According to Falcon, Aristotle proposes that we have knowledge of a thing only when we understand its causes, and he proposes four possible causes: material, formal, efficient, and final.
The material cause: “that out of which”, e.g., the bronze of a statue.
The formal cause: “the form”, “the account of what-it-is-to-be”, e.g., the shape of a statue.
The efficient cause: “the primary source of the change or rest”, e.g., the artisan, the art of bronze-casting the statue, the man who gives advice, the father of the child.
The final cause: “the end, that for the sake of which a thing is done”, e.g., health is the end of walking, losing weight, purging, drugs, and surgical tools.
The final cause for a statue is the statue itself.
With the final cause, Aristotle's theory is teleological; the purpose of a thing is a kind of cause of it. Because of this, he has been accused of anthropomorphizing nature, attributing to it psychological reasons for the way things are. However, while the theory can take desire, intention, etc., into account, the final causes of natural things don't require psychological causes. For example, Aristotle explains that the 'final cause' for why frontal teeth are sharp and back teeth are flat is because that is the best arrangement for the survival of the animal.
A couple of other key points are that, in studying nature, we should look for generalities. We aren't concerned about exceptions; we are trying to discover the rules. He also doesn't require that we use all four causes. In some cases, like the bronze statue, the formal and final causes are the same. In some cases the efficient cause is enough. For example, Aristotle explains a lunar eclipse with an efficient cause: the earth comes between the moon and sun.
The idea of a final cause was controversial in Aristotle's day. (I think it became controversial again in the 18th or 19th century.) Many philosophers* proposed that material and efficient causes were good enough. Aristotle claimed that material and efficient causes alone failed to account for regularity. If we ask, why are front teeth sharp and back teeth flat, material and efficient causes alone leave us with coincidence; animals produce offspring like themselves, and that's it. There is no reference to this arrangement making survival easier. Final causes, on the other hand, allow us to say that teeth are arranged that way to make survival easier; they explain the regularity in ways that material and efficient causes do not.
Leaving Falcon behind for a moment, why did final causes become controversial in the 18th or 19th century? Because teleological explanations seem to imply Nature has a personality. Before this time, Christian philosophers who adopted Aristotle would often point to God to provide final causes: Why were front teeth sharp and back teeth flat? God designed the animal that way to improve its chances of surviving. But God had to be killed in the Enlightenment (Hegel proclaimed it long before Nietzsche) and all that sort of thing removed. Biology today still uses teleological terms, but they intend them in reverse: the animal survives better because the teeth are arranged that way, and survival means a better chance of reproducing, which produces offspring with teeth arranged that way.
Next up, a dive into the Physics.
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* Science as the organized / methodical study of nature was a branch of philosophy up through the Scientific Revolution, and some branches of science (such as physics) were still called 'natural philosophy' up into the 19th century.
5 comments:
Very good. It's hard to grasp some of those points without an instructor to go over it with you. How much of Aristotle did you read, vice the SEP article?
One thing I'd like to emphasize about Aristotle is that he's a subtle thinker. He isn't worried about being absolutely consistent, or formalizing principles in logically rigorous ways. He's happy to say what seems to be true, even if it means having to accept principles like, "IN a way, X; but IN ANOTHER way, Y." If you read the Physics, you see this throughout.
So, for example, when you say: "In some cases, like the bronze statue, the formal and final causes are the same." In a way, that's right. A better way of saying it is that there is a way in which they are always the same. The form that is coming to be carries a telos, which is a end (i.e., a final cause). So to have a form is to have an end, which is to have a final cause; and the formal cause brings the end with it. Thus, the formal cause and the final cause are always the same -- in a way.
So why make the distinction? Well, because 'there's another way' of thinking about the question. What is the formal cause of the statue? The shape, structure, etc. What is the final cause for which the artisan made the statue? Having the statue.
But why did he want a stature? Well, there's a kind of telos that only a statue can serve. But that telos belongs to the artisan, not to the statue: it does not belong to the form of the statute to want to honor a hero, but to the man who made the statue. Yet in another way, it does belong to the form of the statue, because only a statue would do.
So does it have two ends -- its own, and the artisan's? No, just one. Does that end belong to the form? Yes, in a way. But in another way, it belongs to the artisan. So we have a distinction between formal and final cause, even though it makes sense to say that they're the same thing. There is a way in which they are, and a way in which they aren't.
Aristotle's mind was subtle enough not to be troubled by that, just because it is true. Many a modern philosopher ran screaming from the room over the same truth.
There's a similar thing going on with the material and efficient causes, which is another reason the moderns thought they could get rid of formal/final causality.
If we have an efficient cause -- an artisan building a statue -- we have a material object (the artisan) bringing another material object (the statue) into being, out of a material object (the bronze) that already exists. So the moderns argued that we don't really need to talk about anything else: we've got an adequate account to explain how the statue got here.
What we lose is an account of why the statue got here, and why it's a statue and not something else. Here we ought to talk a bit more about why Aristotle thought you needed that in nature as well as in cases with artisans.
That discussion starts with his example of the house that comes to be by accident. Do you remember that part?
It's hard to grasp some of those points without an instructor to go over it with you.
No kidding! I've been preparing the next post and am frankly at a bit of a loss on a couple of points; I may just post what I understand and ask questions.
How much of Aristotle did you read, vice the SEP article?
I wanted to get through the two SEP articles first, and I'm still fighting with the article on Nat. Phil., so I haven't actually read any of the Physics yet, this go around. (I read bits of it in grad school, some years ago.)
Maybe I should just get what I can from the SEP articles and dive into the text itself. What do you think?
Yes, I think these suggestions are wise.
Cool. Will do.
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