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Thinking Forms in Images: Aristotle on Intellectual

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Thinking Forms in Images: Aristotle on Intellectual THINKING FORMS IN IMAGES: ARISTOTLE ON INTELLECTUAL CAPACITIES, ACTIVITIES, AND VIRTUES by Jonathan A. Buttaci BA, University of Notre Dame, 2009 MA, University of Pittsburgh, 2014 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2016 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Jonathan A. Buttaci It was defended on June 13, 2016 and approved by James Allen, Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto Kristen Inglis, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh Sean Kelsey, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame Dissertation Co-Director: James Lennox, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh Dissertation Co-Director: John McDowell, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh ii Copyright © by Jonathan A. Buttaci 2016 iii THINKING FORMS IN IMAGES: ARISTOTLE ON INTELLECTUAL CAPACITIES, ACTIVITIES, AND VIRTUES Jonathan A. Buttaci, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2016 Aristotle’s active intellect has been a subject of much interpretive controversy over the centuries. Some have said it is the divine mind, others a god-like power of the human soul. Most begin by asking what the active intellect is; instead, I first ask what it does. Upon a close reading of de Anima III.5, I conclude that the active intellect activates or actualizes potentially intelligible objects, making them to be actually or actively intelligible for thinking. Accordingly, on my view, the active intellect is not responsible for initiating particular episodes of thinking for an individual, nor is it responsible for the intelligibility of the world in general. Rather, as I go on to argue, the active intellect plays a distinctive role in learning and discovery by making intelligible objects available for individual knowers. To understand this role more precisely, I consider Aristotle’s idea that we learn by doing: not only do we become builders by building and brave by doing brave things, but we also get knowledge of triangles by thinking about triangles. In my investigation into his account of intellectual learning I draw on the Posterior Analytics and Metaphysics. I conclude that Aristotle distinguishes two sorts of intellectual activity when students are learning about triangles: they think about specific proofs in order to gradually grasp them, but they can also manipulate diagrams to discover proofs not yet considered, perhaps by drawing parallel lines or bisecting angles. This latter activity, by which students search for and uncover intelligible content in perceptual particulars, is the distinctive function of the active intellect. It is productive, then, like light, which does not create the color of things but rather reveals colored things as they already are. In doing so, however, the active intellect does not act as some intellectual spotlight, but rather as the familiar capacity to explore and move about one’s world, a capacity to inquire that is shared by the toddler and the scientist alike. The active intellect therefore directs our perceptual engagement in inquiry, so that we may hunt down, discover, and consider the correct intelligible forms in the images. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION AND PRÉCIS ................................................................................... 1 1.1 AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL FRAME ................................................................. 3 1.2 CHAPTER TWO: ARISTOTLE’S INTELLECTS .......................................... 4 1.3 CHAPTER THREE: LEARNING BY DOING ............................................... 8 1.4 CHAPTER FOUR: TYPES OF PRIOR INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITY ........ 9 1.5 CHAPTER FIVE: ACTIVITIES IN INQUIRY AND DISCOVERY ............ 13 1.6 LET THE INQUIRY BEGIN ......................................................................... 16 2. WHAT DOES ACTIVE NOUS ACTIVATE? TOWARD AN INTERPRETATION OF DE ANIMA III.5 ........................................ 17 2.1 EXAMINING CONTEMPORARY VIEWS ................................................... 21 2.1.1 The Text of de Anima III.5 ......................................................................... 21 2.1.2 A Brief Survey of Views ............................................................................... 24 2.1.3 The Contemporary Consensus in Focus ..................................................... 28 2.1.4 Evidence for the Contemporary Consensus................................................ 40 2.1.5 First Objections to the Contemporary Consensus ...................................... 44 2.1.6 A Second Version of the Contemporary Consensus ................................... 54 2.2 AGAINST THE CONTEMPORARY CONSENSUS .................................... 57 2.2.1 A New Argument Against the Consensus................................................... 57 2.2.2 The Two Analogies Introduced .................................................................. 59 2.2.3 The Two Analogies in Tension ................................................................... 61 2.2.4 “Like Light, Which in a Way…” ................................................................. 62 2.2.5 Sicut Cervus… ............................................................................................. 67 2.2.6 …Ita Anima Mea ......................................................................................... 71 2.2.7 An Inconsistent Triad ................................................................................. 73 2.3 DEVELOPING AN ALTERNATIVE PICTURE .......................................... 76 2.3.1 An Expected Development ......................................................................... 76 v 2.3.2 Further Specifying Intellectual Poiēsis and Pathētika................................ 80 2.3.3 Still Further Questions ................................................................................ 82 2.3.4 Learning, Generic and Specific ................................................................... 83 3. RECOGNIZING ARISTOTLE’S POTENTIAL: FIRST POTENTIALITY AND THE POSSIBILITY OF LEARNING BY DOING .. 84 3.1 ARISTOTLE’S LEARNING PRINCIPLE ..................................................... 88 3.1.1 The Learning Principle Introduced ............................................................ 88 3.1.2 The Learning Principle in Metaphysics Θ.5 ............................................... 90 3.1.3 Intellectual Habits and Habituation ........................................................... 95 3.1.4 Toward a Generic Specification of the Learning Principle ........................ 97 3.1.5 The Incoherence Challenge to the Learning Principle .............................. 99 3.1.6 The Learning Principle in Metaphysics Θ.8 ............................................. 102 3.1.7 Summary and Conclusions ........................................................................ 108 3.2 THE TRIPLE SCHEME................................................................................ 110 3.2.1 The Triple Scheme Introduced .................................................................. 110 3.2.2 The Standard View of the Triple Scheme .................................................. 113 3.2.3 Initial Worries about the Standard View .................................................... 118 3.2.4 A Non-Standard Defender of the Core Claim ............................................ 121 3.3 AN ALTERNATIVE ACCOUNT ................................................................. 125 3.3.1 A Path Forward.......................................................................................... 125 3.3.2 Examining the Learning Principle: Scylla and Charybdis ....................... 126 3.3.3 Examining the Core Claim: Toward an Amended View .......................... 130 3.3.4 Squaring the Triple Scheme ...................................................................... 134 3.4 OBJECTIONS AND REPLIES .................................................................... 137 3.4.1 Avoiding Redundancy from the Start ........................................................ 137 3.4.2 Returning to Natural Capacities ............................................................... 140 3.4.3 The Broader Purpose of de Anima II.5 ..................................................... 144 3.5 RECOGNIZING ARISTOTLE’S POTENTIAL ......................................... 145 4. CONTEMPLATING IN ORDER TO LEARN: SOME PROPOSALS REGARDING PRIOR INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITY ........... 147 4.1 INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITY IN THE DE ANIMA ................................... 151 4.1.1 Intellectual Identity, Activity, and Potentiality .......................................... 151 vi 4.1.2 A Potential Complication .......................................................................... 154 4.1.3 Avoiding the Complication ........................................................................ 161 4.2 INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITIES IN THE POSTERIOR ANALYTICS .... 167 4.2.1 Prior Energeia and Preexisting Gnōsis ..................................................... 167 4.2.2 The Place of Experience in Metaphysics A.1 ............................................. 171 4.2.3 Framing an Account of Posterior Analytics B.19 ...................................... 176 4.2.4 Toward an Alternative Account of Posterior Analytics B.19 ..................... 182 4.2.5 Some Clarifications of the Alternative Picture .........................................
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