Philosophical Psychology

Name, definition, object, division, and importance of philosophical psychology as the ultimate science of life, the life-principle, and the living body.

The meaning of life; vital immanence as the defining mark of living activity; the distinction between life and mere mechanism; preliminary definitions and the scope of minor psychology.

The philosophical criteria distinguishing living from non-living bodies; the inadequacy of mechanistic and purely chemical explanations; the evidence for a special principle of life.

The three essentially different forms and grades of life — vegetal, sentient, and rational — and the hierarchical structure of living bodies.

The soul as the first principle of life in living bodies; the inadequacy of matter, organic structure, and physico-chemical forces as explanations of vital activity; the definition of the soul as the first act of a physical organic body.

Plants as living bodies possessing the lowest grade of life; their self-perfective immanent activity; the proof that plants are not sentient.

The three vegetal operations — nutrition, growth, and generation — their nature, mechanism, and philosophical significance as intrinsically immanent vital activities.

The vegetal life-principle as the substantial form of the living plant; its nature, incompleteness, materiality, and four chief characteristics.

Animals as living bodies of the second grade; the proof that animals are truly alive; the proof that animals lack reason; a study of instinct and its contrast with intellect.

The five operations of sentient bodies — vegetal operations, sensation, appetition, locomotion, and sentient powers — and their proximate principles.

The nature and characteristics of the sentient life-principle; its relation to the vegetal principle; eduction from matter; generation and corruption per accidens.

The meaning of biological species; the two marks that define it — structure and filiation; varieties, breeds, races, hybrids, and the biological classification of organisms.

The origin of the first life and the subsequent diversity of species; evaluation of spontaneous generation, monistic evolution, Darwinian evolution, and Christian evolution.

The human soul as the principle of human life; its substantiality, simplicity, spirituality, and immortality; its origin by direct divine creation.

The nature of the union of soul and body in man; the results of that union; the place of the soul in the body; errors regarding body-soul relations.

The nature of faculties as proximate principles of vital operations; their distinction from the soul; their subject; and their classification as active/passive, organic/inorganic.

The nature and mechanism of human sensation; the sentient system; the external and internal senses and their objects; the sensing process.

Human sentient appetition; its nature; the concupiscible and irascible appetencies or passions; their moral character; love as the root of all the passions.

The nature and organ of human locomotion; spontaneous local movement as the vital expression of appetition aroused by sensation.

The meaning of intellect; the proof that man actually possesses an intellect; the character of the intellect as a spiritual faculty.

The three operations of the human intellect — simple apprehension, judgment, and reasoning; the object of the intellect as the essences of material things conceived in universal.

How intellectual concepts or ideas originate from sense-experience; the role of abstraction and the agent intellect; the expression of ideas in language.

The will as rational appetency; its nature, existence, object, and acts; the distinction between elicited and commanded acts.

The real distinction between intellect and will; their mutual influence; the relative perfection or nobility of the two faculties.

The meaning, kinds, and proof of human freedom; the refutation of determinism; the appendix on free will and divine foreknowledge.

The nature of sleep as a suspension of sentient consciousness; the nature of dreams as partial activity of the senses during sleep.