Aristotle's Psychology of Signification

Aristotle's Psychology of Signification

Author: Simon Noriega-Olmos

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 3110289873

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This book reconstructs the theory of signification implicit in Aristotle’s De Interpretatione and its psychological background in his writing De Anima, a project often envisioned by scholars but never systematically undertaken. I begin by explaining what sort of phonetic material, according to Aristotle, can be a significans and a phônê. To that end, I provide a physiological account of which animal sounds count as phônê, as well as a psychological evaluation of the cognitive content of the phônai under consideration in De Interpretatione: names, verbs, and assertive sentences. I then turn to noêmata, which, for Aristotle, are the psychological reference and significata of names, verbs and assertive sentences. I explain what, for Aristotle, are the logical properties a significatum must have in order to be signified by the phonetic material of a name, verb or assertive sentence, and why noêmata can fulfil those logical conditions. Finally, I elucidate the significans-significatum relation without making use of the modern semantic triangle. This approach is consonant with Aristotle’s methodology and breaks new ground by exploring the connection between the linguistic and psychological aspects of Aristotle’s theory of signification.


Aristotle's Psychology of Signification

Aristotle's Psychology of Signification

Author: Simón Noriega-Olmos

Publisher: de Gruyter

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9783110287653

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This book reconstructs the theory of signification implicit in Aristotle's De Interpretatione and its psychological background in his writing De Anima, a project often envisioned by scholars but never systematically undertaken. I begin by explaining what sort of phonetic material, according to Aristotle, can be a significans and a phônê. To that end, I provide a physiological account of which animal sounds count as phônê, as well as a psychological evaluation of the cognitive content of the phônai under consideration in De Interpretatione: names, verbs, and assertive sentences. I then turn to noêmata, which, for Aristotle, are the psychological reference and significata of names, verbs and assertive sentences. I explain what, for Aristotle, are the logical properties a significatum must have in order to be signified by the phonetic material of a name, verb or assertive sentence, and why noêmata can fulfil those logical conditions. Finally, I elucidate the significans-significatum relation without making use of the modern semantic triangle. This approach is consonant with Aristotle's methodology and breaks new ground by exploring the connection between the linguistic and psychological aspects of Aristotle's theory of signification.


The Powers of Aristotle's Soul

The Powers of Aristotle's Soul

Author: Thomas Kjeller Johansen

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2012-10-18

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0191633011

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Aristotle is considered by many to be the founder of 'faculty psychology'—the attempt to explain a variety of psychological phenomena by reference to a few inborn capacities. In The Powers of Aristotle's Soul, Thomas Kjeller Johansen investigates his main work on psychology, the De Anima, from this perspective. He shows how Aristotle conceives of the soul's capacities and how he uses them to account for the souls of living beings. Johansen offers an original account of how Aristotle defines the capacities in relation to their activities and proper objects, and considers the relationship of the body to the definition of the soul's capacities. Against the background of Aristotle's theory of science, Johansen argues that the capacities of the soul serve as causal principles in the explanation of the various life forms. He develops detailed readings of Aristotle's treatment of nutrition, perception, and intellect, which show the soul's various roles as formal, final and efficient causes, and argues that the so-called 'agent' intellect falls outside the scope of Aristotle's natural scientific approach to the soul. Other psychological activities, various kinds of perception (including 'perceiving that we perceive'), memory, imagination, are accounted for in their explanatory dependency on the basic capacities. The ability to move spatially is similarly explained as derivative from the perceptual or intellectual capacities. Johansen claims that these capacities together with the nutritive may be understood as 'parts' of the soul, as they are basic to the definition and explanation of the various kinds of soul. Finally, he considers how the account of the capacities in the De Anima is adopted and adapted in Aristotle's biological and minor psychological works.


Form without Matter

Form without Matter

Author: Mark Eli Kalderon

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2015-01-29

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0191027731

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Mark Eli Kalderon presents an original study in the philosophy of perception written in the medium of historiography. He considers the phenomenology and metaphysics of sensory presentation through the examination of an ancient aporia. Specifically, he argues that a puzzle about perception at a distance is behind Empedocles' theory of vision. Empedocles conceives of perception as a mode of material assimilation, but this raises a puzzle about color vision, since color vision seems to present colors that inhere in distant objects. But if the colors inhere in distant objects how can they be taken in by the organ of sight and so be palpable to sense? Aristotle purports to resolve this puzzle in his definition of perception as the assimilation of sensible form without the matter of the perceived particular. Aristotle explicitly criticizes Empedocles, though he is keen to retain the idea that perception is a mode of assimilation, if not a material mode. Aristotle's notorious definition has long puzzled commentators. Kalderon shows how, read in light of Empedoclean puzzlement about the sensory presentation of remote objects, Aristotle's definition of perception can be better understood. Moreover, when so read, the resulting conception of perception is both attractive and defensible.


Evil in Aristotle

Evil in Aristotle

Author: Pavlos Kontos

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-02-22

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 1107161975

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Provides the first full study of Aristotle's notion of evil and sheds light on its content, potential, and influence.


Aristotle's Anthropology

Aristotle's Anthropology

Author: Geert Keil

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-05-30

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 1107192692

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The first collection of essays on Aristotle's philosophy of human nature, covering the metaphysical, biological and ethical works.