Aristotle denies that souls are agents. He’s particularly clear about this when talking about emotions. He points out that any emotion that we might attribute to our souls (joy, despair) is evident in our bodies as a physiological response (laughter, tears). But then he goes further and argues that our tendency to see these responses as a consequence of the soul’s condition is wrong; rather, they are the soul: To say that the soul is angry is as though one were to say that the soul weaves or builds. For it is, perhaps, better to say not that the soul pities, learns or thinks, but that humans
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