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    The soul is best defined as 'something which moves itself' — Carmelics
    Statements
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    Home/Consciousness & Mind
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    The soul is best defined as 'something which moves itself'

    Consciousness & Mind
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.The forms of spheres are souls
      ?

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    • 2.Sense perception is particular only to animals, not all ensouled things
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    • 3.Movement is common to all souls
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Aristotle's hylomorphic framework defines soul as the first actuality of a natural body with the potential for life, not self-motion.
      ?

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    • 2.Self-motion is a property Aristotle explicitly reserves for animals, not the vegetative soul governing nutrition and growth.
      ?

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    • 3.A definition grounded in self-motion therefore excludes plant souls, violating the requirement to capture all instances of soul.
      ?

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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Unmoved movers, including Aristotle's divine intellect and Neoplatonic hypostases, produce motion without themselves moving, yet are paradigmatically soul-like or higher.
      ?

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    • 2.If the highest and most perfect principle of life and intellect is unmoved, then self-motion cannot serve as the essential differentiating mark of soul.
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    Topics

    Consciousness & Mind

    Connections

    3 topics

    Truth & Knowledge1 linkedPerception1 linkedPhilosophy of Language1 linked

    Related

    A definition grounded in self-motion therefore excludes plant souls, violating t...A definition should capture what is common to all instances of the thing definedAristotle's hylomorphic framework defines soul as the first actuality of a natur...If the highest and most perfect principle of life and intellect is unmoved, then...
    +5 moreShow less
    Movement is common to all soulsSelf-motion is a property Aristotle explicitly reserves for animals, not the veg...Sense perception is particular only to animals, not all ensouled things

    Similar

    The soul is the form of the body, meaning a particular person's soul i...87%The soul moves itself87%The soul must itself be in motion84%The soul is always in motion83%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: ibn-bajja
    View source passageHide passage
    Since it was clear to Plato that the soul is assigned to substance, and that substance is predicated on the form and matter which is body, and that the soul cannot be said to be a body, he fervently defined the soul in its particular aspect. Since he had established that the forms of spheres are souls, he looked for the commonality of all [souls], and found that sense perception is particular to animals, [but] that movement is particular to all, and therefore he defined the soul as “something wh
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    The forms of spheres are souls
    Unmoved movers, including Aristotle's divine intellect and Neoplatonic hypostase...
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit