PH354 Aristotle Week 4. Man’s Nature (I) Soul & Perception.

PH354 Aristotle

Week 4. Man’s Nature (I)Soul & Perception

Introduction

• (i) In De Anima, Aristotle turns his attention to life, animal life, and the psychological being of animals.

• (ii) A central part of Aristotle’s project in De Anima appears to be the development of views about the soul, and views about psychological functioning that allow us to steer between two approaches that he seems to think are mistaken: Platonism and materialism.

•

Introduction

• (iii) Aristotle takes the key to understanding the notion of the soul, and the relation of soul to body, to be hylomorphism: the view that living beings are a composite of matter and form.

• (iv) There are many unresolved questions about De Anima: (a) What exactly is Aristotle’s account? How is hylomorphism supposed to work? (b) Does the form-matter distinction hold in the case of living bodies; (c) Puzzles about about perception and thought; (d) The intellect: Aristotle to think that the intellect is separable from the body. Is Aristotle really just a kind of dualist after all?

Lecture Plan

• (i) Platonism and Materialism about the soul• (ii) Aristotle’s claims about the soul in De Anima II.• (iii) A worry about Aristotle’s hylomorphic account of soul-

body relations. Explore strategies for dealing with that worry

• (iv) Aristotle’s account of perception. Perception as a particular kind of change, and as the reception of ‘sensible form without matter’.

• (v) Explore difficulties concerning the role of form and matter in perception. The dispute between materialist accounts and ‘spiritualizing’ accounts introduced.

A Basic Assumption

• The soul = The ‘first principle of life’ in living beings

• The ‘first principle of life’ = What explains life• ‘Soul’ on Aristotle’s view is much broader in

scope than the notion that might be thought to arise from Cartesian dualism

Platonism

• (a) Souls are things, substances, in the sense that they are things that have properties and are capable of surviving and undergoing changes.

• (b) Souls are immaterial. They are not identified with any particular material thing nor with any collection of material things.

• (c) While the soul is joined to a body, it is only contingently so joined. A soul can exist without the body that they are joined to, as it will after the physical death of the human being. (See the Phaedo account)

Materialism

• (a) Souls, understood as things that cannot be identified with any material thing, nor with any collection of material things, do not exist. (Leaves room open for materialist reductionism (souls exist but they are physical) as well as a more obvious eliminativist approach)

• (b) What explains life is not the presence of an immaterial soul, but facts about the activities, arrangements and patterns of the basic physical entities (atoms) that make up human beings.

Materialism

• Democritus argues that the soul is a sort of fire or heat. For forms and atoms being countless, he calls the spherical ones fire and soul, and likens them to the (so-called) motes in the air, which can be seen in the sunbeams passing through our windows; the aggregate of these particles he calls the elements of which all nature is composed. And Leucippus adopts a similar position. It is the spherical atoms which they call the soul, because such shapes can most readily pass through anything, and can move other things in virtue of their own motion. (404a1-8)

De Anima II, 1: Hylomorphism

• It is bodies especially which are thought to be substance, and of these especially natural bodies; for these are sources of the rest. Of natural bodies, some have life and some do not; and it is self-nourishment, growth and decay that we speak of as life. Hence, every natural body which partakes of life will be a substance, and substance of a composite kind. 412a 10-15

• Not all natural beings are living beings• The most basic kind of soul: nutritive soul


• Now we speak of one particular kind of existent thing as substance, and under this heading we so speak of one thing qua matter, which in itself is not a particular, another qua shape and form, in virtue of which it is then spoken of as a particular, and a third qua the product of these two. And matter is potentiality, while form is actuality— (412a6-9)

• Living beings are composites of form and matter. • Matter: what is not in itself particular• Form: what makes something particular


• Since it is indeed body of such a kind (for it is one having life), the soul will not be body; for the body is not something predicated of a subject, but exists rather as subject and matter. The soul must, then, be substance qua form of a natural body which has life potentially. Substance is actuality. The soul, therefore, will be the actuality of a body of this kind. (412a17-22)


• Soul – body : Form – matter

• Form = ‘Actuality’ = What it is to be something/to have being (= Substance)


• But actuality is spoken of in two ways, first as knowledge is and second as contemplation is. It is clear then that the soul is actuality as knowledge is; for both sleep and waking depend on the existence of soul, and waking is analogous to contemplation, and sleep to the possession but not the exercise of knowledge. In the same individual, knowledge is in origin prior. Hence the soul is the first actuality of a natural body which has life potentially.


• First Actuality Second Actuality• Knowledge

Contemplation• Knowing French Talking in French• Being capable of seeing Seeing• Having a soul Living


• If then we are to speak of something common to every soul, it will be the first actuality of a natural body which has organs. Hence too we should not ask whether the soul and body are one, any more than whether the wax and the impression are one, or in general whether the matter of each thing and that of which it is the matter are one. For, while unity and being are so spoken of in many ways, that which is most properly so spoken of is the actuality. (412b3-9)


• Why should we not ask whether soul and body are one?!

• They are obviously one (?)• They are not one, but that does not entail that

there are two separate things (?)• It’s a bad question (?) Why?


• We must consider what has been said in relation to the parts of the body also. For, if the eye were an animal, sight would be its soul; for this is an eye’s substance—that corresponding to its principle. The eye is a matter for sight, and if this fails, it is no longer an eye, except homonymously, just like an eye in stone or a painted eye. (412b18-24)


• The soul is constituted from a range of different capacities and powers

• In the case of each of these powers, there is a corresponding bodily part or parts.

• The distinction between matter and form can be drawn between the power and the body part

• If a body part is not capable of performing its function it is no longer a body part. The same is true of a body.

• A dead body is a body only homonymously (i.e. only by being commonly picked out by the same term).

Ackrill on Hylomorphism

1. x and y can be contrasted as the matter and form of a composite only if the matter can be picked out in such a way that it can be understood as existing without form.

2. But Aristotle’s account makes it impossible to understand how a body or the organs of a body could be conceived as existing without form.

3. Therefore the soul and the body (or bodily organs) cannot be understood as the matter and form of a composite.

Premise 1

• They (notions of form and matter—TC) normally find application where the relevant matter (or what is potentially an X) can be picked out and (re-) identified in both an unformed and an in-formed state (or both as potentially and as actually an X). Take first the concepts of form and matter. They are introduced by Aristotle to explain change. Certain matter or material can be shaped or otherwise worked on (given a form) and made into a so and so (the composite). In the simplest type of example the material of which the composite is made is the very same material from which it was made; and the same material will survive the destruction of the composite.

Premise 1

• We can of course distinguish form from matter in regard to things we have not made and things which may escape dissolution as long as we like to think; but in making the distinction we are implying the possibility of this material’s not always having been (and not always going to be) in-formed in this way. In order that the matter-form distinction be clearly applicable to anything, that a thing should be capable of being seen as a composite of matter and form, it is necessary that the material constituent be capable of being picked out. (Ackrill (1972-3)(1979), p.68-9)

Premise 2

• The problem with Aristotle’s application of the matter-form distinction to living things is that the body that is here the matter is itself ‘already’ necessarily living. For the body is this head, these arms, etc. (or this flesh, these bones, etc.) but there was no such thing as this head before birth and there will not be a head, properly speaking, after death… The body we are told to pick out as the material ‘constituent’ of the animal depends for its very identity on being alive. (Ackrill (1972-3) (1979), p.69-70)

• • It is not that which has lost its soul which is potentially such as

to live, but that which possesses it. Seeds and fruit are potentially bodies of this kind. (412b25-7)

(1) Matter as Stuff

• In addition to saying that the body is composed of anhomoemerous parts (head, hands, and the like) Aristotle also says that the body is composed of flesh and bone.

• Flesh and bone are like-parted (homoemereous) stuffs, rather than particular parts like a head or a limb.

• Perhaps we ought to take Aristotle to think that flesh and bones are capable of existing independently of being in-formed?

(1) Matter as Stuff

• In Meteor. IV 12, after saying of organs that they “are defined by their function” he adds “So also with flesh; but its function is less obvious than that of the tongue” (321b28-32)

• In Generation of Animals, Book II, Chapter 1• “For it is not face nor flesh unless it has soul: after their death

it will be equivocal to say that the one is a face and the other flesh, as it would be if they were made of stone and wood. The homoemereous parts and the instrumental parts are produced simultaneously. We would not say that an axe or other instrument was made by fire alone: no more would we say it of hand or foot. The same applies to flesh, for it too has a certain function.” (734b24-31)

(2) The Elements

• The homoemereous (stuff-like) parts, as well as the heads and arms, etc,, are made ultimately of the elements—earth, air, fire and water. Perhaps Aristotle thought that these things could exist independently of being contained within form. So, perhaps the elements provide the relevant way of thinking about matter, as something that is capable of taking on different forms.

• In Metaphysics IX Aristotle raises the issue about when things have potentials:

• “E.g. is earth potentially a man? No – but rather when it has already become seed, and perhaps not even then… A thing is potentially all those things which it will be of itself if nothing external hinders it…” (1049a1-16)

(3) Deny the Requirement for Form-independent Matter

• “Aristotle was aware of this problem (homonymy). He did not simply transfer a distinction from a realm in which it makes sense to a realm in which it does not, insensitive to what he was doing. He had cogent reason for thinking that the distinction between form and matter could be made out within the realm of the living. Soul is substance, Aristotle says, in the sense of the essence—or ‘what it is to be’ of the body. This is substance according to the logos.


• The essence or logos of something is, as we have seen, an order—an order which is intelligible. As we shall see later, the mind comprehends a thing by taking on its logos. Thus there is a route backward, from mind to world, which will lend content to the idea of the form, or soul, of a living organism. By studying a loving, functioning organism one’s mind eventually takes on the form realized in the organism. By reflecting philosophically on what one has learned about the organism one gains insight into what the form of the organism is.” (1988: 98-9)


• Consider two assumptions Ackrill makes in motivating premise (1) of his argument:

• (a) Aristotle invokes matter—and the idea of the matter-form distinction—to explain change.

• (b) The explanation of change provided by the matter-form distinction requires a conception of matter as something that can exist independently of form. (The clay being shaped into a statue is not statue-shaped)

Matter and the Explanation of Change

• Aristotle does think that the distinction can explain change• But the primary philosophical role of the distinction is to

explain being, form, or the reality of things. • The form-matter distinction emerges through reflection on

the different ways that things can exist• Form or being can exist actually or potential. • Form in its actual state is final cause.• Form in its potential state is matter. Put another way: matter

is potential being. It is already something organized or structured according to form. As such it cannot be understood independently of form.

Change and Matter

• We have seen that we can explain many changes and processes, precisely, in terms of the transition between potential being and actual being.

• Form exists in different ways through change. • At the start of the change, form is not present actually, but it is

present potentially.• It is not even obvious that even in the examples that Ackrill (1972-3)

uses, the relevant notion of matter is something that can be understood independently of the notion of form.

• The lump of clay on the sculptor’s table is the matter for the statue, given that it is something that has the power to be a statue. (The lump of clay is what is potentially a statue, and what is potentially many things, insofar as it is considered as artist’s material).

Aristotle on Perception

• Aristotle’s account of perception is one that draws on notions of form and matter in different ways.

• The basic proposal appears to be that perception is a kind of change or motion (kinesis):

• “Perception consists in being moved and affected, as has been said; for it is thought to be a kind of alteration.” (416b33-35)

• But what kind of alteration? What is distinctive of perceptual change?


• In general, with regard to all sense-perception, we must take it that the sense is that which can receive perceptible forms without their matter, as wax receives the imprint of the ring without the iron or gold, and it takes the imprint which is of gold or bronze, but not qua gold or bronze. Similarly too in each case the sense is affected by that which has colour or flavor or sound, but by these not in so far as what each of them is spoken of as being, but in so far as they are things of a certain kind and in accordance with their principle.


• The primary sense organ is that in which such a potentiality resides. These are then the same, although what it is for them to be such is not the same. For that which perceives must be a certain extended magnitude, while what it is to be able to perceive and the sense are surely not magnitudes, but rather a certain principle and potentiality of that thing. (424a18-28)


• Perception of something, F, occurs when:• (i) A perceiver’s sense organ (or sense) is

changed by (affected by) F. • (ii) That sense organ (or sense) “receives the

perceptible form of F without the matter”

(a) ‘Materialism’ (See Sorabji (1977), Everson (1997))

• For the sense organ to take on sensible form without matter is for the respect in which the sense organ is like the perceptible form to be a literal case of the sharing of a property.

• In perception, a physical process occurs in which some aspect of the environment is imprinted on the perceiver through a material process, involving the sense-organs.

• When something red is perceived the eye jelly becomes red.

• On this view, it is the sharing of this perceptible property that is the taking on of form without matter

Evidence for Materialism

• ‘Moreover, even that which sees is in a way coloured; for each sense-organ is receptive of the object of perception without its matter. That is why perceptions and imaginings remain in the sense-organs even when the objects of perception are gone.’ 425b20-25

• ‘(Talking of touch) Their sense-organ, that of touch, in which the sense called touch primarily resides, is the part which is potentially such as they are. For perceiving is a form of being affected; hence, that which acts makes that part, which is potentially as it is, such as it is itself actually.’ (423b29-424a1)

Problems for Spiritualism

1. What is the material basis, if any, for the reception of sensible form without matter?

2. Does the wax/ring analogy fit this picture?

Problems for Materialism

• (i) Simplistic even in materialist terms. • (ii) Explanation should involve form, but what is

the formal aspect of this explanation? Is it an actualization of a capacity to perceive? Is it an actualization of a capacity to perceive in anything other than the sense in which getting sunburnt is the actualizing of a capacity to get sunburnt.

• (iii) It’s a bad theory. (Noticing and attending, etc.)

(b) Burnyeat (1990) ‘Spiritualism’ (also called ‘Cognitivism’ or ‘Intentionalism’)

• On this view, the explanation begins with a sense rather than a physical sense-organ.

• For sense to take on sensible form without matter is not for anything in the body to become coloured, but for the sensible form to be ‘intentionally present’ in the sense, or to be ‘perceptually represented’.

• The sensible form is present without its matter because one is in the state of being perceptually aware of F.

• An interpretation of this kind was offered by Brentano (1867). In the modern literature, the position is associated primarily with the work of Myles Burnyeat. (See for example, Burnyeat (1990))

Evidence for Spiritualism

• Being affected is not a single thing either; it is first a kind of destruction of something by its contrary, and second it is rather the preservation of that which is so potentially by that which is so actually and is like it in the way that a potentiality may be like an actuality. For that which has knowledge comes to contemplate, and this is either not an alteration (for the development is of a thing into itself and into actuality) or a different kind of alteration. For this reason it is not right to say that something which understand is altered when it understands, any more than a builder when he builds. (417b1-10)

Evidence for Spiritualism

• “Actual sense perception is so spoken of in the same way as contemplation; but there is a difference in that in sense-perception the things which are able to produce the activity are external, i.e. the objects of sight and hearing, and similarly for the rest of the objects of perception. The reason is that actual perception is of particulars, while knowledge is of universals; and these are somehow in the soul itself. For this reason it is open to us to think when we wish, but perceiving is not similarly open to us; for there must be the object of perception.” 417b18-25

(c) Lear (1988) on Perception

• In perception, there are two different ways in which form becoming actual, and achieving its full reality, enters into an explanation of perception

• (a) Sensible form (the visible appearance of an object) exists in the object external to the mind as a potential, as a power to be the object of a state of perceptual awareness. This potentiality achieves the fullest state of actuality in the perceiver’s being aware of sensible forms.

• (b) Form also exists in the perceiver; in terms of a developed capacity to perceive, that is a developed capacity to receive the sensible forms of things. This potential is itself realized, or achieves its full state of actuality, in episodes in which the perceiver is aware of sensible forms.


• In perception there is a single episode in which the sensible form of an object becomes present in the perceiver.

• The transmission of such a form involves some physical process through which the form becomes realized in the perceiver’s sense organ.

• That is what it is for the sensible form to become present in the agent.

• But the very same occurrence which is the sensible form achieving its full degree of actuality in this way is identical with the actuality of the potential to be aware of sensible form. (The activity of the sensory faculty)


• Lear (1988) takes the two actualities to be the same• But he also describes perception or awareness as the ‘end

state’ of the affection or movement of form transmission from the object to the sense organ.

• But if the sense in which perception is an activity is that it is a state which is an actuality of the capacity to perceive, then how is that state to be identified with the affection or movement of form transmission. If it is what ends the movement it cannot be identical with it.

• (If the affection brings about the state they cannot be the same thing…)

PH354 Aristotle Week 4. Man’s Nature (I) Soul & Perception.

Documents

Transcript of PH354 Aristotle Week 4. Man’s Nature (I) Soul & Perception.