Aristotle Flashcards
What is Aristotle’s epistemology
Empiricism- Any knowledge we have in our mind comes from the senses
A posteriori knowledge- using sense experience
What are Aristotle’s Four Causes
Material cause
Formal Cause
Efficient Cause
Final Cause
What is the Material Cause
The thing that something is made from, for example, a statue is made out of bronze or a watch is made out of stainless steel
What is Formal Cause
The structure or form of a finished thing- eg describing the characteristics of a statue. However, this can be more than just the appearances for example, the characteristics of a dog are, it barks, and the characteristics of a chicken is that it clucks
What is Efficient Cause
The maker of the object- e.g. a sculpture would make a statue or a watchmaker makes a watch
What is FINAL CAUSE (important)
It is the purpose of which something is done or made- its TELOS. For example, the telos of a watch can be for fashion purposes and for telling the time
What would an object have to do in order for it to be good (Aristotle)
An object is good if it fulfils its purpose- however it is hard to comprehend an object having an intrinsic cause because surely it is humans that give objects their purposes
What is Motus
All the movement and change in our world
Why does Aristotle believe there is Motus (movement and change) in our world
everything is moving towards the final cause and our universe has no beginning or end.
The final cause and telos of an object can change and Aristotle shows this through Actuality and Potentiality. What are these concepts?
An objects actuality is what it actually is, for example, take an acorn, its actuality is an acorn. But its potentiality is the potential of what that object can be and it can have multiple potentials (multiple telos’). For example an acorn has the potential to be food for a squirrel, it can grow into a tree or it can be used for firewood.
Give a strength of Aristotle’s Four Causes- natural world
The four causes are derived from Aristotle’s reflections on his studies of the natural world. Also because his use of empiricism allows us to see and observe the world around us it is stronger than Plato’s theory of forms as it is based on sense experience which can be tested
Give two more strengths of Aristotle’s four causes- telos,
applied today
His argument for final cause is very true, we do nothing without a reason for doing it, so every action must have a final cause- idea of telos is evidently portrayed here
The theory can still be applied today, even though Aristotle was an ancient greek, shows it is a timeless theory
What is a weakness of Aristotle’s idea that everything has a purpose
Does everything have a purpose? If you accidently rip part of a page of a book, then what is the purpose of that small bit of torn paper?
What is another weakness of Aristotle’s idea that everything has a purpose- prime mover
Many argue that only man can have a purpose as it is intelligent to give itself a purpose. If something was to have a purpose it must’ve been given to it by a greater power. The prime mover doesn’t know of our existence so how can it give us a purpose.
Why is A posterior knowledge useful
it is more useful than a priori knowledge because there is physical evidence in the world around us, for example, the four causes are derived from Aristotles reflections of the empirical world
