What follows explains some things that seem clear about A's
theories of the soul, but does not attempt to solve all the
problems and questions that arise.
First are some notes about the soul, followed by notes from
Everson's article 'Psychology' in CCTA.
Works treating psychology:
de Anima
Parva Naturalia "Small
works on nature" including de
Sensu and de
Memoria.
Scientific writings: especially de
Motu
Animalium.
In talking about soul, Aristotle is simply saying that every living
thing has a certain FORM, part of which explains the thing's being
alive: soul is the “first actuality of a natural organic body” De
Anima 412b5–6; “substance as form of a natural body which has life
in potentiality” De Anima 412a20–21; and “is a first actuality of a
natural body which has life in potentiality” De Anima 412a27–8.
Aristotle's "psychology" has different aspects: sometimes he is
talking as if he were a natural scientist examining a hylomorphic
substance that undergoes change, but he also thinks that thought has
no organ, no bodily component!
soul : body : : form : matter : : statue structure : bronze
Materialists hold that all mental states are also physical states;
substance dualists deny this, because they hold that the soul is a
subject of mental states which can exist alone, when separated from
the body.
Perhaps the closest we get to Aristotle's take on this: It is not necessary to ask whether
soul and body are one, just as it is not necessary to ask whether
the wax and its shape are one, nor generally whether the matter of
each thing and that of which it is the matter are one. For even if
one and being are spoken of in several ways, what is properly so
spoken of is the actuality De Anima 412b6–9
we have no particular reason to ask about some special relation
between a soul and its matter: it is the same relation as that
between any substance's form and matter.
It is not unclear that the soul –
or certain parts of it, if it naturally has parts – is not
separable from the body De Anima 413a3–5
Intellect (nous), however, has no bodily component, and so may be
separable (413a6-7)
so Aristotle is neither a reductive materialist nor a dualist about
the mind-matter problem. He thinks there is a middle course.
souls have capacities:
nutritive
perceptual
intellectual
imagination (aka appearance) and desire are two further soul
capacities.
imagination integrates perception, intellect, and nutritive
capacities
desire only occurs in living beings that have perception: explains
purposive behavior
Capacities can be told apart by their objects: different capacities
have different objects, and that is what makes them different
capacities.
Aristotle has a typical procedure in treating capacities of the
soul: he accounts for the relevant phainomena. He also looks to see
whether reductive accounts of them work. Can they be reduced to a
materialistic explanation?
First, Aristotle treats nutritive
capacity. Why?
1) all life forms have it, and so 2) it's explanation is prior to
all the higher life forms in A's order.
nothing is nourished which does
not have a share in life ...since nothing is nourished which does
not partake of life, what is nourished will be the ensouled body
insofar as it is ensouled, with the result that nourishment (i.e.
food) is related to the ensouled, and not coincidentally... that which is nourished, that by
which it is nourished, and what nourishes (i.e. that which engages
in nutrition)....what nourishes is the primary soul; what is
nourished is the body which has this soul; and that by which it is
nourished is nourishment. de Anima 415-16.
life does not equal "capacity to be nourished". Aristotle seems not
to want to reduce life to some one thing that is basic, even though
all living things (on earth at least?) share nutritive capacity.
growth is not merely accrual of material, as might happen with a
volcano.
rather, it is end-directed activity (plus, it occurs in a complex
non-uniform, non-linear pattern)
if it were merely materialistic, then animals and plants would not
cease to grow at a certain size, or change growth patterns after a
certain stage. Fire just grows haphazardly, but life forms do not.
perhaps a more nuanced materialism could avoid any reference to life
(i.e. to form). It does not seem that there is one, however.
Next, Aristotle treats perceptive
capacity, the senses
the differentia of animals (from plants) is having perception: de Sensu 436b10.
In order to reach the goal (being a mature animal and procreating),
animals need perception: it is essential to them teleologically
speaking (de Anima 414b6,
etc.)
Material explanation of perception
it is a kind of change: there
is
a substrate and a form that activates a potentiality
the thing perceived must be of a suitable sort: in other words, it
must be potentially perceivable
perception receives the sensible form of what is perceived: so when
I see you, my sight is activated by your perceptible form.
that perceptible form might affect non-living entities too (I cast a
shadow on a rock for instance, or light energy causes heating), but
that should not be confused with perception: just because sound can
cause an avalanche does not mean the mountain hears the sound.
what's the difference?
first off, Aristotle's account of perception involves the faculty of
perception becoming like the thing perceived: sight receives the
sensible form and becomes like that form. The mountain does not
"become like" the sound.
but what about garlic? when you store it with something else, that
other thing will smell of garlic: the other thing has become like
the perceptible (smellable) form of the garlic. Does it perceive the
garlic? No, but how can Aristotle's analysis say why the one is
perception, the other not?
the perceptive faculty is
in potentiality such as the object of perception already is in
actuality: when a perceptible object is encountered by a
sense of perception, the perceptive organ is made like it and is such as that thing is De
Anima 418a3–6.
SO, perception occurs if the sensing animal has the capacity to
receive a sense object's sensible form and the sense object enforms
the sense capacity: in that case, the sense capacity acquires the
same form as the objects' sensible form.
Do non-living things that absorb garlic odor have the capacity to
receive the sensible form of the sense object (garlic)? Aristotle
should want to say no: what is his argument?
A related concern is the medium thru which sensible forms must
travel: visible, smellable, and hearable forms must pass thru air
(or water)...does the intervening medium also take on the form?
And what about that "acquires the same form as the object's sensible
form"? How does that work? Does the eye really become red, green,
and gold when it sees a Christmas tree? Or is it more like a
schematic drawing, a blueprint of a house, where it does not have
the SAME form, but has something that specifies what the form is?
PHANTASIA
Perhaps a separate capacity, phantasia is most often translated as
"imagination," and sometimes as "appearance"
Phantasia is that in virtue of
which an image occurs in us De Anima 428aa1-2 in thoughts,
dreams, and memories
Phantasia is distinct from perception and intellect: it occurs in
dreams when there is no perception occurring, some animals lack it
but have perception, and perception is always true, but imagination
can be false 428a5-16.
imagination produces, stores, and recalls images used in a variety
of cognitive activities, including those which motivate and guide
action De Anima 429a4-7, De Memoria 1450a22-25
whenever one contemplates, one
necessarily at the same time contemplates in images De
Anima 432a8-9, 431a16-17; De Memoria 449b31-450a1.
but Aristotle accepts the existence of a god whose thinking is not
plausibly regarded as imagistic (Metaphysics
xii 7,1072b26-30).
INTELLECT
nous, often rendered as
"intellect" or "reason" or "mind": the part of the soul by which it knows and understands
De Anima 429a9–10
explored in de Anima 3.4
and 3.5
because we are the rational animal, having an intellect is essential
to being human.
we understand, know, plan, deliberate, etc. with our intellect
we have a "theoretical" and a "practical" aspect to our intellect.
intellect receives intelligible form and becomes isomorphic with it:
this is parallel to his account of perception.
so, when I think of a stone, my mind become like in form to a stone,
but only to the form, not the matter, of a stone: for it is not the stone which is in
the soul, but its form De Anima 431b29–432a1.
so it seems that thought can only be of universals (forms), not
particulars (matter or form-matter compounds), but he speaks of
having knowledge of particulars sometimes. It seems that Aristotle
can navigate this seeming contradiction.
we don't become what we think of, so there must be some difference
between the intelligible form we receive and the form of the object,
or some difference between the way our mind receives the form and
the way the matter of the object receives it, perhaps something like
the relation of a blueprint to an actual building: it may be some
representational way of receiving the intelligible form.
A big problem is that the intellect has no material organ: what is
it that receives the intelligible form? What is the intellect? How
can it be such as to receive these forms? It must itself have no
qualities (else they would interfere with reception of certain
forms: we would have to have a mental "blind spot"). See De Anima 429a18). If the
intellect is not actually anything before it thinks of something,
then how could it "change"? How does the hylomorphic analysis apply?
Aristotle apparently thinks that the intellect is like my ability to
speak French: I've got in me all the things necessary to speak
French already (vocabulary, rules of syntax, accent, etc.) and so
all it takes is my actually speaking French to speak French.
Aristotle wants the intellect to be potentially every thought that
is thinkable. When I start speaking French, I do not actually
change, although I realize a potentiality. Just so, Aristotle says
that when I think of something, I do not actually change: I just
realize a potentiality. See De
Anima 417b6–16.
There is still a problem, for the intellect is then required to be a
sort of parallel to prime matter: capable of receiving any form, but
having no form itself, no qualities. Maybe Aristotle could say that
the intellect is always already thinking SOMETHING, and so the
intellect is never prime mental stuff actually, just as the basic
elements are always there, and so prime matter is never prime matter
actually, but rather is always already combined with a form.
DESIRE:
orexis (desire)
perception and intellect are somewhat passive, but not entirely:
they involve discerning differences, selecting things to pay
attention to.
why are animals active? what in their soul makes them act?
desire alone is not enough for action: there are people who are
self-controlled, who have desires but do not act on them.
Even so, Aristotle says: It is
manifest, therefore, that what is called desire is the sort of
faculty in the soul which initiates movement De Anima
433a31-b1.
Perhaps he thinks that controlled desire is simply a case where two
desires conflict and the superordinate one prevents acting on the
other. Does he talk about that?
Desire works with practical reason to produce action. In non-humans,
desire works with imagination/appearance.
Desire is always for something which seems to be good to the
animal.
He is exceedingly careful and hesitant in his discussion about
desire: but he appears committed to the claim that desire is what is
responsible for the initial spur to action.
End of Bailly's independent notes
More on Aristotle's de
Anima
partially notes from Everson's article 'Psychology' in
CCTA.
When we discuss the concept Aristotle labels 'ψυχη,' or
'psyche,' we usually translate it as 'soul.' That has some problems:
bear in mind that Aristotle thinks that every living being has a
soul. A soul is just the name for the form of a living being
(form in the hylomorphic sense of form v. matter): every
particular substance can be thought of as a composite of form and
matter. Those substances that are living beings have a form that is
called 'soul' and are composites of soul and matter. In other words,
do not think of the soul as something confined to humans, nor as
something that has to do with heaven or hell (Aristotle did not
believe in an afterlife in anything like the way some of you perhaps
do).
Current philosophy is concerned to explore and explain consciousness
and intentionality and to formulate a theory of mind. Aristotle was
not concerned about consciousness as such: he takes
consciousness for granted.
What Aristotle is concerned with is to develop an
account of soul in terms of capacities: growth and nutrition,
perception, desire, imagination, belief, understanding.
So Aristotle has no separate concept for what we call "mind."
Does that mean he has no theory of the mind? Not necessarily.
Aristotle has a theory of what thought and understanding are, and
they are what minds do, and so, he has the central components of
what could be called a theory of the mind.
412a15-16: every living thing is a substance, a composite of form
and matter.
412a19-21: the soul just is the form of a living thing.
A body is not identical to its matter (412a7-8).
The matter of a human (or any other living thing) is its body, which
is made up of organs, but the organs are only organs when they are
part of a living thing. The body too is only a body when it is part
of a living thing. They are potentially alive in a sense, but there
is no such thing, for Aristotle, as an organ or a body that is not
alive: thus every organ is always already alive and so actual.
The matter of the organs may be something like flesh, bone,
arteries, etc. That too may only be flesh, bone, etc. when it is
actually alive, and so there is nothing that is merely potentially
flesh, bone, arteries, etc.
But at some level, we get to something that is matter that is not
alive, but is potentially part of a living thing. There is a
fundamental difference between food on the one hand and sperms and
eggs on the other. Food is potentially a living thing, but not in
the same way that sperm and eggs are.
Some forms can be pretty simple or more complex: in the case of a
chunk of pure gold, the form is merely the shape that is compounded
with the matter (gold). A separate question is whether he
matter of that chunk (gold), has a form, a definition. But
what is pointed out here is that the chunk's 'form' is simply
chunkness. Living bodies, however, are complex forms.
The soul is described at 412a20 as "the form of a natural body which
potentially has life"--why only potentially? Do such things exist on
their own? No.
The soul is also "the first actuality of a body which has
organs" at 412b5
Aristotle uses sight as an example: sight is the first actuality of
the eye. Sight is the form of the eye. 412b27
Thus "form" is not just arrangement and shape and
ingredients: it includes capacities.
Every capacity of a body has to have an organ (GA 766b35):
for something to be an organ just is to have a capacity. That's what
organ means: Greek ὀργανον
means "tool." It is cognate with English "work."
One capacity which has no organ, however, is intellect (more
later).
Thus when we come to explain what the soul is, we really need to
explain what the soul's capacities are.
414b20-22: there is no soul apart from individual living beings'
souls, and there is no such thing as a really informative definition
of a generic soul (i.e. of something that is the soul of no
particular sort of living thing but is still a soul). Souls are
a collection of capacities, and each animal or plant species has
its own specific collection of capacities.
For Aristotle, these capacities are nested or built upon each
other: plants have nutritive and reproductive capacities;
animals have sensible, locomotive, nutritive, and reproductive
capacities; humans have intellectual, sensible, locomotive,
nutritive, and reproductive capacities. Each one adds more to what
came before, and that puts humans at the top, the most complex end.
order of explanation: remember the triangle passage: it's not just
about how to explain, but about causal direction of what causes what
If one is to say what each of
these [capacities] is, for instance what the capacity for
thought is, or for perception or nutrition, one should first say
what thinking and perceiving is; for activities and actions are
prior in account to capacities [for those actions and
activities]. And if this is so, and if, even before these, one
should have investigated their correlative objects, then for the
same reason one should first determine these, i.e. about food
and the objects of perception and thought. 415a16-22
In the de Anima passage
just quoted, 415a16-22, Aristotle suggests that in order to explore
capacities, we must first say what they are capacities for: in other
words, we should explore the actions that the capacities lead to
before we look at the capacities, for the actions are prior in
account. One can only understand what the ability to X is if one
understands first what X-ing is.
Aristotle also says in that passage that we need to look at the
objects of the capacities' actions even before we look at their
actions. That seems strange: why do we need to know about things we
see in order to know about sight? It becomes less strange when we
discover that Aristotle means that we are to explore which things
are suitable to actualize a capacity. Food actualizes the nutritive
capacity. Visible things actualize the visual capacity, etc.
415B8 says that the soul is the cause of a body: it is easy
to see how it is the formal cause. It is also the final cause, as I
think should be clear.
415b21-26 At DA 2.5,
Aristotle suggests that we think about flammable objects: they can
never set themselves on fire. Perception, a capacity of some souls,
is like that: it is dependent on external things to set it moving.
Everson P 176: "The force of A's claim is that how a substance can
be affected by other objects depends on the nature of that
substance."
An aside I don't want to pursue: what about fire? It seems to feed
and grow and propagate. Is it alive?
Since nothing except what is
alive can be fed, what is fed is the animate body and just
because it is animate. Hence food is essentially related to what
has psyche. Food has a power which is other than the power to
increase the bulk of what is fed by it; for in so far as what is
animate has bulk this is increased, but in so far as it is a
"something in particular," that is a substance, the food acts as
food; for it preserves the substance. 416b9-15
The above passage, 416b9-15, explains what food is. It does not just
increase bulk of the living body: living things are nourished by
food, which is more than simply increasing bulk. So food is a causal
thing: food is what has the capacity to set the nutritive capacity
in motion.
That is why one needs to know the objects of each capacity first:
the nutritive capacity is that by which the living thing engages in
certain activities called nourishing (growth, preservation,
recovering, energizing, etc.) which are not just increasing in bulk
by the addition of material. And the activity of nourishment has an
object, namely food. So to understand the nutritive capacity, we
need to look at the activity, nourishing, as well as its object,
food. Food is a causal notion: it is what causes the nutritive
capacity to activate.
To explore the capacity
of sight, we have to first see that all objects of vision have
the quality of acting on what is transparent. Color is what causes
the sight capacity to activate. Each sense has its own proper
sense object (see deAnima 3.1
partial explanation then come back here).
Sight sees color (and some common objects), (but can only
accidentally see things like Jacques or Cleisenthene?). In other
words, the capacity of sight is properly limited to its proper
objects and certain common objects (such as unity, shape, ...). In
order to "see" Jacques, some other capacity must exist which can put
together what sight sees with other things to lead to "seeing"
Jacques. Surely memory is one of the capacities that is called on in
such cases. Perhaps thought too. But Aristotle does seem to want it
to be a matter of perception. Why? perhaps because thought belongs
to humans, whereas animals can see Jacques too: if seeing Jacques
required thought, then how do the thoughtless animals do it?
MATERIAL EXPLANATION
So, souls have capacities that have activities that have proper
objects. How does this work?
Well, every capacity (except intellect) needs an organ, a tool.
Aristotle uses a concept called "hypothetical necessity": For just as there is a necessity
that the axe be hard, since one must cut with it, and, if hard,
that it be of bronze or iron, so too since the body is an
instrument [organon] (for each of its parts is for the sake of
something, and so is the body as a whole), therefore there is a
necessity that it be such a thing and made of such things if
that end is to be.
Think of Gary Larson's "Boneless Chicken Ranch"
Aristotle proceeds via hypothetical necessity to ask how the organs
must be composed: in the case of sight, the material components of
the eye must be transparent (it must admit of every color: it it
itself were colored, that would interfere with seeing other colors).
Water is the best candidate (air would not work because it is less
easily contained in the appropriate configuration: another
hypothetical necessity constraint). So if there is to be an eye,
it must be made of a transparent substance. Water fits that best.
Thus the capacity (form) must include to some extent specification
of the matter: it seems that Aristotle's division of matter
and form (even if it is only conceptual) is falling apart to some
degree. See the middle paragraph of Everson P 181.
Each sense organ has to be made up of matter that can take on the
range of qualities that the sense organ perceives. Because of
that, in order to have a sense of touch, the animal (every animal
has at least the sense of touch says A) must be comprised of more
than just earth (earth cannot become hot because it is dry and cold,
and touch detects heat) in order to have the tactile capacity.
403a5 Living things have specifications of the kind of matter
they must be composed of in their forms!! Why? Because a
thing's form is its essence, and an essence specifies the things
which a thing must have in order to be that thing. What animals must
have in order to be animals is nutritive capacity, reproductive
capacity, sensory capacity, and locomotive capacity. In order to be
sight, for instance, a thing must have something transparent. That
is, it must have transparent matter. Aristotle calls the accounts of
the activities of the psyche "enmattered accounts."
The form of man is always found
in flesh and bones and parts of this kind; are these then also
parts of the form and the account? No, they are matter; but
because man is not found also in other materials we are unable
to effect the severance. Metaphysics 1036b3-7
In other words, it is only because humans happen to be always flesh
and bone that we cannot effect the severance. "Affecting the
severance" would be like what we can do with bronze triangles and
chalk triangles and stick triangles and paper triangles. With
those triangles, we can effect the severance, we can separate
triangularity from bronzen triangularity or sticky triangularity.
But the situation with humans is really no different than with
triangles seems to be the suggestion. We should simply get over it
and effect the severance. Perhaps if we had access to AI robots or
intelligent aliens, we could effect the severance. Maybe when
Christianity comes along with its angels, who are intelligent, they
could more easily 'effect the severance.'
So how does Aristotle connect mechanical physical material states
with psychological states? An answer can be found in the following
passage:
Sometimes when there are
violent and striking occurrences, one is neither excited nor
afraid, whilst at other times one is affected by slight and
feeble things--when the body is angry, that is when it is in the
same condition as when one is angry. Here is a still clearer
case: in the absence of any external cause of fear, we find
ourselves in the state of someone frightened. If this is so, it
is obvious that the affections of the psyche are enmattered
accounts. DA 403a19-25
While the physicist defines anger as boiling of blood around the
heart (we might call it activation of a certain neural module
in the brain by certain chemicals), most of us call anger something
like "the desire for revenge." 403b1-9: the physicist's "definition"
gives the matter/material account, the psychological account
gives the form and account.
I cannot pretend that that is a clear and plausible account of how
physical material states connect to psychological states. But then
again, I am not able to really get too far in fathoming this issue
via modern science (note that I am limited: perhaps other do much
better).
The form/matter distinction seems to be in danger. One weak way for
A to keep the form/matter distinction is to say that although living
beings have accounts that must include material specifications, they
do not specify any particular bits of matter. Thus our bodies change
their atoms every so and so many days completely, but our form
remains the same. A is not satisfied by that: in the Metaphysics, he says that even
when some particular form is instantiated only in one particular
batch of matter and does not change its matter ever, it is still the
case that the form and the matter are distinct.
"Aristotle's claim is that it is only by treating the substance as
conceptually prior to its matter that one will be able to achieve a
properly integrated explanation of what the matter and its
properties contribute to the substance it initiates." Everson P 183
Even though bodies are composed of organs, it would be impossible to
understand an organ without the body. The body is thus prior.
403a 19ff
sometimes one is angry or afraid
although there is no anger-causing or fear-causing external thing
present. At other times, when there is a (normally) anger or
fear-causing thing present, one is not angry or afraid.
Animal movement:
So how do animals move? Aristotle's answer is the "practical syllogism":
"I want to drink," says appetite.
"That's drink," says perception or phantasia or thought (depending
on
what type of animal we're talking about: not all have all of those): immediately the animal drinks. In
this way animals are impelled to move and to act, and desire is
the last cause of movement. de Motu Animalium 701a32-35
Common Affections
In on the Senses 436a7-8,
Aristotle says that perception and desire are common to the psyche
and the body. He also says that in de Anima 1.1. The only psychic capacity that is
not common to the psyche and the body is thought.
It is apparent that all the
affections of the psyche are with body ... in all these the body
undergoes some affection. DA 403a15-19.
But body and psyche are matter and form, not two separate substances
that form a system.
SO how should we understand what Aristotle means here? Perhaps there
is one substance that can be described in two ways: 1) a material
thing that has certain material affections, and 2) an organ whose
capacity is actualized.
But Aristotle seems to reject that way of understanding what happens
when we perceive something.
Suppose an animal desires drink and sees drink, as in the example of
a practical syllogism above. Aristotle wants to say that seeing the
drink is not IDENTICAL with the material alterations of the sense
organ, and also that the action of drinking is not identical with
the material physical movements of the limbs to put the drink into
the mouth. BUT he does want to say that such material alterations of
the sense organs and such limb movements are sufficient for drinking
to take place. WHAT IS GOING ON? This seems confusing.
Aristotle wants to say that the material alterations and limb
movements are the matter, while the psychological events (seeing and
satisfying desire) are the form. WHY? and how can he show that the
psychological events are causally relevant?
He might want to say that for there to be an action, there must
be psychological states. Otherwise, it will just be an event like
the wind pushing a leaf off the sidewalk. No action, just event.
For action, you need more than material mechanical events.
You need things like desire and perception.Moderns speak of
'agency' in this regard.
You might think that the psychological is caused by the material,
but Aristotle thinks the reverse is the case: the only reason
why there is a drinking or other action at all is because there is a
form animal, which is the efficient, formal, and final cause of
there being an animal and of its actions.
This is not a distinction between mental events and physical events
such as Descartes posits: Aristotle's distinction is between events
which are actualizations of capacities of living things and those
which are just alterations.
Everson thinks that "In recognizing [the idea] that one does not
have to attempt an identification of mental events with physical
events in order to integrate the psychological within the physical
world view, Aristotle at least shows a greater sophistication than
is perhaps common even now."