The Status of Souls as Hupokeimena in Aristotle

§1. The Current Debate

It is well known that Aristotle thinks that plants, animals, and human beings can engage in various activities by virtue of their having souls, indeed not just any sort of souls but souls of the relevant kind as to bestow the particular vital capacities they possess as plants, animals, or human beings (DA II.2, 414a12–13; DA I.4, 408b13–15; and DA I.5, 411a26–b2). For Aristotle, the soul of a living corporeal substance (i.e., a plant, animal, or human being) is a principle, i.e., a cause or ground, not only of that substance’s life but also its characteristic powers, e.g., to nourish and reproduce itself, self-locomote, perceive, desire, think, reason, and/or etc. (see DA II.4, 415b12–14 and II.2, 413b11–12). But what about these souls themselves? Does Aristotle think that our souls not only ground the life and psychological powers that we have but also are themselves literally alive and capable of engaging in whatever mental activities that we can?¹

Many scholars have invoked a well-known passage in DA I.4 to argue that Aristotle does not think this. The passage is occasioned by Aristotle’s acknowledging the following ‘difficulty’:

In response to this difficulty, Aristotle first notes that even if these psychological affections do essentially involve motion, it doesn’t follow that the soul is what undergoes the motion; the soul could be what experiences the mental affection (e.g., the pain or pleasure), while the motion involved takes place in the body rather than in the soul.² But then Aristotle makes a second point:

Jonathan Barnes refers to this as Aristotle’s ‘celebrated Rylean passage’ because, Barnes claims, it anticipates Ryle’s famous claim that it is a category mistake to treat one’s mind (or soul) as if it were a thing in its own right, a literal subject of mental states alongside the corporeal substance that oneself is. (I shall refer to anything that literally perceives, thinks, etc. as a ‘literal subject’ of such activities). Indeed, Barnes appeals to this and other passages to argue that Aristotle ‘construe[s] the soul not as a substance (like, say, the heart or the brain) but as an attribute (like, say, life or health)’ (1971: 103). Many other scholars have agreed with Barnes and likewise claimed that the above passage shows that Aristotle’s position is that a thing’s soul is not itself something which can perceive, think, or engage in any other mental activity but instead only something (viz., a form) by virtue of having which something else (e.g., an animal or human) can engage in such activities.⁴

Those who endorse this view suppose that Aristotle’s thought is that the former locution (‘the soul pities, learns, thinks, etc.’) is better avoided because it incorrectly suggests the soul itself is a thing which pities, learns, thinks, etc. The latter locution (‘a human being does these things by virtue of his/her soul’) is better because it indicates instead that the soul is only something by virtue of which something else (viz., the human being whose soul it is) does these things. (Compare: one might think it is better not to say that one’s eyes see but instead that one sees by virtue of one’s eyes, for though one’s eyes are certainly involved in seeing, one’s eyes are not what literally sees or has any visual experiences; instead, oneself is.)

However, other authors have disputed this ‘Rylean’ interpretation of the passage and offered alternative accounts of why Aristotle thinks it is ‘better not to say that the soul pities or learns or thinks but instead that a human being does these things by virtue of his/her soul’ which do not depend on Aristotle’s denying that souls are literal subjects of such activities.⁵ Some of these authors not only defend alternative interpretations of this particular passage but also offer other alleged evidence in favor of their claim that Aristotle does think that our souls are substances which are literal subjects of various properties, states, and activities, including mental activities like perceiving, thinking, and reasoning. Let us call this latter interpretation of Aristotle’s position ‘the Literal Subject Interpretation.’

Those who defend the Literal Subject Interpretation have offered three main kinds of arguments for it. First, Christopher Shields has argued based on various texts from Aristotle’s Categories and Metaphysics that Aristotle thinks the forms of corporeal substances (including souls) underlie non-substantial features (or πάθη) as ‘underlying subjects’ (ὑποκείμɛνα) for such features in the same way that the corporeal substances themselves are ‘underlying subjects’ (ὑποκείμɛνα) for such features. Since the latter are literal subjects of the non-substantial features they underlie, one might think that Aristotle thinks souls are likewise literal subjects of the capacities, states, and activities they too underlie.⁶ Second, Jason Carter has recently argued that a certain passage from Metaph. Δ.18 (in which Aristotle refers to life being ‘in the soul primarily’ (ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ πρώτῃ) and in human beings in virtue of their souls) indicates that Aristotle thinks that at least some properties (e.g., being alive) are attributable to corporeal substances in virtue of their having souls which themselves have those properties. Moreover, Carter invokes both this passage and Cat. 2, 1a23–b3, where Aristotle refers to knowledge being in the soul and the soul as something that underlies (i.e., a ὑποκɛίμɛνον for) knowledge, to argue that Aristotle really does think souls are literal subjects of mental states and activities.⁷ Third, there are surprisingly many passages in which Aristotle speaks of souls doing things such as ‘discriminating’ (κρίνɛιν), ‘knowing’ (γνωρίζɛιν, γιγνώσκɛιν), ‘understanding’ (ϕρονɛῖν), ‘reasoning’ (διάνοιɛιν, νοɛῖν), ‘conceiving’ (ὑπολαμβάνɛιν), and ‘perceiving’ (αισθάνeσθαι).⁸ Some authors, including Shields and Carter, contend that these passages – as well as those where Aristotle speaks of various mental capacities and activities as capacities and activities ‘of’ the soul⁹ – indicate that we should take seriously the idea that Aristotle thinks our souls are in fact things that discriminate, know, understand, perceive, and so forth, contrary to what a ‘Rylean’ reading of the above DA I.4 passage would suggest.¹⁰

Given these three lines of alleged evidence for the Literal Subject Interpretation, as well as the dispute over how to interpret the aforementioned DA I.4 passage, there is a need to examine the question of whether Aristotle thinks our souls are alive and literal subjects of mental states from a more general perspective, one that takes into account relevant texts from not only Aristotle’s De Anima but also his Metaphysics, Categories, and Posterior Analytics. This article is designed to do just that.

In what follows, I argue that the evidence favors the view that Aristotle does not think our souls are literally alive or literal subjects of any mental capacities, states, or activities. In §2, I offer a prima facie case for this position, a case that aligns with and yet also expands upon what other opponents of the Literal Subject Interpretation have argued. Then, in §§3–4, I address the first of the three above arguments for the Literal Subject Interpretation. More specifically, in §3 I argue, in agreement with Shields, that Aristotle does think the souls of living corporeal substances are ‘things that underlie’ (i.e., ‘ὑποκείμɛνα for’) various properties of those substances, including the life and various vital (including mental) capacities of those substances. However, in §4 I carefully review what Aristotle says to clarify what he means by an ‘underlying thing’ (a ‘ὑποκɛίμɛνoν’) in this context. Based on this clarification, I argue (in contrast to Shields) that the fact that Aristotle thinks souls are ὑποκείμɛνα which underlie such things does not entail that he thinks they are literal subjects of the features they underlie. Given this, I conclude that Aristotle’s characterizing souls as ὑποκείμɛνα in this way should not lead us to abandon what I argued in §2 should be our default way of understanding his position; namely, that he does not think souls are literal subjects of life or any mental capacities, states, or activities. Building on this discussion, in §§5–6 I proceed to address the other two arguments for the Literal Subject Interpretation mentioned above. In each case, I argue that the texts in question are best understood in a way that does not commit Aristotle to the claim that our souls are literally alive or literal subjects of any mental capacities, states, or activities. Finally, in §7 I summarize the key results of my discussion and briefly comment on their significance for those interested in developing and defending a contemporary version of Aristotle’s account of what we are.

§2. A Prima Facie Case against the Literal Subject Interpretation

A central pillar in Aristotle’s position is his claim that souls are substances in the way that forms can be substances. In explaining his grounds for identifying souls with forms rather than some kind of body, Aristotle gives a crucial clue to understanding just what kind of entity he thinks souls are. In particular, he implies that souls are entities which are predicated of the corporeal substances to which they belong. To see this, consider Aristotle’s reasoning in DA II.1:

Aristotle’s inference in this passage depends on the implicit premise that souls, unlike the kind of body Aristotle is arguing a soul cannot be, are among those things which are predicated of an ‘underlying thing’ or ‘ὑποκɛίμɛνον’.

This idea is implied again when Aristotle revisits his identification of souls with forms in the next chapter, DA II.2:

Here Aristotle repeats his core claim that souls are substances in the way that forms can be substances. Moreover, he again indicates that a soul is something which is predicated of and belongs to something else, viz., the body or corporeal substance to which it belongs as a form and actuality. A living corporeal substance (e.g., a plant, animal, or human being) is not an embodied soul but rather an ‘ensouled thing,’ an ensouled body. In short, both preceding passages indicate that Aristotle thinks souls are entities, forms, which are predicated of something else, viz., the living bodies or corporeal substances to which they belong as forms.¹¹

Given this, it is reasonable to infer that Aristotle does not think souls are first-order objects, i.e., things that exist without being predicated of something else (like, e.g., human beings and animals). Instead, for Aristotle a soul is a certain kind of feature or attribute, something that exists by belonging to, by being predicated of, something else.

Several further pieces of evidence support this inference as well. First, it fits the analogies Aristotle uses to explain his view of what a soul is. In DA II.1, Aristotle likens a soul, a form and first actuality, to the knowledge of a knower, to the shape of wax, to an axe’s power to cut, and to an eye’s power of sight (see 412a22–23, 412b6–8, 412b27–413a3 with 412b10–17). These are clearly not first-order objects but rather attributes predicated of such objects. Second, in his more general discussion of the form and first actuality of a substance in Metaph. H.2, Aristotle likens the form of a substance to differentiating properties (διαϕορές) insofar as the former, like the latter, is predicated of something as the cause/ground of its being a thing of a certain kind (see 1042b31–1043a7; see also Metaph. Δ.8, 1017b15–17). Finally, the same conclusion is suggested by Aristotle’s use of the term ‘μορϕή’ for form, as the shape (the ‘μορϕή’) of a thing is evidently not a first-order object but rather an attribute of such an object.

So, souls for Aristotle are not first-order objects, things that exist without being predicated of something else, but instead exist only as a kind of attribute or feature of the living corporeal substances to which they belong and of which they are predicated. Given this, it is reasonable to conclude further that Aristotle does not think souls are literally alive or capable of thinking, perceiving, or engaging in any other kind of mental activity. Intuitively, something that is predicated of something else is not the right sort of thing to be, strictly speaking, alive or capable of thinking, perceiving, or engaging in any other sort of mental activity.¹² Some properties seem (by experience) to be first-order properties, i.e., properties that are only had by entities that are not themselves predicated of other entities. Being alive, being capable of thinking, being capable of perceiving, and, in general, being capable of engaging in any sort of mental activity each seem to be such properties. This is not to say all properties are like this. Consider, for example, being visible: the shapes and colors of objects seem to be themselves visible, even though they are entities predicated of other things. At least, this is how things seem to us in experience. By contrast, we have no experience of there being something predicated of ourselves or any other living substance that itself is alive or can perceive, think, or engage in any other mental activity. For this reason, unless there is strong evidence elsewhere to the contrary, we should presume Aristotle’s classification of souls as predicated entities implies that he doesn’t think they are literally alive or capable of engaging in mental activities.¹³

To further support the preceding point, consider a different but analogous case: it is not the weight of an object that, strictly speaking, falls when the object is dropped; rather, it is the object that falls, though it does so (in part) because of its weight (a certain attribute it has). Likewise, given Aristotle’s claim that souls are forms, forms because of which the things they are predicated of are alive and can engage in certain kinds of activities, it is natural to conclude that he does not think souls themselves are, strictly speaking, alive or capable of engaging in those activities. Rather, the thing which has the soul is what is alive and can engage in those activities, though it is alive and capable of engaging in those activities only because it has a soul (in fact, a soul of the right kind, e.g., it can reason not because it has any sort of soul but rather because it has a rational soul in particular). In fact, this seems to be just the sort of clarification Aristotle has in mind in the DA I.4 passage when he describes what it would be ‘better to say.’

This conclusion is further bolstered by considering the ‘too many thinkers’ problem that would otherwise result from Aristotle’s position. Aristotle repeatedly claims that our souls are that by which we (human beings) live and perceive and think (see DA II.2, 413b11–12; I.2, 403b23–26; I.4, 407b34–408a1; and I.5, 411a26–b2). At the same time, Aristotle denies that we are our souls; we (human beings) are not forms but compounds of form and matter (see, e.g., Metaph. Z.11, 1037a5–10, and Λ.3, 1070a9–13). Given these two claims, Aristotle could have thought that our souls themselves perceive, think, etc. only if he thought that, for each human being, there were two things that perceive, think, and so on: the human being and their soul.

Now, various philosophers hold and defend views of this sort, i.e., views that face an alleged ‘too many thinkers’ problem of one sort or another.¹⁴ My goal here is not to argue that such views are philosophically untenable or too counterintuitive to be taken seriously as the right interpretation of what a historical philosopher like Aristotle thought. Rather, my point is simply that this is the counterintuitive sort of view one must attribute to Aristotle if one insists that he thinks that our souls themselves – the souls that he clearly identifies as forms and distinguishes from ourselves (who are compounds of form and matter) – are literally capable of engaging in the kinds of mental activities that we are capable of engaging in. In effect, one is attributing to him the view that, for every human being (and animal) there are two literal subjects of mental states where pretheoretically we would have said there was just one.

In general, we should not attribute to a philosopher a counterintuitive thesis, a thesis that conflicts with beliefs we can presume were part of their pre-theoretical picture of the world, in the absence of good evidence for doing so. So, given the above points, we should not attribute to Aristotle the view that our souls are literal subjects of mental states unless there is good evidence for doing so. Hence, the question now before us is whether there is any good evidence for doing so. Proponents of the Literal Subject Interpretation claim there is. In the following §§3–6, I shall discuss the three main kinds of evidence they have offered, arguing in each case that the alleged evidence in question is best understood in a way that doesn’t in fact support their position.

§3. Aristotle Does Think Souls Are Hupokeimena

Let us begin by considering the claim that Aristotle thinks souls are ‘ὑποκɛίμɛνα,’ i.e., ‘things that underlie’ other entities. It is well known that Aristotle thinks the matter and form of corporeal substances are, along with those corporeal substances, also ‘substances’ in some sense. Shields argues that Aristotle doesn’t just think all three – matter, form, and compound – are ‘substances’ in some sense; Aristotle also thinks that all three are in some sense ὑποκɛίμɛνα for other entities. More specifically, Shields argues, there is strong evidence that Aristotle thinks that both corporeal substances (compounds of matter and form) and their forms are ὑποκɛίμɛνα that underlie non-substantial features (or πάθη), whereas the matter of a substance is a ὑποκɛίμɛνoν that underlies the substance’s form. Moreover, Shields argues, while Aristotle doesn’t explicitly state that souls are ὑποκɛίμɛνα for mental capacities, states, and activities, there are many texts in which Aristotle attributes such capacities, states, and activities to souls. Given all of this, Shields concludes that Aristotle does think souls are ‘proper’ or literal subjects of mental states and that there is no reason to read the allegedly ‘Rylean’ DA I.4 passage as denying this.¹⁵

In this section, I review Shields’s argument and discuss some objections that have been raised against it. I argue that even granting the points made in these objections, there remains strong textual evidence that Aristotle thinks souls are in fact ὑποκɛίμɛνα that underlie various non-substantial features (or πάθη). However, as I make clear in the following §4, it needn’t follow from this that souls are literal subjects of the non-substantial features they underlie.

The first stage of Shields’s argument rests on two premises: (1) Aristotle thinks that anything which is a substance is a ὑποκɛίμɛνον, and (2) Aristotle thinks that souls are substances. It follows from (1) and (2) that Aristotle thinks souls are ὑποκɛίμɛνα. That Aristotle thinks souls are substances is uncontroversial; in both his De Anima and Metaphysics, Aristotle clearly identifies souls as substances in the way forms can be substances.¹⁶ However, the claim that Aristotle thinks anything which is a substance is a ὑποκɛίμɛνον is much more controversial.

Shields defends this claim by appeal to Aristotle’s Categories and Metaphysics Z.3.¹⁷ In the former, Aristotle draws a tight connection between being a substance and being something that ‘underlies’ other things: ‘primary substances are most properly called substances,’ Aristotle writes, ‘because they are the entities which underlie (ὑποκɛῖσθαι) everything else, and everything else is either said of them or in them’ (2b15–17).¹⁸ While secondary substances differ from primary substances in being ‘said of’ other substances (e.g., their instances), they are nonetheless like primary substances in being things that underlie (i.e., ὑποκɛίμɛνα for) various non-substantial features (see 3a1–4). Shields argues that Aristotle draws a similar connection between being a substance and being a ὑποκɛίμɛνoν in Metaphysics Z.3 as well, for there Aristotle writes,

Moreover, in the lines that follow, Aristotle appears to explicitly endorse the claim that the form of a substance is in one way a ὑποκɛίμɛνoν:

Shields concludes that these texts provide strong evidence that Aristotle thinks that anything which is a substance, even a substance in the way a form is, is in some way a ὑποκɛίμɛνoν.

Others, however, have disputed this. It is controversial whether the ideas about substance proposed in Aristotle’s Metaphysics are consistent with those proposed in his Categories. In particular, some scholars have questioned whether Aristotle retains the so-called ‘subject-criterion’ of substancehood found in his Categories, i.e., the claim, put forward in Cat 2b15–17 and related passages, that a substance in the primary sense is that which underlies everything else and is such that nothing else underlies it. Some argue that Aristotle abandons this criterion in his Metaphysics, since there Aristotle says that the forms of substances are primary substances (see Metaph. Z.7, 1032b1, and Z.11, 1037a5) yet also claims that matter underlies form and that form is predicated of matter.¹⁹ As for T1 and T2, some have argued (against Shields) that the ideas discussed in these texts may not be ones Aristotle himself endorses, since he says only that the primary ὑποκɛίμɛνoν ‘is held’ to be substance most of all (1029a1–2) and that the matter, form, and compound ‘are said’ to be of this sort (1029a2ff). These critics question whether Aristotle himself accepts what ‘is held’ and ‘is said,’ especially since the subsequent discussion of Metaph. Z.3 appears to show that accepting these claims leads to the conclusion that matter is substance most of all, and yet this a conclusion Aristotle subsequently rejects (see 1029a26–30).²⁰

However, these disputes can be sidestepped because even if one interprets the above passages in such a way that they don’t commit Aristotle to the claim that the forms of substances are ὑποκɛίμɛνα, a later passage in Metaph. H.1 does so commit him. There Aristotle writes,

Here Aristotle endorses in his own voice what he noted ‘is said’ in T2, namely, that, in one way, what underlies (τὸ ὑποκɛίμɛνoν) is the matter; in another way, what underlies is the form; and in a third way, what underlies is the substance composed of these. So, Aristotle evidently does think that the forms of composite substances are in some way ὑποκɛίμɛνα.²¹

But in what way? What exactly does Aristotle have in mind in affirming that the forms of corporeal substances are in some way ὑποκɛίμɛνα? Shields tries to answer this question by appeal to what Aristotle says in Metaph. Z.13. There Aristotle draws a distinction between two ways in which something can be said to ‘underlie’ something else, viz., ‘either by being a this something (τόδɛ τι) – which is the way in which an animal underlies affections (πάθη) – or as the matter [of a substance] underlies the actuality [of that substance]’ (1038b5–6; see also Metaph. Θ.7, 1049a18–1049b3). Though Aristotle’s example of something which underlies in the former way is a compound substance (an animal) rather than its form (an animal’s soul), Shields argues that this needn’t preclude Aristotle from thinking the same is true of the form as well, since Aristotle holds that a substance’s form is also a this something (τόδɛ τι) and, as we have seen, in some way a ὑποκɛίμɛνoν. Given this, Shields concludes that the forms of composite substances (including souls) are like composite substances in being things that underlie (i.e., ὑποκɛίμɛνα for) various ‘affections’ or non-substantial features.²²

Finally, while Aristotle doesn’t explicitly state that souls underlie mental capacities, states, and activities in particular, there are many texts in which Aristotle attributes such capacities, states, and activities to animal and human souls (see, e.g., DA 402a7–10, 403a3–12, 403a16–19, 413a33–413b1, 414a29, and 415a22–25).²³ Given this, Shields concludes that there is good reason to think Aristotle does think animal and human souls are ὑποκɛίμɛνα that underlie such capacities, states, and activities.

For now, I shall grant Shields this last step in the argument, i.e., the move from claiming that Aristotle thinks souls are in some way ὑποκɛίμɛνα to the more specific claim that Aristotle thinks souls underlie various kinds of non-substantial features, including mental capacities, states, and activities in the case of animal and human souls. (The evidence just presented could be challenged, but what I say in the following section will show why in the end we should agree that souls do ‘underlie’ such things in the relevant sense of ‘underlying’). Instead, I want to focus on clarifying what Aristotle has in mind when he calls something a ‘thing that underlies’ or ‘ὑποκɛίμɛνoν for’ other things. The term ‘ὑποκɛίμɛνoν’ is often translated as ‘underlying subject,’ but such a translation, I shall presently argue, is misleading. It is misleading because it can suggest that anything that is said to underlie something else, anything that is said to be a ‘ὑποκɛίμɛνoν,’ is a literal subject of what it underlies when in fact no such implication holds given how Aristotle explains his use of this terminology in this context.

§4. Souls Can Be Hupokeimena without Being Literal Subjects of What They Underlie

Some opponents of the Literal Subject Interpretation claim that Aristotle would deny that the forms of substances, including souls, are ὑποκɛίμɛνα.²⁴ However, I have just argued that such an interpretation is ruled out by the fact that in T3 Aristotle claims in his own voice that the form of a substance is in one way a ὑποκɛίμɛνoν. Other opponents of the Literal Subject Interpretation accept this but decline to take a stand on what Aristotle means by this.²⁵ Ideally, however, one would like such an account, an account which makes clear whether and why Aristotle’s saying this either does or doesn’t imply that he thinks the forms of substances are literal subjects of the non-substantial features they underlie. In this section, I develop and defend just such an account.

I begin with the only definition of a ὑποκείμɛνον that Aristotle gives in the Metaph. ZH context. In Metaph. Z.3, the Metaph. ZH chapter where Aristotle first begins to discuss the idea that all substances (including forms) are ὑποκɛίμɛνα, Aristotle explains that ‘a ὑποκɛίμɛνoν is that of which the other things are said, while it is itself is not [said] of the others’ (1028b36–1029a1). This is something Aristotle affirms in his own voice, not something he reports as merely something that ‘is said’ or ‘is held.’ Now, some authors have found it deeply puzzling that Aristotle could have thought forms are ὑποκɛίμɛνα in this sense because they have interpreted this definition as implying that anything that is a ὑποκείμɛνον cannot be predicated or said of anything else.²⁶ However, the above definition does not in fact have this implication. In the following lines, Aristotle clarifies that the ‘the others’ (τὰ ἄλλα) he has in mind are (or at least include) the various kinds of non-substances, e.g., affections (πάθη), activities (ποιήματα), capacities (δυνάμɛις), etc. (see 1029a13ff). Given this, something can be a ὑποκɛίμɛνoν by being something both (1) of which non-substances are said and (2) which is not said of any non-substance. Forms can thus be ὑποκɛίμɛνα insofar as (1) non-substances are said of them and yet (2) they are not said of any non-substance. This can be true even though the forms themselves are said of some underlying thing (e.g., the matter or even the whole compound), as long as what they are said of is a substance rather than a non-substance.²⁷

To further understand what Aristotle has in mind, we must also consider what it means for one entity to be ‘said of’ (λέγɛται + κατά) another in this context. To begin, we should note that there is good reason to not identify this ‘said of’ relation with the distinctive ‘said of’ relation introduced and discussed in the Categories: the latter relation is one that cannot hold between a non-substance and a substance, but the ‘said of’ relation at issue here is one that evidently can hold between non-substances and substances. Thus, we should not understand Aristotle to have in mind here the Categories ‘said of’ relation. Instead, we should understand Aristotle to have in mind a generic notion of ‘belonging to’ or ‘being predicated of’ that he regularly employs throughout his works, including in his Analytics. When speaking this way, Aristotle often switches without comment between talking of things being ‘said of’ another, ‘belonging to’ another, or being ‘predicated of’ another. In fact, Aristotle switches his language in just this way in Metaph. Z.3, too (see 1029a8–9, a15–16, a21–25).

We have now reached a place where we can raise the question crucial to the argument of this section: in general, does a thing’s being ‘said of’ another in the sense at issue entail that the latter is a literal subject of the former? It does not. To see this, I want to turn our attention to Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, a work referenced several times in the Metaph. ZH context.²⁸ It is a familiar point from Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics that the cause/ground, B, in virtue of which some feature, C, holds of some subject, A, can be represented as a middle term in a chain of predications (i.e., C belongs to A because C belongs to B and B belongs to A, or C is said of A because C is said of B and B is said of A). What is crucial here is that Aristotle speaks this way even when it is clear that he would deny that the B in question is a literal subject of the C ‘said of’ it. Let us consider two examples of this.

First, in APo II.17 (see 99a25–28), Aristotle gives an example where a certain class of plants, viz., broad-leaved plants (= A) shed their leaves (= C) due to the solidification of the sap in their stems (= B) and suggests this causal relationship can be represented as follows: C is said of A because C is said of B and B is said of A. Though Aristotle represents the causal relationship between B and C by saying that ‘C is said of B,’ it makes no sense to suppose that this B (the solidification of the sap in the stems) is a literal subject of this C (leaf-shedding). What sheds their leaves are the broad-leaved plants, not the solidification of the sap in their stems; the solidification of the sap in their stems is the cause of the leaf-shedding but not itself something that sheds its leaves (in fact, it’s not even the right kind of entity for this). Crucially, what this example illustrates is that Aristotle is happy to represent the causal dependence of one feature of a subject on a more basic feature of that subject in terms of the former’s being ‘said of’ or ‘belonging to’ the latter even though the latter is not a literal subject of the former.

Second, consider the well-known eclipse example Aristotle discusses in APo II.8 (see 93a29–93b14; see also the reference to this example in Metaph. H.4, 1044b8–14). Here Aristotle notes that the moon (= A) becomes eclipsed, i.e., loses its illumination (= C), due to the earth being interposed between the moon and the sun (= B). He then represents this causal relationship in the following way: C is said of A because C is said of B and B is said of A. Once again, though C is ‘said of’ B, it makes no sense to think of the entity represented by B as a literal subject of that represented by C. The thing that undergoes a loss of illumination is the moon, not the event of the earth being interposed between the moon and the sun; the latter is the cause of the loss of illumination but not itself something that loses its illumination. Just like the leaf-shedding example, this example shows that Aristotle’s talk of something ‘belonging to’ or being ‘said of’ something else should not always be understood to imply that he thinks the latter is a literal subject of the former. On the contrary, the latter’s being the cause of the former suffices for Aristotle to speak this way even when the latter is not a literal subject of the former.

In general, what these examples illustrate is that when some feature C belongs to a subject A in virtue of some B’s belonging to A, this suffices for Aristotle to describe C as something ‘belonging to’ or ‘said of’ B even when B is not something Aristotle thinks is a literal subject of C. Now before proceeding to apply this point to what Aristotle says in Metaph. ZH, it’s important to see that the point I am making here is not based on a few idiosyncratic examples but instead reflects a general consequence of Aristotle’s canonical way of representing causal relationships in science. It is Aristotle’s general practice (one that he explains in his Analytics) to represent the cause, B, in virtue of which some feature C is predicated of some subject A as a middle term in a chain of predications linking C and A. In other words, Aristotle’s canonical way of representing this sort of causal relationship is as follows: C is said of A because C is said of B and B is said of A (see, e.g., APo II.2 and II.8). A consequence of this is that the explained feature, C, is predicated of its cause simply in virtue of the causal relationship between them; the cause need not also be a literal subject of the former feature for Aristotle to engage in such predication. For this reason, when Aristotle speaks of something being ‘said of,’ ‘predicated of,’ or ‘belonging to’ another, we should not generally take this to imply that he thinks the latter is a literal subject of the former; the latter may just be the cause of the former.

We now have what we need to understand why Aristotle would characterize the forms/souls of living corporeal substances as ὑποκɛίμɛνα in Metaph. ZH. For Aristotle, the form/soul of a living corporeal substance is the cause/principle of both its life and all of its vital capacities, including any mental capacities it may have; put differently, a living corporeal substance is alive and can engage in whatever vital (including mental) activities it can engage in, e.g., perceive, think, etc., only because it has a soul (DA II.2, 414a12–13; II.2, 413b11–12; and II.4, 415b12–14). If we represent this causal relationship in Aristotle’s canonical way, then the cause, the soul/form, should be represented as a middle term in a chain of predications linking life and such vital capacities to living corporeal substances. In other words, on Aristotle’s way of thinking, life and such vital capacities are said of a living corporeal substance because they are said of its form/soul and that form/soul is said of it. By contrast, the converse is not true: it’s not true that the form/soul is said of the living corporeal substance in virtue of life or such vital capacities being said of it; the substance’s form/soul is the principle/cause of its life and vital capacities, not vice-versa. Thus, the form/soul is indeed a substance of which such things are said and which itself is not said of such things. In other words, given the definition of a ὑποκɛίμɛνoν given in Metaph. Z.3, the form/soul is indeed something that underlies, a ὑποκɛίμɛνoν for, such things.

Having clarified why Aristotle would characterize souls as not just as ὑποκɛίμɛνα but as ὑποκɛίμɛνα that underlie the life and vital capacities of the substances to which they belong, we can now see both that and why this characterization fails to provide strong evidence in support of the Literal Subject Interpretation. Aristotle’s view that a thing’s soul is the cause/principle of its life and vital (including mental) capacities suffices to explain why he would characterize it as something that underlies (i.e., a ὑποκɛίμɛνoν for) such things. Given this, there is no reason to infer from this characterization that he also thinks our souls are literal subjects of such things, that they themselves (in addition to or instead of we ourselves) are alive and can engage in the kinds of mental activities (seeing, hearing, thinking, etc.) that we can. In short then, contrary to what Shields claims, Aristotle’s characterizing souls in this way should not be taken as a reason to abandon what I argued in §2 should be our default way of understanding Aristotle’s position, namely, that souls are not literal subjects of such things but instead merely forms by virtue of having which the substances to which they belong are alive and have such capacities.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that the discussion of this section alone shows that Aristotle doesn’t think our souls are literal subjects of life or any mental capacities, states, or activities. In §2, I gave my reasons as to why, in the absence of strong evidence to the contrary, we should not attribute to Aristotle the view that our souls are literal subjects of such things. The goal of this section was not to repeat those reasons but instead to address one of the main arguments given by those who think there is strong evidence to the contrary, viz., Shields’s argument. Contrary to what Shields claims, I have argued that Aristotle’s claim that souls are ὑποκɛίμɛνα for such things provides no evidence that he thinks they are literal subjects of them.

§5. A Response to Carter’s Defense of the Literal Subject Interpretation

Let us turn now to consider Carter’s arguments in defense of the Literal Subject Interpretation. Carter’s discussion is focused on the following large passage from DA I.4, a passage that includes the allegedly ‘Rylean’ passage mentioned in §1:

Carter and I agree that the puzzle under discussion here is based on (i) the fact that Aristotle is willing to speak of (and indeed has spoken of) the soul as something that can be pained, rejoice, and, in general, engage in various kinds of mental activities and (ii) Aristotle’s affirmation that at least some of the activities in question are, or at least essentially involve, ‘motions’ (κινήσɛις). We also agree that Aristotle initially responds not by qualifying either (i) or (ii) but instead by arguing that it needn’t follow from (i) and (ii) that (iii) the soul itself is moved (κινɛῖσθαι). This is because, as Aristotle explains in parts (iv)–(viii), the thing that is moved when such mental activities occur need not be the same as the thing that performs the activity. When the soul is angered, for example, the thing that is angered (the soul) need not be the same as the thing moved by that activity, which could instead be a part of the body (e.g., the heart).

But what about (viii), i.e., Aristotle’s claim that it follows from the above considerations that ‘to say that the soul grows angry is like if someone were to say that the soul weaves or builds’? Some authors take Aristotle to be implying here that of course the soul doesn’t weave or build and so, likewise, we should not say that the soul grows angry (or rejoices or etc.).³⁰ However, Carter rightly challenges this claim. As he points out, it is a basic principle of Aristotle’s physics that

Given this, Carter argues, we should think the point Aristotle is making in (viii) is not that we shouldn’t say that the soul gets angry, rejoices, etc. but that even though these psychological activities essentially involve something’s being moved, speaking of the soul as what performs these activities no more implies that it is what is moved when they occur than speaking of the soul as something that builds or weaves would imply that it is what is moved when these occur.

So far, I agree with Carter. What remains, however, is the key question of how to interpret the final part of the passage, i.e., (ix)–(x). In (ix), Aristotle returns to the original puzzle and indicates that though he has been willing to speak of the soul as something that can be pained, rejoice, and, in general, engage in various kinds of mental activities (see (i) above), this isn’t the best way to speak. It would be better ‘not to say that the soul hopes or learns or reasons, but to say a man [does these things] with his soul (τῇ ψυχῇ).’ Why is the latter better? Many commentators, myself included, take Aristotle to be thinking that the latter way of speaking is better because it clarifies that it is really the human being (the living corporeal substance to which the soul belongs) that is the subject of the relevant mental activities (the individual who becomes angry, becomes pained, hopes, learns, reasons, etc.), whereas the soul is only something ‘with which’ or ‘by virtue of which’ the human being does these things.³¹ Later in DA II.1–2, Aristotle will make this still more precise by specifying that what a soul is is a certain kind of form or first actuality, the having of which is what grounds or causes plants, animals, and humans to have whatever vital capacities they have, e.g., to nourish and reproduce themselves, self-locomote, sense, desire, think, reason, etc. (see DA II.4, 415b12–14 and II.2, 413b11–12). It is in this way, i.e., as forms/first actualities that bestow capacities for certain further actualities or activities, that our souls are ‘that by which we live and perceive and think’ (DA II.2, 414a12–13).

But here in DA I.4, Aristotle doesn’t go into all of this. Instead, he finishes his second response to the initial puzzle by clarifying in his final sentence, (x), that he doesn’t mean that the human being becomes angered, rejoices, perceives, etc. in virtue of his/her soul being moved in some way. No, it is always the body, not the soul, that is moved when such mental activities occur, though in some cases (e.g., recollection) the mental activity is the source of the relevant motion in the body, whereas in other cases (e.g., perception) the relevant motion in the body (e.g., in the relevant sense organ) is the source of the mental activity. In the former cases, the motion ‘proceeds from the soul,’ as the soul grounds the capacity whose activation causes the motion, whereas in other cases the motion ‘reaches as far as the soul,’ in the sense that it doesn’t just affect the body but also activates a capacity ‘of,’ i.e., grounded by, the soul.³²

Carter, however, rejects this way of understanding (ix) and (x) because he thinks that other passages indicate that Aristotle really does think souls are literal subjects of these sorts of mental activities. One of the most important such passages Carter invokes is the following one from Metaph. Δ.18. In the course of discussing different senses in which something can be said to belong to something else ‘in virtue of itself’ (καθ᾽ αὑτό), Aristotle writes,

Carter argues that this passage shows us that even if one reads part (ix) of the DA I.4 passage to imply that ‘the proper Peripatetic way of making causal claims about the soul’s affections is to say that a ‘man ϕ-s κατά his soul,’ this better way of speaking ‘still admit[s] of a further analysis that is consistent with the idea of soul being a metaphysical [i.e., literal] subject [of such affections]’ (Carter 2018: 46). This is because, Carter claims, in the above passage

However, Carter’s use of this passage to support his version of the Literal Subject Interpretation rests on a misunderstanding of what Aristotle means in saying that the soul is the part of a human being ‘in which life is primarily.’ In his Posterior Analytics, Aristotle clarifies that for one item to belong to another ‘primarily’ is for there to be no further cause or middle term in virtue of which the former belongs to the latter; instead, the former belongs to the latter ‘immediately,’ without a further cause or middle term.³³ Now, on Aristotle’s view, a human being’s soul is the immediate cause/principle of its life (DA II.2, 413a21–24 with 413b11–12, and DA II.4, 415b12–14). Put syllogistically, C (life) belongs to A (man) because C (life) belongs to B (soul) and B (soul) belongs to A (man); moreover, there is no further middle term between C and B. Given this and Aristotle’s view of what it is for one thing to belong to another ‘primarily,’ it follows that life belongs ‘primarily’ not to a human being but to the soul of a human being. However, for the reasons noted in the previous section, we should not infer from this that Aristotle thinks the soul itself is literally alive. Indeed, the claim that life belongs primarily not to a human being but to a human being’s soul no more implies that the soul itself is alive than Aristotle’s claim that leaf-shedding belongs primarily not to broad-leaved plants but to the solidification of the sap in their stems (see APo II.17, 99a25–26) implies that the solidification itself, rather than just the broad-leaved plants, is something that loses its leaves.³⁴

Beyond citing the above Metaph. Δ.18 passage, Carter also invokes what Aristotle says in Cat. 2, 1a23–b3, to support his claim that Aristotle should not be understood as denying that our souls themselves become angry, hope, perceive, think, etc.³⁵ Here, while discussing examples of things which ‘are in a ὑποκɛίμɛνoν,’ Aristotle suggests that ‘for example, a particular [piece of] grammatical knowledge is in a ὑποκɛίμɛνoν, viz., the soul’ (1a26) and that ‘for example, knowledge [in general] is in a ὑποκɛίμɛνoν, viz., the soul’ (1b1–2). One might think that these examples imply that Aristotle thinks souls are in fact things that can literally know (or become angry, hope, perceive, etc.).

However, there are again strong reasons to think that these examples should not be understood to have this implication. In the lines that immediately precede these examples, Aristotle clarifies that, ‘By [speaking of something as being] ‘in a ὑποκɛίμɛνoν,’ I do not mean what is in something in the way a part is but instead what is not capable of being separately from what it is in’ (1b24–25). Now, several different interpretations have been given of what Aristotle has in mind when he speaks of something as ‘not capable of being separately from’ something else. Some understand this in modal-existential terms: A is not capable of being separately from B just in case, necessarily, B exists if A exists. Others interpret Aristotle as invoking a notion of essence-based dependence: A is not capable of being separately from B just in case reference to B is somehow involved in what it is to be A (i.e., the essence of A). Still others have defended a third view, according to which A is not capable of being separately from B just in case A has the ontological status of a being in virtue of standing in some tie to B. Just which (if any) of these interpretations we should accept is a disputed matter.³⁶

Thankfully, however, I need not settle this dispute to make the point I wish to make here, which is that something’s being inseparable from another thing does not entail the latter is a literal subject of the former. Indeed, none of the above interpretations of Aristotle’s position implies that something is not capable of being separately from another thing only if the latter is a literal subject of the former. Moreover, on any of the three main interpretations, the soul’s status as an essential principle/cause of a living corporeal substance’s mental capacities entails that those mental capacities are ‘not capable of being separately from’ it. The same follows for any states and activities that are actualizations of those capacities, for they are essentially actualizations of capacities that are essentially dependent on the soul as their principle. Thus, in accord with what I argued in the previous section, Aristotle’s talk of such states (e.g., knowledge) being ‘in’ the soul as something that underlies them can again be wholly explained by reference to the soul’s status as an essential principle of the capacities of which such states are actualizations. For this reason, contrary to what Carter’s argument requires, there is no reason to take this talk to imply something stronger than this, viz., that Aristotle thinks the soul is a literal subject of such things.

§6. Aristotle’s Attributions of Mental Capacities and Activities to the Soul

This brings us to the last of the three lines of argument for the Literal Subject Interpretation mentioned in §1. Aristotle does occasionally talk of the soul ‘knowing’ (γνωρίζɛιν, γιγνώσκɛιν), ‘reasoning’ (διάνοιɛιν), ‘perceiving’ (αισθάνeσθαι), etc. and of various mental capacities, states, and activities as capacities, states, and activities ‘of’ the soul.³⁷ Both Shields and Carter invoke texts where Aristotle speaks this way to support their claim that Aristotle really does think souls are literal subjects of such mental capacities, states, and activities.³⁸ However, I shall argue here that there are good reasons to not take these passages in this way.

The first thing we should note is that we can and do attribute mental activities like seeing, hearing, reasoning, etc. to things without meaning thereby that those things are literal subjects of those activities. In particular, we can and do attribute mental activities to capacities (e.g., seeing is an activity of sight, whereas reasoning is an activity of the intellect) and organs (e.g., this eye can’t see well, but my other one can; the ears hear, whereas the eyes see; etc.) without meaning thereby that those capacities or organs are literal subjects of those mental activities. There is much evidence that Aristotle also speaks this way. For example, he speaks of our senses ‘discriminating’ (DA II.6, 418a11–15; DA III.2, 426b10–11) and of our intellect ‘thinking’ (DA III.4, 429b3–4, 429b23–25; DA III.7, 431b1–6). Just as is the case when we speak this way, when Aristotle speaks this way, we should not understand him to be implying that one’s senses literally discriminate or that one’s intellect literally thinks. (That would commit Aristotle to a bizarre, even absurd multiplication of literal subjects of mental states within a single substance). Instead, such talk should be taken to imply only that discriminating is something one does by virtue of (or with) one’s senses and that thinking is something one does by virtue of (or with) one’s intellect.

Is there room to understand Aristotle’s attributions of such mental activities to the soul in a similar manner? I think there is. Just as we can reasonably take Aristotle’s talk of the senses discriminating to imply only that discriminating is something one does by virtue of (or with) one’s senses, likewise one can reasonably take Aristotle’s talk of one’s soul knowing, reasoning, perceiving, etc. to imply only that these are things one does by virtue of (or with) one’s soul. In fact, that we should understand Aristotle’s talk this way is strongly suggested by the apparently ‘Rylean’ DA I.4 passage, for there he indicates that though he sometimes talks this way (i.e., of the soul perceiving, reasoning, etc.), he himself recognizes this is not the most careful way of speaking and that a more careful way of speaking would be speak of these as things that a human being (or animal) does by virtue of (or with) their soul.

This point is also supported by the fact that Aristotle often switches without comment from speaking as if one’s soul itself ϕs, for some vital activity ϕ, to saying (more carefully) that one’s soul is that by virtue of which one ϕs.³⁹ Thus, for example, in DA I.5, 411a26ff, Aristotle asks whether knowing, perceiving, believing, etc. ‘belong to the soul in its entirety,’ only to clarify, ‘That is, is it by the whole soul that we think and perceive and are moved and both do and experience each of the others, or do we do different things with different parts of the soul?’ (DA I.5, 411b1–3; translation from Shields 2016: 20). Carter takes this text to provide one more piece of evidence that Aristotle really does think the soul literally knows, perceives, etc., since Aristotle speaks here of such activities as ‘belonging to’ the soul.⁴⁰ However, there is little reason to draw such a conclusion, since Aristotle’s fluid switch here from treating the soul as that which thinks, perceives, etc. to treating us as that which thinks, perceives, etc. with or by virtue of our souls (or various parts of our souls) suggests that we ought not to read too much into the former way of speaking, as it seems to just be a loose way of speaking, a loose way of speaking that could be made more precise by making clear that it is we (human beings or animals) who do these things by virtue of our souls (or by virtue of the capacities we have in virtue of our souls).

Indeed, the fact that Aristotle takes seriously in this passage the question whether (a) all these vital activities belong to the soul as a whole or (b) different activities belong to different parts of the soul provides further reason to think his talk of ϕ-ing belonging to x, where ϕ-ing is a vital activity, should not always be understood to imply that x is a literal subject of ϕ-ing. For, if it were understood in that way, then Aristotle would be taking seriously the bizarre idea that there is a part of a person’s soul which literally thinks but does not literally perceive, another part which literally perceives but does not literally think, and so forth, all in addition to the whole person who does all these things. This would be a very strange position for Aristotle to be taking seriously.⁴¹ A much more plausible interpretation is that Aristotle is raising for discussion here a question not about literal subjects but about whether there is a different basic capacity (δύναμις) corresponding to each of the activities under discussion or whether some of these activities can instead be understood as exercises of the same basic capacity of the soul.⁴²

In addition to treating mental activities as things which ‘belong to the soul,’ Aristotle also treats non-mental vital activities, including ‘growth, maturation, and decay’ (411a30) as things which ‘belong to the soul’ (411b3; see also DA II.4, 416a17–18). Surely this talk should not be taken literally, as it borders on unintelligible to claim that an Aristotelian soul literally grows, matures, and decays. Instead, Aristotle’s point must instead be that such vital activities (and the corresponding capacities (see DA II.3, 414a29–32 and II.4, 415a22–25)) ‘belong to the soul’ in the sense that it is on account of its soul (rather than its matter) that something is capable of growth, maturation, and decay; as he puts it, ‘these things belong to the soul and not to fire [or any other material element], and to the λόγος [i.e., the form] rather than to the matter’ (DA II.4, 416a17–18). Thus, we have here another point in favor of not reading too much into Aristotle’s talk of various capacities and activities as capacities and activities ‘of’ or ‘belonging to’ the soul.

A final point worth making is that, in general, how we understand an author’s attributions of some capacity or activity to some x should be guided by our knowledge of what that author understands x to be. For example, if the author understands x to be a capacity, then we should not understand such attributions (e.g., ‘thinking is an activity of x’, ‘when x thinks, such and such happens’, etc.) to imply that they think x is a literal subject of those activities. Now, we know that Aristotle understands the soul to be a form, a first actuality the having of which makes something capable of doing certain things (e.g., self-locomoting, desiring, perceiving, thinking, etc.), just as (he says) knowledge is a first actuality the having of which makes something capable of doing certain things (see DA II.1, 412a21–28). But, as the examples Aristotle uses to illustrate his concept of a first actuality show, first actualities are not generally literal subjects of the activities associated with them. For example, while sculpting is an activity of the knowledge of sculpting, the knowledge itself doesn’t literally sculp anything; rather, it is the sculptor, the one who has this first actuality, that sculps and can do so by virtue of his knowledge of sculpting. Given this, when Aristotle speaks of various mental capacities and activities as capacities and activities ‘of’ the soul, we should understand him to be speaking of these as capacities and activities ‘of’ a certain first actuality. Such are not capacities of which the first actuality is a literal subject but rather capacities bestowed by it, and such are not activities of which the first actuality is a literal subject but rather activities which having that first actuality makes something capable of.⁴³

§7. A Concluding Summary

Many scholars have claimed that the souls Aristotle posits are not literal subjects of mental capacities, states, or activities. Their claiming this has largely been motivated by one allegedly Rylean sentence in DA I.4, where Aristotle pauses to say that, ‘[i]n fact, it is probably better not to say that the soul pities or learns or thinks but instead that a human being does these things by virtue of his/her soul (τῇ ψυχῇ)’ (408b13–15). There are, however, several considerations that might be thought to challenge this common interpretation of Aristotle’s position. In fact, close attention to such considerations has led several notable scholars (e.g., Shields and Carter) to reject the above common interpretation of Aristotle’s position and argue that Aristotle is in fact better understood as holding that our souls are literal subjects of mental capacities, states, and activities.

In this article, I have sought to reestablish the former interpretation as the best interpretation of Aristotle’s position. To this end, I offered in §2 a more careful and comprehensive discussion of the prima facie evidence against taking the souls Aristotle posits to be literal subjects of mental capacities, states, and activities. One thing I did here that other authors haven’t done is draw attention to the too many thinkers problem that would result from our interpreting Aristotle as thinking that souls are literal subjects of such things. In my view, this is an especially important point, as it has a key role to play in explaining why it is natural to infer from Aristotle’s identifying our souls with our forms that he does not think our souls are literal subjects of such things. It’s not just important that forms are predicated entities and thus seemingly not the right kind of thing to be literal subjects of such things, as authors like Barnes (1971: 103) and Granger (1996: 20–21) have suggested. It is also important that Aristotle thinks we are not our forms. Since it is deeply counterintuitive to think that there is some constituent of oneself besides oneself that thinks thoughts, experiences emotions, feels pain, etc., we should default to thinking that Aristotle does not think our souls themselves think, experience emotions, feel pain, etc. At least, we should default to this unless there is strong evidence to the contrary.

But what of the alleged evidence to the contrary? Shields’s main argument for a contrary view is based on Aristotle’s claim that the forms of substances are themselves ὑποκɛίμɛνα that underlie various non-substantial features of those substances. Of the authors who have attempted to respond to this argument, some have denied that Aristotle thinks the forms of substances actually are ὑποκɛίμɛνα. I, however, argued against this position in my §§3–4. Others have accepted that Aristotle does say the forms of substances are ὑποκɛίμɛνα but have tried to deny that it follows from this that Aristotle thinks they are literal subjects of the non-substances they underlie. However, these authors have not offered a compelling alternative interpretation of what Aristotle had in mind instead. In my §4, I have sought to rectify this by offering a compelling alternative interpretation, one which I have attempted to show is well-supported by various texts and considerations relevant to determining just what Aristotle had in mind in characterizing forms in this way. Indeed, by illustrating the merits of this interpretation, I hope to have not only rebutted Shields’s argument but also shed light on a part of Aristotle Metaphysics (viz, his claim that forms are in some way ὑποκɛίμɛνα) that many commentators have found deeply puzzling.

Next, in §5 I took on the task of addressing several of the key pieces of evidence that Carter has offered in support of his version of the Literal Subject Interpretation. To my knowledge, no author has attempted to address the considerations Carter has offered in support of his position. However, I myself don’t think that we should be persuaded by Carter’s reasoning and have sought to explain why, focusing on three points in particular. First, I argued that one can agree with Carter that the first part of Aristotle’s response to the puzzle under discussion in DA I.4 (408b4–13) does not rest on his denying that the soul is a literal subject of mental states while still thinking that the best interpretation of the second part of his response (408b13–18) does involve his denying this. Second, I argued that Aristotle’s claim in Metaph. Δ.18 that life belongs to a human being’s soul primarily and to a human being in virtue of his/her soul should not be taken as evidence that that he thinks such souls are alive (or literal subjects of any other capacities, states, or activities that might be said to belong to them primarily and to human beings in virtue of their souls). This way of speaking just reflects Aristotle’s view that a human being’s soul is the immediate cause/principle of their being alive; it does not imply that he thinks our souls themselves are literally alive. Third, I argued that Aristotle’s talk in Cat 2 of mental states (e.g., knowledge) being ‘in’ the soul as something that underlies them can again be explained by reference to the soul’s being an essential cause/principle of the capacities of which such states are actualizations. Given this, I argued that there is no reason to take this talk to imply that Aristotle thinks the soul is a literal subject of such mental states, i.e., something that, in addition to or instead of the human being to which it belongs, literally knows, perceives, etc.

A final kind of consideration that both Shields and Carter have invoked to support their view is Aristotle’s talk of the soul ‘knowing,’ ‘reasoning,’ ‘perceiving,’ etc. and of various mental capacities, states, and activities as capacities, states, and activities ‘of’ or ‘belonging to’ the soul. In §6, I addressed this final kind of consideration by arguing that there are several good reasons to not understand this talk in a way that implies souls are literal subjects of these things.

In summary then, I have argued in §2 that, in the absence of strong evidence to the contrary, we should think that Aristotle does not think the souls he posits are literal subjects of life or any mental capacities, states, or activities. I have also argued in §§3–6 that, contrary to what scholars like Shields and Carter have claimed, there is not in fact strong evidence to the contrary. Given this, we should conclude that Aristotle does not think the souls he posits are literal subjects of life or any mental capacities, states, or activities.

I close with a remark about the significance of this discussion for those interested in developing and defending a contemporary version of Aristotle’s hylomorphic dualist account of what we are. If one adopts a position like the one the Literal Subject Interpretation attributes to Aristotle, then one will face a serious too many thinkers problem akin to that confronting various non-hylomorphic compound dualist views. As Dean Zimmerman explains, the idea that

Though some authors have attempted to defend their compound dualist positions from this sort of criticism, others (myself included) continue think that there is here a decisive reason for rejecting such views, whether they be hylomorphic or non-hylomorphic.⁴⁵ On the other hand, if one instead adopts a position akin to the one I have argued we should attribute to Aristotle, then no such too many thinkers problem will confront them. For this reason, one might think my interpretation of Aristotle offers a much more promising position for contemporary Aristotelians to consider developing and defending than the Literal Subject Interpretation does.

Competing Interests

The author has no competing interests to declare.