Thomist psychology and the modern concept of mind

The aim of this article is the modernisation of the Aristotelian-Thomist conception of mind by a comparison with the contemporary concept of mind. The mind has typically been conceived, in the philosophy of mind, as an area of private or "inner" experience. In contrast to this the Aristotelian concept of the soul is the principle of life and the substantial form of the body. "Soul" is therefore a more complex term than "mind": it includes all the vital powers (vegetative, sensory and rational). In debate with stronger and weaker theories of psycho-physical identity, the rational knowledge of universals, which are non-spatial objects, and which cannot therefore be detected by a material organ, can be used to support arguments in the tradition of Thomas Aquinas. Rational knowledge is non-bodily, although reason requires the co-functioning of the so-called inner senses (for example, of the imagination). The inner senses, unlike reason, know only particulars and have a bodily organ: the brain. Interactions between reason and the body are a problem for the Cartesian dualist, but in the framework of the conception of the soul as a form of the body they can be explained.