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Mind and Body in Aristotle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

H. M. Robinson
H. M. Robinson
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool
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Extract

In this paper I hope to show that a particular modern approach to Aristotle's philosophy of mind is untenable and, out of that negative discussion, develop some tentative suggestions concerning the interpretation of two famous and puzzling Aristotelian maxims. These maxims are, first, that the soul is the form of the body and, second, that perception is the reception of form without matter.

The fashionable interpretation of Aristotle which I wish to criticize is the attempt to assimilate him to certain modern philosophies of mind by making him into a functionalist. I shall therefore begin by explaining this modern term of art

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , May 1978 , pp. 105 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1978

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References

1 A typical exposition of modern func-tionalism can be found in Putnam, H., ‘Psychological Predicates’, in Art, Mind and Religion, ed. Capitan, and Merrill, (Pittsburgh, 1967)Google Scholar. For our purposes the causal theory of mind is a popular variant on Functional-ism: see Armstrong, D.M., A Materialist Theory of the Mind (Routledge, 1968).Google Scholar

2 Armstrong, , op. cit., pp. 85 f.Google Scholar

3 Kosman, L.A., ‘Perceiving that We Perceive: On the Soul III 2’, Philosophical Review 84 (1975), 499–519.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Sorabji, R., ‘Body and Soul in Aristotle’, Philosophy 49 (1974), 63–89.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

5 See Matson, W.I., ‘Why isn't the Mind-Body Problem Ancient?’, in Mind, Matter and Method (Minnesota, 1966)Google Scholar; Sorabji, , p. 68Google Scholar. For further discussion of this issue see Hardie, W.F.R., ‘Concepts of Consciousness in Aristotle’, Mind 85 (1976)Google Scholar. Hardie argues strongly that the Greeks in general and Aristotle when speaking non-technically used coextensively with our term ‘conscious’ and with the same apparent sense.

6 Kahn, C.H., ‘Sensations and Consciousness in Aristotle's Psychology’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 48 (1966), 43–8:CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Quotations from De Anima II and III are from Hamlyn, 's translation, Clarendon Aristotle Series, Oxford, 1968; quotations from D.A. I are from the Oxford translation.Google Scholar

8 Such a view has modern parallels: e.g. Campbell, K., Body and Mind (Macmillan, 1970), argues that all mental predicates should be analysed behaviouristically except for those relating to senseations which must be treated dualistically.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 In n. 66 Sorabji says that ‘the formal cause of seeing will be awareness of colour’ but goes on to say ‘the awareness is again uml;not a Cartesian act of mind’. Therefore this reference to awareness as the formal cause is not illuminating, for no account is implicit as to how it should be understood.

10 e.g. Armstrong, , op. cit., p. 94.Google Scholar

11 Hardie, W.F.R., ‘Aristotle's Treatment of the Relation Between the Soul and the Body’, Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1964), 53–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Barnes, J., ‘Aristotle's Concept of Mind’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 72 (1971–1972), 101–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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14 Marjorie, Grene, A Portrait of Aristotle (1963), p. 243Google Scholar: quoted by Hardie, Mind, 1976.Google Scholar

15 Hintikka, J., Time and Necessity: studies in Aristotle's Theory of Modality (Oxford, 1973).Google Scholar

16 Slakey, T.J., ‘Aristotle on Sense Perception’, Philosophical Review 70 (1961), 470–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Brentano, F., Die Psychologie des Aristoteles (Mainz, 1867), pp. 79–98.Google Scholar

18 Hamlyn, D.W., ‘Aristotle's Account of Aestbesis in the De Anima’, CQ N.S. 9 (1959), 6–16.Google Scholar

19 Schiller, J., ‘Aristotle and the Concept of Awareness in Sense Perception‘, Journal of the History of Philosophy 13 (1975), 283–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

I am particularly grateful for the help of Dr. Julia Annas, Dr. K. V. Wilkes Professor A. C. Lloyd, and Professor A. A.Long.