mind-body problem
Johnjohn123
AristotleonSubstanceExpandedUpdated1.pptxAristotle
On nature and causation
384-322 BC
Student of Plato for 20 Years
His father was the Court Physician to the King of Macedonia
335 BC Founded the Lyceum after Plato died
Lyceum had an extensive library and zoo
Friend and Tutor to Alexander the Great
Exiled himself after Alexander the Great died in 323 BC
Wrote treatises on logic and language, physics, biology, psychology, metaphysics, and ethics
Terminology and Definitions
“Dualism”: Includes Plato and Rene Descartes (they are kinds of dualists, but there are differences we will study later on)
Humans are a composite of two objects (or, for Descartes, two substances): One material and one immaterial
“Materialism”: Includes Greek atomists and present day reductive materialists.
All that exists is matter in motion operating according to "pushes and pulls", or mechanical movements of parts interacting.
Terminology and Definitions (cont.)
“Functional States”: States of an organism that are directed to some outcome and are explanatorily necessary.
Example 1: Desires can only be understood in reference to the object the desire is aimed at. That is, a desire is always “for” something. Belief works the same way.
Example 2: “The heart is for pumping blood”. The function of the heart is necessary to understand and explain the heart as an organ.
“Formal States”: Explanations which make reference to the definition of the object.
Terminology and Definitions (cont.)
“Immanent activity”: Activity that begins in the agent and terminates in the agent for the agent’s sake. The cause is the agent terminating back in the agent.
Example: A plant drawing nutrients from the soil.
“Transient activity”: Causation of one thing by another where the effect terminates in the former. The process terminates in something other than the cause itself.
Example: A snowball rolling down a hill accumulating size. The activity is “outside” or “extrinsic” to the snowball.
Plato’s Theory of Forms
Universals are mind-independent abstract realities separate from particular. Examples include The Beautiful, The Just, The Good, The Equal, etc.
Example: “The Triangle” (aka triangularity) exists independently from individual instances of triangles.
Aristotle’s Critique
Aristotle focuses on the two aspects of Plato’s theory to show that it fails as an explanation of the ancient problem of the One and the Many.
Separability: Forms exist separately from the particulars which they characterize.
Self-predication: Forms possess their own quality. That is, Plato uses language like “The Form of Beauty is beautiful”.
Aristotle’s Critique
Critique 1: The problem of the peculiar particular.
Given separability, Forms themselves are like another particular object alongside all other individual objects. They are just weird particular objects.
Aristotle’s Critique
Critique 2: The Third Man Regress
Aristotle’s critique here is that Plato’s theory generates an infinite regress of explanations. That is, one explains x by reference to y, and y by reference to z ad infinitum. The explanation never terminates. By Aristotle’s estimation, the theory of Forms was an attempt to terminate explanation of the many particulars by reference to the Form that caused them. But it did not work out that way.
Aristotelians and Universals
Universals exist as abstracted from particulars by an intellect and exist as an idea in the intellect.
Example: “Triangularity” exists in objects with particular features like color and size.
“Triangularity” by itself exists in the intellect after the intellect abstracts it away from the particular features.
Note: Universals are not invented by human minds—they are really there! They are waiting to be abstracted by an intellect (aka to be understood).
Aristotelians and Universals (Cont.)
Universals exist in matter concretely.
Universals exist in the intellect abstractly (as a definition).
Fitz: The first substance.
3 Elements to account for Change
1st Substance: The subject that remains in existence when it undergoes an exchange of contraries
Fitz goes from blubbery to lean.
2nd Substance: The universal "property". It is the essence of the 1st substance. It tells us what the 1st substance is (aka, it is a kind term).
Fitz is a dog.
Non-substantial universals: Properties a 1st substance can lose and remain in existence. It simply describes a 1st substance.
Fitz is long toe-nailed.
Kinds of Change
A "qualified coming to be" or qualified change
The same subject persists but no new subject comes into existence
Examples: A house is painted, a hammer gets dirty, you get a haircut).
Notice that the change has to do with qualities of the object.
An "unqualified coming to be" or unqualified change (sometimes called a substantial change)
A new subject comes into existence.
Examples: A hammer is forged from steel, water is formed from hydrogen and oxygen.
Notice that this is not merely a change in quality, but rather a new 1st substance comes into existence.
Unqualified Changes
What sorts of 1st substances are there?
Matter: The particular subject that underlies the change (lump of bronze is the matter of the statue
Form: What the matter acquires when a 1st substance comes into existence.
Statue of Pericles example: It is made of bronze but what it is is a statue.
Fitz example: Fitz is made of fur, blood, bones, molecules, blubber, and cuteness, but what it is is Fitz.
So, formal things count as 1st substances, but why?
Fitz has undergone a number of qualified changes: His hair is a different color, he has diminished muscle mass, his eyes are cloudy, he is deaf. But Fitz has survived each of the changes (even though he might not smell like it!)
If the materialist (who identifies the identity of the object with its material constituents) was correct, each change would actually be an unqualified change.
But the underlying stability of Fitz’s form can be observed even though Fitz’s matter changes constantly.
So, Fitz is the subject of the change, not merely Fitz’s matter.
Hylomorphism
Matter
“Hyle”: Wood
The matter of which the substance is made. The material principle.
Form
“Morphe”: Shape
The organizing principle of the substance which makes it what it is.
Each material object is a composite of form and matter. Remember: These are not separate objects or things: They are two reasons/causes/principles for why the substance is what it is.
The 4 Causes Answers to the question: "Why is this the way it is?"
Material cause: That of which the substance is made; the matter which has taken on the form
Efficient cause: The origin of the process by which it was produced or was brought into existence; that which brought it into being.
Formal cause: The form or principle of organization; the substantial form in the case of a natural substance.
Final cause: That for the sake of which it was made; the end, goal, or outcome toward which it points, extrinsically for artifacts, intrinsically for natural substances
Kinds of 1st Substances
Car
Substance in a loose sense
Still a Matter-Form Composite
They are artifacts: Form is artificially imposed on matter that is not of a nature to arrange in this way.
Rock
Natural Substance
Form-Matter Composite
Non-living/Inanimate
Squirrel
Natural Substance
Form-Matter Composite
Living/Animate
Souls: A Hylomorphic Account
Book 2 Chapter 1
“Among substances are by general consent reckoned bodies; and especially natural bodies, for they are the principles of all other bodies. Of natural bodies some have life in them, others do not; by life we mean self-nutrition and growth (with its correlative decay). It follows that every natural body which has life in it is a substance in the sense of a composite.”
Soul: A Hylomorphic Account
From Irwin: "A mere collection of flesh and bones is not necessarily a living creature, and the collection that is left when Socrates dies is not more Socrates than a glass eye is really an eye."
Soul (def):
"Hence the soul must be a substance in the sense of the form of a natural body having life potentially within it....."
The first grade of actuality of a natural body having life potentially within it....."
It is a substance in the sense which corresponds to the definitive formula of a thing's essence."
"The soul is the cause or principle of the living body...It is the principle or origin of movement, it is the end, it is the essence of the whole living body."
Put somewhat differently, the soul is the principle of organization of a natural body directed to an end.
Aristotle's axe and eye analogies
Axe: A broken or destroyed axe is no longer an axe. A dead animal is no longer an animal.
Eye: If an eye was an animal, it's flesh would body would be the flesh, the seeing would be the soul.
"…[A]s the pupil plus the power of sight constitutes the eye, so the soul plus the body constitutes the animal."
"That is why we can wholly dismiss as unnecessary the question whether the soul and the body are one: it is as meaningless as to ask whether the wax and the shape given to it by the stamp are one, or generally the matter of a thing and that of which it is the matter."
The Psychic Hierarchy
Plants
Are animate natural substances
"Life" (def): Self-nourishment, growth, and its correlative decay
Plants have the power of self-nutrition, growth, reproduction, and decay
Plants have a vegetative soul
Non-human animals
Are animate natural substances
Have the powers of self-nutrition, growth reproduction
Have specific powers of sensation and perception
Basic sensation is touch
Sensation is a power an organ has to receive sensible forms. Perception is the orientation of the organism toward the environment according to its needs.
Non-human animals have sensitive/desiderative souls.
Human Animals
Are animate natural substances
Have the power of self-nutrition, growth, reproduction, sensation and perception.
Have the power specific power of rationality (hence Aristotle's definition of a human as a "rational animal")
Humans have a rational soul.
Sensory Cognition (From 2.7 in your De Anima Reading)
4 Cause Analysis of Sensation
Material Cause: the organ of sense
Formal cause: the object of sensation (think about the contours and shapes of a textured wall)
Efficient cause: The medium (think about how a flashlight floods the air with light which affects the eye)
Final cause: the purpose of sensation itself is perception of the object. It is what makes sense of the whole process.
From RE Houser: “In real changes the new form produces a new real characteristic, in perception it produces an awareness of that real characteristic. The difference is due to matter and manifests itself in several ways.”
Rationality
Intellectual cognition involves thinking, knowledge, and opinion and it is characterized by universality, necessity, and certainty.
Senses work by receiving sensible forms of things without the matter (note that this is a hylomorphic analysis of sensation).
Examples: Receiving the frequency of air movement in your ear, or the impression of angles of a Lego block in your foot.
Thus the senses are related to what is sensible
Intellectual understanding occurs when the intellect grasps the definition or essence of the substance. This is an intelligible form.
Examples: Understanding the essence of triangularity, the essence of a dog, etc.
The intellect has the potential, then, to receive any intelligible form. The intellectual process is like a stylus writing on a tablet. The intellect must exist in such a way as to receive the forms themselves.
The Intellect or "Mind" for Aristotle
The intellect must exist immaterially and be potentially anything. So it cannot be identified with an organ.
1. It is not destroyed by overstimulation like a sense organ.
Physical organs can be overstimulated to the point of damage at
which point they are no longer able to sense (think of the hearing
loss epidemic cause by earbuds and high volume). No such
overstimulation happens to the intellect. The more it takes in, the
more it understands.
2. It is unlimited in the range of things it can think about.
The objects of mental cognition are universals. Sense organs have a limited range of
receptivity. If the mind was physical, it would have a limited range. Its range is
whatever is possible to understand and think. So it does not have a limited range. So
it cannot be physical.
The Intellect or "Mind" for Aristotle (cont.)
The Tablet Analogy
The tablet has a passive power to receive any writing whatsoever from a stylus. The tablet is like matter, learning is like writing on the tablet that requires a stylus, and the stylus writing on the tablet is the efficient cause of the writing. The words written on the tablet is the content of human mental life. The words are the formal cause and are the objects of intellectual knowledge. The writing on the tablet has the same purpose as intellection does, and that is understanding. The but as the aforementioned sections specify, we are working with a spiritual tablet here.
What a human does in the process of intellectual cognition is abstracting the essences of things from their matter, then using those to understand the particular objects. If one starts with Janet and her fair skin, the intellect goes to work to understand what “fair-skinned” means, then reapplies that to form the judgment that “Janet is fair-skinned”.
But what is the efficient cause or, in the tablet analogy, the stylus? This is what Aristotle calls the B intellect. We do not have room here to go into the complexities of the agent intellect, but however it exists it is like the medium of understanding in the same way as light is the medium of sight. It is not identical to the passive intellect nor is it the universal which is understood.
Dualism? Materialism? Hylomorphism?
Materialism
Includes Greek atomists and present day reductive materialists
All that exists is matter in motion operating according to "pushes and pulls", or mechanical movements of parts interacting.
Aristotle's Critique:
Formal and Functional states are required for explanation
The materialist explanation is wrong in principle because it cannot differentiate between goal directed and non-goal directed behaviors of objects
There are fewer unqualified changes, and materialists cannot account for this
Dualism
Includes Plato and Rene Descartes (they are kinds of dualists, but there are differences we will study later on)
Humans are a composite of two objects (or, for Descartes, two substances): One material and one immaterial
Aristotle's Critique:
Wrong understanding of soul as object
Hylomorphism
Physical objects are composites of matter and form, where form organizes the matter to be a kind of thing. Thus form and matter are two principles of a single, unified substance.
References to the soul are the formal and final causes of a creature's behaviour (includes goals, perception, desire, pleasure, pain, etc).
Rationality makes it possible for humans to organize activities according to rational principles. That is, distinctly human behaviour is mediated by concepts.
Why Formal Cause Matters (and Final too!)
1. Formal and final cause are required for understanding an object: The definition requires reference to the goal and intended function.
“The causes are interdependent. In physical substances, form does not exist except in matter and matter never exists except with some form or other. A things inherent efficient causal powers and teleological features are grounded in its substantial form. Efficient causality presupposes final causality.” Ed Feser, Aristotle’s Revenge, 2019.
From Irwin: "His [Aristotle's] belief in final cause is not exactly a scientific hypothesis, but a claim about the type of scientific hypothesis we should accept....he simply claims that the right sort of hypothesis must show how form and function explain the properties and behaviour of natural organisms." (129)
Again, Irwin: (Referencing the analogy of the teacup on 129) "The same sort of argument shows what we lose if we give up thinking of organs or organisms in functional terms. In so far as laws about organs and organisms, as such, explain their structure and behaviour, we cannot ignore their functions and their goal-directed structures in trying to understand them. The materialists who appeal only to material processes cannot explain all we want explained. To this extent Aristotle argues that common sense is right in recognizing essentially formal thing (artifacts, organisms) as substances, and in resisting the claims that matter is the only substance." (129).
2. Required for distinguishing qualified and unqualified changes. Experience shows us that there are fewer unqualified changes than qualified ones. This explains why.
