Abstract
I argue that a modern gloss on Aristotle’s notions of Form and Matter not only allows us to escape a dualism of the psychological and the physical, but also results in a plausible sort of materialism. This is because Aristotle held that the essential nature of any psychological state, including perception and human thought, is to be some physical property. I also show that Hilary Putnam and Martha Nussbaum are mistaken in saying that Aristotle was not a materialist, but a functionalist. His functionalism should instead be given a materialistic interpretation, since he holds that only the appropriate sort of matter can realize the human psyche. Aristotle’s functionalism is therefore best viewed as a “causal functionalism,” in which functional descriptions enable us to find the right sort of material embodiment. By sidestepping dualistic assumptions, Aristotle also avoids having to deal with any further notion of consciousness.
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Notes
De Anima, 403a30–31.
Ibid, 403a26–28.
Ibid, 433b17–20.
Ibid, 408a35–408b1–2. Aristotle later says (408b12–15) that it is better to say that a man does all these things with his soul, but he never denies that these things are all movements.
Cf. Ibid, 412a23–28. Aristotle likens sleep to the possession of knowledge and waking to its exercise. The former is classified as a first actuality of a living body, since in the history of the individual the possession of a characteristic comes before its employment.
Ibid, 424a18–20.
For a defense of the materialist interpretation see Richard Sorabji, “Intentionality and the Physiological Processes: Aristotle’s Theory of Sense Perception,” in Martha C. Nussbaum and Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (eds.), Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1992), 295–225. For a recent dualist interpretation see M.F. Burnyeat, “Is an Aristotelian Philosophy of Mind Still Credible? A Draft,” De Anima, 15–26.
This cannot be a literal interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of visual perception, since he mistakenly thought of light, not as waves or photons, but as something that served to make the medium of sight (the air between perceiver and perceived) transparent. My claim here as elsewhere is that correcting the scientific mistake leaves the philosophical claim intact.
De Anima, 424b15–18.
See, for example, De Anima, 430b29–30 and Nichomachean Ethics, 1147a25–30.
De Anima, Ch. 22.
Ibid, 429a25–27.
For instance, see Chapter 7 of K.V. Wilkes’s Physicalism (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, Inc., 1978).
Cf. De Anima, 432a8–10, where Aristotle explicitly says that in contemplation one must simultaneously contemplate an image.
Martha C. Nussbaum and Hilary Putnam, “Changing Aristotle’s Mind,” in Martha C. Nussbaum and Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (eds.), op. cit., 27–56.
Ibid., 28.
Cf. De Anima II for Aristotle’s application of the Form–Matter distinction to different sorts of living things.
Nussbaum and Putnam, op. cit., 48.
Ibid., 32.
This is the point of Aristotle’s remark that thinking of soul as capable of inhabiting any old body would be like thinking that you could do carpentry with flutes (i.e., instead of with chisels); De Anima, 408a19–22.
De Anima, 403b1–3.
Nussbaum and Putnam, op. cit., 29.
De Anima, 412a19–20.
Ibid., 412b20–22.
Nussbaum and Putnam, op. cit., 35.
There is also evidence that his preferred definitions for psychological states all contain reference to the appropriate Matter. Cf. De Anima, 403a25–28, where he says: “...it is clear that the affections of the soul are principles involving Matter. Hence their definitions are such as ‘Being angry is a particular movement of a body of such and such a kind, or a part or potentiality of it, as a result of this thing and for the sake of that.’”
Aristotle is explicit about this in Metaphysics, 1036b3033: “For it is not a hand in any state that is part of a man, but a hand that can fulfill its work, which must therefore be alive; if it is not alive it is not a part.”
Cf. De Anima, 403a25–34. It is clear here that Aristotle’s preferred definitions for psychological states always mention both Form and Matter.
Nussbaum and Putnam, op. cit., 48–49.
De Anima, 403a5–18.
De Anima, 403a25–26. Form seems to get elevated over Matter in his saying what a particular natural substance is, but even here the reference to Matter is essential. Cf. Physics, 194a4–6, where Aristotle says, “Odd and even, straight and curved, and likewise number, line, and figure, do not involve motion; not so flesh and bone and man – these are like snub nose, not like curved.”
In De Anima, 403a29–403b1 Aristotle explicitly says that if the state is to exist at all, its Form must be in Matter of “such and such a kind.”
Aristotle lists his categories, or types of predication, somewhat differently in Categories, Ch. 4 and in Topics, Ch. 9.
William Lycan’s defense of what he also calls “homuncular” functionalism appears in his Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1987), especially in Chapter 4. Jennifer Whiting seems to adopt a teleological functionalism in “Living Bodies,” Martha C. Nussbaum and Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (eds.), op. cit., 75–91. K.V. Wilkes offers her version in Physicalism (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1978), especially at 55–64. Daniel Dennett also claims allegiance to a sort of teleological/homuncular functionalism in Consciousness Explained (Boston and New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1991), 262 and 460. What is common to all these views is that they seek to explain how any psychological system works in terms of the functioning of smaller and smaller sub-systems.
For Lycan, the psychological state can itself be viewed as a system in which sub-agencies play their roles in the realization of that state, op. cit., 39–41.
Lycan seems to want it both ways: to define mental states in terms of their functional roles, and yet to say that what they are is to be explained in terms of the sub-agencies that occupy these roles; Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), 41. I think this is confused. If they are defined in terms of their roles, then it is a purely contingent matter that these roles are carried out by homuncular sub-agencies – or by anything else.
See Posterior Analytics, Ch. 10. Here Aristotle suggests that we need to know whether something exists before giving a definition of its essential nature. The nominal definition gives a general specification allowing the scientist to identify something for further study. His example is that of thunder, which is nominally defined as a certain noise in the clouds; whereas, a “real definition” of thunder is the noise of fire being extinguished in the clouds.
See D.M. Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of the Mind (New York: Humanities Press, 1968), 90–91, where he claims that he is offering a logical analysis of the mental concepts, which is to be followed by a scientific identification of the states so analyzed with states of the brain. David Lewis’ defense of a causal functionalism appears in “An Argument for the Identity Theory,” Journal of Philosophy 63: 17–25 (1966). J.J.C. Smart gave his groundbreaking defense of a topic-neutral account of sensations in his “Sensations and Brain Processes,” Philosophical Review 68: 141–156 (1959).
Teleological functionalists limit their characterizations of psychological states to descriptions of how these states serve the purposes of their subject. This notion of purpose is usually reconstructed in evolutionary terms; that is, in terms of the survival value of that state. (See Lycan, op. cit., 45.) But this restriction on functional characterizations seems too narrow, for it is plausible that some psychological states evolved, not because of their survival value, but merely as “epiphenomena”; that is, as causal off-shoots of something that did have survival value.
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Carrier, L.S. Aristotelian Materialism. Philosophia 34, 253–266 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-006-9033-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-006-9033-9