The matters are clear to you, so my objections are merely proof of my incapacity. I have no objection to that sort of rhetoric as such. I would have continued on that basis if I understood what you are convinced of.

When I piece together what you ascribe to Aristotle, I don't understand it as a thought by itself.

By way of contrast, I disagree with many things Gerson asserts. He is not around to answer my challenges, but I understand what he is saying. I don't understand what you are saying. You have a vivid image of something and I cannot make it out.

One element I think about a lot is theater. There are plenty of different ways that display is important in animal behavior, Humans write scripts for them. They experience them in the tension of knowing they are inventions but wanting more from them. The theater is one of the go-to metaphors for consciousness.

Another way to translate it would be to say the exact opposite … you become everything. — I like sushi

That is an interesting kind of via negativa, the agent has to be found through sifting the evidence for what is missing. That reminds me of the unknown value X in Descartes' geometry, where we act like we know it to make other equations.

I was led to believe that the right to bear arms has one and only one purpose - to enable the people to fight fire with fire in case of a government — Agent Smith

The original language of the amendment included "well-regulated militias" so that local governments did not have to rely on a centralized military to provide security. From that point of view, the logic was not focused upon resisting the forces of central authority but to diminish the need for a standing army which was considered an evil onto itself, regardless of how it was commanded.
The Federalists Papers are chock a block with debates concerning the issue.

He very clearly discredits this idea in a number of ways. It's right there for you to read, but you'd prefer to ignore it. — Metaphysician Undercover

I have been disagreeing with your interpretation of its purpose in the text. It doesn't match what Aristotle says later in De Anima. You discredit references to cosmology outside the book where the differences between actuality and potentiality are discussed in detail in relation to first causes.

There is nothing more I can contribute to this discussion. I will put my efforts elsewhere.

I am beginning to feel guilty about the extent I am discussing Aristotle on the basis of your OP. Would you prefer this sort of thing happen in a different tree house?

He wants to place the soul first, and not have the mind as independent sort of soul. If the mind is a self-moving sort of soul, then it has no need for the "soul" as Aristotle is defining, as the source of activity. That would separate "soul" in the sense of mind from "soul" in the sense of first actuality of a living body. — Metaphysician Undercover

If this is Aristotle's intention, why is it placed in Book 1 of De Anima, devoted to the criticism of his predecessors' views of the soul, and not in Book Lambda of the Metaphysics, where the immovable mover is shown to be the first principle of all? In chapter 6 of the same book, Aristotle approaches the models of his predecessors with this observation (1071b12): "So there is no gain even if we posit eternal substances, like those who posit the Forms, unless there is in them a principle which can cause a change" (translated by H.G. Apostle). On this basis, Aristotle says:

This is why some thinkers, like Leucippus and Plato, posit eternal activity; for they say that motion is eternal. But they do not state why. But they do not why this exists nor which it is, nor yet its manner or the cause of it. For nothing is moved at random, but there must always be something, just as it is at present with physical bodies which are moved in one way by nature but in another by force or by the intellect or by something else. Then again, which of them is first? For this makes a great difference. Plato cannot even state what it is that he sometimes considers to be the principle, that is, that which moves itself; for as he himself says the soul came after and it is generated at the same time as the universe. — 1071b30, translated by H.G. Apostle

It seems like your interpretation should appear somewhere in this discussion if it is what Aristotle intended to say.

The separation you are calling for also makes it difficult to understand De Anima, Book 3, Chapter 4. In that chapter, the role of the intellect, as expressed in certain kinds of souls, is presented side by side with the view of an activity not conditioned by that role.

a great dialogue.

I've only read snippets of Gerson. — Wayfarer

I have found this essay of Gerson's that works at giving an 'Aristotelian' basis for speaking of a 'disembodied person.' It is an impressive bit of scholarship and the footnotes taught me things I did not know. But I think he solves a problem (the two intellects versus one) that was never a problem if one understood identification of causes as Aristotle intended.

Notice here that Aristotle has rejected Plato's description of the soul, as being like a "mind". Furthermore, he has rejected the whole idea of an eternal "mind" as fundamentally incoherent. — Metaphysician Undercover

There is a distinction being made here between nous and the psyche. To infer that is for the purpose of rejecting "the whole idea of an eternal "mind" as fundamentally incoherent" runs into the fundamental problem that Aristotle keeps referring to precisely that idea throughout his writings. The psyche is the active principle in living beings. Some forms of life are capable of intellect. Since that active element is said to be separable and eternal, Aristotle asks whether the inquiry of the psyche is for the "student of nature" or the "dialectician." At 403b he tries to sort out the overlapping areas of concern by saying:

The properties which are not separable, but which are not treated as such and such a body but in abstraction, are the concern of the mathematician. Those which are treated as separable are the concern of the 'first philosopher.' — translated by D.W. Hamlyn

So I believe that the reversal you propose here is quite mistaken. The difference between the knowledge which a material human being has, and the knowledge which a divine independent, separate soul is said to have, is the difference between universal forms, and particular forms. — Metaphysician Undercover

I am not proposing a reversal of a property but observing the role of the statement in Aristotle's argument. The passage I quoted at 408b starts with "The case of the mind is different." What it is different from is the argument that started at 408a30 which distinguishes the soul from the vehicle it is in. The vehicle can move in space but that is not the soul that is moving. Regarding the experience of man, the lack of motion of the soul is put thusly:

Yet to say that is the soul which is angry is as inexact as it would be to say that is the soul that weaves webs of builds houses. It is doubtless better to avoid saying the soul pities, learns or thinks, and rather say that it is the man who does this with his soul. What we mean is not that the movement is in the soul but that sometimes it terminates in the soul and sometimes starts from it, sensation e.g. coming from without inwards, and reminiscence starting from the soul and terminating with the movements, actual or residual, in the sense organs.
The case of the mind is different.... — 408b10, translated by J.A Smith

The sharp contrast between saying the nous is self-moving while the psyche is not, places the problem squarely in the wheelhouse of first philosophy while also not trespassing the causal formula Aristotle demands for 'combined' beings. The latter is the language which one can use to describe beings that "exist as particulars." That was the purpose of my previous entries of Aristotle, to point to the need to separate talk about combined beings from other ways to talk about Forms and Entities.

On the level of the cosmic order as a whole, the way that neither nous nor psyche can be made entirely the part of the other is recognized as a problem in the narrative of the Timaeus but not resolved there. Aristotle does not explain it away somewhere.

With the above distinctions applied to what 'universal principles' might mean, I don't understand your last paragraph. It seems to me that you are blowing past boundaries Aristotle went to great effort to put in place. He is trying to make the question harder for us, not easier.

The last line, "that the soul cannot be moved is therefore clear from what we have said", seems to dismiss the idea of the mind being an independent substance implanted in the soul, which moves it. — Metaphysician Undercover

That part of the argument relates to the overarching context of the passage which concerns how the cosmic status of the Soul relates to what is possible for particular individuals. In that regard, the concluding remark is not a qualification of the statements just made but the reverse. The limits of what is possible for composite beings informs the way universal principles work on the level of causes within the cosmos.

It is one thing to grasp the idea through skills living beyond a given generation but another to see how it applies to the very principle through which one understands themselves to be alive. Reproduce that.

Aristotle criticizes the Pythagorean claim that a soul can transmigrate into random bodies, but it is far from clear that he rejects reincarnation itself, stating only that “as a craft must employ the right tools, so the soul must employ the right body” (De Anima 407b23). As reincarnation was a fairly widespread belief in philosophical circles at the time (which is why it appears in Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato), it seems likely that he accepted (or at least was not opposed to) some forms of the theory. — Apollodorus

In the citations I put forward on this topic here so far, Aristotle shows himself clearly interested in framing the question of mortality/immortality in the context of his own understanding of how causality works in the cosmos. He agrees with Plato (and others) on many observations but also works to see the agreements in terms he insists are better than his predecessors. Your citation of De Anima 407b is a good example of that practice because he is not directly challenging the Pythagorean idea of reincarnation there but the conditions necessary for it to be applicable:

The view we have just been examining, in company with most theories about the soul, involves the following absurdity: they all join the soul to a body, or place it in a body, without any specification of the reason for their union, or of the bodily conditions required for it. Yet such explanation can scarcely be omitted; for some community of nature is presupposed by the fact that the one acts and the other is acted upon, the one moves and the other is moved; interaction always implies a special nature in the two ingredients. All, however, that these thinkers do is to describe the specific characteristics of the soul; they do not try to determine anything about the body which is to contain it, as if it were possible, as in the Pythagorean myths, that any soul could be clothed by any body--- an absurd view, for each body seems to have a form and shape of its own. It is absurd as to say that the art of carpentry could embody itself in flutes; each art must use its tools, each soul its body. — De Anima 407a, 14, translated by J.A. Smith

Putting the matter that way means that Aristotle is not invested in naming every instance of the shortcomings of other thinkers. He is very interested in the borders of the eternal and mortal but demands that a particular order of logic and a lived experience of the world be brought into the discussion.

Plotinus' mysticism was said to be impersonal, the individual literally surrendering or loosing his/her identity in merging with the Absolute, whereas in Christianity it is supposed that personal identity is retained. — Wayfarer

How this issue relates to Aristotle is perhaps indicated here:

The case of the mind is different; it seems to be an independent substance implanted within the soul and to be incapable of being destroyed. If it could be destroyed at all, it would be under the blunting influence of old age. What really happens in respect of mind in old age is, however, exactly parallel to what happens in the case of the sense organs; if the old man could recover the proper kind of eye, he would see just as well as the young man. The incapacity of old age is due to an affection not of the soul but of its vehicle, as occurs in drunkenness or disease. Thus it is that in old age the activity of mind or intellectual apprehension declines only through the decay of some other inward part; mind itself is impassible. Thinking, loving, and hating are affections not of mind but of that which has mind, in so far as it has it. That is why, when the vehicle decays, memory and love cease; they were activities not of mind, but of the composite which has perished; mind is, no doubt, something more divine and impassable. That the soul cannot be moved is therefore clear from what we have said, and if it cannot be moved at all, manifestly it cannot be moved by itself. — De Anima, 408b, 18, translated by J. A. Smith

This was the way which was revealed to Saul, as to how to produce consistency, unification between Christians and Jews, ending the continued conflict between them. — Metaphysician Undercover

That should read as the beginning of the conflict between them. Paul's Letter to the Hebrews was an eviction notice.

So a large portion of the more "true" Christians ('true' at that time, prior to The Church defining 'true Christian') retreated into the mysticism provided for by Greek philosophy. You can see how Augustine comes from the mystical side, rather than the structured religious (Jewish) side. — Metaphysician Undercover

There was plenty of mysticism around for all involved. Greek philosophy, it should be remembered, also provided a vision of a natural order that the Christian vision divided into separate realms. Augustine forged a third product from the legacies of the Greek and Jewish world, claiming ascendency over both. The City of God is a masterpiece of appropriation.

Well, guitar geek Kimmo Aroluoma gives a detailed description of Hendrix's use of effects including the Stockholm show. Aroluoma gives the concert low marks for the performance, and one can see a lot of fiddling. I, however, like the ensemble playing between the three during show.

By way of a footnote, even though Christian theology appropriated many of Plotinus’ philosophical views in support of its own, it always distinguished between the supposedly impersonal union with the One described by Plotinus (henosis) and the divine union of Christ (kenosis). — Wayfarer

If there is a distinction to be made between "impersonal union" and what the Christian view proposes, what is to be made of Gerson's reference to a 'disembodied person?'

Try this at home:

It really starts to get tight 30 minutes in.

Gerson is a scholar whose focus has long been on Plotinus and your description of 'Platonism' is very close to his view. Gerson used the expression "disembodied self." There is source for that expression in Plotinus. I am not aware of a source for that language about self in Plato. Perhaps Gerson throws some light upon that topic somewhere.

The purpose of my comparison between Plotinus and Aristotle was not to challenge an overarching theory of what the different authors might agree upon regarding eternity and immortality in general but to ask what Aristotle imagines the Nous continuing after death entails. There are plenty of notions where the immortality of the soul is not a repetition of a lived identity. None of your observations approach the question framed as such.

Gerson assumes an answer to my question when he says:

The identity between a subject of intellection and a subject of the idiosyncratic states of embodiment is deeply obscure. I do not want to suggest that either Plato or Aristotle has anything like a satisfactory explanation for this. But I do wish to insist they share a conviction in general about how to bridge the gap between the embodied person and the disembodied person.

The issue I raised is whether the active principle of the intellect is a person as one who experiences themselves as such after that principle is separated from the composition of a living individual. Plotinus' view of the soul differs sharply from Aristotle's regarding what elements are being discussed:

When he (Plato) advises us to separate the soul from the body, he does not mean any local separation (that is, the sort of separation that is established by nature). He means the soul must not incline towards the body and towards thoughts concerned with sense objects but must become alienated from the body. We achieve this separation when we elevate to the intelligible world the lower part of the soul which is established in the sense world and which is the sole agent which produces and fashions the body and busies itself about it. — Ennead V, i, 10, translated by Joseph Katz

There is no trace of the hylomorphism on display in De Anima. Aristotle is specifically concerning himself with the 'local separation' that Plotinus dismisses here. Plotinus rejects the notion of the "composition" as being any concern of true philosophy. The 'lower part" of the soul being named the 'sole agent' negates the distinctions of causes whereby the generation of living creatures can be recognized and studied. The view is not only uninterested in a cosmos outside of the psychology of our experience, it gives a tinge of disrepute to such interests.

Gerson's description is perfectly in tune with the philosophy of Plotinus. It is a questionable form of expression in the language of Aristotle.

I was trying the 'embed code.' I will now try the web url:



That's it!

Thank you, Caldwell.

I thought I did, the 'embed media' thingee where I paste the code. Does it take a while to show up?

Aristotle’s interest in Forms appears to be tied in the first place to attempts to explain intellectual processes. What he seems to suggest is that higher, non-discursive intellect contains Forms that are accessed by lower, discursive intellect by means of images (or mental copies of Forms) and used as a basis for discursive thinking and cognition. — Apollodorus

Where do you read this notion in Aristotle?

What is clearly stated in Aristotle is an interest in understanding causes of events and the reality of actual beings. There is a consideration of the sciences of the first things and the cosmology of eternal objects. But the study of nature as Fusis is also accorded the rank of a theoretical science. Experience in the world is a necessary condition of knowledge.

There's a recent book that addresses this idea, Surviving Death, Mark Johnson. — Wayfarer

Sounds interesting. Please give a passage or two that reflects the situation as Aristotle framed it.

When I try to embed media here, it doesn't show up.
Is it something I said?

The idea had a role in Judaism long before the Christians emerged. The Shekhinah are places where one can dwell and the Unnamable One is said to do/have done that in some places us mortals can/could encounter.
I don't like my link but it was the only one I could find that crossed the many different ways it was adopted.

Yes, the nous is seen as a principle of actuality that does not perish. The question is how to understand the relation of that principle to a composite being such as a man. Aristotle frames the existence of principles generally through distinguishing the potential from the actual rather than describing particular beings to be participating in a Form:

Of matter, some is intelligible and some sensible, and in a formula, it is always the case that one part is actuality for example, in the case of a circle, "a plane figure. But of the things which have no matter, whether intelligible or sensible, each is immediately just a unity as well as just a being, such as a this, or a quality, or a quantity. And so in their definitions, too, neither "being" nor "one" is present, and the essence of each is immediately a unity as well as a being. Consequentially, nothing else is the cause of oneness or of being in each of them, for each is immediately a being and a unity, not in the sense that "being" and "unity' are their genera, nor in the sense they exist apart from individuals.
It is because of this difficulty that some thinkers speak of participation but are perplexed what causes participation and what it is to participate, and others speak of communion with the soul, as when Lycophron says that knowledge is the communion of knowing with the soul, and still others call life a composition or connection of soul with body. However, the same argument applies to all; for being healthy, too, will be a communion or connection or a composition of soul and health, and the being of a triangular bronze will be a composition of bronze and a triangle, and being white will be a composition of surface and whiteness. They are speaking in this manner because they are seeking a unifying formula of, and a difference between potentiality and actuality. But as we have stated, the last matter and the form are one and the same; the one exists potentially, the other as actuality. Thus, it is like asking what the cause of unity is and what causes something to be one; for each thing is a kind of unity, and potentiality and actuality taken together exist somehow as one. So, there is no other cause, unless it be the mover which causes the motion from potency to actuality. But all things which have no matter are without qualifications just unities of one kind or another. — Metaphysics, 1045b, translated by HG Apostle

The distinction made above appears again a little bit later in Book Lambda where the soul as a cause is distinguished from the individuals composed through its activity:

Moving causes exist prior to what they generate, but a cause in the sense of a formula exists at the same time as that of which it is the cause. For when a man is healthy, it is at that time that also health exists; and the shape of the bronze sphere exists at the same time as the bronze sphere. But if there is something that remains after, this should be considered. For in some cases there is nothing to prevent this; for example, if the soul is such, not all of it but only the intellect, for it is perhaps impossible for all of the soul to remain. It is evident, then, at least because of all this, that there is necessity for the Ideas to exist; for it is a man that begets a man, an individual that begets an individual, and similarly in the case of the arts, for the art of medicine is the formula of health. — Metaphysics, 1070a, 20, ibid

At this point, it is natural to wonder in what manner an "individual' can said to remain if the intellect continues after death. What distinguishes one human life from another must largely be the result of the 'composition' as one of the three kinds of being. As for the individual remembering themselves, Aristotle's Memory and Reminiscence (453a) places much emphasis upon memory involving corporeal elements in parallel with what makes sense-perception possible.

I was asking for references in Aristotle that supported your suggestion that a soul survived death as a particular unit. When I said: 'It sounds like you are saying the Nous, as a principle, is a substance of some kind.', i was only referring to how the idea is put forth by Aristotle. It is certainly the case that other writers had different views.

Pardon me. I was trying to add something and it did not work. Maybe some other day.

Very deep and interesting.
Will refrain from having opinions.

I am not sure about all the fancy theories regarding political theater versus why the people on the stage are put there.
But the problem of who has a vote or does not has been a problem that keeps showing up with all the other problems.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Aristotle does seem to reject the immortality of the lower part of the soul (psyche), but not of the higher part called “intellect” (nous). On this point he is in agreement with Plato who holds that less evolved souls are subject to rebirth but that in evolved souls what remains after the death of the physical body is the intellectual or spiritual part which is the seat of consciousness. — Apollodorus

Where do you see support for this interpretation in Aristotle? It sounds like you are saying the Nous, as a principle, is a substance of some kind.

You only tapped into centuries of people talking past each other.
Settle in.

That is very good performance. The left and right hands playing for and against each other.

Even if Aristotle's Direct Realism was true - the claim that the senses provide us with direct awareness of the external world - the causal path from object in the world to thought in the mind can still be explained within materialism. — RussellA

The model was physical in so far as the beings being perceived acted upon sense organs capable of being acted upon. To that extent, it is similar to the 'letting the tree be a tree' model suggested by Andrew M. But why such a condition developed is yet to be explained by any of the models. Dualism is a way to separate elements. Its use sort of advertises its limitations.

That a thing is necessary doesn’t tell us anything about what it is. Or ontology claims are not epistemological claims — Mww

Perhaps the two kinds of claims are not only not similar but inversely proportional to some extent.

Descartes campaigned for a particular method of epistemology to be the benefactor of his establishment of the cogito. It seems safe to say that the responses to his claim go well beyond what he imagined.

Yes, I completely agree with this. And if you think that what I said confuses the issue, I apologize for that, it was not my intention. — Metaphysician Undercover

I was putting forth an alternative view. Neither of us should apologize for saying what we think.

I have listened to the Gerson lecture a couple of times. Do you know of a link to a printed copy? Each of his statements are proposals to discuss very specific topics.

I agree with Gerson's argument that Aristotle is not stepping outside of what 'urPlatonism' militates against. On the other hand, it seems that Aristotle worked hard to have the empirical inquiry of the natural world be worthy and capable of going forward, even if upon a problematical basis.

Is that a compromise, as Gerson would describe it? It seems to me that Aristotle's efforts to separate inquiries reflect an interest in avoiding putting matters in those terms of opposition.

The relevant question is whether a mind can know with "an immediate intuition" — Metaphysician Undercover

Your account of what Aristotle says the intellect depends upon confuses this question. Yes, a living creature who has the capacity to know is only possible because they also have other capacities needed by other living creatures. Yes, the more advanced forms of life depend upon the structure of the more basic forms. But this is not to say that what is possible for the more advanced form is framed only by the possibilities available to the less advanced. Otherwise, there would be no point in distinguishing between them.

There is a relationship between the types of soul that conditions what is possible and Aristotle describes this in a manner that addresses your question regarding 'immediate intuition'. From Posterior Analytics:

We have already said that scientific knowledge through demonstration is impossible unless a man knows the primary immediate premises. But there are questions which might be raised in respect of the apprehension of these immediate premises: one might not only ask whether it is of the same kind as the apprehension of the conclusions, but also whether there is or is not scientific knowledge of both; or scientific knowledge of the latter, and of former a different kind of knowledge; and further, whether the developed states of knowledge are not innate but come to be in us, or are innate but at first unnoticed. Now it is strange if we possess them from birth; for it means that we possess apprehensions more accurate than demonstration and fail to notice them. If on the other hand we acquire them and do not previously possess them, how could we apprehend and learn without a basis of pre-existent knowledge? For that is impossible as we use to find in the case of demonstration. So it emerges that neither can we possess them from birth, nor can they come to be in us if we are without knowledge of them to the extent of having no such developed state at all. Therefore we must possess a capacity of some sort but not such as to rank higher in accuracy than these developed states. And this at least is an obvious characteristic of all animals, for they possess a congenital discriminative capacity which is called sense-perception. But though sense-perception is innate in all animals, in some the sense-perception comes to persist, in others it does not. So animals in which this persistence does not come to be have either no knowledge at all outside the act of perceiving, or no knowledge of objects of which no impression persists; animals in which it does come into being have perception and can continue to retain the sense-impression in the soul: and when such persistence is frequently repeated a further distinction at once arises between those which out of the persistence of such sense-impressions develop a power of systematizing them and those which do not. So out of sense-perception comes to be what we call memory, and out of frequently repeated memories of the same thing develops experience; for a number of memories constitute a single experience. From experience again--i.e. from the universal now stabilized in its entirety within the soul, the one beside the many which is a single identity within them all---originate the skill of the craftsman and the knowledge of the man of science, skill in the sphere of coming to be and science in the sphere of being.

We conclude that these states of knowledge are nether innate in a determinate form, nor developed from higher states of knowledge but from sense-perception. It is like a rout in battle stopped by first one man making a stand and then another, until the original formation has been restored. The soul is so constituted to capable of this process. — Posterior Analytics, 99,20, translated by GRG Mure