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.

This book reconstructs the theory of signification implicit in Aristotle s De Interpretatione and its psychological background in hisDe Anima. The study develops in three steps that correspond to the three elements involved in every notion of signification: (1) the phonetic element or significans, called phone by Aristotle, (2) the significatum, i. e. what the phonetic material stands for, and (3) the relation between significans and significatum. This work breaks new ground by connecting the linguistic and psychological aspects of Aristotle s theory of signification."

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.

This book treats of the Problem of Psychology and the attempts which have been made to solve it; The Nature of Soul and its specific Forms; The Intellectual and Active Powers. “The acquisition of knowledge is always something high and honourable; but one form of knowledge is superior to another either in virtue of the self-contained simplicity of its truths or by the greater dignity and wondrousness of its contents: and on both these grounds the investigation of the soul might with justice claim a foremost place. And, besides, the knowledge of it is thought to have important bearings on truth generally and especially on nature: for soul is as it were the prime factor in animal existence. The object of our enquiry is to observe and to discover both the historical development and the essential nature of the soul, and further to find out the phenomena occurring in connection with it — phenomena of which some are thought to be affections peculiar to the soul itself, others, while owing their existence to the soul, are thought to belong to the animal nature taken as a whole...”

Argues that Aristotle's psychology is shaped by his critical reception of earlier theories of soul, including the Presocratic and Platonic.

V. 1. Science.