Introduction

second nature and naturalism

pp. 1-10

in: Grant Gillett, From Aristotle to cognitive neuroscience, Berlin, Springer, 2018

Abstract

Aristotle's account of the soul differs from Cartesianism; while it holds that the soul denotes a conception of a human being as not merely a physical or material thing, the division is conceptual and not in terms of a different metaphysical substance and it concerns the form of human life as self-organised, rational, and moral beings in a shared world using shared cognitive tools. The human soul animates and gives coherence to our lives and it develops, in part, through education to create a second nature developed out of the (first) nature human beings are born with. The account is extended by Kant and the phenomenologists who examine how human beings train their children as cognitive apprentices.