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

Your account reflects the distinctions Aristotle is making. But the phrasing of this remark should be reconsidered:"

In contrast, when separated from the body, it reverts to its essential, contemplative state."

The intellect as the actuality bringing the potential into being is unchanged during generation and corruption as described in Metaphysics Book Lambda, chapters 6 and 7.

Starting with the latter, Spinoza argued against free will on the basis that everything that happens is caused to happen and that we don't understand these causes hardly at all. But he also strongly suggested that being less ignorant about why events happened improves our lives.

I don't understand. Are you saying that only people who agree to be judged should be held accountable? — T Clark

There are all kinds of reasons to hold people accountable, whether they agree or not. But the only people worthy of trust hold themselves accountable to something. The quality is not without its own uncertainties. But extending trust is more about this assumption of obligation than assuming the quality is 'free.'

The capacity to perceive other beings reaches the highest level when a being is actually what they are in one's presence. That is possible because of the activity of the intellect. Other forms of life share in some aspect of that activity but are revealed by their partial involvement in the dynamic.

Your description lacks any vision of what such a capacity would be good for.

Does it make sense to hold people accountable for their actions given that there is no free will? — T Clark

Outside of the context of the compulsion to comply, the practice of holding other people accountable is closely bound by how much responsibility is accepted by said individuals. Such acceptance may be necessary from a point of view of causes we do not understand. But as a matter of practical decisions about people, agents who bind themselves to obligation are the only one's worth arranging anything with. That is the mark of voluntary action well beyond the apportionment of blame. Are such willing agents free?

A little Spinoza might help here. He noted that we select what draws us closer to what is desired or takes us further away from what is feared. But the degree of our knowledge and understanding is an influence of outcomes, despite the role of necessity. Consider Proposition 6 of Ethics 5:

Insofar as the mind understands all things as necessary, to that extent it has greater power over the emotions or is less acted on by ​them.

Proof The mind understands that all things are necessary (by 1p29) and are determined to exist and operate by an infinite nexus of causes (by 1p28); and therefore (by the previous proposition) it ensures to that extent that it is less acted on by the emotions arising from them and (by 3p48) it is less affected toward them. Q. E. D.

Scholium

The more this cognition that things are necessary is concerned with particular things that we imagine quite distinctly and vividly, the greater the power of the mind over the emotions. Experience itself also testifies to this. For we see that sadness for the loss of some good thing that has perished is mitigated as soon as the person who lost it considers that that good thing could not have been saved in any case. Thus we also see ​that no one pities an infant ​because it does not know how to speak or walk or reason and because it lives for so many years as it were unconscious of itself. But if most people were born as adults and only one or two as infants, then everyone would pity every one of the infants, because then they would consider infancy itself not as a natural and necessary thing but as a fault or something sinful in nature; and we could give several other instances of this sort. — Spinoza: Ethics: Cambridge University Press

Another aspect to consider is that being compelled to do what you were designed to do is much different than becoming bound to others or dire circumstance.

De Anima went into why the different kinds of life are different from each other. The potentials of what can be experienced are sharply contrasted against each other. From that point of view, the observation:
"soul" would mean something different for every particular, distinct living being" is exactly the point.

How the universal works is harder to observe than the singular quality of each life as a life.

Maybe it is true that the 'anima' is the same in many forms of life. What Aristotle introduced is a correspondence of perception. Plants respond to other forms of life, but they cannot change location. Animals respond in various ways according to how well they move in response to others. Humans can wonder why things change and put such matters as problems for the mind.

From that perspective, the idea is not so much about what is stuff or not but what is the overriding design that keeps showing up in stuff.

I am referring to the writers who ventured to speak of the fundamental elements of the world. So, starting with Thales up to the contemporaries of Socrates.
The primary writing is sparse and influenced and or preserved by later writers. I don't have the chops to have an opinion about competing translations. The reading is more dependent upon the efforts of scholars than many other works. I have started reading a collection of essays by Alexander P.D. Mourelatos that deal with a number of changes with the use of key words and expectations during this period. I know that many other arguments take other points of view. With that said, I still look at the project as chance to have a more direct relation to those texts.

As regards the physical effort, I mean exercise and therapy. Use it or lose it.

some beaty is immediately arresting and other forms involve a measure of time to glimpse.
in Homer, realizing that one is present before a god was oddly piecemeal.
that neck does not fit. why are the sounds so harmonious?

ugly is bound up with time and circumstance too. but in a different way.

You equate the desire for more information with some more corrupt intention.

That is not what I said at all.
Whatever, dude.

If it is only something that cannot be demonstrated to others, then only silence will suffice.