In discussing quasimind, it's important to consider Aristotle's
hierarchy of psyches in _De Anima_. Since Peirce was familiar with
Aristotle, that hierarchy may have had some influence on his views:
1. Vegetative psyche of plants.
2. Sensitive psyche of sessile animals like sponges and clams.
(Aristotle was the first to note that sponges were animals.)
3. Locomotive pysche of worms.
4. Psyche of animals having imagery (phantasia).
5. Rational psyche of an animal having logos (zôon logon echein).
Each psyche inherits all the abilities of the more primitive psyches.
For Aristotle, the rational psyche of humans is the most advanced.
For discussion of that hierarchy, see Martha Nussbaum & Hilary Putnam,
"Changing Aristotle's Mind",
http://moodle.nthu.edu.tw/file.php/28946/M._Nussbaum_and_H._Putnam_Changing_Aristotle_s_Mind.pdf
Interesting point: Nussbaum and Putnam cite the way Thomas Aquinas
used Aristotle's hierarchy to justify the resurrection of the body
at the Last Judgment. (Quotations below)
They say that Aquinas had a more integrated interpretation of
Aristotle than many later philosophers. But they don't claim
that the resurrection of the body is essential to that view.
John
_________________________________________________________________
From Nussbaum and Putnam (1992)
in the Summa Theologiae [Aquinas] concludes... that soul and body
are so unified, so fitly and fully together in all their activity,
that the separated soul has cognition only in a confused and unnatural
way. With the death of the body, sensing and phantasia go; but then,
he holds, all cognition of particulars and all modes of cognition
built on this must go as well. But then the natural human way of
cognizing must go: "To be separated from the body is contrary to the
principle of its nature, and similarly to cognize without turning to
phantasms is contrary to its nature. So it is united to the body so
that it should be and act according to its nature" (ST I, q. 89, a. 1).
What remains is only an imperfect cognition, 'confusam in communi'....
If the human mode of cognition is different, in its embodiment, from
that of God and the angels, still it is exactly suited to human life,
life in a world of changing perceptible particulars. Matter is suited
to its function, and cognition's embodied modes to the nature of
cognition's worldly objects (ST I, q. 84, a. 7).
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