Platonic Realism and Its Relation to Physical Objects
but as I read it Aristotle is not claiming, as Wayfarer is, that world and mind arise together as objective and subjective poles. — Fooloso4
In the matter of Aristotle saying " Actual knowledge is identical with its object" (431a1), the "potential" knowing is the absence of the object until it is present. In the comparing of perception and knowledge, Aristotle focuses on our capacity for the actuality of the object to be the cause of perception in time:
"It is clear that the object of perception makes that which can perceive actively so instead of potentially so; for it is not affected or altered." (431a4)
If this wasn't the case, perception would not help the ensouled being survive. The universe would just be fake news.
Building on the element of being actualized, Aristotle says:
"To the thinking soul images serve as sense-perceptions (aisthemeta). And when it asserts or denies good or bad, it avoids or pursues it. Hence the soul never thinks without an image. " (431a8)
To complete the comparison, Aristotle says:
"Knowledge and perception are divided to correspond to their objects, the potential to the potential, the actual to the actual. In the soul that which can perceive and that which can know are potentially these things, the one the object of knowledge, the other the object of perception. These must either be the things themselves or their forms. Not the things themselves; for it is not the stone which is in the soul but its form. Hence the soul is as the hand is; for the hand is a tool of tools, and the intellect is a form of forms and sense a form objects of perception. (431b24) All above translated by D.W. Hamlyn.
The distinction between objective and subjective is treated here as the illusion. The range from living with only the capacity to feel touch to knowing other beings as they really exist points to our capacity in a different way than reflecting upon limits we cannot be on both sides of.