarks (De an. III, 427a; Meta. 100gb) that the pre-Socratics generally made no distinction between noesis and aisthesis.
It is easy to understand why he thought so since they all attempted to explain the operations of the psyche in purely physical terms, a procedure that, according to Aristotle (loc. cit.), cannot account for error (pseudos) since like must know like (see homoi08, aisthesis).
From one point of view this is true; but it is likewise true that since Parmenides’ assault on sense perception in terms of the instability of its object (see on ” episteme 2) it became an epistemological necessity to distinguish between the obvious perils of aisthesis and a “true knowledge” more or less independent of the senses.
3. These attempts can be seen in Empedocles’ doubts about the reliability of our sense perception and the need of divine assistance (Sextus Empiricus, Ad”. Math. VII, 122–124).
But the limitations of sensation here seem to be due to our misuse of them rather than to any inherent weakness of their own (fl’. 3, lines 9-13).
When he comes to explain the possibility of error (called ignorance and opposed to phronesis; Theophrastus, De sens. g), Empedocles resorts to a mechanistic explanation of how the effluences (aporrhoai; see aisthesis 7) of one sense object are symmetrical only with the pores of its proper sense organ, and so cannot be judged by the others (Theophrastus, op. cit. 7).
If thought is anything to Empedocles it is a special type of sensation that occurs in the hlood by reason of its being a perfect mixture of all the stoicheia (ibid. 9).
4. It is somewhat more perplexing to find Anaxagoras, the eminent proponent of nous, in Aristotle’s catalogue of those who failed to distinguish sensation and thought.
In the fragments we do find the usual statements casting doubts on sensation (e.g. £r. 21), but there is no explanation of noesis.
Indeed nous does not seem to be a cognitive principle at all but rather a cosmological one.
It initiates motion (and in this it has obvious affinities to soul; see psyche 1, 7, and passim) and it guides and rules all (fr. 12).
What Anaxagoras is obviously offering is the presence of some intelligent and hence purposeful principle in the universe.
But it appears the nous is an immanent principle as well and we are told that it is not present in everything (fr. 11).
Alcmaeon of Crotona, who had already sharply distinguished phronesis from aisthesis, maintained that the former was characteristic of men only (Theophrastus, De sens. 25), but we have no idea of the extension of the immanent nous in Anaxagoras.
Presumably it would cover the same territory as psyche, i.e., the entire animate world. i
5. For Diogenes of Apollonia, who also addressed himself to the problem, aer (q.v.), the intelligent and divine arche, is continuous and present in all things that are (fr. 5), but it is present in varying degrees.
The degree is based on the dryness and warmth of the air, distinctions of texture that explain progressively higher cognitive acts (Theophrastus, op. cit. 40-43).
In this way are explained the complete absence of cognitive activities in plants and the relatively higher degree of phronesis in man as compared to the other animals (ibid. 44).
6. The Atomists’ theories of sensible qualities (see aisthesis 11, pathos 4) demanded refinements in the cognitive faculties.
Many so-called qualities are merely subjective impressions and the true nature of the atomon is not visible to sight.
Hence Democritus draws the distinction (fl’. 11) between a genuine and a bastard knowledge; the latter is sensation and the former, presumably (the text breaks off), reason, the operation of the logikon that is located in the breast (Aetius IV, 4, 6; see kardia 2 and psyche 7).
But even though phronesis and aisthesis have different ohjects and different seats, the mechanics of their operation are the same (Aetius IV, 8, 5; IV, 8, 10).
7· To resume the pre-Socratic attitude: there were solid epistemological grounds for making a distinction in kind between thought (noesis, phronesis; in the epistemological context, episteme) and sensation (aisthesis; in the epistemological context, doxa), and, indeed, the differentiation could be specified when it came to giving them different locations in the body (aisthesis tied to the sense organs; the higher faculty in a central location, though not always distinguished from the more generic notion of psyche; see kardia).
But the operations of this higher faculty could be distinguished from those of sensation only in degree, e.g. finer or warmer in composition.
8. Plato, while adhering firmly to the Parmenidean epistemology (see episteme 2), has, in addition, a new spiritnalized conception of soul that, though originally posited on religious grounds (see psyche ‘3), is incorporated in Plato’s theory of knowledge (ibid. 14).
It is this pure unitary soul of the Phaedo that becomes the epistemological correlative of the eide and, being absolutely different in kind from the body, can perform all the cognitive activities that the post-Parmenidean philosophers associated with nous but were unable to explain on the level of substance.
But the problem is considerably more complex than this.
Even in the Phaedo the soul is the arche of all cognitive activity: sensation is perception by tlle soul through the body; phronesis is an operation of the soul alone (Phaedo 7gd; see aisthesis ‘5-,6).
9. In the Phaedo the distinction hetween the two operations is largely in terms of the objects known; in the Republic it reappears, in a much more complex form, based as well upon the internal operations of the soul.
This latter is now divided into three parts (see psyche 15) and the upper part, the logistikon (ibid. 16), is responsible for noetic activity.
But the psychology is far more sophisticated here, and in the Diagram of the Line in Rep. VI the noetic activity is explained in some detail.
The distinction drawn previously (Rep. IV, 476a-480a) between episteme and doxa is maintained here, but we discover that there is more than one type of episteme.
The upper part of the Line that represented knowledge of the noeta (ibid. 50ge) is further subdivided into what Plato calls noesis and dianoia (ibid. 51id).
10. These two operations of the logistikon have been much debated; one school of thought sees dianoia as that activity of the mind which has as its object the “mathematicals,” while the objects of noesis are the eide (see mathematika 2); the other school sees dianoia as discursive reasoning in general and noesis as immediate intellectual intuition, in much the same way as Aristotle (see Anal. post. II, 100b; epagoge 3) and Plotinus (see 18-19 infra) distinguished between logismos and nous.
What is clear, however, is that the method of noesis is that known to Plato as dialektike; q.v.; ibid.
511b) and the way of life based upon it is philosophia (q.v., and compare phronesis, theoria) .
11. There are certain passages in Plato, echoed by Aristotle, that give somewhat more of a purely psychological insight into the workings of the intellective process.
Both men seek to derive episteme from the Greek word to “stand” or “come to a halt” (ephistamai) and so explain intellection as a “coming to a halt” in the midst of a series of sense impressions, the “fixing” of an intuitive concept (Grat. 437a; Phaedo 96b; Anal. post. II, 100a; Phys. VII, 247b).
But this psychological approach is overwhelmed by a flood of ”physical” considerations.
Noesis is an activity and so must be located within the general categories of change and kinesis.
Plato speaks of revolutions in the World Soul (Tim. 37a) and in the immortal part of the individual soul (ibid. 43a).
This owes nothing, of course, to introspection, but is based upon considerations of the revolutions of the body of the kosmos that reveal the motion of its own soul (ibid. 34b) and provide a visible moral paradigm for the motions of our own soul (ibid. 47b, and see ouran08 2-3; for sensation as motion, see ibid. 43C; and for the larger question of motion in the soul, psyche 19).
For the operation of cosmic nous in Plato, see nous 5-6; kinoun 5.
12. Aristotle’s treatment of noesis, like his explanation of aisthesis, is conducted within the categories of potency (dynamis) and act (energeia, q.v.).
The nous before it knows is actually nothing but potentially all the things it can know; the eide are present in it but only potentially (De an. III, 429a).
When the nous begins to operate it passes from a passive to an activated state by reason of its becoming identical with its object, the intelligible form (ibid. III, 431a): There is in noesis a parallel with aisthesis: just as aisthesis extracts the sensible forms (eide) of sensible objects (see aisthesis 19), so noesis thinks the intelligible forms in sensible images (phantasiai), and noesis never occurs without these latter (ibid. III, 431a-b ) .
Noesis can be directly of essences (for the intuitive role of nous, see epagoge 3-4 and compare Meta. 1036a), or it can operate through judgments (hypolepseis), i.e., by the combination (synthesis) or separation (diairesis) of concepts, and it is only in this latter operation that error (pseudos) is possible (ibid. 430a-b; for the Platonic theory of judgment, see doxa 4).
For the operation of cosmic nous in Aristotle, cf. nous, kinoun.
13. The Atomists considered the soul, which was distributed throughout the body (Aristotle, De an. I, 409a; Lucretius III, 370), to be the seat of all sensation (for the mechanics of this, see aisthesis 22-23).
But given that soul (psyche) and mind (nous) are substantially the same (De an. I, 404a), it would seem to follow that sensation and thought are identical, and so Aristotle concluded (Meta. lOo9b; see Aetius IV, 8, 5; IV, 8, 10). As for its operation, since nous is nothing more than a kind of aggregation (see holon 10) of soul-atoms in the breast, it is reasonable to suppose that some of the eidola penetrate beyond the surface sense organs, reach the interior of the breast, and so cause this higher type of perception (see Lucretius IV, 722-731).
14. But we have already seen that the earlier Atomists had attempted to distinguish, by the purity of its constitution and its location, mind from soul.
The Epicureans preserved and refined the distinction and it is specifically present in Lucretius’ consistent use of anima for psyche and animus for nous or dianoia (mens is somewhat too narrow in connotation for the latter since the animus is the seat of volitional as well as intellectual activity; III, 145).
He clearly separates the two at 111,396-416 where he argues that part of the anima may be lost (e.g., in the loss of a limb) and a man still survive, but the loss of the animus means the instantaneous end of the organism.
15. For the Epicurean nous operates somewhat in the fashion of the senses.
It too may directly perceive the eidola given off by bodies but that are not, in this case, grasped by the senses.
Such are, for example, the accidental mixtures of eidola that give rise to the imagining of centaurs and chimeras (Lucretius IV, 129), visions seen in dreams (IV, 749-776), and the eidola ofthe gods (v, 148-14g; Cicero, De nat. deor. I, 49).
These operations are akin to Aristole’s nous thinking of indivisible concepts (De an. III, 430a); there is, as well, intellection componendo et dividendo, i.e., evaluating and passing judgment on the data of sensation.
The images (phantasiai) in which the eidola are grouped are passed along to the dianoia or nous where they accumulate into general “preconceptions” (prolepseis, q.v.).
These in turn serve as a standard of comparison for judgments (hypolepseis) about individual sensible things (D.L. x, 33).
This is the area of opinion into which error enters (see doxa 7; the Epicurean criterion of truth and error is discussed under enargeia).
Finally, the mind is also capable of entering the realm of the imperceptibles (adela) , i.e., to perform a discursive reasoning process (logismos, the ratio of Lucre’ tius) dealing with entities not immediately perceptible to the senses, a class that would, of course, include the atoma themselves (see D.L. x, 32 ). .
16. The Stoic version of noesis, the operation of the hegemonikon (q.v.), is properly katalepsis or apprehension.
The process begins with an impression (typosis) on the senses that results in a sensible image (phantasia; see aisthesis 2+-25).
These are borne, via the pneuma (q.v.), to the hegemonikon where it is first assented to (synkatathesis, adsensio) and is thus apprehended (katalepsis, q.v.; Cicero, Acad. post. I, 40–42).
In this way what was a sensible image (phantasia) becomes an intelligible image or concept (ennoia, q.v.).
In the earliest years this is almost an unconscious process and the child builds up various “preconceptions” (prolepseis, q.v.) under whose influence the hegemonikon matures to the point where it is capable of creating its own conscious ennoiai (SVF II, 83; according to this same text, the full operation of the hegemonikon begins at the age of seven, or at least between seven and fourteen, a judgment not based on the observation of rational behavior in adolescents but on the onset of puberty and the first production of sperm; see SVF II, 764, 785).
As in Epicureanism, noesis is not only of the aistheta but ranges freely over a wide area of thought, creating its own ennoiai by recourse to the principles of similarity, analogy, privation, opposition, etc. (SVF II, 87).
On the Stoics’ primary prolepsis of good and evil, see oikeiosis.
17. This theory did not remain completely intact.
Chrysippus made some important revisions that had as their effect the reunification of the psyche under the aegis of the hegemonikon so that even the pathe became intellectual judgments (kriseis; SVF III, 461) and, in direct opposition to Plato’s vision of the tripartite soul, volitional activity was subsumed under the intellectual (SVF II, 823; see aisthesis 25, pathos 12).
This is followed by a strong Platonizing reaction under Poseidonius who opposed Chrysippus on the intellectual nature of the pathe and restored the Platonic partition of the soul (Galen, Placita Hipp. et Plat. 448, 460).
There follows from this a sharper distinction between psyche and nous (particularly apparent in Marcus Aurelius III, 16; XII, 3) with emphasis on the divine and immortal nature of nous as opposed to the other parts of the soul (see sympatheia 5), and, by reason of the presence of this daimon in it (so Galen, op. cit. 448; Plutarch, De genio Socr. 591C-f; Platonic inspiration in Tim. 90a and see daimon), a new interest in the medial position of the soul (see psyche 29).
18. Middle Platonism concentrated its attention on the cosmic aspects of nous (q.v.) and it is not until Plotinus that we have any significant contribution to the workings of the immanent nous.
As did Plato and Aristotle, Plotinus distinguishes two types of intellectual activity, one intuitive and one discursive.
The former, noesis, is, in the first instance, the life and energeia of the cosmic hypostatized nous.
It is not, however, an activity of the One since for Plotinus even so self-integrated an act as noesis bespeaks duality and so is anathema to the One (Enn. VI, 6, 3, with passing reference to Plato’s remarks in Soph. 254d and Parmenides 146a on the role of “the Other” [heteron] in being and therefore in intellection).
What need, Plotinus asks (VI, 7,4), would the eye have to see something if it were itself the light?
19. Noesis, then, in its genuine form is a unity of subject and object that, though they differ only logically, constitute a plurality (plethos).
It is characteristically internalized: the noeta that are the objects of noesis are in the nous that knows them (VI, 2, 21).
Noesis, which is the life of nous, casts forth its image (eikon) in the form of an energeia in the lower hypostasis of the soul. This is logismos or discursive reasoning, an operation that, unlike the immediate and internalized noesis, comprehends the phantasmata of objects outside itself offered to it by sensation, and makes judgments (kriseis) concerning them by invoking rnles (kanones) transmitted from nous (v, 3, 4), or, as he puts it elsewhere, by composition and division (synagoge, diairesis: v, 3, 2; see the Platonic antecedents of theseterms under dialektike).
What he refers to here is a knowledge of the eide supplied by the nous that contains them and that make possible our comparative judgments (cf. V, 1, 11; V, 3, 3; and compare Phaedo 74a ff.).
20. The soul is capable of two activities: when “turned upward” it gives itself over to noesis/logismosj when “downward,” to aisthesis and the operation of the other faculties (VI, 2, 22; see aisthesis 26).
Sensation uses a medium, an image (phantasma), separated from its model and yet different from the thing in which it resides; noesis is immediate: knower and known confront each other directly and become identified (v, 3, 8).
But we do not have noesis in its purity.
Noesis is a vision of unity; our image of it, logismos, deals with plurality, and the more one frees oneself from the composing and dividing that is our imitation of noesis and turns instead to a contemplation of self, the more one will be assimilating oneself to the true operation of nous (v, 3, 6).
Why the soul is forced to endure this logismos is part of tl,e general condition of its descent into a body (see kathodos).
It is, like its external manifestation, language, a weakness, a sign of the soul’s preoccupation with areas not akin to itself (IV, 3, 18).
21. In this passage (IV, 3, 18) Plotinus makes use of the principle of attention (phrontis) to explain the degeneration of noesis into logismas (compare the elaborate metaphor in IV, 3, 17 where the soul’s preoccupation with the material is compared to that of a ship’s captain toward his ship and its cargo; for the further degeneration of thought into activity, see physis 5) and he resorts to a similar type of explanation in confronting another problem.
If nous is a faculty in the soul, how is one to explain the intermittent nature of noesis in man as compared to its continnous exercise in the higher principle? Aristotle had already faced the question and had suggested that while the objects of noesis are always in the mind, they are not always present to the mind; in short, man must choose to think (De an. II, 417b).
Fnrther, this activity can last for only brief periods in man since it involves a passage from potency to act and so fatigues the thinker (Meta. 1050b, l072b; Eth. Nich. 1175a).
For Plotinus it is a question of awareness.
The immanent nous is always in operation but we, because our attention is turned elsewhere, are not always aware of it (IV, 8, 8).
This view, based as it is on a desire to keep the human soul perpetually linked, via the nous, to the kosmos noetos, Proclus finds a novelty in the Platonic tradition (In Tim. III, 333-334) and therefore returns to the position of an intermittent functioning of noesis in the “descended” soul (Elem. theol., prop. 211; see kathodos and psyche 35).
via:
Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon
By Francis E. Peters
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‘ve gone as deep as I am going to for the moment on nous. “The notion of” made me think of the nature of nous and I borrowed-without-intent-to-return Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon By Francis E. Peters which was in PDF. I cleaned up the text a bit. [getting rid of hyphens and stuff and word-wrapping issues]
So whatever your notion of notion is is at least partially informed by this in some way.
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I’m 1/2 deaf yet also perfect pitch (both kinds). I miss inflection and tone in speech as having such poor hearing, I have to “guess” a lot. So a lot of that stuff goes past me as I’m too busy trying to get ‘what did they say?” correct. Yet in other ways, sometimes all I *hear* is the music” of the speech, when the words aren’t clear.
So I have to guess the meaning via the musical ups and downs of the speech patterns to help me fill in the words I miss and pretend that I heard.
I also read lips although not consciously. I just know that I understand people better when they’re looking my way.
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that got genuine laugh out of me there haha – “Sober up” lol. I like Heidegger and Quine. But from a pragmatic point of view, sure, translations are possible. For the “21 words for snow in Eskimo” there’s a way to describe the same 21 phenomenon in other languages. Sometimes translation is difficult : Japanese translators are having a very hard time translating Donald Trump’s twitter and speeches into Japanese for various reason… but not impossible, just imperfect.
But his communication with English native speakers is imperfect too. Such is the nature of communication.
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In my early 20s, I worked with kids who had cerebral palsy. I set up computers (old MS-DOS computers!) with alternative input keyboards, worked with pointing boards with icons, tried to understand each of their unique ways of communicating.
It was usually possible, through negotiating meaning, to understand them and to communicate with even the hardest cases.
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Yes. Meaning doesn’t require word-for-word translating just concept translation.
You could describe dirty snow with a crust of ice on top that is dangerous to walk on with a pantomime skit for example.
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I suspect this is why I prefer writing online to other forms of communication. By restricting it to the realm of 7/8/16-bit characters, pictures, sounds and videos, there’s more control. The lag time allows additional room for comprehension. Plus there’s a backspace key here. Real-time physical communication has no backspace and lots of nuances of meaning.
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Inference has always given me grief. I have to consciously process inference.. sometimes it gives me a headache although it’s easier now than when I was a kid and I actually enjoy the puzzle.
I mean it _could_ be construed as communication but it’s got so many layers on it that it’s more often a deceit mechanism than a pragmatic message passing.
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If I tell you this text describes the above animated gif and you believe me, you have just translated language in some basic form. You can say “This describes a penguin falling through ice after being hit in the back of the head with another penguin” even if you can’t read a single word of it.
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[responsivevoice_button voice="US English Male"]