He may well be, but that overemphasis on individualism is is rampant in neoliberal and conservative circles, it's most amusing version being the sovereign citizen. — Banno

The example given here: "Thus, morality is the self-generated body of behaviors designed for individual achievement of well-being and happiness." is a Randian expression of what people really talk about when they talk about morality. Many Libertarians, like Hayek for example, argue against institutional controls of exchange without making such a claim or writing an epistemology to explain their view of what constitutes tyranny.

What I have read of the "sovereign individual" book on systems is that it seems to be 'amoral' to the extent that self-interest is taken as a presupposition and there is no need to compare that with any telos of how the world of people should be.

He is channeling Ayn Rand, where "morality" is a personal to do list:

"Since a value is that which on acts to gain and/or keep, and the amount of possible action is the duration of one's lifespan, it is a part of one's life that one invests in everything one values. The years, months, days or hours of thought, of interest, of action devoted to a value are the currency with which one pays for the enjoyment one receives from." — Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Concepts of Consciousness

The "teleological" measuring stick is me, myself, and I.

Are you going Puritan about this angle or something more Baudrillard?

Maybe you guys should establish your own thread where you disagree with each other for time out of mind. You both want to monopolize what is being discussed. You deserve each other.

Your failure to understand this prevents you from correctly understanding Aristotle (and Plato) and you get bogged down in unfounded and futile "interpretations" that can only lead to materialism in the best case and to psychological issues in the worst — Apollodorus

While I disagree with many parts of Metaphysician Undercover's reading of Aristotle, I also disagree with your penchant to decide what the different interpretations lead to. I have no idea whether Metaphysician Undercover's interpretation leads to the results you portend. The categories you employ are not matters of fact but involve many unresolved questions of scholarship and reflection.

For instance, I disagree with a large number of Gerson's arguments that I have been encouraged to engage with here. I have no interest in pronouncing any judgement upon his views outside of agreeing or disagreeing with his statements about the arguments and intent of the text he puts forth.

What possible value could be derived from treating those disagreements as proof of an agenda not stated in the text?

That is an obvious observation of how it functions; Noticing that does not mean there is nothing else to be said. Its role in the building of our technical society requires more than agreeing with your proposition.

Money does play a big part in the exchange of commodities now. Agreeing it is not a replacement for fungible goods, as what the OP refers to as "real", does not explain that development. Presumably it is the question of how imaginary our interactions may be rather than the status of money that is being raised.

I wasn't claiming one system replaced the other by necessity. I thought my comment was more in line with:

instead money seems to have arisen to keep track of pre-existing credit relationships — SEP

The exchange of valued objects was still based on agreement about the deal regarding actual objects.

The set up did take on a life of its own. I was suggesting that the "game" like qualities of those developments did not change the fundamental basis of barter.

Money relates to a real exchange of commodities. As a system, it extends bartering where one is not required to have the items standing next to each other for the swap. The imaginary element enters as a possibility for an exchange and thus frames the future in the present. Throw in the dynamics of debt and time is even more thoroughly reimagined.

But does that sort of game set up alter the 'reality' of the exchange of desired things? Is the distinction between "necessary: and "fetish" goods something that hinges upon the imaginary?

I can't see the point you are making here, Paine. Aristotle clearly says that thoughts are dependent on images. It's at the end of your quote. And images are derived from the senses. So we have no basis for a "nous" which is independent of the senses, sense organs, and material body. It's true that Aristotle, at some points alludes to the appearance of a separate, independent mind, but such a thing is inconsistent with the principles he clearly states. — Metaphysician Undercover

This inconsistency you refer to goes toward illuminating my inability to decipher what you think Aristotle is saying. You seem to be invested in claiming Aristotle is saying X. But you also are arguing against claims made by Aristotle when they do not support your interpretation of X.

How is a conversation about an author's intent to go forward under these conditions?

I think the reason for Spinoza's expulsion by the Jewish community was because his philosophy bypassed the need for the traditional religious authorities by teaching a 'direct path' type of approach. — Wayfarer

There is an "indirectness" that also led to that expulsion. Arguing that the Unnamable One is not an agent we could gain or lose favor for our purposes through pleasing that agent through our petitions was the real kicker. The notion that our circumstances would improve if we weren't so stupid was recognized as something we could not explain by direct causal explanations must certainly have been annoying. But not as annoying as that first part.

After all, the lessons of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes was that one should not get too big in the britches explaining events.

So the spatial representation of a circular motion, which is a material representation, is insufficient to describe an eternal being which is immaterial. — Metaphysician Undercover

This ignores the distinction between heavenly bodies and the "combined beings" of the sublunary sphere. The life of the latter is "ensouled" in a material basis that does not apply to eternal substances. The references to serial order of thinking relates to the distinction being made. What the actuality is for living animals does not completely include how nous is an actuality for those creatures. Aristotle says that the soul, as what makes creatures alive, is not self-moving. Something else causes it. Nous is said to be different in a way that requires more than the celestial model of Timaeus to explain. As Aristotle says: "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."

In this section of Book 1, no mention is made of actuality and potentiality. That emerges when Aristotle begins his own inquiry after finishing discussing previous views. As the beginning of Book 2 says: "Let us start again, as it were from the beginning, and try to determine what the soul is and what would be its most comprehensive definition." Through his analysis on this basis, Aristotle recognizes the materiality of combined beings while also claiming that nous is not simply a property of such. In Book 3, Chapter 8 of DA, he lays out the boundaries. The following addresses the materiality you refer to:

Since there is no actual thing which has separate existence, apart as it seems from magnitudes which are objects of perception, the objects of thought are included among the forms which are objects of perception, both those spoken of as in abstraction and those which are dispositions and affectations of objects of perception. And for this reason unless one perceived things one would not learn or understand anything, and when one contemplates one must simultaneously contemplate an image; for images are like sense-perception, except that they are without matter. But imagination is different from assertion and denial; for truth and falsity involve a combination of thoughts. But what distinguishes the first thoughts from images? Surely neither these nor any other thoughts will be images, but they will not exist without images. — DA 432a3, translated by D.W. Hamlyn

This view does not conform to the either/or you see in Book 1. The insufficiency noted by Aristotle in Book 1 is now accounted for as a distinction of causes: These distinctions are used to clarify the different ways that desire and practical reason can said to move the living animal.

Plotinus did not quite seem to grasp the necessity of Aristotle's cosmological argument. — Metaphysician Undercover

That likely is the case. The observation does seem to support my doubt that Metaphysics Book Lamba is somehow a sneaky backstory for Neo-Platonists. Your description of Plotinus' argument puzzles me on a number of levels, I will refrain from going there because it gets closer to your vision of Aristotle that I don't understand.

I am mulling the article you linked to. It is interesting in comparing ideas of motion and the first causes.
But the universe Aristotle thought he lived in is vastly different than what is being revealed now. It makes me less inclined to make certain connections than more.

When I took a course on Aristotle's Metaphysics in university, the professor told us that it was debatable as to whether Aristotle actually wrote this part. He attributed the writing to some other (unknown) Neo-Platonist, and so we did not study it with the rest of the text. — Metaphysician Undercover

Do you have any other evidence to support this observation?
One Neo-Platonist, Plotinus, specifically objected to Aristotle's view of the Unmoved Mover on this point:

Aristotle says that the first existence is separated form sense objects and is an intelligible existence. But when he says that "it thinks itself," he takes the first rank from it. He also asserts the existence of a plurality of other intelligible entities in a number equal to the celestial spheres, so that each of them might have its principle of motion. About the intelligible entities, therefore, Aristotle advances a doctrine different from Plato, and as he has no good reason for this change, he brings in necessity. Even if he had good reasons, one might well object that it seems more reasonable to suppose that the spheres as they are coordinated in a single system are directed towards one end, the supreme existence. — Ennead Vi,i, translated by Joseph Katz

In this passage, Plotinus seems to be ignoring the clear reference to the importance of necessity in Plato's Timaeus. Nonetheless, it does undercut the idea that the Metaphysics was advancing a view of the cosmos that the Neo-Platonists were eager to support.

This dispositional difference is in part reflected in Aristotle’s penchant for introducing terminological innovations to express old (i.e., Platonic) thoughts. In working through the Aristotelian corpus with a mind open to the Neoplatonic assumption of harmony, I have found time and again that Aristotle was, it turns out, actually analyzing the Platonic position or making it more precise, not refuting it. — Lloyd Gerson

Gerson's emphasis upon "who is a Platonist" here is misplaced. Aristotle's objections to Plato were not a "penchant for introducing terminological innovations to express old (i.e., Platonic) thoughts." The "innovations" were serious attempts to advance the discussion beyond the terms expressed by Plato. The numerous places where Aristotle says something like "Plato was not wrong when he said X" are the places where he is saying Plato was wrong in how the idea was expressed. And that difference was the important matter to pay attention to.

If the differences were not really a difference, the whole trajectory of Aristotle's inquiry can be written off as some kind of poetry slam.

Who are you quoting?

Did he really talk about a never ending circular motion? — Raymond

He does so in De Caelo or "On the Heavens."
He also makes reference to the cosmology in the Metaphysics.

And that's love. Giving away everything your inner rational egotist has acquired. — ucarr

But this view is controverted by experience. The love amongst family and friends is not a zero-sum game. My child will not benefit from demonstrations of sacrifice. The freely given benefits me as well as him.

Edited: removed needless taunt.

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.