On the Soul  (de Anima)


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)