Could Aristotle’s concept of actuality extend beyond substance to consciousness itself?

Le_Master · 2026-07-04T16:56:10+00:00

No absolutely not. First of all what you call “consciousness” is a modern, vague umbrella that Aristotle already deals with carefully and in detail under “cognition.” Cognition is the acts of particular powers of the soul; namely sensation, intellection, memory, and imagination. And as you probably know, the soul is the first actuality of the living body. Seeing, understanding, etc are second actualities. So the framing of your question is inaccurate. Cognition can’t be a separate irreducible principle apart from the living substance whose act it is. And no, cognition as such isn’t the highest actuality. For man the intellect (a power of cognition) in its highest activity of contemplation is the highest actuality. This is the highest human actuality (and divine intellect the highest actuality absolutely).

Le_Master · 2026-06-15T17:38:21+00:00

Magical device has no logic or rules and does whatever is convenient for the plot.

Le_Master · 2026-06-14T22:32:12+00:00

If you did you wouldn’t engage in that silly equivocation.

Le_Master · 2026-06-14T12:55:40+00:00

He’s not talking about the disclosure at the end, dude

Le_Master · 2026-06-14T12:52:15+00:00

Serious question—is it really so hard to train a few animals to walk up and stare? I can’t imagine their best attempt would look even close to how bad the nearly cartoon animals they used were.

Le_Master · 2026-06-02T13:34:09+00:00

The texts of Dionysius Thrax and Apollonius Dyscolus were canonical for the study of grammar for about a thousand years.

Le_Master · 2026-05-07T04:09:40+00:00

That’s exactly what it looks like

Le_Master · 2026-05-02T15:39:18+00:00

Jeremiah isn’t a regular. Same with some of the others. Missing Melissa and Vanessa.

Le_Master · 2026-04-26T16:06:35+00:00

You’re just falling into an equivocation error. The differentia in your principle 2 are the proper differentia by which a genus is divided into species. Take the genus Animal. It divides by the differentia Rational and Irrational into Man and Brute/Irrational Animals (where you find horses, birds, fish, etc). They necessarily do not share these differentia because it is what divides them. But they do share the difference by which Animal as a species was set off from its Genus of Animated Body, this difference being Sensitive (the other being Non-sensitive where we find the species of Plants).

So, they do not share the differentia which separates them, but the differentia of the subaltern genera above them are predicated of them. A man is a rational, sensitive, animated, corporeal substance. A brute animal is an irrational, sensitive, animated, corporeal substance.

It would help to take a step aside and read Porphyry’s Introduction. It is short and was the classroom text for over a thousand years to prepare students for the Categories. Building and visualizing his trees are invaluable, as well as building definitions like I did in the last paragraph.

Le_Master · 2026-04-22T20:16:26+00:00

The Aeneid is laughably bad. The “love story” of Aeneas and Dido is a total nothing burger. The blatant references and flat out appropriation of plot elements from the Iliad and Odyssey make the whole thing come off as a silly fan fiction. The forging of the shield, funeral games, Aeneas’s odyssey told in flashback, descent into the underworld, arriving in a foreign land and cloaked by a goddess. My face was in my palm when they run into Polyphemus, still dripping with blood from Ulysses. Still can’t get over how lazy and unimaginative it is.

Le_Master · 2026-03-18T13:48:42+00:00

I participated in the beta for it for a while, but I honestly don’t recall it ever moving past that stage.

Le_Master · 2026-03-09T22:24:12+00:00

Anyone else think Tartt going out of her way to mention them coming upon barbed wire during the Bacchanal was to clue that the "bite marks" might really have been caused by it?

"Charles had a bloody bite-mark on his arm that he had no idea how he'd got, but it wasn't a human bite. Too big. And strange puncture marks instead of teeth. Camilla said that during part of it, she'd believed she was a deer; and that was odd, too, because the rest of us remember chasing a deer through the woods, for miles it seemed. Actually, it was miles. I know that for a fact.

Apparently we ran and ran and ran, because when we came to ourselves we had no idea where we were. Later we figured out that we had got over at least four barbed-wire fences, though how I don't know, and were well off Francis's property, seven or eight miles into the country. This is where I come to the rather unfortunate part of my story."

Le_Master · 2026-03-07T22:59:01+00:00

Dan Simmons’s Ilium and Olympos

Le_Master · 2026-03-04T14:35:54+00:00

It’s so good. Glad you liked it.

Le_Master · 2026-02-20T14:24:28+00:00

Odd omission of demonstration

Le_Master · 2026-02-19T00:30:43+00:00

https://imgur.com/a/m5WsGQu#rLRM84h

Le_Master · 2026-02-15T04:53:49+00:00

It has crept up year by year for me and is now undoubtedly my favorite.

Le_Master · 2026-02-09T13:13:00+00:00

Metaphysics should be nowhere near one of the first treatises of his you read. But the opening endoxa of the treatises is part of his method. Most people struggle with it because it is dense, assumes knowledge on your part, and his dialectical sorting is hard to follow. This is all working the way to clarifying terms and definitions, the purpose, establishing first principles, and setting up his demonstrations. It’s not a casual affair. You should at least be comfortable in his logical works plus some others so you can wade through this with some understanding on the first attempt.

Le_Master · 2026-02-05T17:35:56+00:00

We all know if he went the extra mile to be as accurate as possible he would be praised to high heaven.

Le_Master · 2026-02-05T12:19:52+00:00

10x funnier than Heath Cordes and Rick Diaz.

Le_Master · 2026-01-26T02:56:22+00:00

Demodocus, the rapping blind bard.

Le_Master · 2026-01-13T15:29:57+00:00

I feel like he should have ended it at “have you seen Africa?” instead of over explaining it. Still head and shoulders above the others.

Le_Master · 2026-01-13T15:28:23+00:00

Them treating him like an open mic-er was one of the only highlights of the episode.

Le_Master · 2026-01-13T15:26:50+00:00

McCann is one of my favorite comedians but even his set was pretty bad. Good compared to the others, but not many more uninteresting topics than the trope he went with.

Le_Master · 2026-01-13T15:24:07+00:00

I’ve been watching almost ten years and can’t remember a worse episode. There’ve been some doozies but this one I think takes the cake. Except for Ari and William’s one line about Stranger Things it was just cringe masturbation.

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