This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Psychê and Life Hylomorphism and the Problem of Body Perception Mental Events and Physical Events Functionalism Belief‐Desire Psychology Problem of Consciousness Active and Passive Intellects Conclusion Notes References and Recommended Reading.

Although it is common for interpreters of Aristotle's De Anima to treat the soul as a specially related set of powers of capacities, I argue against this view on the grounds that the plausible options for reconciling the claim that the soul is a set of powers with Aristotle's repeated claim that the soul is an actuality cannot be unsuccessful. Moreover, I argue that there are good reasons to be wary of attributing to Aristotle the view that the soul is (...) a set of powers because this claim conflicts with several of his metaphysical commitments, most importantly his claims about form and substance. I argue that although there are passages in the De Anima in which Aristotle discusses the soul in terms of its powers or capacities, these discussions do not establish that the soul is a set of capacities. (shrink)

On the one hand, Aristotle claims that the matter of a material thing is not part of its form. On the other hand, he suggests that the proper account of a natural thing must include a specification of the kind of matter in which it is realized. There are three possible strategies for dealing with this apparent tension. First, there may be two kinds of definition, so that the definition of the form of a thing does not include any specification (...) of its matter, whereas the definition of a compound does. Second, the definition of a substance may not include a specification of its matter at all, but still reveal in what kinds of matter its form can be realized. Third, there may be a special kind of matter, functional matter, which belongs to the form of certain things. I will show that the functional matter of a thing does not belong to its form (in a strict sense of “form”), but that an adequate account of natural substances and their functions must nonetheless involve a reference to their functional matter. This means that the function of a natural thing is not the same as its form and that its adequate account as a natural thing is not a definition (in a strict sense of “form” and “definition”). (shrink)

This paper tests Leonardo Polo’s concausality against the challenges of epiphenomenalism, overdetermination, and reductionism that the contemporary mind-body problem presents. Analysis of Jaegwon Kim’s criticism of John Searle’s Biological Naturalism exemplifies the aporias of the mind-body relation generated by dualism and physicalism. In contrast with these ontologies, Aristotle’s notion of matter as potentiality requires a plurality of causal senses and is a viable alternative to both dualism and monism. Polo’s reprisal of Aristotle’s substance as concausality provides a revision of our (...) senses of causation and an ontological framework that makes coherent our experience of consciousness and our understanding of physical reality. (shrink)

Aristotle’s Naïve Somatism is a re-interpretation of Aristotle’s cognitive psychology in light of certain presuppositions he holds about the living animal body. The living animal body is presumed to be sensitive, and Aristotle grounds his account of cognition in a rudimentary proprioceptive awareness one has of her body. With that presupposed metaphysics under our belts, we are in a position to see that Aristotle in de Anima (cognition chapters at least) has a di erent explanatory aim in view than that (...) which the literature generally imputes to him. He is not explicating what we would call the “mental”—the private, inner realm which some take to be of a di erent kind than the physical—as most take him to be. His explanandum is content acquisition; the explanans is showing how the body becomes like various aspects of objects. Although he famously describes the mind (nous) as unmixed with the body, he is guided by functional constrains—nous cannot be limited or qualified if it is to potentially think all things. Thus, his inquiry into cognition is philosophically limited from a contemporary perspective. Aristotle is not doing philosophy of mind, for he doesn’t seem to find the “mental” philosophically perplexing. (shrink)