ARISTOTLE ON INTELLECTUAL CAPACITIES, ACTIVITIES, AND VIRTUES by Jonathan A. Buttaci ...

285 Pages·2016·1.99 MB·English

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
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Copyright © by Jonathan A. Buttaci
2016
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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.
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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
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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
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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 .......................................... 187
4.3 CONTEMPLATING IN ORDER TO LEARN ........................................... 190
5. COMING TO KNOW BY MAKING:
DISCOVERING PARALLELS WITH DE ANIMA III.5 ........................................... 193
5.1 INTRODUCTION AND RECAP ................................................................. 194
5.2 TWO ASPECTS OF INDUCTION .............................................................. 201
5.3 ACTIVE TEACHING, ACTIVE INQUIRY ................................................ 207
5.3.1 Socratic Lessons ........................................................................................ 207
5.3.2 An Aristotelian Parallel .............................................................................. 210
5.3.3 Coming to Know by Making ..................................................................... 217
5.3.4 Making Intelligibility ................................................................................ 220
5.3.5 Two Intellects, Two Kinds of Intellectual Virtue ..................................... 223
5.4 ARISTOTLE’S PASSIVE INTELLECT ....................................................... 228
5.5 FURTHER IMPLICATIONS ....................................................................... 234
5.5.1 Non-Rational Experience ......................................................................... 234
5.5.2 Craft and Light .......................................................................................... 236
5.5.3 (Non-)Intermittent Thinking .................................................................... 241
5.5.4 Divine and Human Intellects .................................................................... 247
5.5.5 Differing (Active) Intellectual Abilities ..................................................... 251
5.6 INQUIRY AND ABSTRACTION ................................................................ 254
5.7 KNOWING THE PLACE FOR THE FIRST TIME
(OR, TO MAKE AN END IS TO MAKE A BEGINNING) ........................ 260
BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................. 261
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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. The Light Analogy of de Anima III.5 ............................................................................................ 60
Figure 2. The Standard View of the Triple Scheme..................................................................................113
Figure 3. The Two-Dimensional Scheme ...................................................................................................134
Figure 4. Perceptual vs. Intellectual Development ...................................................................................144
Figure 5. The Default Reading of de Anima III.4 ......................................................................................157
Figure 6. The Complicating Reading of de Anima III.4 ............................................................................158
Figure 7. The Cognitive Ascents in Posterior Analytics B.19 ......................................................................186
Figure 8. Drawing Diagonals in the Meno ...................................................................................................208
Figure 9. Drawing Parallels with Aristotle in Metaphysics Θ.9 ..................................................................213
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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
APo. Analytica Posteriora
APr. Analytica Priora
Cael. de Caelo
Cat. Categoriae
de An. de Anima
EE Ethica Eudemia
EN Ethica Nicomachea
Fr. Fragmenta
GA de Generatione Animalium
GC de Generatione et Corruptione
HA Historia Animalium
Int. de Interpretatione (On Interpretation)
MA de Motu Animalium
Mem. de Memoria
Meta. Metaphysica
PA de Partibus Animalium
Phys. Physica
Po. Poetica
Pol. Politica
Prot. Protrepticus
Rep. Platonis Respublica
Resp. de Respiratione
Rhet. Rhetorica
Sens. de Sensu et Sensibilia
ST Sancti Thomae Aquinatis Summa Theologica
Top. Topica
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PREFACE
A student’s debt to his teachers resembles a child’s to his parents, and so can never be truly repaid.
Nevertheless, I endeavor to thank them here in the best way I can muster, by indicating some
question each encouraged me to ask. While each has influenced the present study in important ways,
I am of course responsible for any misstatements or misappropriations of their thought.
First, I should like to thank my first philosophy teachers and mentors at the University of
Notre Dame (for the beginning is more than half the whole). In our year-long reading of Plato’s
corpus, Prof. Jeffrey Langan first encouraged me to explore a Platonic conception of education in the
Republic, one which includes both habituation (and perhaps even indoctrination) as well as a more
reflective and dialectical program. Prof. David O’Connor first suggested to me that Metaphysics Θ
might be a singularly important key to understanding Aristotle’s contributions quite generally, since
distinctions between potentiality, being-at-an-end (ἐντελέχεια), and being-at-work (ἐνέργεια) are
exploited in interesting and indispensable ways across his thought. Finally, Prof. John O’Callaghan
first suggested the merits of an Aristotelian-Thomistic conception of mind in view of more recent
alternatives. He also first encouraged me to explore abstractionism and concept acquisition in
Aquinas, Geach and McDowell. His own scholarly work perhaps most of all led me to—and indeed
prepared me for—studies at the University of Pittsburgh.
At Pitt I have worked with many fine and brilliant philosophers, among the first are my two
co-advisors. Prof. John McDowell first suggested to me both the perils and the appeal of the Myth
of the Given (for as Chesterton says, he who has no sympathy with myths has no sympathy with
men). His distinctive characterization of the problem—that capacities proper to our rational nature
must already be operative in our getting what is gotten from perception—lies in the background of
my argument in Chapter 3. Prof. James Lennox first encouraged me—also in view of his own
work—to challenge interpretive views that have grown dominant concerning the Posterior Analytics,
suggesting that scientific discovery for Aristotle results from a methodical and intellectually-driven
inquiry, an idea which informs my Chapter 4. I am grateful to them both for their support, their
engaging conversation, and their insight. Studying with them has been an honor and a delight.
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