Hi, I'm joining this Thread because I want to know the same thing that J's asking. My knowledge of Aristotle's philosophy isn't proficient enough to answer J's question, but this is something that I'm genuinely interested in, so I'm all ears on this one.

- This strikes me as somewhat standard, depending on what precisely you are asking about.

Now it is in the latter of these two senses that either the whole soul or some part of it constitutes the nature of an animal; and inasmuch as it is the presence of the soul that enables matter to constitute the animal nature, much more than it is the presence of matter which so enables the soul, the inquirer into nature is bound to treat of the soul rather than of the matter. For though the wood of which they are made constitutes the couch and the tripod, it only does so because it is potentially such and such a form.

What has been said suggests the question, whether it is the whole soul or only some part of it, the consideration of which comes within the province of natural science. Now if it be of the whole soul that this should treat, then there is no place for any other philosophy beside it. For as it belongs in all cases to one and the same science to deal with correlated subjects—one and the same science, for instance, deals with sensation and with the objects of sense—and as therefore the intelligent soul and the objects of intellect, being correlated, must belong to one and the same science, it follows that natural science will have to include everything in its province. But perhaps it is not the whole soul, nor all its parts collectively, that constitutes the source of motion; but there may be one part, identical with that in plants, which is the source of growth, another, namely the sensory part, which is the source of change of quality, while still another, and this not the intellectual part, is the source of locomotion. For other animals than man have the power of locomotion, but in none but him is there intellect. Thus then it is plain that it is not of the whole soul that we have to treat. For it is not the whole soul that constitutes the animal nature, but only some part or parts of it. — Aristotle, Parts of Animals, Book I, 641a27..., tr. W. Ogle

Aristotle is basically saying that the study of animals requires a study of the vegetative part of the soul and the motion-causing part of the soul, but not the intellectual part of the soul, because a study of the intellectual part of the soul would implicate the objects of intellect, which would include everything.

But is Rödl correct in saying that the intellect (nous) cannot be included in any domain? I don't actually see Aristotle saying this. Aristotle is rather arguing from premises such as, "Natural science does not include everything in its province," or, "Animal nature is not intellectual." He is not arguing from the premise, "There is no science which includes everything in its province."

Can the intellect be "included in any domain"? I would say that it can be included but not contained or exhausted, but I'm not sure where Rödl is going with this.

Thanks, and you've put your finger on what I'm wondering about too. Can Rödl go on to say that nous cannot be included in any domain? It gets finicky, because I'm not clear on what either philosopher means by "included," exactly. Are your suggestions -- "contained," "exhausted" -- synonyms for inclusion? Couldn't "included" simply mean "studied" or even "taken into account"?

He is not arguing from the premise, "There is no science which includes everything in its province." — Leontiskos

No, that seems clear. I rather see him, in the passage you quote, arriving at this as a conclusion about natural science, which strikes him as a reductio -- but that may be because natural science isn't the right science to do this, not because no science does so.

Aristotle is basically saying that the study of animals requires a study of the vegetative part of the soul and the motion-causing part of the soul, but not the intellectual part of the soul, because a study of the intellectual part of the soul would implicate the objects of intellect, which would include everything — Leontiskos

That sounds like a hard problem ;-)

That sounds like a hard problem ;-) — Wayfarer

What do you mean? Is that a reference to the hard problem of consciousness and the metaphysics of qualia, as David Chalmers understands it?

Or do you mean something else?

but that may be because natural science isn't the right science to do this, not because no science does so. — J

Right, and Aristotle is clearly happy to study the intellect in De Anima. It would also be within the province of metaphysics. But I hesitate to say what science or sciences Aristotle sees as proper to the study of the intellect. Rödl could be right that there is no science of judgment (as distinct from logic).

Couldn't "included" simply mean "studied" or even "taken into account"? — J

I think Rödl is using it correctly when he says that the science of perception must include the object of perception. So for example, the science of sight must include the object of color. So yes, something mild like "taken into account" would count as inclusion. To use Aristotle's word, sight and color are "correlated."

Note though that to study sight one does not need to study every individual object of sight or even every individual color. It's therefore unclear why an "illimitable object" precludes study. It seems to me that it only precludes an exhaustive study, and perhaps a science.

- :up:

I will just add that it's helpful to recall that physics is the study of mobile/changing being here, so to have everything under it would be to imply that everything is mutable. I don't even know if this is Heraclitus, because he at least has the Logos.

I think it's De Anima III that covers nous and the active intellect.

BTW, this topic actually opens onto a host of interesting questions. There is a really good article on this in the Routledge Handbook of Neoplatonism called something like "Neoplatonic Epistemology." It focuses on Plotinus, but it also covers Aristotle a good deal because Aristotle was a huge influence on Plotinus in this area and on the Patristics in general.

One of the points Aristotle makes is that belief and knowledge cannot be reduced to mechanistic (efficient) cause and effect. If belief is just the rearrangement of atoms, then it is hard to see how it can be "false." Falsity implies a sort of judgement, it implies intentionality, etc. So how do beliefs work vis-a-vis a mechanistic picture? On a common understanding of mechanism, they don't, that's the whole impetus for res cognitans or of semiotics.

Certainly, we understand perception better now. Information theory is very helpful here. But these fundamental questions about intentionality, perspective, etc. remain major open questions in the philosophy of information and in contemporary thought more broadly (e.g. the "Hard Problem").

A second interesting point is that falsity, and knowledge, need to involve universals. If we just invented a sui generis term for each particular, we could never be wrong about our predication. If I say, particular102939940204 is term24828920299202, and term24828920299202 only applies to that particular (perhaps in that moment), then I cannot be wrong about it. Falsity shows up when we judge that x is y, but x can fail to actually be y. Borges' short story "Funes the Memorious" plays around with the problems, and ultimate incoherence, of seeing all particulars as only particulars.

This is closely related to the epistemic issues related to the One and the Many. One cannot come to know any % of an (effectively) infinite number of causes/particulars in a finite time. We're dividing by infinity here. So here too, knowledge has to deal with overarching principles, Ones that apply to a Many.

But if these universals are just, in some sense, arbitrary "representations" (a misunderstanding of ens rationis), and they too are subject to change, because all of thought and intellgibility is mutable, then knowledge will prove impossible. But we do have discursive knowledge, therefore something in the assumptions that lead us to reject knowledge is false.

The whole Plotinian identity theory of truth (which rejects knowledge as belief), a popular and influential interpretation of Aristotle and Plato, requires a nous that is in some sense immutable.

Interesting, and thanks for replying to my OP. I'm not sure where Rödl is going to take this, but I'll be better informed now.

One of the points Aristotle makes is that belief and knowledge cannot be reduced to mechanistic (efficient) cause and effect. If belief is just the rearrangement of atoms, then it is hard to see how it can be "false." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right, and a key premise here is that the intellect/nous has the formal capacity to know everything, and that which knows all things is not itself one of the things known. Usually this is phrased in terms of materiality: the intellect can know all material things and must therefore be immaterial. Rödl may be up against some variety of materialism, which limits the power of the intellect.

For the materialist the intellect is different and lesser, and therefore knowledge is different and lesser, and I think we see this play out in a lot of discussions on TPF. For the materialist the object of the intellect is determinate and limited in a way that Aristotle and Rödl do not accept.

I have looked at a preview of Rödl’s book. It is an interesting challenge to the mind/object dichotomy of Descartes and Kant (and many others).

I see your quote came from page 55 and that a footnote accompanies the reference to Part of Animals. Does that note give the Bekker line number for the reference?

The preview also let me see from 118 to 123. His account of De Anima 417a 21ff is solid as well as the references to Metaphysics Gamma. The distinction between different kinds of potentiality (powers) is a helpful touchstone to the rest of De Anima.

Usually this is phrased in terms of materiality: the intellect can know all material things and must therefore be immaterial. — Leontiskos

I’ve become very interested in (although not very knowledgeable about) the idea of the ‘divine intellect’ in Aristotle and Platonism generally. The basic thrust is that the power of reason is what distinguishes the human from other animals - hence man as the ‘rational animal’. It preserves the tripartite distinction in Plato's diaogues of the rational element of the soul as being the highest part.

In Aristotle, that is expressed in hylomorphism. The material senses receive the material form - in other words, sense-data. But only intellect (nous) knows what a thing is. (I believe this is all from D’Anima III.) In this way, the intellect ‘becomes all things’. And the reason it can do that, is because of its immaterial nature. Lloyd Gerson paraphrases it as follows:

Aristotle, in De Anima, argued that thinking in general (which includes knowledge as one kind of thinking) cannot be a property of a body; it cannot, as he put it, 'be blended with a body'. This is because in thinking, the intelligible object or form is present in the intellect, and thinking itself is the identification of the intellect with this intelligible. Among other things, this means that you could not think if materialism is true… . Thinking is not something that is, in principle, like sensing or perceiving; this is because thinking is a universalising activity. This is what this means: when you think, you see - mentally see - a form which could not, in principle, be identical with a particular - including a particular neurological element, a circuit, or a state of a circuit, or a synapse, and so on. This is so because the object of thinking is universal, or the mind is operating universally.

….the fact that in thinking, your mind is identical with the form that it thinks, means (for Aristotle and for all Platonists) that since the form 'thought' is detached from matter, 'mind' is immaterial too. — Platonism vs Naturalism, Lloyd Gerson

(See also The Unity of Intellect in Aristotle's D'Anima.)

This is preserved in Aquinas' epistemology, as I understand it. And behind that, is a mysterious doctrine called 'the unity of knower and known'. If you search on that phrase, you will find many recondite scholarly papers mostly about either Thomism or medieval Islamic scholasticism. And I believe Rödl is articulating a similar theme. The underlying rationale is that of 'participatory knowing' and 'divine union' which have long since fallen out of favour in Western culture.

Yes, the ref is I 1, 641a10ff. Also: "C.f. De Anima, Book III, 429a."

I haven't gotten to pp. 118 - 123 yet. Good to know he's on target with Aristotle. The book is challenging in much the same way as Kimhi's Thinking and Being is (and covers some very similar ground) but I'm finding it well worth a slow, careful read.

A mysterious doctrine called 'the unity of knower and known'. . . I believe Rödl is articulating a similar theme. — Wayfarer

Yes, though as I wrote above, I'm still locating all the pieces on the board with Rödl. It's a dense book. You're reading it, right? His arguments about why objectivity is necessarily self-conscious -- odd as that sounds -- are covering the same ground as Kimhi's arguments about the unity of thinking and being. Once again, poor Frege comes in for a kicking. I'll definitely write more about the book as I go along, and I hope others will read it too.

You're reading it, right? — J

Yes, but I'm finding it a real hard slog to maintain focus. I figure that as he has to penetrate the habitual cynicism of the current philosophical profession, he needs the equivalent of a depleted uranium ordnance. (After all as Banno never tires of pointing out, any form of idealism is very much a minority report in the profession.) My problem is I can kind of intuitively grasp the point he's aiming at, without having to do all the hard work of traversing the terrain. But as you're reading it, I will try and persist, I'm nearly up to the end of Chapter One.

a real hard slog to maintain focus — Wayfarer

I do a section a day, after coffee, when if I'm lucky I can concentrate for 30 minutes. :halo:

But please don't slog on my account . . .

His arguments about why objectivity is necessarily self-conscious — J

Hmmm... I think that's false (Hi, excuse me, if I'm allowed to give an opinion as objectively and respectfully as possible)

odd as that sounds — J

Of course it sounds odd. That's what I've been saying since I first joined this Forum: some of the things that are discussed in professional philosophy sound odd. That doesn't mean, necessarily, that what they're saying is untrue. I mean, we -the philosophers- have become de-sensitized to theoretically strange ideas. What is Platonism if not that? What is Cartesianism if not that? We've been exposed to so much professional philosophy, that it's become quite difficult for professional philosophers to genuinely surprise us, the burnt-out readers of professional philosophers, in which some are professional philosophers as well.

Very important work - pleased there’s someone else reading it.

@Banno I just came across this, which speaks to the Wittgensteinian theme being discussed over in the "Mathematical platonism" thread:

There is nothing I may encounter, encountering which will equip me with the idea of it as real, or a fact. If I lack this idea, nothing -- nothing real, no fact -- can give it to me. The concept of things' being as they are is possible only as it is at work -- not in thinking this or that, but -- in thinking anything at all. — Rödl, 61

"Only as it is at work" . . . I think he means that we can't find the concept of reality or facticity as the object of thought; rather, it's contained or implied in the act, the "work", of thinking that anything is so. No doubt Witt would approve.

I studied De Anima in detail as an undergrad. I've forgotten most of it. To dismissive?

Would it be surprising to find a Wittgensteinian interpretation of Aristotle only after Wittgenstein? Not so much. And if there were such a thing before Wittgenstein, then Wittgenstein would be an interpreter of Aristotle...

There's much of just-so stories in exegesis.

↪J
I studied De Anima in detail as an undergrad. I've forgotten most of it. To dismissive? — Banno

It's an admittedly strange book, in that it outlines a theory of the mind and the soul that is very remote from how we understand such topics from a modern perspective.

Personally, I never cared much for De Anima, but what makes it seem so odd to me, from a merely bibliographical standpoint, is that Aristotle's concept of the "active intellect" only appears once in the entire works of Aristotle, and it appears in one specific passage in De Anima. That's what most odd about that book, specifically.

Nevertheless, the topic of the "active intellect" was widely discussing in Medieval European Philosophy. It's just one of those strange things about Aristotle, I don't think anyone can really explain it.

Your link points to another important reference:

Another passage which is traditionally read together with the De Anima passage is in Metaphysics, Book XII, Ch. 7–10.[2] Aristotle again distinguishes between the active and passive intellects, but this time he equates the active intellect with the "unmoved mover" and God. He explains that when people have real knowledge, their thinking is, for a time receiving, or partaking of, this energeia of the nous (active intellect). — ibid.

More important for the use of "active agent" in De Anima is the inquiry in Metaphysics of how potential and actual "energeia" relate to each other. These investigations are contiguous to the fact that Book 2 of De Anima echoes many elements of Parts of Animals, Coming to be and Passing away, and History of Animals.

As those titles suggest, Aristotle did not say that personal (or individual) lives survived death. The Neoplatonists who were popular when the "Medieval' period began did promote various versions of such personal immortality. That is the batter Augustine used to cook his pancakes.

I get all that (thanks for responding, BTW), but the part that I can't understand is the following one: if the concept of the active intellect is so important, why doesn't Aristotle talk about it anywhere else but in one obscure passage in De Anima? It just strikes me in the manner that an odd thing would. It just doesn't make sense.

I am proposing that he is talking about it many times but with the humility of being a mortal creature who only can remotely glimpse the divine. Note how often he uses "perhaps" in Book 3. He does not state as a matter of fact that nous is separable. In Book 2, Aristotle is more comfortable with locating the "act of knowing in the context of the individual as receiving (some of) the power from the kind (genos) they come from. The same immediacy of the actual is being sought for without the naming of the agent in Book 3.

I am proposing that he is talking about it many times but with the humility of being a mortal creature who only can remotely glimpse the divine. Note how often he uses "perhaps" in Book 3. He does not state as a matter of fact that nous is separable. In Book 2, Aristotle is more comfortable with locating the "act of knowing in the context of the individual as receiving the power from the kind (genos) they come from. The same immediacy of the actual is being sought for without the naming of the agent in Book 3. — Paine

But it's a very... "subtle" point, isn't it? If Aristotle is effectively talking about it as many times as you say, why isn't it more ... obvious? Humility notwithstanding and all that, this is Aristotle that we are talking about. Are his scholars really sure that the Prime Mover is "the same thing" as the active intellect? It seems like -pardon the expression- "a stretch of the imagination", as people say nowadays, a simple act of "stretching" or even of "reaching", if you will.

The question of causality on the cosmological scale of Metaphysics book Lambda is itself a product of trying to distinguish "active" and "passive" elements of individual things.

Your question about scholars making that connection is less important to me than looking for how nous is something we can learn about through our experiences and thinking about it. I am not arguing for a "subtlety" as much as for a difficulty.

Edit to add: The point I was making about the connection of DA Book 2' references to nous in the other works concerning life is what will make the discussion in Book 3 seem less of a one-off as you described it to be.

Anyhow re: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/957656, this article was by Gerson, which makes sense now that I see it.

"Only as it is at work" . . . I think he means that we can't find the concept of reality or facticity as the object of thought; rather, it's contained or implied in the act, the "work", of thinking that anything is so. No doubt Witt would approve.

IDK how closely Rodl follows Aristotle (or Hegel), but in their case this has to do with the identity of thought and being (something Plotinus brings out in Aristotle in his rebuttals of the Empiricists and Stoics). This ends up being, in some key respects, almost the opposite of Wittgenstein, although I do think there is some interesting overlap in that they tend to resolve epistemic issues in ways that are isomorphic.

I’ve become very interested in (although not very knowledgeable about) the idea of the ‘divine intellect’ in Aristotle and Platonism generally.

The Metaphysics of Dante's Comedy by Christian Moevs is surprisingly the best treatment I've seen of this. It spends a good amount of time on Aristotle in the third chapter, including this exact question. Dante's role as a philosophical thinker is often overshadowed by his role as a literary figure (and how could be otherwise? He is often ranked as one of, if not the greatest). However, there is a lot of interesting stuff there.

I find this sometimes, the best succinct treatment of a topic ends up being in an unrelated topic. For instance, David Bentley Hart has one of the better treatments of classical notions of freedom in the last part of That All Shall Be Saved, and I'd recommend just that section even for people with little interest in Christian universalism (the topic of the book). It's funny how that works out sometimes.

Thank you, appreciated. I’ve found some articles on the topic also.

IDK how closely Rodl follows Aristotle (or Hegel), but in their case this has to do with the identity of thought and being (something Plotinus brings out in Aristotle in his rebuttals of the Empiricists and Stoics). This ends up being, in some key respects, almost the opposite of Wittgenstein, although I do think there is some interesting overlap in that they tend to resolve epistemic issues in ways that are isomorphic. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, everyone finds their own Wittgenstein! Kimhi, in Thinking and Being, claimed Witt as a fellow exponent of the monistic unity of thinking and being, which in turn he (Kimhi) derives from Aristotle. And this is very much Rödl's view as well.

Here is a passage from Sebastian Rödl’s Self-Consciousness and Objectivity:

In De Partibus Animalium, Aristotle asserts that nous does not fall within the domain of physics. It does not lie within that domain, not because it lies outside it, in a different domain alongside that of physics. Rather, nous does not lie within the domain of physics because it cannot be included in any domain. For, just as the science of perception includes the object of perception, so the science of judgment – knowledge of the nature of judgment – is at the same time the science of the object of judgment – knowledge of the nature of the object of judgment. And the object of judgment is everything . . . Its object is illimitable.
— Rödl, p. 55

I know we have several Aristotelians on TPF. Could one of you tell me, first, whether this is an accurate account of what Aristotle argues, and second, whether it is a standard interpretation of Aristotle on this point? Many thanks. — J

I believe there is an important issue of translation/interpretation which needs to be dealt with here. This is a question of the way that we attribute "the powers of the soul", to the soul itself. In order to do this as a predication, we need to allow that "the soul" is an acceptable subject for predication. If we are inclined to deny the reality of "the soul" as an acceptable subject, then we simply move to avoid this predicament altogether by interpreting "the powers of the soul" as "the parts of the soul". The latter allows that "the soul" is simply the united living body, and "the parts" refers to a division of this body into separate organs or something like that. This latter interpretation allows for a materialist understanding.

From context, especially reference to "De Anima", we can see that Aristotle is proposing "the soul" as a proper subject for predication. "The soul" is proposed as an actuality in the sense of substantive form. And, that "form" itself, is substantive is supported by his "Metaphysics". This allows for the proposition "the soul is our subject of study".

However, we must respect the various ways in which propositions are presented. They are not necessarily offered as true, and what is very common with Aristotle is that he presents them as hypotheticals for the purpose of argumentation. So for example, he might be saying, "if it is true that the soul is a proper subject for study, what would be some of the logical conclusions we can derive from this premise". Then he judges those potential conclusions for acceptability, to determine whether or not "the soul is a proper subject for study" is a sound premise. I would say that this is the sort of interpretation we need to make of what is offered in the op. This is made more clear by the passage presented by

Personally, I never cared much for De Anima, but what makes it seem so odd to me, from a merely bibliographical standpoint, is that Aristotle's concept of the "active intellect" only appears once in the entire works of Aristotle, and it appears in one specific passage in De Anima. That's what most odd about that book, specifically. — Arcane Sandwich

I believe that the principle issue here is that prior to Aristotle it was understood that the human mind must be passive. This was assumed in order to allow that the mind receives the forms of objects. In perception and abstraction, it was assumed that the form of the material object was received by the mind. This represents the mind as passive in this event, and this is the common physicalist representation of today. The senses, and consequently the mind, are acted upon by the physical world, and the physical world is understood as causing an effect within the brain, or mind.

I believe Plato proposed an active component of the mind in (I think) "The Theaetetus". He described visual perception, seeing, as an activity extending outward from the eyes, meeting an activity coming from the object seen. You can see how this divides the active part of "seeing" into two distinct activities, the activity coming from the thing seen, and the activity originating in the mind. Aristotle furthers this distinction between the actuality of the physical world, and the actuality of the soul.

Post-Aristotelian thinkers had much difficulty, and consequently much discussion, as to how to properly locate both the passive and active parts of the intellect. If I understand correctly, the root of the difficulty was the problem of accounting for the reality of the passive intellect. Passivity, in Aristotelian principles is associated with matter, and allowing the intellect passivity is a move toward denying the immateriality of the intellect, and its assumed independent, eternal existence. So the difficulty was to allow for passivity, yet still allow for an eternal immaterial intellect. Aristotle's metaphysics denies that any potential could be eternal. This produced debate as to where the passive intellect is located, and depending on one's proposition for this, the active intellect would be assigned accordingly.