Aristotle: Philosophy of Mind

Ethics for Rational Animals brings to light a novel account of akrasia, practical wisdom, and character virtue through an original and comprehensive study of the moral psychology at the basis of Aristotle's ethics. It argues that practical wisdom is a persuasive rational excellence, that virtue is a listening excellence, and that the ignorance involved in akrasia is in fact a failure of persuasion. Aristotle's moral psychology emerges from this reconstruction as a qualified intellectualism. The view is intellectualistic because it describes (...) practical wisdom as the sort of knowledge that can govern desire and action and akrasia as involving a form of ignorance. However, Aristotle's intellectualism is qualified because practical wisdom goes beyond grasping the truth about the human good, for it must also be able to convey the truth persuasively to non-rational cognition and desires. (shrink)

In De Anima II.6, Aristotle divides the objects of perception into three kinds: “special perceptibles" (idia aisthêta) such as colours, sounds and flavours, which can be perceived in their own right by only one sense; “common perceptibles" (koina aisthêta) such as shapes, sizes and movements, which can be perceived in their own right by multiple senses; and “incidental perceptibles,” such as the son of Diares, which can be perceived only “incidentally” (kata sumbebêkos). In this paper, I examine this division of (...) perceptibles and consider what it amounts to. First, I argue that Aristotle’s distinction between perceiving something in its own right (kath' hauto) and perceiving it incidentally marks a causal distinction: what is perceived in its own right causes perception as such, whereas what is perceived incidentally coincides with what is perceived in its own right. Second, I argue that for Aristotle special perceptibles, unlike common perceptibles, belong to homogeneous bodies on account of their chemical composition. Finally, I explain the primacy Aristotle assigns to special perceptibles and his claim that perception of them alone is free from error. I conclude with some brief remarks on Aristotle and the primary/secondary quality distinction. (shrink)

This article provides a new account of the role of phantasia, imagination, in Aristotle's political thought. Phantasia plays a key role in Aristotle's psychology and is crucial for explaining any kind of movement and action. I argue that this insight holds for collective actions as well. By offering a reconsideration of the famous “Wisdom of the Multitude” passage, this article shows that the capacity of a multitude to act together is tied to its ability to share a collective phantasma: a (...) mental representation of the practical end or goal of their collective effort as good and thus worthy of pursuit. However, I argue that given the subjective nature of phantasia, acting together can be hard. I conclude that since one's phantasia is shaped by one's moral character, a community can achieve a shared phantasma—and thus secure collective action—by means of persuasion, habituation, and education. (shrink)

Whereas scholars often look to De Anima 2.5 to support one or another understanding of the sense in which perception, for Aristotle, qualifies as an alteration and qualitative assimilation to the sense-object, I ask the more basic question of what the chapter is meant to establish or accomplish with respect to the question whether perception is an alteration. I argue that the chapter does not presuppose or legitimate the view that perception is an alteration where it is thought to, and (...) that it is meant rather to challenge that view, most importantly, by putting its argumentative weight behind a different model of perception, leading to a kind of antinomy. What stands in the way of understanding perception as an alteration (and assimilation to the sense-object), in this chapter, is ultimately the lack of an account of perceiving a quality as having that quality. (shrink)

Once upon a time in the twentieth century, it was considered good sense by some to think that Aristotle began his De anima with a series of very Aristotelian theories about the soul, and that the function of its first book was to eristically taunt his predecessors for failing to appreciate hylomorphism, or patronizingly praise them for getting the odd bit right. Jason Carter deserves our thanks for showing how wrong-headed this reading of Aristotle is. His book begins with the (...) much more sensible assumption that the review of previous δόξαι in DA I plays an important and even constitutive role for theses at the core of Aristotle's theory of soul and living things, prominent among them these two: that the soul... (shrink)

The late ancient commentators on Aristotle, most of them Platonists, have been gradually re-emerging on the philosophical and scholarly horizon during the last two or three decades. Their reappearance is not likely to cause any major transformations of the scene, but they are interesting enough in themselves to deserve careful study and they have been influential in the past to the extent that proper understanding of their work sheds light on the subsequent history of the interpretation of Aristotle. This and (...) much more is borne out by Blumenthal's excellent study. A considerable number of ancient commentaries have now appeared in English translations initiated by Richard Sorabji, and books and articles on them have begun to appear as never before. After writing some pioneering works on Plotinus's psychology, in which the relevance of Aristotle for the latter's fundamentally Platonic psychology is much in focus, Blumenthal set out in the 1970s to study the commentators and thus belongs to the pioneers in the contemporary awakening. (shrink)

On the Soul II 8, 420a3–12 is always explained as if Aristotle there considered the ears to be the seat of the faculty of hearing. However, Aristotle there identifies the instrument of sense perception not with external parts of the visible body but with the soul’s instrumental body, situated in the heart and connected with the ears. That also appears to be the case in Generation of Animals V 2.

Aristotle sometimes claims that the perception of special perceptibles by their proper sense is unerring. This claim is striking, since it might seem that we quite often misperceive things like colours, sounds and smells. Aristotle also claims that the perception of common perceptibles is more prone to error than the perception of special perceptibles. This is puzzling in its own right, and also places constraints on the interpretation of. I argue that reading Alexander of Aphrodisias on perceptual error can help (...) to make good sense of both of Aristotle’s claims. (shrink)

This paper presents three interpretations of the infamous “sailor / ship” sentence that concludes Aristotle’s De Anima II.1. The first two interpretations represent the ones most popular in contemporary scholarship; the final is the author’s original. The interpretations are then evaluated with respect to grammatical plausibility and explanatory strength. The paper makes a case that the new reading answers to both points of evaluation and contributes to an interpretive approach to Aristotle that values the coherence and cogency of his De (...) Anima as a whole. (shrink)

This revised edition contains a substantial review of recent work on Aristotle's philosophy of mind, together with a new bibliography.

Presents strategies for reinvigorating the corporate spirit by way of the teachings of ancient philosophers. -- Back cover.

Cristoforo Landino's writings from 1462 to 1472 do not support the idea that the "Ficino circle" of humanists in the 1460s and early 1470s withdrew from Aristotelianism and social activity for Platonic studies. While Ficino was doing his main work on Plato, Landino, one of Ficino's closest friends, wrote his two main studies of the human soul, the De anima and the Disputationes Camaldulenses. In these works Landino relies on medieval and contemporary thinkers to incorporate both Plato and Aristotle, and (...) while he prefers the genus vitae of otium to negotium, he does not advocate a retreat from society or social responsibility, but holds that the best life is one that combines both otium and negotium, both study and social involvement. ;Landino's understanding of the human soul evolved between 1462 and 1472. A comparison between Landino's lectures on Virgil in 1462-63 and the 1472 Disputationes reveals notable developments in Landino's philosophical sophistication regarding the human soul. To explain the mind and to distinguish its operations from the genera vitae, Landino develops a new terminology from his work on the De anima in the late 1460s and early 1470s. Landino's De anima is a compendium of classical and scholastic thought on the soul, based primarily on Aristotle but also including Plato, Avicenna, Averroes, Albert the Great, Argyropoulos and Bessarion. Moreover, in the Disputationes Landino relies extensively on Thomas Aquinas. These aspects of Landino's development and thought show that Landino was largely independent of Ficino in his understanding of the nature of the human soul. ;In the dissertation, the author first analyzes Landino's De anima, covering such topics as the nature of the mind, illumination, virtue and Landino's sources. After examining Books I and II of the Disputationes concerning the best life and the highest good, the author compares Landino's lectures on Virgil's Aeneid with his interpretation of the Aeneid in Books III and IV of the Disputationes, using the De anima and the first half of the Disputationes to understand his arguments. The author concludes with remarks on Landino's place in mid-fifteenth century Florentine thought. (shrink)

In Proclus dianoia is the Soul's thinking activity, through which it makes itself into a divided image of Nous. This dissertation examines various aspects of Procline dianoia. Dianoia's thoughts are logoi, because in the Greek philosophical tradition, logos came to mean a division of a prior unity . Proclus' theory of dianoia rejects induction, and is a conscious development of Plato's theory of anamnesis , because induction is unable to yield a true universal . The source of Soul's logoi is (...) not a pre-natal vision of reality, but rather its ontological dependence on Nous. The Soul's ousia is a fullness of logoi which are images of the eide in Nous. The Soul projects these multiple oudiodeis logoi into even greater multiplicity. In so doing, Soul makes itself into the image of Nous, and the paradigm of Body. For this reason all dianoia is metaphorical, because it either understands Nous through the image which itself is, or understands Body through itself as paradigm . Dianoia, therefore, has two parts. Dialectic is the Soul's grasp of Nous through itself as image, and mathematics is the Soul's grasp of Body through itself as paradigm . The Soul's attention to Body may cause it to cease its dianoetic activity, because it takes on Body's passivity. Philosophical discussion may rescue such a fallen soul, turning it back towards itself, away from the body. In Procline terms, philosophy restores the Soul's autokinesis, or self-motion . The particular Nous of which Soul is an image, and which dianoia divides, is the Nous which serves as a measure for Soul's dividing activity. And because Time is the measure of the Soul's motion, this particular Nous is the monad of Time . Dianoia has as its aim to leave behind all divided thinking, and to be content with the unity of Nous, and the simplicity of the One. This is accomplished through that in the Soul which is higher than dianoia, the nous of the Soul, and its own one. (shrink)

This dissertation traces the development of the concept "greatness of soul" in Greek and Roman thought and literature, both philosophical and non-philosophical, from the fourth century B.C.E. to the last works of Cicero in 44--43 B.C.E. The Greek megalopsuchia and Latin magnitudo animi, which is not always a literal translation of the Greek, harbor an inherent polysemy and ambiguity. Laudable "greatness of soul" can be confused with, and shade over into, blameworthy "arrogance". Special attention is paid to philosophical discourse, particularly (...) Aristotle's Ethics and Cicero's De Officiis, which attempt to define "greatness of soul" as a unitary virtue. I focus on the differing approaches of Aristotle and the Stoics with regard to the motivational apparatus of the great-souled person, the value which he or she places on external "goods", especially honor and glory, and the role which he or she is expected to play in the political community. I also consider the extent to which the concept of "greatness of soul" does, or does not, develop diachronically within Aristotle's writings, and within Stoic ethical thought. Throughout the dissertation, I locate the philosophical conceptions of "greatness of soul" within their social, political, and historical contexts, by consideration of evidence from historical writings, Greek and Roman political oratory, and Greek epigraphic evidence from the Hellenistic Period, and in doing so, I reassess and supplement the previous studies by Gauthier , Kirsche and Knoche. (shrink)

In contemporary analytic philosophy, the problem of intentionality is to provide an explanation of how some things can be of or about or directed-at other things . Against some recent interpreters, I will endeavor to show that Aristotle does not have the problem of intentionality or the basis for a theory of intentionality. The problem of intentionality is a problem under a certain set of assumptions and some of these assumptions are incompatible with certain principles of Aristotle's psychology and metaphysics. (...) I focus on the contemporary assumption that there is an explanatory gap between the mental and the physical and its incompatibility with Aristotle's epistemological and metaphysical principles of essentialism and natural understandability . I also endeavor to explain why some contemporary scholars have interpreted Aristotle in ways that would deny my thesis and commit him to there being a problem of intentionality. (shrink)

Nella prima parte dello studio l'A. esamina i tre tipi di commentari averroisti ad Aristotele: i cosiddetti «brevi», «medi» e «lunghi», evidenziandone le specifiche caratteristiche. Viene poi brevemente esaminato il rapporto fra il commento medio e quello lungo al De anima, sottolineando la dipendenza del primo dal secondo. La seconda parte dello studio tratta del commentario breve al De anima. L'A. sottolinea gli elementi di peculiarità di questo testo, in particolare l'interesse per l'aspetto fisiologico dell'anima e le relazioni anima-corpo. Lo (...) studio dei sensi, della sensibilità, del medium, dell'immaginazione, della ragione, dell'intelletto, dell'Intelletto Agente e il problema dell'intelletto materiale sono i principali argomenti su cui verte il commentario. (shrink)

In The Recovery of the Soul, Kenneth Rankin suggests that the current impasse over solutions to many philosophical problems is the result, in part, of a failure to consider how each of these problems bears on the rest. Rankin shows that a libertarian theory of free will, an A-theory of time, a corporealist theory of personal identity, and a non-relativist interpretation of the foundation of ethics all contribute to or are derived from a psychocentric form of physicalism. The proposed Modal (...) Identity thesis identifies the mind, or that which ensouls the body, with a strictly physical power, the power to act intentionally from occasion to occasion in any one of several mutually exclusive ways. Rankin argues further that the non-arbitrary individuation of particular physical things derives from the causal powers they possess. The distinctive power that ensouls our bodies is identified as the primary causal power: all other powers derive their status as powers from it in so far as they are constitutive, or instruments, of it. Rankin demonstrates that many of our ontological preconceptions are Aristotelian in origin. The psychocentric physicalism of the central thesis is a response to Aristotle's question "What is being?" and in the earlier chapters of the book Aristotle's contributions to a theory of being are used as a preliminary study to suggest which parts of these preconceptions should be kept and which revised. Later chapters suggest that failure to resolve many philosophical problems results in part from the failure of Aristotle's philosophy to fulfil its promise. (shrink)

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections (...) in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. (shrink)