Editing Parmenides (section)

==== B16:  Sense perception ====
Parmenides also provided a theory of knowledge through sense perception, a description of which is preserved by [[Theophrastus]]. Theophrastus, in recording Parmenides' opinion on sensation,{{efn|''de Sensu 3'', DK 28A46}} indicates that Parmenides holds that sense perception proceeds by resemblance between what feels and the thing felt. He reports Parmenides as saying that everything is composed of two elements, hot and cold, and their intelligence depends on this mixture, present in the limbs of humans. In fact, the nature of each limb or organ, what is preponderant in them, is what is perceived. That is why corpses, which have been abandoned by fire, light and heat, can only perceive the opposite, cold and silence. Everything that exists, he concludes, contains some knowledge. Just as [[Empedocles]] later said that "we see earth with earth, water with water" ,{{efn|31 B 109}} he held, in accordance with his doctrine of sensible opposites, that mortal perception depends on the admixture of these opposites in the different parts of the body (μέλεα). But, following his teacher's interpretation of the Parmenidean opposites, he says that the thought that arises from the hot is purer. Fränkel therefore thought that this theory of knowledge was valid not only for sensory perception, but also for the thought of "what is".<ref>Fränkel, ''Wege und Formen Frühgriechischen Denkens, pp. 170 and 174.''</ref> Vlastos maintains that the identity of the subject and the object of thought is valid both for the knowledge of what is (B3) and for sensible knowledge, although he accepts that «what is" is "everything identical" (B8, v. 22), while the structure of the body is a mixture of different elements,<ref>Vlastos, "Parmenides' Theory of Knowledge", p. 68.</ref> and that the preponderance of light does not physically justify the knowledge of "what is". The way to conceive a pure knowledge is not by imagining a situation in which the body has more light, but that it is made of pure light, and this is what Parmenides does in the journey recounted in the proem.<ref>Vlastos, « Parmenides' Theory of Knowledge”, pp. 71–73.</ref> Other commentators disagree with transposing this "physical" explanation to the plane of the path of truth. Guthrie{{sfn|Guthrie|1979|p=83}} and Schofield{{sfn|Kirk|Raven|Schofield|1982}} emphasize the exclusive belonging of this theory to the field of the sensible, of mortal opinion.