  This second type of change, which Aristotle maintains is the appropriate model for many psychic activities, is either “not an instance of alteration … or is a different kind of alteration,” where one “should not speak of being affected, unless &lt;one allows that&gt; there are two kinds of alteration” (De Anima ii 5, 417b6–16). Perhaps Aristotle’s position will then be that the mind, at least insofar as its cognitive capacities for thought are concerned, is simply such as to be enformed by any of an infinite range of objects of thought. This would involve its being nothing determinate in itself; and far from being anomalous for Aristotle, the mind would be in the cognitive realm precisely what the most basic stuff, if there is a most basic stuff, would be in the material realm. Both would manifest unconstrained plasticity; and so each would be characterized essentially in terms of their range of potentialities.