(The Irwin
& Fine translation, as edited in Irwin and Fine’s Aristotle: Introductory Readings, from Hackett Publishing Company, 1996)
Chapter 1
Notice how from the start, Aristotle
assumes the existence of the psyche. He
does not list as one of the questions to be examined whether there is such a
thing. If we were to raise this to him,
his response, like that of anyone in his day, would likely be, “But surely a
living organism differs from a dead one.”
402a1-9
Aristotle distinguishes between attributes of the psyche and
attributes of the animal that has the psyche.
Can you think of clear cases of the one, clear cases of the other, and
unclear cases?
403a3-b21
The remainder of the chapter gives
us the first clues about what Aristotle takes to be the issues involved in
whether such things as emotions (he focuses on the example of anger) involve
only the body or the psyche too, and the related issue of whether the psyche is
separable from matter. Take good notes
on your careful reading, for you will find yourselves later referring back to
this section.
403a24-b9
Note Aristotle’s description of a
thoroughly materialist account of anger (as the boiling of the blood) and his
“dialectical” account (as the desire for retaliation). Note how he uses this passage to argue that
because the study of the psyche involves the study of material things, the
study of the psyche falls within the province of the study of nature. We are witnessing the birth of naturalistic
psychology.
Chapter
1
This chapter
contains some general comments about what a psyche is.
412a6-21
The psyche isn't substance in the fullest sense of substance (ousia), namely in the sense in which
the bronze sphere is substance. Instead it
actualizes matter into a composite, and it's that composite which is substance
in the fullest sense.
412a22-27
Aristotle distinguishes between the first and the second actuality of
something. What he means is this. Let
Aristotle's
claim here is that psyche is the first actualization. Why is this point worth
him making? Well, for starters, the implication of saying that psyche is the
first actualization is that the psyche would be not some sort of activity, but
the capacity to engage in some sorts of activities; more precisely, not the
undeveloped capacity (that would be Alice), but the actualized potential to
engage in some sort of activities.
At some
point, then, Aristotle will have to tell us which are the relevant activities.
He starts on this project at the passage 412b10-413a10, where he says that the
psyche of something is the what-it-is-to-be-that-thing, by which he means
something like the essential function (the ergon, "peculiar
work") of the thing. This, of course, leaves unaddressed the question of
which particular activities constitute the psyche of which living things (that
is, which particular activities constitute the peculiar workings of which
living things). This question will start to be addressed in II.2.
It also
leaves open how the psyche actualizes the body; for example, does the
psyche actualize the body like the way a sailor sails a ship? If not, then how
else? This will come in (the notoriously perplexing) III.5.
412b3-9
What does Aristotle mean by his response to the question "Are the psyche
and body one?"
Chapter
2
413b22
Aristotle’s word phantasia is translated by
Fine and Irwin (in editions from Hackett Publishing Company) as
"appearance" (and see their glossary entry for this term), and by
Hamlyn (in Ackrill’s A New Aristotle Reader) as "imagination."
It is a difficult word to translate, for it is more interesting than
"appearance" but less fancy than what we mean by
"imagination." When Aristotle talks of phantasia,
he means it not in the sense of what distinguishes poets from mental drudges
like the rest of us. He means it in the traditional sense, used even by
Descartes, to refer to something like "the ability for at least part of
the outside world to appear to you to be a certain
way." Something like "the ability to entertain images." So in
this sense, Aristotle thinks that a fish must have phantasia,
for it must have an image (provided by sense-perception) of the food source
towards which it's moving.
413b25-32
Aristotle proceeds to mess up his nice picture by declaring that thought alone
is separable (from the body). Furthermore, this seems to land him in the Platonist
camp, for it represents a case of a form (the psychic faculty of thought) as
being able to exist separately from the world of spatio-temporal
particulars. Either Aristotle is right that there is something essentially
different about thought (as distinguished from self-feeding, growth, movement,
and sensation), or we have to chalk this exception up to Aristotle not being
able to throw off the influence of his teacher.
For what it's
worth, we can see a similar problem in Aristotle's discussion from Met.
XII.5, 6 & 9, where he talks about the divine substance. Here again there
is a form which can exist separate from spatio-temporal
particulars, and so perhaps represents another bit of residual Platonic.
But then
maybe it's the same bit. For what is it that Aristotle takes the divine
substance to be doing? Thinking. Which is exactly the exception he's
making here at 413bb.25.
Chapter
3
Aristotle
gets back into his Aristotelian mode when he says that not much can be said
about psyche in general, and that to understand what a psyche is we need to
study different sorts of empsyched beings. This
approach is what makes Aristotle's mind so well-suited for studying, nay
starting, biology.
Chapter
4
This chapter
explores the most basic psyche, the nutritive psyche.
415a26-b1
Note Aristotle's teleology in claiming that everything living reproduces so as
to partake of the everlasting as much as possible. He looks around, notices
that all forms of life reproduce, and concludes that there must be a universal
"urge" (whether felt or unfelt) to reproduce. He does not settle on
(or entertain) the more mechanistic explanation that forms of life which don't
reproduce die off and so aren't around to be noticed by Aristotle.
415b9-28
Aristotle claims that the psyche is the cause of the body in three ways: it's
the efficient cause (the "from which"), the final cause (the
"for the sake of which"), and the formal cause (the "by
which," here described as "the substance" of the body).
Obviously, the psyche can't be the material cause (the "out of
which") of the body.
416a6
What does he mean by saying "in accordance with their functions, a plant’s
roots correspond to an animal’s head"?
416a9-18
Now that Aristotle has claimed that it's the psyche that is responsible for the
ability of a living thing to feed itself and grow, he must counter the view
that it's fire that is the essence of feeding and growth. Why might someone
think that fire is the source of feeding and growth? Well, fire is, after all,
the only element which increases by itself. Effort must be taken
to ensure that a fire doesn't feed itself, for except in artificial
conditions (like sand pits and wood stoves), fire left on its own will spread.
That's fire's nature. The nature of composite things ("everything
naturally constituted") involves proportion and limit (note the echo of
Pythagoras here), and so an incomposite element like fire isn't up to the job
of limiting feeding. Aristotle perhaps is thinking that if there were fire in
us which allows us to feed and grow, then that fire would grow out of control,
and so consume our very bodies. Interesting.
Chapter
5
This chapter
discusses the psyches which have the faculty of perception.
417a2-418a7
Spread your fingers out. If it's the job of skin to perceive touch, then why
can't you feel your fingers' skin?
Look hard. If
your retina is the organ of sight, then why can't you see your retina? Or your
optic nerve? Or firings in your optic cortex?
What does
your tongue taste like, your nose smell like?
What do your
ears sound like? Why do you hear a bell and not the fluttering of your
eardrums? (If you say, "But they're the same thing; the bell is the
fluttering of the eardrum," then consider how a bell can be two hundred
years old without the fluttering of an eardrum being so aged. If you more
carefully say, "Well, the sound of the bell is the
fluttering of the eardrum," then consider that [i]
you've taken the world away from us, for we no longer hear bells, see people,
taste chocolate, but we hear middle-C, see colors, taste sweetness. The world
of objects has been replaced by a flood of sensations. Further consider that
[ii] if the sound of the bell is identical with the fluttering of the eardrum,
then the bell makes no sound if there is no eardrum around to flutter.)
What is
Aristotle's answer to "why we do not perceive the senses themselves"?
(This chapter isn't Aristotle at his clearest, but it has something to do with
the actual/potential distinction.)
418a4-26
Aristotle’s distinction between the proper objects of perceptions and the
common objects came to be influential those coming later.
Chapter
11
This chapter
gives Aristotle's account of the sense of touch, and how it differs and doesn't
differ from the other senses.
Chapter
12
This chapter
draws a lesson about form and matter from the rest of the book. It is an
important lesson too, for he uses it in his discussion of thinking in III.4.
424a18-28
Aristotle concludes his discussion of perception by claiming that sensing is
the reception of the form of the sensed object without its matter. That the
matter isn't communicated can be seen in two ways. First (and this is a point
Aristotle doesn't make here), sensing an apple doesn't affect the matter of the
apple (and affects the form only in the sense of making that form shared by my
perceptual faculty), and certainly doesn't put the whole material apple into my
perceptual faculty. Second (and this is left implicit from Aristotle's interest
in all sensation requiring a medium), the medium of each instance of sensation
acts as a blanket or filter which allows the form but not the matter of the
object into my perceptual faculty.
424a33-b19
Aristotle ends his conclusion by distinguishing the perceptual psyche from the
first species of psyche which he had discussed, the nutritive psyche, which is
had by plants. The nutritive psyche has to be able to be affected by the matter
of objects.
To his
credit, Aristotle doesn't stop there. He entertains the question "How can
something be affected by a perceptual quality (e.g., a smell) without
that thing perceiving that quality?" It is a good question, but smell
isn't the clearest example he could have used. He uses later the better case of
light and darkness. Light and darkness are visual qualities, yet they can
affect plants; does that mean that plants must be able to see? This question is
especially poignant because of Aristotle's emphasis on the sensory medium;
since light and darkness don't directly affect the body, but only the sensory
medium (air or water), how can that sensory medium in turn affect, say, a plant
unless the plant can see? In other words, if sensing is being affected by a change
in a sensory medium, then plants would have to see.
He points out
the exception for touch and taste (424b13). What is touched or tasted directly
affects a sensory medium, but this sensory medium is the body (the skin
or the tongue). So tangible qualities, like hot and cold, cold, can affect
plants without the plants being able to sense them. When a heated iron touches
a plant it affects the plant by the matter of the iron burning the matter of
the plant; form is not sufficient, so this can't be a case of perception.
But this
doesn't allow us to explain the case of light and darkness affecting the plant,
for there the matter of the source of light need not touch the matter of the
plant.
Aristotle
doesn't resolve this, and the end of the chapter "looks like a number of
lecturer's questions thrown out seriatim by way of challenge" (D. W.
Hamlyn, Aristotle's De Anima, Books II and III, Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1968, p.115). But he does suggest in one of his questions that there is
something more to sensing than being affected by a perceptual quality. This is
a weighty issue, for it involves such questions as "Where in the processing
of the visual system does the seeing happen? If in the brain, then in a
particular neuron?" and "What exactly happens in the brain of one who
understands an explanation of the Pythagorean theorem that doesn't happen in
the brain of one who doesn't understand but who nonetheless perceives the words
and pictures?" This last goes beyond perception into cognition; the plant
is to the perceiver as the mere perceiver is to the knower. This takes us to
Book III, where Aristotle takes up the thinking psyche.
Chapter
3
Aristotle
here discusses what phantasia is, and how it
differs from perception, belief, and knowledge. This serves as a bridge between
his discussions of perception and of thinking.
Irwin & Fine render phantasia
as “appearance,” and others (like Hamlyn) translate it as “imagination” (not in
the specific sense of creativity, but in the sense of “imaging” or “forming an
image of something).
428a6-17
He adduces four different considerations for why perceiving differs from
imaging (which is an appropriately less ambitious word than
"imagining"; to image something is for you to have that thing appear
to you): at "For perception is...," at "Moreover,...,"
at "Further,...," and at Again,...."
What are the four? Laurels to those getting the fourth (in a way that makes it
genuinely different from the rest).
It’s not
clear why, but the final sentence repeats the first of the four points.
428a18-24
He gives a reason for phantasia not being
knowledge, and two reasons for it not being belief.
428a25-b9
He gives an argument for phantasia not being a
combination of belief and perception. The last part (b5-9) of the passage is
difficult, but makes sense.
Chapter
4
Now we get
squarely to Aristotle's views on the nature of the thinking faculty (intellect,
nous).
429a14-18
Although Aristotle seems only to suppose that perception is analogous to
thought, he seems go further and to endorse the analogy, at least insofar as
thinking requires that the intellect be capable of receiving the form of the
object of thought. The analog is said of perception at the opening of II.12.
429a19-29
This passage is not only crucial for Aristotle's account of the psyche, but the
point it makes is hugely influential in the history of theorizing about the
mind, its relation to the brain, and its ability to attain knowledge.
Aristotle
holds that because everything can come to be known by the cognitive psyche
(nothing in the cosmos need remain locked away from us), the intellect must
have no nature. It is pure potentiality. For if the intellect had an actual
nature, a form of its own, that nature would interrupt the ability of the
intellect to receive the forms of some objects. The slate has to be blank
(actually blank, though potentially full; cf. 430a1) in order for
everything to be legibly written on it.
It won't be
until Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781 and 1787) that someone
proposes in any detail that the mind is hardwired to think with certain
categories (like space, time, causality, substance), with the consequence that
anything not conforming to those categories couldn't be an object of thought
for us. Aristotle is more optimistic about the ability of the intellect to know
everything in principle.
But that's
not all. Aristotle draws out the implication that if the intellect is to be
characterless so as to be able to take on the character of anything it thinks
about, then it cannot "be mixed with the body." This is reminiscent
of 413b24-31, where he had said that the intellect alone is separable (from the
body? from the organism, including the rest of the psyche?).
Despite this
precedent, this poses no small problem for Aristotle's general account of the
psyche in II.1: "The psyche must, then, be substance qua form of a
natural body which has life potentially...The psyche, therefore, will be the
actuality of a body of this kind." If the psyche is form and actuality,
then how can the intellect (part of the psyche, after all) be formless and pure
potentiality?
Second, even
if Aristotle adjusts his general account of what a psyche is, then, given his
association of matter with potentiality and form with actuality (412a9), it
stands to reason that if the intellect is without form, it's without actuality.
But then if it's potentiality, wouldn't it have to be material?
Third,
Aristotle believes that even matter has a form, though a lower
level form than that of which the matter is matter. For example, a lump
of bronze has the form of being a certain ratio of the four elements, even
before the sculptor induces the higher level form of sphericality onto the
lump. Since matter has some form, that limits the potential it has. Bronze
could never become food, for instance. And even the element of water could
never become fire. But even if Aristotle responds to the second point above
with the claim that the intellect is purer potentiality then anything material
could ever be, wouldn't it follow that when the intellect isn't thinking, it
vanishes into the void (since it has no nature of its own)? To call this
counter-intuitive would be too gentle.
429a29-b9
Aristotle notes two ways in which perception differs from thought, and they
both involve perception being, and thought not being, separate from the body.
(1) Only thought isn't worsened by having an intense object. (2) The intellect
can think by itself, but the perceptual faculties require an external object.
(And lest you object that it's possible to imagine an object that's not
present, remember that Aristotle has already given not one, but four reasons
for holding that imaging is distinct from perception [428a5-16].)
429b23-430a9
Aristotle poses and responds to two questions about his view of what the
intellect is. (1) If x can act on y only in virtue of some
similarity between them (for example, rain can act on a seed only if they are
both material objects and only if they exist at the same time and place), then
how can actual objects of thought act on a completely non-actual intellect? (2)
Can the intellect think about itself? (Given what Aristotle has said in this
chapter, why might this second question be a special challenge for him?)
He provides
an answer to each in the second half of the passage. What are his answers?
Chapter
5
This is where
Aristotle introduces the distinction between the passive intellect and the
active (or producing) intellect. It represents a fast break from the previous
chapter's analogy between perception and thought (cf. 429a14-18). In
fact, it is surprising that the account of thinking in III.4 is so bereft of
any hint of there being two intellects, or, at the very least, two aspects of
the intellect. An example of this puzzlement is that where before he had said
that the intellect has no nature and is only potential (429a21), he now commits
himself to saying that there is an intellect which is pure activity, and so is
pure form and has a full nature (activity, form, and nature all being linked in
Aristotle's metaphysics). This new wrinkle can't simply be appended onto III.4,
for it's incompatible with much of III.4.
Any ideas?
Chapters
10 & 11
These
chapters discuss how thinking things get going. Desire is necessary but not
sufficient for deliberation about what to do. You’re on your own for the rest
of these short chapters.
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