Aristotle

1. Aristotle • Aristotle: 384-322 BC • born in Stagira in northern Greece (i.e. ancient Macedonia) • maps: • http://www.plato-dialogues.org/tools/gk_wrld.htm • http://iam.classics.unc.edu/map/download/area_a7_outline.pdf (this link may malfunction) • At about age 18 Aristotle arrives in Athens and studies begins under Plato at the Academy, where he remains for about 20 years • Leaves Athens after Plato’s death in 347 BC & spends several years in Assos (northwest coast of modern Turkey) and then the coastal island of Lesbos • In 343 BC summoned by King Phillip of Macedonia (who has unified much of Greece, including Athens, under his rule) to the King’s court court to tutor his 13 year old son, Alexander. Aristotle holds this post for three years. • Returns to Athens in 335BC & establishes his own school at the Lyceum (gymnasium, with covered walkways; hence, “Peripatetics” = walkers • Alexander dies in 323 BC, when Aristotle flees Athens and dies the next year.

2. Range of Aristotle’s Work • Virtually all areas of philosophy • metaphysics (note the term) • epistemology • ethics & aesthetics & political theory • logic • protoscience: physics, biology, astronomy

3. Plato v Aristotle • The General Structure of Universe • Plato’s two realms • the world of forms • the world of sensible objects • Aristotle’s unified universe • Only individual objects (substances) exist • Some are sensible • Others are not • forms exist only in individual objects (substances)

4. Plato v Aristotle • Knowledge • Plato’s nativism • Aristotle’s empiricism • Self • Plato: individual souls are immortal • Aristotle: soul is immortal but not individualized or personalized

5. Matter, Form & Substance • The Problem of Change • Plato, Parmenides & Zeno deny the reality of change • They variously hold that the sensible world is “illusory” • Aristotle accepts the reality of the changing, physical world & needs a fundamental principle to accommodate change

6. Matter • Matter = Pure Potentiality • that which, in itself, is nothing but which can become anything • compare malleable clay • that which permits • Individuation • Persistence through change • Compare the enduring clay • that which is unintelligible but fundamental???

7. Form • Form = Pure Actuality • that which disciplines, directs, constrains matter • shape of the malleable clay • that which makes matter become what is real • definable & intelligible • exists in what is real • even in sensible objects

8. Substance • Particular objects = what really exists • e.g. Socrates, tree, electron • Substance = that which is the subject of predication but not itself predicated • target of thought and language

9. Material v Immaterial Substance • Some substances can change while retaining their identity • they contain matter + form • I.e. all sensible substances • Some substances cannot change • they do not contain matter • I.e. Celestial Objects, God (the unmoved mover) • Since they do not contain matter, they are “sui generis” (i.e. one per kind/species/category)

10. Identity and Essence • How change works in material substance • matter remains (compare Soc. Security Number) • form exchanged • distinguish essential (substantial) from accidental form

11. Essential Form • determines genus/species • makes a substance be thekind of object it is • e.g. the rationality of Socrates • Accidental Form • characterizes or qualifies a substance without affecting its identity • e.g. the snubnosedness of Socrates

12. What’s Really Essential? • Contrast generic and personal essence • Socrates, the rational animal • Socrates, the inquisitive philosopher • Two types of essential forms?

13. What’s Really Essential? • All and only rational animals are featherless bipeds • which form is essential? • How do we tell? • Socrates is both a philosopher and a convicted criminal • which form is essential? • How do we tell?

14. Is Essence Subjective? • The role of language • Edward Sapir/Benjamin Whorf Hypothesis • Edward Sapir (1884-1936): American linguist and anthropologist • Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941): American linguist; student of Sapir • The language you speak determines or strongly influences how you conceive of the world and may even influence how you perceive the world • compare • “red,” “white,” and “blue” • “red-or-white” and “blue” • Is essence what we find or what we fabricate?

15. Forms as Universals • Form as that which is commonly and simultaneously present in different but similar individuals as the basis of similarity • How can one thing, i.e. a form, simultaneously be in different places?

16. The Nature of Thought • A person = (body + soul) • (body + soul) = (matter + form) • Hence, a person = (matter + form) • Soul = form • soul is that form which gives life (actuality) to a body (matter) in virtue of giving rationality to matter • soul = generically essential form • Thus rationality is essential to each person • Note that as a generically essential form, the soul is not that which constitutes your individual essence or unique “personality” • Your individual essence (personality) is a set of forms unique to you and which includes the (generic soul) as an element.

17. Universal Soul • Soul = essential form • Essential forms are Universals • Plato’s essential form = Socrates’ essential form • So, Plato’s soul = Socrates’ soul • This generalizes for all people • So, there is but one soul! • Immortality could not be personal!

18. Thought and Form • Soul is seat of cognition/thought • To think (perceive) is to represent in some unique intentional way such that • in thinking of X • one represents X – rather than any other substance – • as having some Form • without thereby representing X as having other forms even if X has many other forms • Intentionally to represent a form F of X is to • Recognize F • By reproducing F in one’s soul

19. Example • Garfield, the golden cat, is a substance • Catness is an essential form of Garfield • Goldenness is an accidental form of Garfield • You are a substance whose essential form (soul) is rationality situated in your matter • When you think or perceive that Garfield is golden, you reproduce in your soul (i.e. in your essential form) the form of Goldenness. • When you think or perceive that Garfield is a cat, you reproduce in your soul (i.e. in your essential form) the form of Catness.

20. Objections • Why doesn’t a thinker become what he/she thinks? • A particular bit of matter is in the object represented by thought but that same matter is not in the soul • Is it possible to distinguish similar things in thought since thought is the reproduction of universal forms? • If your soul is my soul, then when you think that Garfield is golden, why don’t I thereby also think the same?

21. The Four Causes • Aristotle is convinced in the reality of sensible objects & change • Thus, he must offer a theory of how it is possible to understand the structure of sensible objects and change • Aristotle proposes four basic types of causation or explanation aiming at showing why, of necessity, things are as they are by showing them to be instances of Universal Laws

22. Causation: Explanation byFourfold Necessary Universality • Material Causation • based in the varieties of matter • E.g.: It is because the stick is compose of “woody” matter that it burns when ignited by a flaming torch • Efficient Causation • based in the (infinite) sequence of antecedent motion • E.g.: The red billiard ball begins to roll across the table because it was struck by the moving blue ball. • Note: every instance of a moving material substance presupposes the prior motion of another material substance • Hence, there can be no first motion; no beginning of motion; no beginning to the motion that constitutes the universe.

23. Causation Continued • Formal Causation • based in the varieties of form • E.g.: The sculpture is a statue of Socrates (rather than a statue of Plato) because the sculpture includes as a form the same very same shape that Socrates (but not Plato) includes as a form. • Final Causation • based in intelligent or natural purpose • Telos = end, purpose or objective • Teleology = knowledge or science of the ends or purposes of things • E.g.: The heart beats rhythmically because its purpose is to pump blood

24. Final Causation and Nature as the Font of Purpose • Sometimes the telos of an artifact presupposes the intelligent design of a person or group of persons • The purpose of the wheel on the car is to permit its motion • Might the telos of a natural object not presuppose intelligent design? • E.g. The purpose of the bird’s wing is to permit flight • Darwinians maintain that purpose does not imply intelligent design • Creationists maintain that purpose does imply natural design

25. The Unmoved Mover • The universe must be temporally eternal since the idea of the (causal) beginning/end of the universe is nonsense • Still, why does the universe have the structure that it does in fact have? It could have been other than it actually is.

26. There must exist something that is not part of the changing, structured universe whose existence serves to explain the universe’s structure • This = the Unmoved Mover who affects the world in the manner of a beloved/desired object

27. Unmoved Mover • Immaterial • Unique • Pure Form • Unchanging • Eternal • Thinks, but only of itself • The Final Cause of the physical universe