The Nature of Thinking in Aristotle’s De Anima 3.6-3.8

De Anima 3.6 and 3.7 are about time and space in relation to thought. De Anima 3.6 is about time and the sense in which thoughts are in time. In De Anima 3.6, Aristotle distinguishes between simple and complex thoughts and objects. It is understood that a thought is its object, so if I think a simple thought I think a simple object and if I think a complex thought I think a complex object because the object and the thought are the same thing. Aristotle wants to try to explain the sense in which thoughts are in time. When considering the relationship between thoughts and time, Aristotle runs into a difficulty. If thoughts take up a certain amount of time and I can divide those thoughts in time, then it looks like I’m making a division in the thing. If I am thinking of something like a bunny rabbit, and thinking that thought takes up a certain amount of time, is it the case that I am doing something like only thinking about half of the bunny rabbit in the first half of the time and the second half of the bunny rabbit in the second half of the time? In other words, Aristotle wants to know how we are supposed to understand the idea that a thought which is extended in time is divisible. Someone might use this as an argument against the thesis that thoughts and things are one. The thought appears to be divisible, but these divisions do not seem to correspond to divisions in the thing. Aristotle’s difficulty is about how we are to understand the temporality of thought in relation to its being identical to its objects. Complexes will be true or false. So, any proposition with a truth value will be a complex. The example Aristotle uses is “Cleon is pale.” This is a complex in that it takes two things, Cleon and pale, and combines the two things. Both “Cleon” and “pale” as individual things are simples. “Cleon is pale” and “Cleon is not pale” are both complexes in that they are synthetic, but the former combines and the latter separates. These things will be thought in time in a number of different ways. If the objects are simple or complex then the time in which they are thought will similarly be simple or complex.

A complex thought will have a single time with a division in it. That is when we say “Cleon is pale,” we can divide the time of my thinking that into the parts of the thought itself. While it is unclear from the text if “Cleon is pale” counts as a complex in this case as it might itself be a simple, we can identify examples of complexes when we have something like if/then statements as these will definitely have an articulate structure. In the case of simples, Aristotle wants to resist the idea that simple thoughts happen in a simple time, that is instantaneously. Aristotle does not think that thought works like that. Aristotle thinks that we think of simples like “pale” in an extended period of time. Aristotle anticipates an objection to this idea which is that the thought of the simple would then be divisible so I can cut it in half and I would therefore be able to then take the simple object, which is supposed to have no divisions, and find divisions in it because the time is divisible. To this, Aristotle says that there are two senses in which something can be simple or indivisible and that is whether or not something is potentially divisible or actually undivided. In the case of a simple thought extended in time, we have a case where it is actually undivided. It is one continuous time which is held together by the same thing that holds together something like a bunny rabbit or “pale.” That is, a bunny rabbit is a continuous mass of things like flesh and blood and bone, but the thing that unifies it into an individual bunny rabbit is the form. Similarly, in the thought of the bunny rabbit, we have in the time something a bit like the matter of the bunny rabbit in that the time is itself unified by the form. A group or colony of rabbits is divisible in that we could divide a group or colony of rabbits into individual rabbits, so it is like a complex thought. But a simple thought is divisible only in the sense that an individual bunny rabbit is divisible. That is, you can divide a bunny rabbit but not into other bunny rabbits or into anything other than just some matter. Similarly, you can divide the thought of a simple, but not into anything thoughtlike. If it takes several seconds to have the thought “bunny rabbit,” and one is interrupted halfway through this time, they would fail to have the thought, they would not have something like part of the thought. This is how thought relates to time, simple thoughts are in simple time and complex thoughts are in complex time. For Aristotle, all we need to understand is if the object itself is simple or complex and we get the division in time accordingly.

In De Anima 3.7, Aristotle is asking the same question as in 3.6, but in relation to spatial magnitude. The thing that thinks itself has a spatial magnitude and spatial magnitudes are involved in thought. To Aristotle, is obvious that in the case of action, cases of desire or fear where we want to pursue something or avoid it, we need to have an image. For example, if I am thirsty and I want a drink of water, I need to be able to form in my mind an image of that water and an image of the drinking of it. I cannot, however, rely on the sensation of drinking water to have that desire because then I would already have the thing that I am desiring. In order to pursue it, I need to be able to produce an anticipation somehow. In action, we think with an image. When we desire something, we take this image and make a judgment on it like “this is good” or “this is bad.” Aristotle argues both that the use of an image in the case of desire is necessary and that there is a direct analogy here with the case of believing or knowing. Aristotle’s main concern is not desire, he is simply using desire to show that images are necessary. In believing or knowing, we simply pronounce an image or deny it. Affirmation and denial in the case of believing or knowing are analogous to pursuit and avoidance in the case of desire. Similarly, the soul needs an image to either affirm or deny. Whenever we believe or know something, we do so by means of an image. Aristotle goes further in arguing that we do this even with simples. The argument is that this shows that we need an image because complexes are made of simples. At the end of the chapter, Aristotle asks us to imagine a snub nose, not as a snub nose but as hollow. In this case, what you are going to do is just try to think about the shape of the nose and imagine the flesh fading away. Similarly, if I were asked to think about the shape of a wooden block, the wood itself would fade away, and I would focus on something like a transparent cube that delineates the shape of the wooden block. However, this image of a transparent cube is not what the thought of a cube is. For example, the thought of a triangle has a certain size, but the triangle I am trying to prove something about has no size. I am not interested in the size of a triangle when I am trying to prove something about its angles. The image itself is not the thought, but Aristotle argues that we cannot get away from thinking a thought with an image and that image has to be extended in space. That is, an image has to have magnitude.

The important thing about that image is always that it is complex in a certain way. In the case of a triangle, the thought “three sided figure” is a simple thought, so in some sense the image of a triangle has to be simple in some way even though it is manifestly complex. The way Aristotle thinks geometry happens is through exploring the potentialities within simple objects and in doing so I am dividing them. I am also dividing my thoughts in time, but the original object, the triangle, is somehow a simple object. Aristotle raises a doubt that perhaps we can only think of things that are themselves magnitudes because we have to use images because images are somehow necessary for thought. There is a question about how the image of a triangle could be simple in the way that a triangle is. Aristotle’s answer is that to be triangular is itself a form of unity. This kind of unity is more obvious in the case of a bunny rabbit where rabbits are not just a pile of flesh, the blood and bones are somehow unified by its being alive. Similarly, the thing that unifies my image is not any feature of the image which is just, in a sense, treated like matter. What unifies the image is the thought of the bunny rabbit that I find in the image. One reading of what Aristotle is trying to say in this chapter is that images are the matter of thoughts. This would suggest that a lot of the confusion around the subject matter of thinking is brought about by the conflation of images with the thoughts that they are the matter of. A critique of this idea is that it would strongly suggest that passive intellect is the imagination, something Aristotle would not be too likely to accept. Aristotle argues that imagination definitely takes place in the body somewhere but would appear to also have the requisite flexibility in that, through images, imagination has the potential to become other things. So perhaps it is not the imagination, but some power within the imagination which allows it to do this.