Aristotle's Empiricism

Aristotle writes, “From memory men can get experience; for by often remembering the same thing they acquire the power of unified experience.” This is Aristotle’s empirical rejection of Platonic rationalism. At some point in time I behold an X that is unfamiliar. When I behold this X again, at some future time, it is no longer unfamiliar. But is this familiarization what created a unified experience? Don’t I somehow have to make sense of what I am beholding? There is nothing in X itself that endows it with meaning for me. That is, it is not enough for X to be present; X also has to be accessible to me in some way. What is prior to unified experience, as Aristotle calls it, is the accessibility of the object as a meaningful thing to the subject. That means that the subject, or something prior to both the subject and the object, creates a field of intelligibility by which access is possible, by which subject and object commune.