Okay, I promised the thread. So here it is. Aristotle’s De Anima III.5
Background:
Aristotle’s hylomorphism takes it that things have matter & form. e.g. a fireplace & a house can have the same matter (bricks), but it’s the form that makes them different (‘fireplace’ vs ‘house’)

(This is a big imprecise because human-made things don’t usually have natural forms, but it’s often a go-to example; bear w me)
Matter & forms can’t be separated, except abstractly. We can abstract forms from things. When we think, our thought of X & the form of X are identical.

For A, the soul is the form of the body. It’s the distinguishing essence—with essential features which make it the kind of thing it is. The essence is what ‘causes’ a thing to be the way it is. A soul, then, is the form of a living thing. It’s a marker of being alive, then, too.

Plants, animals, & humans each have a different kind of soul, since each are capable of different things, have different functions, etc. Plants have nutritive souls, meaning they’re the sort of matter capable of reproducing, taking in nutrients, & dying.

(Non-human) animals have sensitive souls, meaning they’re capable of all that the nutritive souls are capable of, with the additional abilities to sense the world & move about in it. Humans have rational souls, which include all the aforementioned abilities + rational capacities.

Getting into III.5:
Rational souls have something called ‘νους’, mind or intellect. A says this Intellect has two parts: the Active Intellect (AI) & the Passive Intellect (PI). This is where things get real weird.

Matter’s also understood as ‘potential’, while form’s understood as ‘actual’. Bricks are potentially all sorts of things. It’s only when there’s a form that it becomes something. All existing things have matter & form. ∴ all things have potential & actuality.

For bricks to become a house, there has to be something to put the form on the matter. So it is for all things to go from potential (only matter) to actual (enformed matter). Marble needs an artist with art in mind to become a sculpture. So, too, A says, is required for the mind.

But mind is already part of a soul, which is a form, which is abstracted from the body. So what’s he talkin’ about? ‘cause then A says PI ‘becomes all things’ while Ai ‘makes all things’. This is immediately followed by an analogy about light & colour.

Light itself isn’t a colour (A says), but it actualizes colours. Without light, we can’t see colours. With light, can. It doesn’t have colours themselves (A says), but has the power to bring colours to light (). How’s this connect to AI & PI?

PI’s the part of our mind which takes on forms, kind of like a ball of clay, allowing us to think all sorts of things. In that sense, it ‘becomes all things’. AI’s like the light; it’s a power to bring forward different forms/thoughts to the PI. However, AI does not itself think.

i.e. AI does not know things. PI receives sense-info from the sense-organs, AI is the efficient cause which acts on PI to bring forward particular thoughts. This is needed because all moving things require a mover. A change in thoughts requires a changer—the AI.

A says AI is separable, impassive, & unmixed, since its essentially an activity. But form & matter are necessarily inseparable! What do? Well, AI-qua-efficient-cause would be those things, because efficient causes are basically always separate from that of which they’re causing.

(The unmoved-mover/God is the exception). The sculptor is separate from the art, builder from the house. So too AI is separable from PI. Impassive because AI isn’t affected—rather, it affects the PI. Unmixed because it’s a distinct power affecting PI & is definitionally distinct.

AI’s an activity, as A says, because AI effects some thought in PI. Efficient cause is often considered an activity in A’s writings. Because AI is actual, while PI is essentially potential (because PI could take on any thought, AI makes it one or another), AI is always active.

“When isolated it is it’s true self & nothing more, & this alone is immortal & everlasting (we do not remember because, while mind in this sense cannot be acted upon, mind in the passive sense is perishable)...” WAIT. Soul is immortal? Paging Phaedo! Non-Aristotelian alert! What?

“it” is AI, which is somehow immortal. AI doesn’t have memory or sense-data because when body & PI perish those capacities are lost (408b28). I take this to be a response to Plato & the general argument that “we can’t know if we remember things after death!”

If AI does persist beyond death, it doesn’t take with it memory, the ability to experience, or the ability to imagine the future, so granting it immortality means a significantly weaker existence than Plato’s claims about the immortal soul.

The chapter ends with an ambiguous statement about without X, either Y doesn’t think or nothing thinks. I take it that the proper reading is that without PI (the living part of mind capable of taking on forms), nothing thinks.

All in all, I take III.5 to be an attempt to do 3 things:
1) Address the potential immortality of soul, arguing that the immortality is nothing like our life.
2) Trying to give an explanation of proto-intentionality in our thinking by dividing PI & AI
3) Establish AI as a power.

@AristotlesStgra How’d I do? Miss anything? Wildly off? Need more?

Also, real talk—I did my undergrad thesis on Aristotle’s hylomorphism & theory of soul but really avoided III.5 so I spent literally all day reading & rereading to make this thread. Definitely worth it, since now I’ve a ~take~ on it, but I’d be curious to hear what others think!