Ancient Philosophical Influences- Aristotle

Question 1

Who taught Aristotle

Answer 1

Plato

Question 2

What does it mean when people say that Aristotle focused of Teleology

Answer 2

The explanation of events by the purpose that they serve, rather than speculated causes

Question 3

Aristotle’s views on the Forms

Answer 3

-Believed in the Forms
-Forms exist within an object itself, not in a different realm
-the Form of an object can be readily percieved with the senses

Question 4

How are Plato and Aristotle viewed to represent the different approaches to Philosophy

Answer 4

Plato- Emphasises the world of ideas and reason as the source of knowledge
Aristotle- Emphasises the physical world and experience as the basis of knowledge

-Rationalism vs Empiricism
-A Priori vs A Posteriori knowledge

Question 5

What are the three types of substance

Answer 5

-Evident but will decay/die (eg. a plant or an animal)
-Evident but will not decay/die (eg. time)
-Immune to change altogether (eg. numbers)

Question 6

What is Potentiality

Answer 6

When something contains the potential to become something else (eg. a seed has the potentiality to become a tree)

Question 7

What is Actuality

Answer 7

When an object fulfils its potential and becomes something else (eg. when a seed grows into a tree)

Question 8

Greek word for change

Answer 8

Motus

Question 9

What are the Four Causes

Answer 9

-Material Cause
-Efficient Cause
-Formal Cause
-Final Cause
(MEFF)

Question 10

What is the Material Cause

Answer 10

-The matter/substance that something is made up of
-(eg. a book is made of paper)
-The materials represent the impermanence of our world

Question 11

What is the Efficient Cause

Answer 11

-The cause of an object existing
-(eg. a book exists because somebody wrote it)
-The Efficient cause does not have to be a person
-An object can have more than one Efficient Cause

Question 12

What is the Formal Cause

Answer 12

-What gives the matter its form or structure
-A book is not just random sheets of paper, but paper cut and arranged in a certain way
-We can recognise a book because it has a cover, pages, and a spine
-We mentally fit the object into a catagory that we already know
-We can catagorise a book as a book because of its ‘bookness’

Question 13

What is the Final Cause

Answer 13

-The reason why something is the way that it is
-The function of a thing or object
-Therefore the Final cause is Teleological (it is to do with the purpose or Telos of a thing or object)
-The reason an object exists at all