Barnes J, Aristotles Concept of Mind

Aristotle's Concept of Mind
Author(s): Jonathan Barnes

Source: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, Vol. 72 (1971 - 1972), pp. 101-114
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The Aristotelian Society
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VI*-ARISTOTLE'S CONCEPT
OF MIND
by Jonathan Barnes
I
What is the nature of Aristotle's mental philosophy? Did he,
as some think, transcend Democritus to adumbrate a modern
and sophisticated physicalism? or did he rather remain in
Plato's camp, elaborating a fresh and subtler dualism? The
current orthodoxy relies on syncretism and psychogenetics:
first, physicalism and dualism are both countenanced-for
while most mental features are dissolved into body, the Aristo-
telian intellect (or perhaps only the 'creative' intellect) stands
out anomalously as an independent immaterial substance.
Then it is explained that the youthful Aristotle, drunk on
Plato, saw ghostly doubles for all psychic things; and that as
he grew older these hallucinations diminished in extent but
never entirely disappeared.
Such a story is not wholly satisfying: its psychogenetic
component, unconvincing in
itself,
ignores the fact that the
de Anima and the Parva Naturalia, whatever their origins, are
presented to us as a more or less continuous and connected
course in psychology;' and the terms of its syncretism are
vague, indeterminate, and inadequate.
II
The physicalist interpretation of Aristotle's psychology is
founded on the general account of ykvx74 at the beginning of
de Anima B. Many scholars call a halt here: for, they say, it is
*Meeting of the Aristotelian Society at 5/7 Tavistock Place, London,
W.C.i on Monday, ioth January I972, at 7.30 p.m.
1 W. Jaeger's genetic hypotheses (Aristotle,2 I948, pp. 332-4) were
supplanted by F. Nuyens' elaborate proposals (L'tvolution de la Psychologie
d'Aristote, 1948:
cf.
W. D. Ross, Aristotle's Parva Naturalia, 1955, pp. 3-18).
Nuyens has been refuted by I. Block, Am.
J.
Philol. I96I, and by W. F. R.
Hardie, P.Q. I964; see also G. E. L. Owen in Studies in the Philosophy of
Thought and Action (ed. P. F. Strawson), I968, pp. 151-4. On the value of
psychogenetics in this context see esp. C. H. Kahn, A.G.P. I966, pp. 68n59
and 47n12 (cf. Block, o.c. pp. 76-7).
IOI
I02 JONATHAN BARNES
characteristic of Aristotle's psychology that souls form an
ordered series (E (s: 41 4b2) -vegetative, perceptive,
intellectual
(404b5-6;
4IobI5-4I Ia2; 4 3a26-bIO)-and it is
a familiar feature of his logic that there can be no general
account of terms falling into an ordered series (see Met.
99ga6-7;
E.N.
Iog6aI9-35;
E.E. I2I8aI-8; Pol.
I275a34-8).
Thus
Aristotle has no room for any general account of soul; ancl
indeed in B 3 he roundly asserts that "it is ridiculous to seek a
common formula" for all types of soul
(4I4b25:
cf.
402b3-9).
This argument is common but erroneous. First, Aristotle
does not condemn the search for a common formula for soul;
rather, "it is ridiculous to seek the common formula ... while
neglecting the formula" proper to each particular type of soul. Secondly,
soul is compared to
oxi7/ra
(4I4b2o) which is explicitly stated
to be amenable to a general account
(404b23).
Thirdly,
Aristotle's strictures on ordered series have an ontological and
not a semantic sense: he denies that when A's form an ordered
series <a1, a2, . . . ,
an>
there exists an A over and above the
ai's;
he does not deny that the term "A" is susceptible to
definition.2 Thus the general account of soul in de Anima
B I-2 may be taken seriously.
The argument that justifies that account is, alas, obscure,
jargon-ridden, and textually corrupt; and in any event it is
almost certainly unsound
(4I2aI6-9:
cf: 4I4ai4-9). Its con-
clusion is this: "if, then, we must say something common for
every soul, it will be the first actuality of an organic natural
body" (41 2b4-6). I take this to amount to:
(Di) x has a soul df x is a living organic natural body.
After some discussion, the next chapter opens with a caution
that "the definitory formula must not only show the fact ... but
the explanation too must inhere in it and shine through"
(4I3aI3-6). A second argument then leads to a second general
account: "the soul is a principle of the aforesaid things, i.e., it is
defined by these-nutritive, perceptive, intellectual, motion"
(4I3bI
I-3).
I take this to amount to:
2
On all this see J. Cook Wilson, C.R. I904. The correct view on the
KOLVOT Aoyor of &vXv is clearly expressed by Philoponus (C.I.A.G. XV,
257.7-I2); see also H. M'L. Innes, C.R. 1902.
ARISTOTLE S CONCEPT OF MIND
I03
(D2) x has a soul df
X can nourish itself OR x can perceive OR
x can think OR x can move itself.
Since the features disjoined on the right of this equation
are precisely those in virtue of which a natural body is called
living
(4I3a22-5),
(D2) in a sense provides an 'explanation'
of the 'fact' laid down in (DI).
The crucial characteristic of both these definitions is that
they construe the soul not as a substance (like, say, the heart
or the brain) but as an attribute (like, say, life or health).
Neither (DI) nor (D2) gives or implies any definition of the
term "soul" or the predicate ". . . is a soul": the definiendum is
".... has a soul"; and, as each
definiens
makes clear, this one-
place predicate is not analysable into a two-place predicate
" . has
-"
and a substance term "soul", as ". . . has a
brain" might be analysed into ". . . has " and "brain".
If "an animal is made from soul and body" (Pol.
I277a6),
it is not as a motor-car is made from engine and coachwork,
but rather as a motor-car with its engine running is 'made'
from the running and the works.
This feature of Aristotle's account of soul comes out in
various ways in the de Anima: it is implicit in the close con-
nexion which, in orthodox Greek fashion, Aristotle observes
between soul and life (e.g., 402a6; 4Iiai6; 413a2I); it is
reflected in Aristotle's frequent and unapologetic use of the
terms
"E'4,vxosg"
and
"a'Ovxo9"
(e.g. 403b25; 404b7;
4I32I),
and again in the terms-"straight" (4o3aI3), "white"
(405b
I 8), sight"
(4I2bIg),
"art" (407b23: cf. P.A. 652bI4)-
which, in various contexts, Aristotle parallels to "soul"; and
it is prepared for in that celebrated Rylean passage where we
are urged "to say not that the soul pities or learns or thinks,
but that the man does with his soul"
(408bI3-5).3
III
The general account of soul is non-substantialist; this is often
supposed to commit Aristotle to some sort of physicalism:
in fact non-substantialism entails neither physicalism nor
non-physicalism. The soul may be taken for (i) a physical
3"with his soul"-i-
akvXq-
i.e., "by virtue of the fact that he has a
soul": cf. 402a io (St' EiCE'V?)v <sc. Ti'v
OvXv>); 4o8b27 ( CKevo (sc. riv Ov
4V>
I04 JONATHAN BARNES
substance, (ii) a non-physical substance, (iii) physical and
non-substantial, or (iv) non-physical and non-substantial.
De Anima B I-2 commits Aristotle to the rejection of (i) and (ii);
but he is still at liberty to choose between (iii) and
(iv).
The language in which these issues are discussed is not
always pellucid. Aristotle will sometimes approach physicalism
by asking of some psychic function whether or not it is /ETEa
uawiaTos or
ur(wlIaTtKOV (e.g. 403a6; 9; 17;
407b4; 427a26;
433bi9;
Mem.
453a14;
MA.
702a3);
more often he uses the
language of separation,
xwpcoLupos.
This term must be treated
with care: "X is separate" is an incomplete expression, and its
sense will depend upon the intended completion-"separate
from r". Talk about the separation of psychic elements is not
always talk about the relation between soul and body.4
The expressions "with body", "corporeal", "inseparable
from body" might, like the term "physical", figure in more
than one thesis. Let
0
be any mental, or psychological,
predicate. (The term "mental" has no contentious sense: all
that matters is that mental predicates should include ". . . has
a soul" and also any predicate contained in, or subsumable
under those contained in, the right-hand side of (D2).) Let q
be any physical predicate. "Physical" here is a technical term;
a rough definition, sufficient for present purposes, is this:
0
is physical if
0
is definable in terms of the primitive predicates
of physics (and, if necessary, of chemistry; and, if necessary,
of biology).
We are familiar with two strong physicalisms, the charac-
teristic schemata of which are:
(i) "Oa" means "+o"
and:
(2) 0
=
0
Of these (i) covers Carnapian physicalism, and some varieties
of behaviourism; (2) represents the 'Identity Theory' of Feigl,
Smart, and others. To these schemata two others can be
added:
(3) "0a,"
means
"Ou
& P"
4
The ends of B i
(413a3-Io) and of B 2 (4 I3b14-4i4a3) are superficially
parallel: both deal with the
Xcwptqpw'r of psychic parts. But in fact they
discuss perfectly distinct topics: B I, the separation of psychic partsfrom
body; B 2, the separation of psychic partsfrom one another.
105
-where the content of P is left undetermined-and:
(4)
That
O,ba
entails that bcx
These might, I suggest, be called schemata of weak physicalism.
The difficult sentence at
403bI7-9
probably means to dis-
tinguish (3) from (4).
At the end of B I Aristotle concludes: "That the soul is
not separable from the body . . . is not unclear" (4I3a4-5).
This states a type-(4) thesis with respect to ". . . has a soul".
It is plain that (DI) commits Aristotle to a type-(3) thesis,
and hence to a type-(4) thesis.
IV
The sentence just quoted reads in full: "That the soul is not
separable from the body, or some parts of it (if it is partition-
able), is not unclear; (?) for they are the actuality of some of
the parts <of the body> themselves (?). But nothing prevents
some <psychic parts from being separable from the body>,
through not being actualities of any body" (4I3a3-7). This
has caused puzzlement: for how can the soul be inseparable
from the body unless all its parts are? (The language of parts
need not trouble us: /iLOplOV is used interchangeably with
vvac/uS
and
apX,
without any substantialist implications-
cf. Met. A 25; Bonitz, Index 864b6osqq.)
Aristotle appears to mean that:
(A)
x has a soul
-
x
is compatible with:
(B) (3 ,) (Ox
-*
Ox)
But, on the assumption that all mental predicates are subsumable
under those on the right-hand side of (D2), we have:
(C)
(+)(Ox
-*
x has a
soul)
And (A), (B) and (C) are incompatible.
The best solution to this difficulty is to emend (D2) to:
(D2') x has a soul =df X can nourish itself OR (x can nourish
itself and x can perceive) OR (x can
nourish itself and x can perceive and
x can move itself) OR (x can nourish
itself and x can perceive and x can move
itself and x can think).
(D2') incorporates the hierarchical aspect of the psychic func-
i o6 JONATHAN BARNES
tions (see above, p. I02),
and it does not generate (C). Thus
Aristotle may assert both (A) and (B).
To prosecute the physicalist question, then, we must consider
the various psychic parts individually. This is no more than
Aristotle announced at the beginning of the treatise: "There is
a problem about the affections of the soul, whether they are
all common to what has a soul or there is one which is proper
to soul itself; . . . If there is one of the soul's functions or
affections proper to it, it is possible for it to be separated; but
if none is proper to it, it will not be
separable" (4o3a3-II,
omitting
5-Io:
cf.
408b25-9).
To ask whether an affection is
proper to the soul or common to soul and body (cf.
402ag;
433b20, Sens. 436a8; b2; Somn. 453bI2) has a misleadingly
substantialist air to it; but Aristotle's point is clear enough:
the issue of separability turns on the question whether any
psychic part or faculty is separable from the body.
In the rest of this paper I shall look briefly at the question
as it touches the emotions, perception, and intellect.
V
"It seems likely that the affections of the soul are all with
body-rage, tranquillity, fear, pity, boldness, again joy and
both loving and hating ... And if this is so, it is clear that the
affections are formulae including matter (Ao'yot eCvvAot)"
(4o3ai6-25,
omitting I8-24). 'Affections', ircO?J, may be either
properties or undergoings or emotions: I shall take the safest
course and interpret them narrowly as emotions.
The reference to Aoyot &vAot precipitates a question
I have so far ducked. In the de Anima the terms "matter" and
"form" regularly carry the contrast I am expressing by "phy-
sical" and "non-physical": the presence of matter in a psychic
part is taken for the presence of a physical element in it.5 This
is not happy: for on the one hand it seems clear that a thing's
form need not be non-physical; and on the other, its matter
(as Aristotle's references to
;A-9
VO'qTLK4 show: see Bonitz,
Index 787aI2-22) need not be physical. The truth is that the
apparatus of matter and form was developed by Aristotle in
5 For a clear example see 403bI I: O' uVaKo5S rEpI avavO' ova rovD -rotov&
awpa&
Kar
T777
Tota-avT7s-
;A77s
pya Kat
7TaaOq.
I07
order to solve certain puzzles about the nature of change; its
success with those puzzles encouraged him to extend it to other
fields and other puzzles, where as often as not it proves merely
obfuscating. That, I think, is so in the de Anima.
However that may be, 403aI
6-25
requires that the definitions
of the emotions include reference to (parts of) the body. The
archetype of a Ao'yos E'vvAosr is the snub (e.g., Met. I
o25b30
sqq;
Io64a23; cf.
429b
I4): being snub is having a concave nose-
and noses are of necessity physical. Similarly, raging, say, will
be or contain some physical affection; "so that the definitions
are such as: being angry is a certain change in such-and-such
a body or part or faculty by this for the sake of this"
(403a25-7).
How is the physical part of this schema to be filled in? We
might think of some fairly neutral reference to 'anger-
appropriate' states of the body; but Aristotle wishes to specify
the state: part of the meaning of "x is angry", he implies, is
"the blood about x's heart is boiling" (403a3 I; cf. P.A.
63oa35
sqq; Timaeus 70B); and elsewhere "x is afraid" is taken
to imply "the blood about x's heart is cold" (P.A.
692a2o-4;
Rhet. I 389b32)A*
VI
The beginning of the de Sensu reduces the inseparability of a
large number of psychic functions to the inseparability of
perception: for these functions involve perception, and "that
perception comes about for the soul through body is clear both
through argument and apart from argument" (436b6; cf.
429b5;
Somn.
454ag; Phys. 244bIi).
The argument is in de Anima B I: the statement at 4I3a7
that some psychic functions are actualities of bodily parts
(above, p. Io6) is illustrated a few lines earlier: "for if the eye
were a living creature, sight would be its soul: for this is the
6
The emotions are treated at length at Rhet. B 2-I I (cf. W. W. Forten-
baugh, A.G.P. 1970); but there the accounts seem to be 'dialectical'
(403a2g)-they
make no overt reference to physical goings-on. The 'dia-
lectical' definition of anger takes
Au'inq
to be a constituent (Rhet. 1378a3o;
Top.
15iai5); and A4vtr, according to Sens. 436aio+b2, being ,IET'
aNae'wsg,
is IeTad aaz,uaTosT. This suggests a rather more subtle physicalist
analysis of anger than that indicated in the de Anima; it is readily generalised
to cover the other emotions.
Io8 JONATHAN BARNES
essence . . . of eye"
(4V2bi8-2o).
As having a soul is having a
living body, so to have sight is to have an actual, i.e., functioning
eye. (It does not, of course, follow that only the eye is implicated
in sight.) Similar accounts are available for the four other
senses.
These remarks on the five senses do not yield a weakly
physicalist account of perception as such, for they do not
exclude the possibility of some non-physicalist mode of
sensation apart from our five senses. The further step is pre-
sented in the de Anima as a sort of analogical generalisation:
"for as the part is related to the part <e.g., sight to eye> so
perception as a whole is related to the perceptive body qua
perceptive"
(4I 2b23-s5).
A different argument is suggested
by the view that there is a central organ of perception, the
heart (e.g., Somn.
455a20; Juv. 467b28;
46gaI2):
as sight is to
the eye, so, it might seem, perception in general is to the
heart. Finally, it is worth recalling that, according to de Anima
ri, the five senses exhaust the possibilities of perception:
if that is so, and if each individual sense is physicalist, then
perception as such will be weakly physicalist.
VII
Thus Aristotle offers
weakly physicalist accounts both of the
emotions and of perception: can we go further and ascribe a
strong physicalism to him?
The emotions are
certainly supposed to have irreducibly
non-physical elements; for that is the sense of saying that
they are compounded of matter and form (above, p. IO6). If b
is an emotional
predicate, defined by
"ox
&
P", then P is
not identical with any qy.
In the illustrative case of anger,
P appears to be "x desires revenge" (403b3o). The implication
that desire, ope'4s.,
is
non-physical, occurs in a different
context at
433b
i
9;
but it is denied at de
Sensu,
436ag
(cf.
433b29
I
403a8-Io).
Perception is more problematic. According to Aristotle,
perceiving (or rather, coming
to
perceive) is an
'alteration',
JAAoiwatsn (e.g., 41oa25; 415b24; 4I6b33-5); moreover, it is
an alteration of the sense-organs (422a7; bi5; 423b30; 435a22;
ARISTOTLE S CONCEPT OF MIND lO9
Insomn.
459b6).
Aristotle explains the alteration in terms of
the sense-organ's becoming like what it comes to perceive
(4I8a4; 422a7; 423b3I), or of its 'receiving the form without
the matter' (424ai8; 425b23; 434a2g).
The position appears
to be this: when I gaze at a glass of green Chartreuse, my eyes,
or some parts of them, become green-the perceptible form of
the Chartreuse-even though none of the physical parts of the
liqueur actually enters my eyes. To see something green just
is for my eyes to become green; and so for other sense-objects
and other senses. Thus we have a purely physiological, and
hence strongly physicalist, analysis of perception.7
I doubt if this analysis was Aristotle's.
First, it is open to devastatingly obvious empirical refutation.
Secondly, it is worth saying that from the fact that perceiving
is an aAodwLats of a sense-organ, it does not follow that
preceiving is a physiological change.
Thirdly, Aristotle's repeated assertions that perception is
common to body and soul (Sens. 436b7; Mem.
45oa27;
Somn.
454a7-
I i) at least suggest that perceiving is not merely
physiological.
Fourthly, Aristotle faces the objection that his account of
perception will allow plants and inanimate objects to perceive
(424a32-b2 I; cf. Sens.
438a5sqq).
His reply is difficult; but
it issues in the clear conclusion that "smelling
<e.g.>
is some-
thing over and above
<physical>
undergoing" (424b2o).
Fifthly, the physiological analysis relies on perfectly standard
cases of aAAotiwats ; yet Aristotle explicitly says that to per-
ceive is to 'alter' and to 'undergo' only in special senses
of ciAAotoviaOat and
ITaTaXEv
(417b2-9; cf.
42gb29-430aI).
The special senses remain obscure. Perhaps 'receiving the form
without the matter' amounts to receiving the form but not
standing to it as matter. Thus if you inject green Chartreuse
(or some other green dye) into my eyeball, my eye becomes
like the Chartreuse inasmuch as its matter supports the same
form as the Chartreuse; if you show me a green Chartreuse,
my eye becomes like it in a sense-but it does not support the
same form. I doubt if
anything
more
positive than this can be
elicited from Aristotle's text: but the
negative point, that
I
This view has been presented lucidly and persuasively by T. J. Slakey,
P.R. i
961i.
110 JONATHAN BARNES
perceiving is not a purely physiological change, seems
established.8
VIII
I now turn to the case of intellect or vovsg: it is hardly necessary
to say that my discussion will trip nonchalantly over ground
wired and mined by platoons of past scholars.
Novisg parades regularly as a potential exception to psycho-
logical generalisations, and in particular to the thesis that
psychic functions are body-bound (e.g., 403a8; 407a3; b4;
408big
etc; P.A. 64iai8; G.A. 736b24; Met.
Io26a5;
E.N.
II 78a22). Such passages reflect not an unreasoned intellectual
inheritance, but an acute rational dilemma.
Two lines of thought seemed to lead to a weakly physicalist
account of vovs. First, Aristotle's empiricist principle that all
knowledge and thought ultimately depends upon sense-
experience
(cJ.
432a7; Sens.
44s5bi6;
A.Pst. 8ia38) entails that
any thinker must be, or have been, embodied: for thought
requires prior perception, and perception needs bodily organs.
Secondly, though "thinking especially seems like something
proper to the soul, . . . if even this is a sort of phantasy, or not
without phantasy, then not even this could exist without a
body" (4o3a8-Io); for phantasy, being "a movement that
comes about as a result of actual perception"
(42gai;
cf.
Insomn. 46ia14-25; 462a8), is inseparable from body. The
claim that "thought is not without phantasy" is vexatiously
indeterminate; but it is undeniably central to Aristotle's
account of the intellect (cf. 427bi6;
43IaI5;
432a8; Mem.
449b3I;
Rhet. I
378bg).
8
On all this see F. Brentano, Die Psychologie des Aristoteles (I867), pp.
79-98: "... nicht insofern wir kalt werden, empfinden wir das Kalte ...,
sondern insofern das Kalte objektiv, d.h. als Erkanntes in uns existirt, also
insofern wir die Kalte aufnehmen, ohne selber das physische Subjekt
derselben zu sein" (p. 8o; cf. pp. 86; i20n23). Compare Philoponus,
o.c. 303.3-6: SeZ VOEIV KaL 47rt' Tv aa0R4aecov dray
A'ycupev ytveaOaL avTah o&rep
'o a0aOvTcv oi
-
?
AEVK71
ytvcra& 7) a Ls i1 eAawa aM' OT rd ET&7 r<iv akrOpcv
avEV Trl
;Aqg
yvWuaTnKws ev eavTa!T at alawa7et
E1tS>Xov-raL.
It should be noted that Phys.
244b7-I5 goes out of its way to assert that
acOla7ar/ is an ordinary case of aAAotwang ;
but it also explicitly says
that the a'AAot'cats is not physical (cf
248a7-9).
ARISTOTLE S CONCEPT OF MIND I I I
There are two main opposing arguments. First, thought
seems indifferent to the physical world in at least two ways:
unlike the objects of perception, the objects of thought "are
in a sense in the soul itself-hence thinking is in a man's
power whenever he likes" (4I 7b23-4; 427b I8); moreover,
thought is not impaired by the excessively thinkable as hearing,
say, is impaired by the excessively audible
(429a3I-b5).
Secondly, Aristotle inferred the separability of thought
from the premiss that we "think of everything"
(42gaI8-26).
His argument is adopted from Plato's Timaeus
(5oE):
if x can
think of something F, then x is capable of 'becoming' F in some
sense (cf. 43iai; bI7; M.A.
70ibig-23),
i.e., x is potentially F
(e.g.,
429aI6;
b3o). Hence x is not actually F (cf. 422bi;
424a8); for if it were, "the mind's Fness would impede and
obscure the object's Fness"
(429a20).
Thus "the mind is
actually nothing before it thinks"
(429a24);
i.e., for no value
of F does "x can think" entail "x is (actually) F"-and in
particular the entailment fails for every +-predicate
(429a25).
Thus whereas each of the senses, since it contains a physical
component, must be blind to some quality or other (424aI-4),
the intellect, since it is cognisant of all qualities, can have no
physical component.
One of the functions of de Anima r 5 is to resolve this
dilemma and reconcile the opposing arguments. This notorious
chapter distinguishes two sorts of intellect: one is the 'matter'
of thought (43oaio) and "becomes all things" (43oai5); it is
called the 'passive' intellect, o raa6-TLKds vovs,9 and it is
perishable
(43oa25),
because it is inseparable from body.
The other intellect was called vovis- 7vOnTtKog by Aristotle's
successors because it "makes everything"
(43oaI5):
"And
this intellect is separable and unaffected and unmixed, being
in essence activity" (43oai8). Thus we have a characteristically
Aristotelian solution to the question of the separability of
intellect: one sort of intellect is separable, one is not.
The adequacy of Aristotle's solution depends on the nature
of the distinction he is making; but that, despite two millenia
9 Here I differ from Brentano and the Thomists who identify vovs
7raa8rfKor with 4av'ralaa; this seems to me inadmissible on linguistic
grounds. But Brentano's discussion of r , remains the best.
II2 JONATHAN BARNES
of discussion, remains quite obscure. Conceivably, the dis-
tinction in r 5 is tied to the distinction in r 4 between two
stages in thinking
(429b5-9;
cf. 417a2o-32); those stages are,
roughly speaking, the acquisition of concepts and their use.
Perhaps, then, the characteristic of 'passive' vovs is to acquire
and store concepts; it is passive inasmuch as its work depends
upon the impressions of phantasy and sense. The use of
concepts-thinking proper-is the province of creative vo0us;
it 'makes' things in the etiolated sense that concepts, the
'matter' provided by passive vovis, form the object of its
activity. In us creative intellect is dependent upon passive
intellect, and hence upon the body; but this dependence is
not logical-"x thinks" entails "x has concepts" but it does
not entail "x acquires concepts". The immortal gods may
exercise their minds without first having to stock them.
If F
5
is striving towards some such position as this, its
efforts face two large obstacles: first, it offers no account of the
nature of concept-use as opposed to concept-acquisition;
secondly, it does not answer the argument from our 'thinking
of everything', for that appears to show the separability of
passive vovsg. But no account of r
5
can hope to avoid obstacles
at least as large as these. The distinction between creative
and passive intellect appears nowhere else in Aristotle; r
5
is
a sketch-faint, careless, suggestive. Its suggestions were never
worked out.
Ix
F
5 intimates a type-(4) physicalism for passive vovs' and
non-physicalism for 'creative' vovs. This in no way commits
Aristotle to a substantialist doctrine of intellect: he should
maintain theory (iv) of p. I04 above, and not theory (ii). I think
that Aristotle appreciated this; linguistically speaking, the
de Anima almost invariably treats vovs- like any other psychic
faculty. In particular, vovs! is regularly denominated a power,
Uvvaputs
(e.g., 404a30;
414a3V,
428a3; 432aI5; 433b2); and
such language is resolutely non-substantialist.
Two passages tell in the opposite direction. First, at 408bi8
Aristotle says that "the intellect seems to come about in us
as being a sort of substance (ov3oa lSa ovaa), and seems not
ARISTOTLE S CONCEPT OF MIND I I 3
to be destroyed". But what sort of substance is vovs3? The
context is a difficult one; it is, I think, possible that the sort of
substance in question is form (cf.
42a6-9).
At least this both
explains the imperishability of vovs (for forms are not
destroyed) and also escapes substantialism (for forms are
substances only in a secondary sense).
Secondly, 430a22-3 says of 'creative' intellect that "only
when separated (xwoptuOlEi) is it just what it is; and it alone
is deathless and eternal". Some interpreters, emphasising the
tense of the participle
XcWpoaEs-,
gloss the sentence by "when
human intellect is separated from the human body", and add
that eternity in any event requires substantiality. But it is as
probable that we should think rather of the divine intellects
of Metaphysics A, and gloss by "when the thinking substance
is not physical" (for the tense see e.g., E.JN. I I56a5). This
reading leaves non-physical substances in the de Anima, but
Metaphysics and de Caelo require these anyway: the essential
point remains that vovs is an attribute of substances and not a
substance itself.
x
Aristotle thus emerges as a fairly consistent upholder of an
attribute theory of mind; and that, I suggest, is his greatest
contribution to mental philosophy.
His voice in the physicalist debate is a subtle one: first, he is
clear that one psychic part may have a different status from
another; secondly, for most psychic parts he holds a weak
physicalism of type-(3), rejecting the stronger physicalisms
of types (I) and (2); thirdly, in the case of at least two psychic
functions, opE'(tS! and vovs, he leans, hesitantly, toward non-
physicalism. (His rejection of strong physicalism of course
commits him to non-physicalism for at least some components
of psychic parts.)
This survey of Aristotle's concept of mind has been broad
in scope and deficient in the details of scholarship. My main
excuse is the belief that if the de Anima retains any purely
philosophical value, it does so on account of the very general
features I have been discussing; for Aristotle's particular
114 JONATHAN BARNES
observations and hypotheses about the mind are by and large
outgrown. I do not maintain that Aristotle's concept of mind
is correct; but it does seem to me at least as good a buy as
anything else currently on the philosophical market. Philosophy
of mind has for centuries been whirled between a Cartesian
Charybdis and a scientific Scylla: Aristotle has the look of
an Odysseus.'0
10
A draft of this paper was kindly criticised by three friends, Robert
Delahunty, Christopher Kirwan, and Howard Robinson. Of published
works I have been most stimulated by Brentano's brilliant book; and I find
myself in comfortingly close agreement with the views of Hardie (o.c.;
and Aristotle's Ethical Theoty (I968) chh. V and XVI).

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Aristotle's Concept of Mind

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