Aristotle's philosophy

The Four Causes
1. Material
  1. Matter/substance (eg stone for a sculpture)
2. Efficient
  1. Creator (eg a sculptor)
3. Formal
  1. Form/structure (eg the person/thing the sculpture looks like)
4. Final
  1. Its purpose for being made the way it is (eg for people to look at)
  2. A final cause is intrinsic and a teleology
    1. A living thing's Final Cause is to become a mature, perfect version of itself
    2. No physical thing can be perfect because they change
    3. Nothing changes without cause
The Prime Mover
1. Aristotle believed in 40 rings of stars which all turned each other
  1. The Prime Mover moves the 4oth ring
2. Aristotle's deity
3. Pure actuality
  1. Transcendent - does not interact with the universe
  2. Does not change
    1. Does not interact with the universes because the universe is imperfect and the Prime Mover must be perfect
      1. Its only activity is thought and it thinks of itself because everything else is imperfect
        Because it is perfect, it is made happy by its self-reflection
  3. A necessary being - could not not exist
4. The cause of all change in the universe
  1. It attracts the universe because everything is attracted to perfection and tries to imitate it
  2. It does nothing to cause change - it just attracts things, the way milk attracts a cat without doing anything
  3. It did not create the universe
    1. It has always existed
Potentiality and Actuality
1. All things in the world have the potential to become something else
  1. Eg a seed has potentiality to become a tree
    1. The tree is the actuality
  2. When Aristotle talks about change and movement he means the transition from potentiality to actuality
For and against this theory
1. FOr
  1. Aristotle was an empiricist; he tried to base his theory on observation of the physical world
  2. Provides an explanation for why things are the way they are
  3. Explains imperfection within the universe
  4. May be easier to accept than the Forms, especially for a theist
2. Against
  1. How does Aristotle know the physical world is the source of truth?
  2. 40 circles theory is scientifically disproven
  3. Theists will reject the Prime Mover
  4. Bertrand Russell: ''The universe is a brute fact.'
  5. Observation of the universe does not logically lead to a Prime Mover
Keywords
1. A posteriori
2. Intrinsic
3. Teleology
4. Necessary being
5. Transcendent

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