Aristotle II Flashcards
What did Aristotle believe about the immaterial soul’s relationship with the body?
Immaterial soul is capable of existing independent of body
However, a person’s identity and individuality requires that the soul be united with the body at some time in his/her existence
How does Aristotle define a person?
An individual substance of rational nature.
A person consist of form plus matter.
What did Aristotle propose about the connection between form and matter?q
Form actualizes matter, gives a substance it’s very essence and identity.
All substances that bear properties and accidents are compounds f matter and form.
Form plus matter equals actualizes substance.
Hylemorphic Dualism
V. Diff from Cartesian dualism in which body and soul are separate.
The soul and body exist separately but together create the person that lives, sense, and reasons
The soul is form, the body is matter. Together, they create the unity that is a living human being. No separateness.
What are the three types of besouled organisms in the cosmic universe?
Plants
Animals
Humans
What are the three kinds of souls?
Vegetative
Sensitive (animals)
Rational (humans)
Intellect vs Sense
Intellect .not directly dependent on material organisms .products are universal and free .abstract and ideal aspects .essences .can reflect on its acts
Sense .dependent on material organs .products are particular and restricted .concrete and material characteristics .accidents .cannot reflect on its acts
What is the function of imagination to Aristotle?
Bring back to consciousness the images of objects no longer present to external senses, or were experienced in the past
E.g. Auditory images represent a song we have heard
Without imagination, our consciousness would be an ever changing set of sense impressions that could never be lived again
What are the two types of imaginal operations?
Purely Sensitive - original experiences are reproduced
Logistic - Use to produce images that never occurred or never happened in the manner in which they are imaged
Imagination
All perceptual experience can be reinstated by imaginal power
NOT JUST the imagination we normally think about, that is just logistic
Also means reinstating things we have experienced in the past
Memory
Produces sensible representations of material OBJECTS
Product of memory can be used by the intellect which uses them to abstract ideas
What are the two types of memory operation?
Reproductive - purely sensitive
Recollective - guided by intellect and will; syllogistic and guided by rules of association, this belongs to both body and soul together
Phantasms
Physical traces left in the body from something that was perceived.
Aristotle believed each sensation left physical traces in the body which we could then recall.
Our thoughts are all made of phantasms.
If we have not experienced it, we cannot think about it because we have not the phantasms to do it.
The basic unit of the psyche?
The common sense
The different sense modalities are somehow unified by a ‘common faculty’, sometimes called the ‘common sense’; that faculty, which is located in the heart, is employed to explain various perceptual and quasi-perceptual phenomena, the most important of which is the ‘unity of consciousness’. Colours are perceived by way of the eyes, sounds by way of the ears; but nevertheless, both perceptions belong to one and the same unitary subject or perceiver, who can compare and associate the data given by the two senses. By my eyes I see the colour and shine of the trumpet; by my ears I hear its tones: but it is a unitary I who perceives the trumpet, and I perceive the trumpet as a unitary substance. That task of perceptual unification is performed by the ‘common sense’.
Sensuous species
Things we experience?
