Ancient

[1.3.6] Aristotle on the Soul and Mind

A. L. Komáromi18 Comments

Aristotle (384-322 BC), in his work De Anima investigates the soul’s faculties and the relation between them. He sustains, that all living beings have soul, and constructs a hierarchical model of the types of souls: 

FacultyPlant’s soulAnimal soulHuman soul
Nutritionincludesincludesincludes
Reproductionincludesincludesincludes
Perception–includesincludes
Desire––includes
Imagination––includes
Mind (intellect, nous)––includes

“The reasons why this should be so are broadly teleological. In brief, every living creature as such grows, reaches maturity, and declines. Without a nutritive capacity, these activities would be impossible… So, Aristotle concludes, psychology must investigate not only perceiving and thinking, but also nutrition.”

The following UML Use Case diagram shows the main concepts in Aristotle’s philosophy of mind:

Aristotle on the soul and mind

Use cases:

FacultyUse CaseRelations
NUTRITIONUse NUTRITION (UC7): “Mind includes the non-human animal level sense-perception, which includes the plant level nutrition.”
REPRODUCTION Use REPRODUCTION (UC8): “… any creature with perception will also have the ability to take on nutrition and to reproduce”
PERCEPTIONUse TASTE, TOUCH, SMELL, HEAR, SEE (UC1-UC5) perception to recieve sensible species: “Aristotle claims that [sense] perception is best understood on the model of hylomorphic change generally: just as a house changes from blue to white when acted upon by the agency of a painter applying paint, so ‘perception comes about with <an organ’s> being changed and affected… for it seems to be a kind of alteration’. So in line with his general account of alteration, Aristotle treats perception as a case of interaction between two suitable agents: objects capable of acting and capacities capable of being affected.”
Sensible species is the representation of the object in the sense-organs.
PERCEPTIONUse COMMON SENSE (koine aisthesis) to unify and monitor 5 senses (UC6)includes UC1-UC5, UC7, UC8
MIND (or intellect)Use MIND (intellect, nous) for knowing an understanding (UC9): Mind or intellect is a faculty posessed just by humans; it has 2 sub-types: Theoretical and Practical mind.
“Human minds do more than understand, however. It is equally essential to the human being to plan and deliberate, to ponder alternatives and strategize, and generally to chart courses of action.”		includes UC6, UC12, UC14
MIND (or intellect) Use THEORETICAL MIND (sophia): from experience grasps of first principles (ta próta); generate Knowledge (epistemê) (UC10)inherits from UC9
MIND (or intellect) Use PRACTICAL MIND (phronēsis) to initiate change (UC11): “desire and practical reason (De Anima iii 10, 433a17–19), though they do not work in isolation from one another. Rather, practical reason, broadly construed to incorporate the kind of image-processing present in non-human animals, is a source of movement when it focuses upon an object of desire as something desirable. So, practical reason and desire act corporately as the sources of purposive motion in all animals, both human and non-human (De Anima iii 10, 433a9–16), even though, ultimately, it is desire whose objects prick practical intellect and set it in motion (De Anima iii 10, 433a17–2).”inherits from UC9; includes UC15
MIND (or intellect) Use MEMORY for storing and recollection of images (UC13).
MIND (or intellect) Create Experience (empiria) (UC12): “experience (empiria)—…a technical term in this connection, reflecting the point at which a single universal comes to take root in the mind” includes UC13
IMAGINATIONUse IMAGINATION (phantasia) to produce images (UC14): “Aristotle identifies imagination as ‘that in virtue of which an image occurs in us’, where this is evidently given a broad range of application to the activities involved in thoughts, dreams, and memories…”
Aristotle regards the images used in cognitive processes in two ways:
● as having its very form in the mind (conformity),
● a mental image in the mind that naturally resembles the object (resemblance). 
DESIREUse DESIRE (orektikon) to initiate motion (UC15): “Aristotle concludes, there is a faculty of desire whose activities and objects are primarily, if not autonomously or discretely, responsible for initiating end-directed motion in animals. What animals seek in action is some object of desire which is or seems to them to be good.”

Actors:

ACTORDESCRIPTIONRELATIONS
Object in External WorldAn object in the external world.UC1, UC2, UC3, UC4, UC5
User of the SoulA human person.uses UC10, UC11

Observations:

  • Aristotle in the analysis of the Soul uses the hylomorphic model (see in [1.3.5]) for explaining the unity of the body and soul, and the working mechanism of perception and mind.
  • All living things have Soul, as their Form. Hence the Human Soul encompasses the faculty of mind (reason), which includes the non-human animal level sense-perception, which includes the plant level nutrition. Mind, sense-perception, and nutrition are the differentia specifica in Aristotle’s 10-fold categorization (see in [1.3.2]).
  • The existence of the living things is teleological (see in [1.3.4]).

The following OntoUML diagram presents the main classes in Aristotle’s theory of soul:

Sources:

  • All citations and more about the topic in: Shields, Christopher, “Aristotle’s Psychology“, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
  • Richard Sorabji, “Aristotle on demarcating the five senses”, Philosophical Review, 1971

First published: 11/4/2019
Updated: 16/4/2019: some use case relations changed
Updated: 27/4/2019: added 5 Senses and Common Sense
Updated: 14/7/2019: added reproduction
Updated: 10/8/2020
Updated: 8/6/2021
Updated: 30/11/2021 added OntoUML diagram


[1.3.5] Aristotle on Hylomorphism

A. L. Komáromi28 Comments

“Central to Aristotle’s (384-322 BC) four-causal account of explanatory adequacy are the notions of matter (hulê) and form (eidos or morphê). Together, they constitute one of his most fundamental philosophical commitments, to hylomorphism:

Hylomorphism =df ordinary objects are composites of matter and form.
Aristotle’s hylomorphism was formulated originally to handle various puzzles about change…”

The following OntoUML diagram shows the main classes in the hylomorphic model:

Aristotle on hylomorphism
ClassDescriptionRelations
Object“‘ordinary objects’ … as a first approximation, it serves to rely on the sorts of examples Aristotle himself employs when motivating hylomorphism: statues and houses, horses and humans.”
Form“form [in Aristotelian sense] =df that which makes some matter which is potentially F actually F“
Acts, forms FormedMatter.		characterizes Object; acts on FormedMatter
Matter“matter [in Aristotelian sense] =df that which persists and which is, for some range of Fs, potentially F”
FormedMatterFormed matter is contained in an Object (not used by Aristotle).is phase of Matter; contained in Object
PrimeMatterPrime matter is usually described as pure potentiality, unformed. is subkind of Matter
PotentialityPotentiality is “possibility” that a thing can have.relates Matter with Object
ActualityActuality is change what realizes fulfillment of a possibility. relates Form with Object

“In general, argues Aristotle, in whatever category a change occurs, something is lost and something gained within that category, even while something else, a substance, remains in existence, as the subject of that change. Of course, substances can come into or go out of existence, in cases of generation or destruction; and these are changes in the category of substance. Evidently even in cases of change in this category, however, something persists. To take an example favourable to Aristotle, in the case of the generation of a statue, the bronze persists, but it comes to acquire a new form, a substantial rather than accidental form. In all cases, whether substantial or accidental, the two-factor analysis obtains: something remains the same and something is gained or lost.
In its most rudimentary formulation, hylomorphism simply labels each of the two factors: what remains is matter and what is gained is form…

Importantly, matter and form come to be paired with another fundamental distinction, that between potentiality and actuality. Again in the case of the generation of a statue, we may say that the bronze is potentially a statue, but that it is an actual statue when and only when it is informed with the form of a statue. Of course, before being made into a statue, the bronze was also in potentiality a fair number of other artefacts—a cannon, a steam-engine, or a goal on a football pitch. Still, it was not in potentiality butter or a beach ball. This shows that potentiality is not the same as possibility: to say that x is potentially F is to say that x already has actual features in virtue of which it might be made to be F by the imposition of a F form upon it. So, given these various connections, it becomes possible to define form and matter generically a

OBSERVATIONS:

  • Since the Aristotelian Form is a part of the Object, when the Object is destroyed, the Form is destroyed. Hence we have a ComponentOf OntoUML (similar to Composition in UML) relation between Object and Form.
  • Object is a Primary Substance in Aristotle’s four-fold categorization system [1.3.1]
  • The same hylomorphic structure can be observed in the previous post [1.3.4] about Causality, Potentiality, Actuality, Teleology:

Sources

  • The source of all citations: Shields, Christopher, “Aristotle“, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
  • Ainsworth, Thomas, “Form vs. Matter“, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

First published: 4/4/2019
Updated: 9/4/2019: Added Potentiality, Actuality
Updated: 6/9/2019: Added PrimeMatter
Updated: 9/2/2021: Added Form, FormedMatter
Updated: 7/12/2021