This article investigates the possibility of establishing a philosophical analogy between the Aristotelian concept of the soul, formulated in De Anima, and contemporary artificial intelligence systems. Starting from the conception of the soul as the formal and actualizing principle of the capacities of the living body, it examines the extent to which complex computational architectures can perform functions analogous to the operations attributed to the sensitive and intellective soul. The study …
Read moreThis article investigates the possibility of establishing a philosophical analogy between the Aristotelian concept of the soul, formulated in De Anima, and contemporary artificial intelligence systems. Starting from the conception of the soul as the formal and actualizing principle of the capacities of the living body, it examines the extent to which complex computational architectures can perform functions analogous to the operations attributed to the sensitive and intellective soul. The study articulates Aristotelian categories such as form, matter, act, potency, and functional integration with contemporary debates in the philosophy of mind, especially functionalism, computationalism, and embodied cognition. The concept of “synthetic soul” is proposed as an artificial principle of perceptual, operational, and cognitive organization in advanced intelligent systems. It is argued, however, that the analogy has important ontological limits, above all owing to the absence of phenomenological consciousness, autonoesis, and biological organicity in current artificial systems. The article concludes that, although artificial intelligence does not possess a soul in the traditional metaphysical sense, Aristotelian philosophy offers a fruitful conceptual framework for understanding contemporary forms of artificial cognition and functional integration.