Aristotle And Causation

Front 1

Platos rationalism versus Aristotle

Aristotle was an empiricist (believes is ultimately based on sense experience)

Back 1

Aristotle's method is known as 'Per genus et per differentia' (through type&difference). Take a guinea pig, first establish the type or genus then compare and note differences. This process of reflective categorisation would, for Aristotle lead to a closer understanding of thing itself.

Front 2

Difference between Plato and Aristotle

We are not remembering things from the realm of forms instead; we are taught them through practice. We acquire knowledge from the outside world, knowledge is not innate.

Back 2

Plato thought education was drawing out of the mind knowledge that lay dormant within. For Aristotle knowledge is based on careful observations and reflections. Consequently theoretical knowledge is not always enough, the knowledge of a musician is different to the knowledge of a mathematician. Interestingly, all infant prodigies occur in fields of science or music not politics or history.

Front 3

Material cause

The substance of which the things is made, for example wood, bricks, nails.

Back 3

Question's what is a thing made of, without the material a thing could not be. According to Aristotle without the matter something is made from there would be nothing.

Front 4

Formal cause

Its design that shapes the formal concept. For example the carpenter/designers drawing.

Back 4

A silver bowl is a silver bowl because it is in the form of a bowl, it would not be a bowl if it was not shaped that way. Instead it would just be a lump of silver.

Remember to draw a distinction here between Plato's idea of forms to Aristotle's, here the form is not abstract.

Front 5

Efficient cause

it's maker or builder, note the efficient causes are found in nature as well.

Back 5

A statue does not just happen, it takes an efficient cause Something external brings about the effect.

Front 6

Final cause

Is the purpose or function

From Greek Telos , a teleological theory.

Back 6

The maker of the bowl creates it for a purpose, the bowl is made for the sake of using it. For Aristotle everything is made for a reason as humans have purposes. Yet Aristotle pushes this idea even further, assuming nature is purposive.

Front 7

The Prime mover

If everything in the universe had a purpose, the universe itself must have a purpose- a final cause. For Aristotle the final cause is God, a God unlike one of the abrahamic religions.

Back 7

The qualities of the prime mover : God and the world are co-eternal, Aristotle assumed the universe had no beginning. For Aristotle, petitionary prayer would be redundant. His God is not listening. The only thing worth contemplation by a perfect being is a perfect being...perfect thought requires a perfect object of thought.

Front 8

God's relationship with the world

The concept is often referred to as the 'Unmoved Mover'

Back 8

• The prime mover is an attracter, and is not to be confused with Aquinas, for whom the prime mover is creator. Aristotle's view on motion is 'change' this includes any kind of change, becoming cool or warm/growing older.
  
• God attracts by his nature, not because he is interested in things outside himself. The universe has no efficient cause, the effect of the prime mover is therefore not as creator but something that creates movement and change by exercising a 'pull' on things.

Front 9

The Prime mover and Plato's form of the Good

Note that neither is directly and personally concerned with the world. YET Plato does not tell us whether the form of good has consciousness whereas the PM is supremely conscious but it's mental activity is concerned with ones wonderful nature.

Back 9

• Argued each is assumed to exist on order to explain why certain things occur in the world.
  
• The form of good acts as a hypothesis to explain what things like goodness really are.
  
• Plato's form of good provides refuge from uncertainties of change, while Aristotle's Prime Mover seeks to explain them.

Front 10

Objections to Aristotle's theories

/scientific objections

Back 10

Advances in modern science cast doubts on many aspects of his theory of the four causes. Yet admirably Aristotle was attempting astronomy with no telescope or attempting chemistry without a laboratory. This is why we find his account of learning and reflection per genus et differentia so valuable. Rich in possibilities and a groundwork for future debate on which modern science could build.

Front 11

Objections to Aristotle's theories

/philosophical objections

Back 11

1)Aristotle's notion of efficient cause does not tell us what happened, only that something has. The term is used to cover a wide range of changes. Too broad to be informative in any significant way.

2)Aristotle's notion of purpose ; The normal use of the word purpose is to describe a mental intention. Minds have purposes but do inanimate things? I may have a purpose for flour,eggs but they surely not being sensate have no intentions or purposes, instead they serve one.

Front 12

Objections to Aristotle's theories

/philosophical objections

Back 12

3)The fallacy of composition; is an error in reasoning. The error of thinking that what is true of the part is true of the whole. Just because all humans have mothers, it does not follow that humankind as a whole has a mother.

4) In the case of the universe, it is even more difficult to assume something has a purpose. Existentialism, as a philosophical movement has always denied that the universe has a purpose. Other philosophers, famously see no reason to assume purpose, ( Bertrand Russell).

Front 13

Objections to Aristotle's theories

/philosophical objections

Back 13

5)If we primarily argue there are many reasons and causes for change it is difficult to see how one prime mover can be assumed to be the cause of it all. If there are many possible causes of change, there seems o be no reason to jump from that to a single explanation.

6)The big bang theory and much of modern cosmology, doubt a god who brings the world into motion by attracting to himself. Instead a violent beginning to an ever expanding universe.

Front 14

Objections to Aristotle's theories

/philosophical objections

Back 14

Religiously it is also possible to criticise the idea of the prime mover. Aristotle's god is not one of the Abrahamic religions. Which for them God cares supremely about the universe he created and with which he interacts.

The mere significance in Aristotle lays in the influence of his ideas.