ABSTRACT
There is significant debate over Aristotle's understanding of the relation between mind and body. Debate centers on interrelated questions concerning Aristotle's views on the mind's distance from the body and its dependence on the body. Aristotle claims, "soul is substance as form of a natural body which has life potentially" and "soul is the first actuality of a natural body furnished with organs". Aristotle seems to mark out mind as being metaphysically disparate from other psychological faculties, like perception, and his treatment of thought does not appear to cohere with his perspective on other psychological states, such as emotion and desire. Aristotle also holds that the physical constitution of perceptual organs varies among species and among individuals within a species. These differences explain why species and individuals vary in respect to the upper and lower limits of the sensibles of which they can become aware.
