Images, Appearances, and Phantasia in Aristotle

Aristotle's account of phantasia in De Anima 3.3 is notoriously difficult to decipher. At one point he describes phantasia as a capacity for producing images, but then later in the same chapter it is clear phantasia is supposed to explain appearances, such as why the sun appears to be a foot wide. Many commentators argue that images cannot explain appearances, and so they claim that Aristotle is using phantasia in two different ways. In this paper I argue that images actually explain perceptual appearances for Aristotle, and so phantasia always refers to images. I take a new approach to interpreting DA 3.3, reading it alongside Plato's Theaetetus and Sophist. In the Theaetetus, Socrates explains how memory gives rise to perceptual appearance. I claim that Aristotle adopts Socrates' account of perceptual appearance, but what Socrates calls memory, Aristotle calls phantasia.