(The Fine & Irwin
translation, as edited in Cohen, Curd, & Reeve’s
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.
416a3
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.
417a2418a7
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.)
Chapter 6
This chapter presents
Aristotle's account of what the object of perception is. He claims that each
sense has a proper object (sometimes rendered "special object," and
for those in the market for certainty, these we can be certain of); that there
are common objects which can be perceived incidental to perceiving the proper
objects; and that I see the son of Diares only
incidentally (not incidental by virtue of the son of Diares
being a common object, but by virtue of him being incidentally related to the
white patch I see from a distance).
A further question, but one
not taken up by Aristotle until III.2, is what exact relation is denoted by
this "related to." Despite Aristotle's use of the verb "to
be" ("if the pale thing is the son of Diares"),
the relation can’t be the relation of identity; for then what’s true of the one
is true of the other, and so since I see the whiteness more than incidentally,
I’d have to see the son of Diares more than
incidentally. This is the intriguing question "If what we see isn't things
in the world, then just what is the relationship
between what we see and the world?" George Berkeley (1685-1753) answers
the question most creatively by denying that there is a world; he claims
(and argues for the claim) that all that exists (not just all that we can have
access to) is perceptions (or minds in which those perceptions inhere).
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.
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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