Knowledge of the Internal Senses | Catholic Philosophy

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The four internal senses operate through the brain. The common or central sense (sense-consciousness) perceives and unifies the findings of all external senses and makes the subject aware of itself sensing. Imagination conserves, reproduces, and rearranges sense-images — never creating genuinely new content, always recombining materials furnished by prior sensation. The estimative sense (instinct) apprehends objects as useful or harmful, individually and for the species, without explicit reasoning (the chick fearing the hawk, the bird building its nest — and in man, the cogitative sense operating in conjunction with reason). Sense-memory recognises reproduced images as experiences of the past. So-called 'errors of imagination' are errors of precipitate judgment upon the findings of a disturbed or over-stimulated sense, not essential failures of the faculty itself.

a) the internal senses The senses called internal (because their organ is the brain, and not a special part of the outer body) are four in number, viz., the common or central sense, the imagination, the estimative sense or instinct, and the sense-memory.

The common sense (or central sense) is an internal faculty which perceives, distinguishes, unites, and divides the findings of the external senses. When we sense an external object, we also sense ourselves sensing it. The eye does not see itself seeing, nor does the ear hear itself hearing, but we are inwardly aware of the eye’s seeing and the ear’s hearing. This inner awareness is the function of the central or common sense. Further, when we are aware that we see and that we hear, we do not become confused in recognizing which sense is affected; we make the proper discriminations between sense-impressions by the aid of the central or common sense. The common sense is the same as sense-consciousness, which we shall briefly discuss in a separate paragraph at the end of this article.
The imagination (or fancy or phantasy) is an internal sense-faculty which preserves the images of objects sensed by the external senses, reproduces these images, and arranges them in new forms. The imagination does not create its images. It depends for its materials upon the external senses. It either reproduces what the external senses have experienced, or it constructs new images by rearranging, exaggerating, minimizing, associating, eliminating, images and elements of images once formed upon external sensation.
The estimative sense (or instinct) is an internal cognitive faculty which apprehends material objects (grasped by the external senses) as useful or harmful, as something to be attained or avoided. The mouse fears the cat, even though it has never before seen a cat. Birds gather twigs for their nests and construct the nests upon a definite plan, although never instructed in the usefulness of these actions.

Even young chickens give fluttering evidence of fear when a hawk is in the neighborhood. In man, instinct acts in conjunction with intellect, and it is difficult to draw an accurate distinction between the part played by this sense and that enacted by reason in any given action or series of actions. We may instance, however, as an action following upon human instinct, the jerk to maintain one’s balance when the feet slip, or the throwing out of the arms to save oneself when falling. The harmfulness or utility which instinct apprehends in a situation or an action, is sensed with reference to the individual sentient subject and also with reference to its kind or species.

A bird will flee from a cat, but a mother bird will fight to keep the cat from her fledglings, even though she lose her own life. So, normally, will human parents, however timid, be unreasoningly brave and selfsacrificing to save their children.

Sense-memory (or sensitive or sensuous memory) is an internal cognitive faculty which recognizes as past, as once experienced, the external or internal sensations which are preserved and reproduced by the imagination. Imagination and memory work together. Imagination supplies the image of the experience; memory recognizes it is an experience of the past. The term sense-memory is used here to distinSENSE-KNOWLEDGE 61 guish this sense from the intellectual memory (which is a function of mind or intellect), by which the mind recalls and recognizes ideas once formed, thoughts once enacted, reasonings once worked out, meanings once understood.

Consciousness

The term consciousness is almost equivalent to the term awareness. That faculty by which we are sensibly aware of things as affecting us is the internal faculty of sense-consciousness. It is simply the central or common sense. We mention consciousness in a special way in order to distinguish this sense faculty from intellectual consciousness (a function of the mind or intellect) which we shall discuss in another place. Consciousness gives us knowledge of ourselves and our experiences as facts; it offers no explanation of these facts, no comment on their nature, no suggestion of their reasons. We shall find later that, within the limits indicated by this description of its function, consciousness is a reliable source of knowledge.

Summary Of The Article

In this very short article we have enumerated the internal senses as the common sense (central sense), imagination, instinct (the estimative sense), and sense-memory. We have considered the function of the common sense in general (as consciousness) and in special as the particular awareness by which this sense unites, divides, distinguishes, and recognizes the findings of the other senses.