La physiologie épicurienne de la représentation mentale

Epicurus, in addition to seeing and thinking, understood as processes attributable to the influx and impression on the peripheral and central sense organs of impressions capable of reproducing the characteristics of the bodies from which they originate, admits a further and intermediate psychophysical process, by means of which phantasiai or representations are generated in the mind, capable of synthesizing the typological characters of sensible objects, which are then the basis of various cognitive functions. The purpose of the paper is to show how Epicurus felt the need to rework Democritean doctrine in this direction in light of Aristotle's criticism of the naturalist philosophers' theories of perception and his reflections on the formation of phantasma from perceptual experience. To this end, it is intended to examine in a timely and circumscribed manner what exactly the physiological mechanism underlying phantasia consists of for Epicurus and to show how it is strongly inspired by the psychophysical process adopted by Aristotle to explain the generation of representation on the basis of the transmission from the peripheral sense organs to the central one of perceptual residues and their subsequent impression in the heart. The analysis of the physiological mechanism underlying the formation of phantasia is also useful in understanding its relevance within Epicurean epistemology more generally.