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Aristotle (384 322 B.C. )

Metaphysics and Epistemology

Names, Terms and Concepts

Categories Substance Causation Teleology Potentiality and Actuality Levels of Reality Empiricism Nous

Aristotle (384 322 B.C. )

Aristotle was Platos most famous student Aristotle joined Platos academy at the age of seventeen Aristotle founded his own school called the Lyceum after Platos death twenty years later Aristotle spent mornings walking with the students talking about philosophy Peripatetic is a Greek word meaning walking around and sometimes Aristotelians are called Peripatetics Aristotle made numerous contributions to many areas of philosophy

Aristotles criticism of Plato

Aristotle is sometimes referred to as a this worldly philosopher whereas Plato is sometimes called a other worldly philosopher This distinction becomes important when we turn to their disagreement concerning Platos theory of the forms Aristotle finds at least three problems with Platos realm of the Forms

Three problems with the Forms

Problem one: Plato, in attempting to explain reality, complicates unnecessarily by adding a whole new world that also needs an explanation Problem two: Aristotle is interested in explaining the world as a changing world Platos Forms do not change so they cannot help in explaining the phenomena of change in the empirical world Problem three: Plato confuses the human ability of abstraction with independent existence. As humans we can generalize and find common features common to separate objects such as red things but that does not mean that there exists somewhere something called redness

Aristotles ideas on Reality

Aristotle believes that most of the previous metaphysicians have made the error of oversimplification Aristotle believes that when trying to understand reality we must organize it into ten categories These categories are the basic components of reality

The Ten Categories

Ten Categories of Being

Substance Location Time Quantity Quality Relationship Posture State Doing Something Undergoing something

The idea of Substance

For our purposes the category of Substance will be the most important to investigate Aristotle belies that Substance is composed of two important features These features are

Matter Form

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Substance is made of Matter and Form Aristotles concept of Matter

Aristotle, unlike Plato, believes that the objects that really exist are the ones that we perceive through our senses We perceive matter as a generic kind of stuff but an object of perception is also one that has form Imagine two identical statues of a horse side by side and one is made of wood and the other is made of marble, Imagine the matter of the one horse would be the wood and the matter of the other would be the marble The form of the statues is their essence of horseness which is basically what makes a horse a horse and not something else Although for the most part Matter is identified as physical stuff sometimes matter can be non-physical according to Aristotle

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Aristotles concept of Form

For Plato, the Forms were an independent realm of existence that are actually more real than the copies we experience in the physical world Aristotles concept of form ( not capitalized usually to distinguish the difference with Plato ) is inseparable from the matter The idea behind Aristotles concept of form is that each thing that exists has something that it holds in common with other similar objects This common feature or essence is what Aristotle believes is its form So, in my example earlier of the two statues of the horses, the marble and the wood would be the matter of the statue but the form would be the essence of the horse how we recognize that it is a horse

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Aristotles idea of Causation

Aristotle as mentioned earlier is interested in understanding the changing world in its complexity In order to track this change through time Aristotle noted that there was four causes that need to be attended to The four causes explain the process of change and why it happens

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The Four types of Causation

Aristotle believed that everything that exists has four cause or can be understood by posing four important questions The Material cause this question asks what is something made out of ? The Efficient cause This answers an important question where does something originate or come from? The Formal cause This question gets at the essence of something what is its essence? The Final cause is somethings purpose This question gets at somethings purpose what is the purpose ?

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Summary of the Four causes Teleological view of the World

The point that everything has a purpose is the central notion behind the final cause Teleological comes from the Greek word Telos meaning end or purpose The idea that everything in nature or created by humans has a purpose or some goal intended by it is called a teleological view of the world

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Further refinements in change

In addition to the four causes that analyzed the important questions that can serve as a tool to understanding reality as it changes, Aristotle also introduces two other concepts that help in this regard These two ideas are called actuality and potentiality

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Potentiality and Actuality

If you recall all substances contain both matter and form But as something undergoes change it can look different through the process Aristotle connects the ideas of matter with potentiality In other words matter contains potentiality so in the text example a lump of clay has the potential to become a brick Form contains actuality At any particular time something has a form or is actual so a lump of clay is actual and has form if the clay is formed into a brick then its form changes and it transforms to a brick form

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Aristotles levels of Reality

For Aristotle the soul was seen as a living force Aristotle identifies three types of souls These souls are included in his five levels of being The five levels give a comprehensive account of Reality

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Five levels of Reality

Inorganic level all the things in nature that do not have life such as stones and earth these objects occupy space Plant level Plants are living things and they have the capacity to reproduce and continue into the future with a purpose Animal Level Animals are living and they reproduce, they have self movement and also have emotions Human Level Human beings have all the capacities of the animal but in addition the important feature of reason

Heavenly level Aristotle like most of his fellow Greeks believed that the moon, stars, and planets were living things as well these living things were formed of a special element called Quintessence

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Aristotles Concept of the Soul

One of the differences that distinguish Plato from Aristotle is their concept of the Soul Aristotle concept of the Soul is that of a living force So, the Plant, the Animal and Humans have souls with different capacities

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Aristotles three types of Souls Three Kinds of Soul Aristotles Epistemology

Aristotle because he rejects Platos forms cannot appeal to the theory of recollection Aristotle must come up with a theory that is consistent with his Metaphysical beliefs Aristotle believes the objects of real existence are the ones that we encounter through our sense perception This theory is called Empiricism Empiricism The view that all knowledge originates from experience

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Knowledge is a process

Humans, according to Aristotle, do not acquire knowledge all in one moment but rather by means of a process This process can be analyzed into four different steps The first step is in accordance with Empiricism and that is we gain information through the senses

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Four steps of Induction

Induction is the process that we undergo to arrive at knowledge The first step is called perception Perception is the acquiring of information through the senses The second step is memory memory is the ability to retain the perceptions in the mind Some animals as well as humans have memory The third step is experience By experiencing perceptions many times in conjunction with memory we form what is called experience The fourth step is knowledge When we are able to understand the universal or the essence of things through this process our experience becomes knowledge Aristotle refers to the human mind or ( Nous ) has the ability to form a Universal from the particular experiences that we have through sense perception and memories

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Induction and its Process Websites and Links

Overview of Aristotle Encyclopedia of Philosophy Aristotles Logic Stanfords Encyclopedia of Philosophy Aristotles Metaphysics - Stanfords Encyclopedia of Philosophy