I have, my struggle is fully understanding the connection between Aristotle’s four fold distinction and his three degrees of soul.. — Millie Regler
I have, my struggle is fully understanding the connection between Aristotle’s four fold distinction and his three degrees of soul. — Millie Regler
I have, my struggle is fully understanding the connection between Aristotle’s four fold distinction and his three degrees of soul.. — Millie Regler
"...while the soul itself is an actuality." Are you able to give a cite on that? It's not my understanding of A. But I can learn (in this case).self-movement (sensitive), and intellection. Each of the three being a potency, or capacity of the soul, while the soul itself is an actuality. — Metaphysician Undercover
On the basis of that, or, arguing from that, do you hold that the soul is any kind of a thing at all? I'm not interested in what I think, or a fortiori what you think, but rather only in what Aristotle said, and meant, if we can get to it. And it could be on that we agree! — tim wood
I argue that "actuality" is too easily mistaken for, and has been mistaken for, understood as, something actual. — tim wood
But to extract any thing actual or real from either word, I argue, is a brutal misreading. — tim wood
It becomes alive when its capacity to be alive is actualized (or realized), and for so long as it is alive. In this Aristotle is marking a difference with a distinction, that between a body and what makes it alive, which he calls psyche, ψθχή. — tim wood
But specifically I do not find in this any notion or even suggestion of anything like a Christian soul. In other words, neither actualization or that which is actualized is any kind of material or substantial thing at all. To my way of thinking, the best we can do is call them ideas. Are we in agreement? — tim wood
This sounds like a claim absent evidence. But it could be just the claim that this is how Aristotle saw it and described it. Except I do not think that's correct. He troubled to reason that body and soul were different. Maybe a living body has, arguably, in his terms, ψυχή, But I am unaware of anywhere he posits a dead body as having that.There is no body without the soul. — Metaphysician Undercover
But I'll buy this. Wouldn't be my first mistake, although in fact it's not quite the mistake that I'm making. But are you buying my:You make the mistake of equating "substantial" with "material". This is not consistent with classical metaphysics. — Metaphysician Undercover
the best we can do is call them ideas. Are we in agreement? — tim wood
But it could be just the claim that this is how Aristotle saw it and described it. Except I do not think that's correct. He troubled to reason that body and soul were different. Maybe a living body has, arguably, in his terms, ψυχή, But I am unaware of anywhere he posits a dead body as having that. — tim wood
To my way of thinking, the best we can do is call them ideas. Are we in agreement? — tim wood
Near as I can tell from my read of Aristotle, his ψυχή is a that-which. He knows what he needs for his account, so he embodies it into a that-which meets that need as account. In accounting terms a contra-asset - not a thing in itself but an offset, something set off, against something else. — tim wood
the soul, which the living body is dependent on. — Metaphysician Undercover
However, the same argument which is used in this refutation, the cosmological argument, also demonstrates the necessity for an actuality, a form, which is prior to all material existence. — Metaphysician Undercover
Yes. I get it that these are all parts of a construct. But it's best we part company here. The difference in our thinking is that you seem to have bought the theory as real, or at least here and elsewhere you use language that strongly implies you think that, while I do not. I think of it as just a theory, an account. Our relative positions being not entirely unlike those between a religious fundamentalist and an agnostic/atheist.The laws of nature are the actual immaterial laws which govern the way matter behaves. — Metaphysician Undercover
Not at all. I have acknowledged, do so now, and will forever, that Aristotle defines left and right, this way and that. In not buying immaterial substance I believe I am in respectable company, even as I recognize that it is a part of the thinking of some people. And how can I be a materialist and at the same time talk about ideas? I appreciate your effort and general civility, but I'm not a member of the congregation.You seem to be completely ignoring the fact that Aristotle defines the soul as a substance, trying to rationalize some other idea which makes more sense to you because you refuse to take the time required to understand immaterial substance, being consumed by materialist presuppositions. — Metaphysician Undercover
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