Aristotle

and

the

Mind-Body

Problem

ROBERT HEINAMAN

In this paper I will argue that Aristotle's position on the mind-body problem is probably best characterized as dualism. The question of whether dualism is true divides into three questions: Are there immaterial, non-physical substances? Are there non-physical mental events? Are there non-physical mental properties? Since Aristotle's position is clearer with regard to the first two issues than the third, I will confine the discussion to an examination of Aristotle's position on those questions. Section I deals with Aristotle's commitments in relation to the question about substance and section II deals with the issue in relation to events. An alternative account of Aristotle's position on the second issue is examined and rejected in section III. I will argue that, with reservations, it is plausible to say that Aristotle accepts the existence of non-physical substances. On the question of mental events, I will argue that Aristotle's position is at odds with both the dualist and the physicalist views, but since in this case too it is plausible to say that Aristotle accepts the existence of non-physical events, his overall position is best classified as dualist. The evidence drawn on occurs largely in the comparatively neglected first book of De Anima. Many have thought, correctly, that Aristotle's views on the intellect commit him to some sort of dualism with regard to the rational soul, but of his position for other types of reject this as an accurate representation soul - sensitive, nutritive, etc. My argument in section I rests on no about the soul assumptions peculiar to the intellect. Aristotle's dualism the soul holds for regarding any kind of soul, including the souls of plants. section II deals However, only with psychic events which have the soul as a subject. Digestion and other actualizations of the nutritive soul are not mental events because the proper subject of digestion, for example, is the body alone.

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I What must Aristotle believe in order to hold a dualist view of the soul? Of course, he must believe that. (1) the soul is an immaterial entity, but clearly more is required. A materialist might believe that the structure or shape of some wooden object is an immaterial entity - it is not made out of matter - without abandoning his materialism. The shape, like weight or velocity, will count as a physical property, and this the materialist is happy to accept. Similarly, even if Aristotle accepted (1), he might think of the soul as a kind of physical attribute of the body and so not be what we would want to call a dualist. More is needed. Belief in the possibility of the soul's existence separately from the body suffices to make one a dualist, but Aristotle rejects that belief for at least most types of soul. If Aristotle is committed to dualism, he must be committed to a weaker version of it which admits that the soul cannot exist apart from the body. The question of whether Aristotle had some Cartesian concept of consciousness is irrelevant to the issue, as Robinson has pointed out. A materialist might accept such a concept while a dualist might reject it. Nowadays the mind-body problem revolves around the question of whether psychological entities and laws are reducible to physical entities and laws (or eliminable altogether). There is no question of Aristotle's wishing to reduce "psychic laws" to physical laws (or eliminate anything), so the relevant question with regard to Aristotle is: does he reduce psychic entities (such as souls and mental events) to material entities (such as bodies and physical changes)? The fact that Aristotle considered the soul to be an immaterial entity irreducible to matter is put beyond doubt by his arguments in De Anima 1. 3 and 4 which purport to prove that the soul is changeless.2 In 1.2, 403b25-27, Aristotle had said that the living have been thought to differ from the non-living in virtue of two characteristics movement and perception. Since it is the presence of a soul that distinguishes the living from the non-living, the soul of a living thing should explain why it is able to move. And it was thought that this explanation would first have to posit that the soul moves, and then say that the body of a living thing is caused to move

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by the soul's motion. This account entails materialism, for the soul can move only if it is a material object.3 Thus, for example, Democritus held the soul to be composed of fine spherical atoms which move, bump into coarser atoms constituting the body, and thereby cause it to move. And, of course, since Democritus' atoms were material objects he had to say that the soul was a material object. Aristotle agrees that the soul of a living thing explains why it moves as it does, but he rejects the suggestion that the soul moves the body in the manner proposed by Democritus by arguing, in 1.3 and 4, that the soul cannot change at all. Why does Aristotle reject the possibility of a soul undergoing change? As Alexander points out,4 it is because the soul is a form, and all forms are immaterial, and hence changeless.' The soul, being a form, is not a body6 and hence has no magnitude' and is not divisible into parts with magnitude. According to De Anima 409al-3

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and the arguments of Physics VI.4 and 10, this excludes the possibility of the soul's changing. 8 The conclusion that the soul is changeless was an important development in Aristotle's views which is linked to other changes of position, for example in his account of pleasure. Previously Aristotle had not hesitated to speak of the soul as the subject of change. In the Categories the soul is the substance which is the proper subject for different kinds of qualities (la25-26, 9b3335), and a distinguishing feature of a substance is its capacity to persist through a change between contraries (4al0-b19). Similarly, the Protrepticus thinks of living as a change undergone by the soul (B80, 83 - Diiring), and the Topics too speaks of the soul's changing (120b2l-26, l23a15-l7). 9 At this stage Aristotle apparently is willing to say that if F and G are qualities whose proper subject is the soul, then the soul's transition between F and G is a change in the soul. By the time he wrote Physics VII, Aristotle was no longer willing to accept this. There we find a rather strange intermediate position where some but not all transitions between different qualities of the soul are changes. The intellectual part of the soul both acquires and uses knowledge but neither is an alteration - a qualitative change - in the intellect. But this is not due to any difference between soul and matter, for the perceptive soul does undergo alterations (244b10- 12, 247a4-17, 248a6-9)10 and some transi-

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tions of state in material objects are not alterations but completions (or What Aristotle wishes to prove in VII.3 is that alteration occurs in a subject - soul or matter - only with respect to qualities which are perceptible. If the qualities in question are not of that kind but are rather conditions, states or shapes, then the subject - soul or matter - transiting between them is not thereby altered. If the qualities are perceptible, then the subject - body or soul - is altered. Since the intellect is not affected by sensible qualities, it is only the perceptive part of the soul that suffers alteration. Aristotle's ascription of change to the soul in these earlier phases does not mean that he was then a materialist, any more than in Plato's case." Rather, by the time he wrote De Anima he had more clearly thought out what was required of a proper subject of change and had concluded that such a subject could not lack magnitude. Believing that souls lack magnitude he had to conclude that souls are changeless. But why did he come to believe that a subject of change must possess magnitude? The answer can be found in Physics VI.4, 234b10-20.'z In any change there is a subject, starting-point and end-point of the change. The end-point of the change is the newly acquired feature; the starting-point is the feature lost in the change; and the subject is what persists throughout the change, what begins with the starting-point and finishes with the end-point. Suppose that a subject is changing from A to B, where B is what the 6 pEIa@6XXEI to subject "first" changes into rather than an extreme For if A is take B to rather be than black. white, 1tQw'tov). example, grey Suppose the subject is now engaged in the process of changing from A to B. Then, Aristotle argues, the subject cannot be in A as a whole for then the subject would be at the starting-point of the change rather than changing. Nor can the subject be in B as a whole for then it would be true that it has

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become B, not that it is becoming B. Since the subject cannot as a whole be in both A and B or in neither, part of the subject must be in A and part in B.13 But that means the subject of change, any subject of change, must be divisible into parts. Since the soul, like any form, is not divisible into parts, it cannot change. Therefore it is immaterial, since for Aristotle all matter is changeable and divisible. And since there is no question but that Aristotle considered the soul to be a substance, 14 the soul is an immaterial substance. But before we can secure the claim that Aristotle is a dualist, a further question must be addressed: does Aristotle consider the soul to be the organization of the body ?15 For those who think that being an organization conflicts with being a substance, this possibility is ruled out. But Meta H.2 makes it doubtful that Aristotle agrees. And if artifacts are substances, their forms are substances, but in many cases such a form will be the which organization of the artifact's material parts. So the interpretation understands Aristotle's soul to be the organization of the body which enables an organism to engage in certain types of behavior cannot be clearly ruled out on this basis. And if the soul were simply the organization of the body, then it would be far from clear that the soul is a "non-physical" entity. of Aristotle as a dualist would be very dubious. The characterization in De Anima 1. 4 But there is a conclusive objection to this interpretation: Aristotle argues that the soul is not the organization of the body. If Aristotle were to express the view that the soul is the organization of the body, what Greek word would serve for 'organization'? The possibil-

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ities seem to be: iay5 (arrangement), xgtaig or (mixture), k6yog aOv0Eaig (combination), (proportion), bi60Eaig (state) or iig (condidoes not occur in De Anima, but the next four do, in I .4 tion). The first word where Aristotle argues that the soul is not a mixture or proportion or combination of bodily parts. There are three things to be distinguished here. A combination of bodies is a juxtaposition of particles of the bodies which leaves the nature of the original particles intact. For example, I might throw sand and sawdust together in such a way that particles of sand and sawdust lie next to each other and are still particles of sand and sawdust. But when two bodies are mixed they act on one another in such a way that the natures of the original bodies are altered to a different nature - a kind of chemical reaction takes place. 16 And the proportion is simply the ratio of the amounts of the mixed or combined bodies. If, as Aristotle argues, the soul is not any kind of combination or mixture or proportion, then it cannot be an organization of bodily parts. It is useless to appeal to the notions of arrangement or state or condition and ascribe to Aristotle the view that one of these terms expresses the type of organization of bodily parts with which the soul is to be identified. For in De An. 1.4 (408al-3) Aristotle says that, unlike the soul, it would be correct to identify health or the other bodily virtues with a harmony of bodily parts. And Meta. E.19 and 20, after defining a state (bi60Eaig) as an arrangement of what has parts, says that a condition is a kind of state, and gives health as an example." So health is an arrangement of bodily parts, a condition and a state of the body; and given De An. 408al-3's contrast of the soul with health, the conclusion must be that, for Aristotle, the soul is none of these. For every term X that might express the concept of organization in Greek, Aristotle denies that the soul is an X of bodily parts. The view that Aristotle considers the soul to be some organization of the body is false. Further evidence that Aristotle rejects the view that the soul is the organization of the body is supplied by the fact that although Aristotle defines the soul as the form of the body, he at times suggests that an animal's soul is "located primarily" in the heart.'8 This would make no

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sense if the soul were the body's organization: a body's organization is not "located primarily" in any bodily part. The point is put beyond question by Aristotle's insistence (408b20-29) that the soul is unaffected by (non-fatal) damage to the body of a living thing.19 If the soul were the organization of the body that constitutes the living thing's capacity to engage in certain kinds of behavior, then the part of the soul which is an animal's capacity to see would have to comprise the organization of the animal's eyes. In which case the destruction or crippling of the eyes of an animal would at the same time destroy that part of the soul, since the relevant organization would be destroyed. But this is just what Aristotle rejects: an old man, he says, could see as well as a young man if he were given a new eye. The damage to the physical eye leaves the soul unaffected. So the relevant part of the soul continues to exist even when the bodily organization is gone, and hence the soul cannot be that organization. The soul of a living thing is not an organization of bodily parts, but rather something which supervenes on bodily parts when they have been organized in a certain way ptXXov IEg6v 'tL ovQa (ion The point is made with great clarity by eyyLVEiaL tois Alexander.2 Aristotle certainly believes that the soul of a living thing is dependent for its own existence on the existence of bodily parts arranged in a certain way .21 But the fact that this organization is a necessary condition for the soul's existence does not require us to identify it with the soul. on the body Rather the soul is a dynamis that supervenes when the organization of matter has reached certain level. From the account we find in De Generatione Animalium (735al4-17, 736a35-b4) we can see that different soul-constituting capacities will supervene on the material organization at different stages of the living thing's development. The soul is a form and all forms are immaterial entities. But forms can be related to matter in three ways: (1) A form which is a structural or physical feature of matter, e.g., the form of an artifact such as a house, or a color, or a certain arrangement of bodily parts such as health.

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(2) A form which is not an immediate structural or physical feature of matter but is supervenient and dependent for its existence on immediate physical features of matter - such as the power of a drug, according to Alexander, and the soul, according to Aristotle. (3) A form which does not depend on matter or material features for its existence. If Aristotle held the soul to be a form of the third sort he would be a Cartesian dualist. At most he thinks the intellect is such a form. If Aristotle held the soul to fall into (1), then there would be at least some plausibility in labelling him a materialist, despite the fact that the soul would still be an immaterial substance. I have argued that Aristotle believes the soul to fall into the second class of forms. Since this makes his position very like that of present day "emergent dualists", it is, I think, best to classify Aristotle as a dualist. So: on the standard account of the dualist-physicalist distinction the former accepts the existence of non-physical entities and the latter does not. Non-physical entities are explained as being entities irreducible to physical entities. On this understanding of the issue, Aristotle is a dualist. But there is a complication in that this account of the physical-nonand hence of the physicalist-dualist distinction, is physical distinction, a as to whether dispositional property inadequate. Philosophers disagree such as fragility should be considered a real property distinct from its physical base - say, the molecular structure of glass. Suppose Jones believes dispositions are real properties but rejects the identification of them with their physical bases. Then Jones might consider fragility to be an emergent property that supervenes on certain physical states but is irreducible to any of these material bases. That in no way commits Jones to denying that fragility is a physical property. Likewise, the irreducibility of a form of kind (2) need not show that it is non-physical. Given this unclarity, it also becomes unclear whether 'dualist' is the correct label to apply to Aristotle's position. Alexander' Furthermore, compares the soul with the power of a drug which is not identical to the matter it is found in or to the matter's organization. The comparison suggests that Alexander does not see any radical break with the physical when the soul supervenes, and there is no evidence to suggest that Aristotle did either. of Aristotle as a dualist remains problematic Hence, the interpretation for two reasons: (i) at least as far as I know, there is no account available

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enabling us to draw a clear distinction between non-physical and physical emergent entities or, hence, between the dualist and the physicalist; (ii) even if such an account of the physical-non-physical distinction were or is available, there is no reason to believe that it or anything like it entered into Aristotle's thinking about the soul. II Aristotle explains what he considers a psychological event to be at the end of De Anima L 1, 403a3-b19. He begins by asking whether psychic events belong only to the soul of the living thing or also have the body as a subject. And from the succeeding lines it is apparent that Aristotle equates this question to the following one: Is it true that, for any appropriate predicate F, "the soul (of the living thing) is F" entails "the body is changing?" Aristotle goes on to claim that with the possible exception of thinking, the entailment always holds. So, apart, possibly, from thought, any psychic event involves a bodily change. Aristotle then (403a24-b19) proceeds to say that for at least most psychic events, there will be a bodily change which is not merely necessary for its occurrence but serves as the matter of the psychological event which, like a material substance, is a composite of form and matter. If so, what is the form of a psychic event? The matter is a change in the body. The form will be something true of the soul since Aristotle has just explained that psychic events are common to body and soul. It cannot be a change given that that is the material part of a psychic event and a soul cannot change. Since the formal aspect of a psychic event is a feature of the soul and must also be an occurrence and not a power or condition of the soul, the only alternative among the menagerie of Aristotelian beings is an activity in the sense contrasted with change in Meta IX. 6 and EN X.4. So a psychic event, for Aristotle, is a composite of activity and change. The activity (form) takes place in the soul of a living thing and the change (matter) occurs in its body. The composite psychic event is not an activity any more than the composite human being is a soul. The end of De An. 1.1 shows that there are only two possibilities: an activity such as seeing red must be either the form of a psychological event or a composite of form and matter where the matter is a bodily change. But the second alternative is not possible. Aristotle believes that a change necessarily occupies a period of time (Phys. 234a24-31) because it is itself divisible into temporal parts with This structure of a change is determined by the analogous "magnitude". 92

structure of its path and in turn determines the time occupied by the change to have an analogous structure (Phys. 207b21-25, 219al0-14, 235a15-17). We must, of course, distinguish the divisibility of the change itself from the divisibility of the time it occupies, just as we must distinguish the divisibility of a play into the three acts constituting it from the divisibility of the time occupied by the play into three hours. The fact that a play is composed of parts with a temporal magnitude means that the play cannot be squeezed into a moment but is itself spread out over time and so must exist for a period of time. Likewise the fact that a change is composed of temporal parts with "size" means that it is spread out over a period of time and cannot be squeezed into a moment. On the other hand, an activity does not divide into temporal parts but like a point is a whole "all" of which exists whenever it exists (EN 1174b9-14). Just as a point has no spatial parts so an activity has no temporal parts. Because it is temporally indivisible an activity "wholly" exists in a moment (EN 1174a14-19, b7-9). So even if it lasts for a period of time, this will not consist in further temporal phases of the activity revealing themselves as different parts of the time occupied by a change disclose different stages of the change itself. If an activity exists at the present moment then even if it lasts for 10 seconds "all" of it is present at that first moment and it is not the case that more of it will come into existence in the future. The time following that first moment will not reveal further parts of the activity but only further phases of time occupied by the activity. Since a change not only occupies a period of time but is itself divisible into different temporal parts, whereas an activity is not divisible into temporal parts, it is as absurd to suppose that an activity could be composed of a change as it is to suppose that a spatially indivisible point could be composed of a spatially divisible magnitude. For the same reason it is absurd to suppose that the same thing could be an activity under one description and a change under a different description. This fundamental difference between activity and change explains other temporal differences between them that rule out the possibility that an activity could be "made out of a change. (1) An activity exists in a moment but a change does not. So when an activity exists in a moment there then exists no change that could constitute the activity. (2) The same result follows if Aristotle allows (as I believe he does) that an activity can exist for one and only one moment. (3) There is a first moment t when an activity A exists but there is no first moment or time when a change C exists (Phys. 236a7-27). On the proposal under consideration, the activity - A - is a composite the matter of which is 93

a bodily change - C. Then there are two possibilities. Suppose t is the first moment of activity A. Either (1) t is a limit of the time occupied by C - at t and prior to t C does not exist but for a period of time of which t is the first limit it does exist; or (2) C begins to exist before t. On (1), "all" of the temporally indivisible activity A exists at t but C does not. Therefore C could not constitute A. On (2), since C exists before t and moments are not next to one another, there will be a period of time occupied by C prior to t. Now if C is the material part of the activity, then the time needed for the change to come to be from the last moment of the period of rest until t will also be time needed for the activity's coming to be. If the change constitutes the activity in the way Socrates' flesh and bones constitute Socrates, then the stages of the change's coming to up until t will be stages of the activity's coming to be, just as stages of Socrates' body coming to be are stages of Socrates' coming to be. And the time necessary for the stages of the change prior to t to pass by will also be time necessary for the activity to come to be. So contrary to EN 1174b9-14, there will be no difference on this score between change and activity. Since, then, an activity cannot be a composite the matter of which is a bodily change, the only alternative is that an activity is the formal aspect of a psychological occurrence, i.e. it is that part of a psychological occurrence the proper subject of which is the soul. Not only do activities occur in souls, they occur only in souls. This claim receives support from the examples of activities listed by Aristotle which are all psychic occurrences: thinking, perceiving, living, living well, pleasure.24 And the clear implication of EN 1173b7-13 is that the soul is the subject even of activities that are bodily pleasures. Further, a soul has no magnitude and it is certain at least that the nature of an activity is not such as to demand that its proper subject be an entity possessing magnitude. Phys. VI. 4's argument that the subject of a change possesses magnitude rests on a distinctive feature of change: it has a path with starting-point and end-point (and intermediate points) which are specifically different. And it is consequently argued that - if A and B are two such features on a path of change then since a changing subject cannot be A as a whole or B as a whole, part of

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the subject must be A and another part B. But an activity has no path. There is no distance from one quality, quantity or place to another covered by the subject of an activity. So VI.4's argument cannot be applied to derive the conclusion that the subject of an activity possesses magnitude." the indivisibility of the subject of an activity may be necesFurthermore, sary given Aristotle's view that a change, its subject and time are all alike divisible or indivisible (Phys.. 235a13-b5), whereas the time of an activity may be indivisible (EN 1174a14-19, b7-14). For this may imply that the subject of an activity cannot be necessarily divisible, as any material object is. Many will object that activities cannot be restricted to psychic events because, e.g., walking and housebuilding must (or can) be counted as activities. One motivation for this view is the "tense-test" according to which Xing is an activity if "A is Xing" entails "A has Xed". But on Aristotle's own view (Phys. VI.6) "A is walking" entails "A has walked". Again, activities are ends, but people may walk for its own sake, and in that case it is an activity. I cannot fully reply to this objection here, but it rests on a misunderstanding of Aristotle's distinction, including the failure to appreciate that activities and changes fall under hierarchies of species and genera just as items in other categories do (Phys.. V.4). Aristotle is drawing a distinction between mutually exclusive classes of beings, not between verbs or verbphrases. Nor is the distinction based on a grammatical difference. In Phys. VI. 6 Aristotle argues that it may be simultaneously true that A is changing and A has changed, but this does not mean at all that a change is an activity. Suppose A changes place from B to E in time t1 to t4.

Aristotle thinks that there are infinitely many points (or places) along the path B-E to which A can be said to be changing in the course of tct4. VI.6's claim is that if we pick out one of these, say the change from B to D, then

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when A is changing from B to D, A has changed a different change, say from B to C (and infinitely many others). This does not show that change is an activity for two reasons. (i) In the "tense-test" it must be the same change that is referred to by the present and the perfect (Phys. 231b28-232al), but in VI.6 different changes are referred to by the present and perfect. (ii) The tense-test, properly understood, does not state that the truth of one statement is or is not simultaneous with the truth of another statement. Rather it asserts that non-linguistic states of affairs (or events) are or are not simultaneous. In VI.6 "A is and "A has be true statements, changing" changed" may simultaneously but the relevant point is that the state of affairs referred to by the second is earlier than the event referred to by the first (236b34, 237b5). Here it is also essential to bear in mind that just as "A's walking"and "A's walking from B to D" denote the same being, so "A is walking" and "A is walking from B to D" both refer to the same being. And we have already seen that it is impossible for the same thing to be an activity and a change. Note too that housebuilding (or walking), like changes and unlike activities, (1) can be fast or slow, and so (2) must occupy time; (3) is divisible into parts specifically different from each other and the whole (cf. Phys. VI.4, EN X . 4) ; (4) has a divisible path with different starting- and end-points; (5) ends with an old feature lost and a new feature deposited in the subject of change; (6) has an end - the house - distinct from itself and so (7) is not indefinitely continuable; (8) depends for its species on what happens later: if no house results it wasn't housebuilding after all. Furthermore, these characteristics of housebuilding (or walking) are unrelated to the question of whether the housebuilder engaged in housebuilding for its own sake or as a means to an end. For example, Jones' housebuilding for its own sake cannot bring it about that his housebuilding need not occupy time or is indivisible into specifically different stages.26 As Aristotle explains in Meta. IX.6, the end (in the relevant sense) of walking is a limit of the walk. Since

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walking and housebuilding cannot be their own limits they cannot be ends in the relevant sense. Now in order to see that the above interpretation of a psychic event fits Aristotle's text, one has to take into consideration an ambiguity in terms referring to psychic events. This ambiguity corresponds to the ambiguity of terms referring to substances which are composites of form and matter. In the Metaphysics terms such as 'man' and 'horse' are used either to refer to the form on its own, i.e., in these cases, the soul, or to the composite of form and matter." Similarly for psychological terms such as 'perception' and 'anger': they refer to composites of form (activity) and matter (change) but can also be understood to refer to the activity alone. And this is what 'anger' denotes when the dialectician defines anger as the desire to return pain for pain (403a30-31). Omitted is any reference to the matter of the composite a bodily change - which must be taken into consideration by the natural scientist who studies anger. (The same ambiguity will apply to 'desire').28

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At the end of Book II (424b16-18) Aristotle says that smelling is something over and above undergoing a change (1tOXELVTL), i.e. over and above the matter of smelling, viz. perceiving (16 pv oO.ta08aL xai aLo6dveo6aL). 'Perceiving' here refers to the formal aspect of the perception apart from the change in the body of the smeller. It must do so if it states the formal aspect of the perception. For if 'perception' here denoted a composite, then perception could not be what smelling is over and above (napa) a bodily change. So a typical psychological event is a change in the body as well as an activity, just as Socrates is flesh and bones as well as a soul. Perception, events recollection, anger, fear and shame (e.g.) are bodily (awpaIix6v) (De An. 427a27, Parva Nat. 453al4-15, 26, EN l128b13-l5), unlike thinking which is not a bodily actuality (De An. 427a26-27, De Gen. Anim. 736b21-29, EN 1117b28-31), even if it requires one (viz. imagination) in order to occur in human beings. 21 So while Aristotle disagrees with the materialist in holding a psychological event to be not reducible to a bodily change, he also disagrees with the dualist in holding a psychological event to be a bodily event, for the matter of such an event is a physical change. The relation between the change and activity composing a psychic event can be causal. Which way the causal relation runs will vary with the type of the psychic event. Thus, at De An. 408b15-18 Aristotle says that in the case of recollection the change occurring in the body may be caused by the soul, i.e., I suggest, by the form of recollection, an activity occurring in the soul. On the other hand, in the case of perception the causal chain must proceed in the opposite direction - a sequence of changes in the body leads to the occurrence of an activity in the soul. Similarly, Parva Nat. 436b6-7 says that perception comes to be in the soul via the body. 30 It is in this way that, in the case of psychic events, the soul is an efficient cause of bodily events. David Charles3' has objected that the soul cannot be an efficient cause of physical events because any such cause must have extension and magnitude and be divisible. A mover moves another thing only if it comes into contact with the moved object. Given Aristotle's definition of contact,32 only a material object can have contact, and that

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with another material object. So a mover, like a moved object, must have extension and magnitude. The soul lacks magnitude and extension, and therefore it cannot be a mover, or at least can be one only incidentally in virtue of existing in matter which is, properly, a mover. But Aristotle believes only that whatever moves an object naturally must do so by coming into contact with it and hence itself suffers a reaction from the moved object (Phys. 20la24-25, 198a27-29, 202a3-9, De Gen. Anim. 768b15-25). And as Aristotle points out in De Anima (406b2425), it is precisely not in this way that the soul moves the body but "through choice and thought". Aristotle does not elaborate, but since he is explicitly ruling out the soul's changing being a cause of the animal's motion, 'choice' and `thought' can only refer to activities (or perhaps sequences of activities): choice and thought must be actualities and there is no other kind of actuality that is an occurrence available in Aristotle's ontology.33 Further, De Gen. et. Corr. distinguishes two types of efficient cause. In every case the moved object will be a physical magnitude, but only certain movers properly touch the moved object, viz. those which themselves have 5, 10-12; cf. De Gen. Anim. position and magnitude (322b32-323al, In these cases the mover will be a moved mover because it will 768b15-25). in turn be acted on by the moved object. So if A moves B in this way, both A and B have magnitude, and A will touch B and B will touch A, and A will move B and B will move A. But sometimes the mover A is without magnitude, and then A will "touch" B but not be touched or, hence, moved by B in return (ia bi 1tOLEL 1ta8f] 6vIa - 328a22; cf. 323a13-34, De An. 406a3-4, Phys. 258al8This describes the relation between soul and body demanded by Aristotle's account of self-motion in Phys. VIII.5. The soul is immaterial and without magnitude and hence cannot be touched by the body which it moves. And so it cannot be moved in return, and hence is an unmoved mover. So it is clear that Aristotle does not believe that only material bodies can be efficient causes of change.

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III To close I will consider a possible objection to my conclusion that what a psychic event is over and above a physical change is an activity. For and on this view according to one popular view Aristotle is a functionalist , a mental event is, in addition to a material change, a certain functional characteristic; or perhaps rather the material change which is (alone) the mental event has such a characteristic. According to functionalism a certain type of mental event is to be defined in terms of its causal role, specifically in terms of its causal relations to sensory input, behavioral output, and other mental states. This would allow Aristotle to give a materialist account of psychological events for a physical event may have such a causal role. But whether the causal role is counted as a physical or non-physical property, it will be a disposition of the material change which is the matter of the psychic event and not, as I claimed, an activity. Hence, the form of a psychic event is not an activity possibly causing or caused by the bodily change but the causal role of that change. It should be noted, to begin with, that there is no evidence that Aristotle shares the belief which is one of the main motivations of functionalism, viz. the belief that the same mental state can have different physical realizations. For example, different species of animal can, it is said, have the same mental state even though its physical realization will differ in the different species. And then it is concluded that a type of mental event cannot be identified with a type of physical event. On the other hand, functionalism easily handles this possibility of multiple realizations. It is true that Aristotle allows that the same psychological event may be found in different species of animal (Hist. Anim. 588a15f. ; cf. De Part. Anim. 639a15-22, 645b3-6) but nothing he says suggests that he believes that the physical basis of the same psychological state will vary. It may be that he thought, e.g., that boiling blood is the physical basis of anger in every species of animal that can experience anger. There are good reasons to reject the view that Aristotle is a functionalist. To begin with, for the functionalist the only essential features of a psychological event are its functional features. Thus, while brain matter may in

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fact realize pain in man, it is possible that eventually some synthetic material should come to play the causal role of pain, and then the synthetic material would realize pain. Generally, it is an essential feature of functionalism that it allows the same psychological state to be realized in different types of matter or event. Aristotle rejects this. At the close of De An. I.1 he says that it is part of the definition of anger that it is boiling blood. 36 He does not say that it is in part matter which must have features enabling it to play the causal role of anger. Similarly, fear is defined as refrigeration (De Part. Anim. 667al2-19, 692a24-25, Rhet. 1389b32), i.e. as being that specific type of change, not merely as whatever type of change has certain causal features. Further, suppose one accepts, as I do, Richard Sorabji's interpretation 31 according to which the vision of a red object consists in, as far as its matter is concerned, the eye-jelly becoming red. Could this specific type of change not be necessary for the perception of red? Could the matter of seeing red, for Aristotle, be a change to yellow, green or any other sensible quality? No, because Aristotle thinks that the perception of a sensible quality involves the sense organ becoming like the perceived quality (De An. 418a3-6, 422a7, b14-16, 423b27-424a2, 424a7-10, 17-18, 425b22-24). If so, the specific change of becoming red is necessary for the perception of red, and a similar point applies to the rest of the five senses: the organ must acquire the specific quality perceived. Contrary to a functionalist view, Aristotle considers specific types of perception to be tied down to specific types of bodily change. Secondly, Aristotle allows that one's body can be in the same condition as it is when one is in a certain psychological state but not be in that psychological state (De An. 403a21-22). This is incompatible with a materialistic functionalism for a physical state which realizes a certain psychological state in human beings cannot fail to have the functional features which make it the realization of that psychological state when it exists in a person. Thirdly, if we look at some of the formal definitions of psychological events given by Aristotle, they often fail to conform to the functionalist style of definition. For example, in Rhet. 11.3 Aristotle first defines growing calm as the quieting of anger and then explains what can cause it. Consider the psychological occurrence of theoretical contemplation. A cause of this event will is the be the theoretical which typical knowledge

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potentiality for that actuality, just as knowledge of the art of housebuilding is a cause of its actuality of housebuilding (Meta. 1032b21-23, De Gen. Anim. 730b15-19, De Gen. et Corr. 324a35-bl, 335b32-33). But Aristotle rules out defining the actuality in terms of the potentiality (Meta. 1049b1217, De An. 415a18-20). So not all of the typical causes of contemplation are used to define it, and a parallel point holds for any psychological occurrence. Again, when Aristotle says at EN 1177b2 that nothing comes to be from contemplation apart from the contemplation itself, this means at least that the definition of contemplation will not incorporate any statement asserting that it causes certain effects. Nor could any final causes be reSo the psychological event of ferred to in a definition of contemplation. is defined not contemplation functionally by Aristotle, and therefore he cannot have wanted, in general, to give a functional account of mental events. Finally, a functional characteristic is a quality - a disposition - whereas a psychological event is an event, falling into the category of doing (1tOLELV) or suffering Aristotle can no more allow an event to be constituted by a quality than he can allow a substance to be constituted out of qualities (De An 410al3-22; Meta. 1038b23-27, 1039a30-32, 1070b2-4, 1073a36, 1086b37-1087a4, 1088b2-4; cf. Phys. 265al5-16). The form of an event must be an event, just as the form of a substance must be a substance. 31 University College London

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