Abstract

This essay is a response to Myles Burnyeat’s paper that attacks an interpretation of the credibility and acceptability of Aristotle’s views of the body and soul. It begins with a discussion of Aristotle’s motivating problems. An interpretation is defended against Burnyeat, which distinguishes Aristotle from both materialist reductionism, and from the Burnyeat interpretation that perceiving etc. does not require concomitant material change, and that awareness is primitive. Aristotle’s position is then defended as tenable, even in the context of a modern theory of matter.