On the Soul (de Anima)
Meteorologica
exhalations
A. Problems with Previous Theories (reviewing the endoxa)
a. material theories: soul cannot be another thing alongside body
b. mathematical theories: harmonies; self-moving number
Pythagoreans and Plato
B. Aristotle’s definition: first actuality of an organic body potentially having life
not separable
grades of actuality: first and second
life has several meanings
nutrition-touch/locomotion-other senses-thinking
C. Part of the Soul
i. nutrition: food as same and not the same as the consumer
plants are upside down
ii. sensation: actuality and alteration
faculty, activity, object
we are born in a state of possession of sensation, and we need only be active in it
a. special sensibles
vision: light (is not a body), transparent
sound: medium - moving air being struck
smell: object difficult to determine
taste and touch of hot/cold/wet and dry: no medium (flesh is the medium)
b. common sensibles (movement, rest, number, figure, magnitude),
c. incidental sensibles
sense as a mean: too violent a sense destroys the mean
iii. imagination (fantasia): movement resulting from an actual exercise of a power of sense
governs brutes and men under some circumstances
accounts for memory, dreams and much thought
iv. thinking, like sensation, have no nature of its own – a capacity
it is not blended with the body (by contrast the sense organ is a means)\
v. locomotion: desire and imagination
appetitive should not be broken up as Plato did
practical syllogism:
this thing is a cloak (imagination)
I want a cloak (desire)
Action: I take the cloak (unless something prevents)