This paper articulates and defends a novel view of the strict distinction that Aristotle makes between human and non-human mental life. We examine two crucially relevant but overlooked arguments that turn on the human capacity for reasoning and inference (syl/logismos) to reconstruct his view of what makes some cognitive processes rational and how they differ from non-rational counterparts. A creature is rational just in case its occurrent cognitive states exhibit a sequential coherence wherein prior cognitive activity constrains subsequent activity for (...) the sake of attaining truth. Processes are rational, then, in virtue of how constituent states relate to each other, not whether any given state involves some peculiar content or grasps some distinct object. This study aids, but does not exhaust, a systematic examination of the rational soul in Aristotle’s writing, based on (a) the human/animal comparisons through which he often elucidates rational cognitive capacities and (b) the distinctions that he draws between elements of rational cognition and non-rational counterparts in terms of what minimally suffices to distinguish between them. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that Aristotle operates with a particular theoretical model in his explanation of animal locomotion, what we call the ‘centralized incoming and outgoing motions’ model. We show how the model accommodates more complex cases of animal motion and how it allows Aristotle to preserve the intuition that animals are self-movers, without jeopardizing his arguments for the eternity of motion and the necessary existence of one eternal unmoved mover in Physics VIII. The CIOM model helps to elucidate (...) Aristotle’s two central yet problematic claims, namely that the soul is the efficient cause of animal motion and that it is the internal supporting-point necessary for animal motion. Moreover, the CIOM model helps us to explain the difference between voluntary, involuntary and non-voluntary motions, and to square Aristotle’s cardiocentrism with his hylomorphism, but also, more generally, it provides an interesting way of thinking about the place of intentionality in the causal structure of the world. (shrink)

I argue that Aristotle thinks desire is what motivates all animal movement and human action. Reason never motivates us directly, but it can exert an influence on what we desire. I argue that whether reason successfully does so depends on our character states, and that this is one reason why Aristotle is correct to say that virtue makes the end (i.e., the object of desire) right. The object of rational desire is the good, and it is because we have character (...) states of a certain kind that we find the ends that reason proposes to be good. So it is because we are virtuous or vicious that we desire what reason proposes. Since reason cannot motivate us directly, reason can only be practical by affecting our desires. Since reason only affects our desires insofar as we are virtuous or vicious, it is virtue and vice that make practical reason possible. (shrink)

This dissertation explores Aristotle’s use of teleology as a principle of explanation, especially as it is used in the natural treatises. Its main purposes are, first, to determine the function, structure, and explanatory power of teleological explanations in four of Aristotle’s natural treatises, that is, in Physica (book II), De Anima, De Partibus Animalium (including the practice in books II-IV), and De Caelo (book II). Its second purpose is to confront these findings about Aristotle’s practice in the natural treatises with (...) the theoretical picture of the structure of teleological explanations gained from Aristotle’s theory of scientific demonstration. For this purpose a new interpretation of Analytica Posteriora II.11 is presented. This study thereby contributes to recent scholarship on the relation between Aristotle’s philosophy of science and his philosophy of nature, while at the same time adding to our knowledge of Aristotle’s notion of teleology in terms of its explanatory merits and limits. (shrink)

Most contemporary philosophers of action accept Aristotle’s view that actions involve movements generated by an internal cause. This is reflected in the wide support enjoyed by the Causal Theory of Action (CTA), according to which actions are bodily movements caused by mental states. Some critics argue that CTA suffers from the Problem of Disappearing Agents (PDA), the complaint that CTA excludes agents because it reduces them to mere passive arenas in which certain events and processes take place. Extant treatments of (...) PDA, most notably those of Michael Bratman and David Velleman, interpret the problem as a challenge to CTA’s ability to capture the role of rational capacities like deliberation and reflection in the etiology of human action. I argue that PDA admits of another interpretation, one that arises when we appreciate that the exercise of higher rational capacities in action presupposes possession of a prior lower-level capacity for basic self-movement – the power to initiate and control one’s bodily behavior. Bolstering CTA so that it accommodates richer exercises of practical thought – as Bratman and Velleman do – will not resolve PDA unless CTA already captures this basic agential power. Adequately responding to PDA, therefore, requires answering a question unaddressed by current responses: How do bodily movements caused by sub-agential items like mental states count as movements actively performed by the whole agent? I argue that CTA can answer this question by adopting a normative account of the nature of self-moving agents. On this view, self-moving agents are teleologically constituted, meaning (1) their nature and proper function derives from their characteristic ends and aims, and (2) the nature and proper function of their parts depend on these ends and aims. Basic self-movement consists of movements caused by a sub-agential part whose own proper function is to generate behavior that constitutes or contributes to the pursuit of the agent’s overall proper function. After showing how this picture applies to artifactual and collective agents (i.e., robots and teams), I extend the account to organic agents (human beings) by sketching a broadly Aristotelian picture of the nature of living things. (shrink)

RESUMEN En De Anima III 10, Aristóteles introduce la noción de phantasía logistikē como uno de los principios de la acción racional. A partir de la exposición de algunos textos del De Anima y de Ética a Nicómaco, se busca interpretar el lugar de aquel tipo de imaginación en el razonamiento práctico. Para ello, se presenta primero la doctrina aristotélica de los principios de la acción y la problemática de su articulación, y luego se discute el papel de la imaginación (...) racional en la configuración del objeto del deseo. ABSTRACT In De Anima III 10, Aristotle introduces the notion of phantasía logistikē as one of the principles of rational action. On the basis of some texts from De Anima and the Nicomachean Ethics, the paper seeks to interpret the place of that type of imagination in practical reasoning. To that effect, it first sets forth Aristotle's doctrine regarding the principles of action and the issue of their articulation, and then goes on to discuss the role of rational imagination in the configuration of the object of desire. (shrink)