Hobbes's Causal Account of Sensation

Hobbes's Causal Account of Sensation JEFFREY BARNOUW I. Introduction If Hobbes's theory of sensation is notorious for its crudity,~ this is largely because it is scarcely known and rather subtle. The main purpose of this paper is to present an interpretation of Hobbes's account of sensation that should show it to be penetrating and plausible. I say "interpretation" because what Hobbes wrote makes considerable demands on our understanding and offers certain occasions for misunderstanding . Nonetheless, 1 believe his meaning is clear when one reads with a sense of what he was after. A secondary purpose of the paper is to suggest ramifications of Hobbes's conception of sense in the analysis of processes of thought and motivation. It will be shown that his grasp of sensation is such that he necessarily includes aspects of his analysis of memory and desire in his treatment of sensation, for sense itself presupposes memory and desire in the broadest sense, that is, experience and conation. Sense, for Hobbes, is not an immediacy of presence or contact, then, but involves generalized reference to the past in the service of an open anticipatory reference to the future. Hobbes's causal account of sensation cannot be understood apart from the context articulated by experience and conation. This does not mean, however, that Hobbes reduced sensation to a function of comprehensive epistemological or psychological theories . His writings show that the question, What is sensation? is primary for him. 2 In Chapter 25, "Of Sense and Animal Motion," which introduces the concluding part of De corpore, Hobbes writes, I have given to this part the title of PHYSlCS, or the Phenomena of Nature. Now such things as appear, or are shown to us by nature, we call phenomena or appearances. Of all the phenomena or appearances which are near us, the most admirable is apparition itself, x6 d~aiveo0at; namely, that some natural bodies have in themselves the patterns almost of all things.... 3 JD. W. Hamlyn writes, "Hobbes's forthrightness . . . leads to little in the way of subtlety, and he shows no sign of appreciating the fact that there are vast problems in the translation of the phenomena of perception into completely mechanical terms'" (Sensation and Perception: A History of the Philosophy of Perception [London: Routledge & Kegan Pual, 1961], p. 57). A parallel but richer example of this attitude is found in R. S. Peters and H. Tajfel, "Hobbes and HuI1--Metaphysicians of Behavior," in M. Cranston and R. S. Peters, eds., Hobbes and Rousseau: A Collection of Critical Essays (New York: Anchor Books, 1972). 2Toward the conclusion of his prose autobiography Hobbes relates, as a turning point of his own interest, that he once found himself among learned men who were discussing "the cause of sensation," when one scornfully asked, "Quid esset sensus," and found, amazingly, that none could answer (Opera Philosophica, ed. Sir William Molesworth, 5 vols. [London: John Bohn, 1839], 1:xx. Cf. n. 8 below.). 3The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, ed. Sir William Molesworth, 11 vols. (London: John Bohn, 1839), 1:38f. [ll5] 116 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY This remarkable passage contains a germ of the monadology; in his view of sensation or appearance as the pattern which some natural (animal) bodies have of a vast variety of other natural bodies, Hobbes imaginatively captures the marvel of sensation even more strikingly than Leibniz. How are we to locate the point of view implied in the last sentence quoted? At one and the same time it reflects a "perspective of sensation" grasping what nature shows to us and a "perspective of science" viewing sensation within nature. This mingling of internal and external points of view is characteristic of Hobbes. It no doubt seemed natural to him, and rightly so. It would be a mistake to take this mingling as philosophical naivet6 on his part, or as bad thinking. He had, after all, the counterexample of Descartes before him, whose assertion of the separation and incommensurability of thinking and extension as distinct substances he rejected explicitly and with insight. 4 Much misreading of Hobbes is due to the pervasive presupposition of a version of Cartesian dualism on the part of his critics. One result...