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Aristotle's Four Causes

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Aristotle first defines what causes are in the metaphysics (1013a25-35). He attributes four causes to change: the material cause, the formal cause, the moving cause and the final cause. The material cause is mainly associated with the substance the thing is made from. An example of this can be bronze to a statue. The formal cause is defined as the essence of the thing we are talking about. Without a formal cause, the thing is only a potential and cannot perform the functions that it is supposed to. The third cause, the moving cause, is the cause that first sets the change in motion. In the case of the statue, this would be the sculptor or the art of sculpting. The final cause is the goal we are working towards or the thing we hope to achieve …show more content…

According to Aristotle the body is the material cause and the soul its formal cause (412a16-412b1). His reason for this is that the formal cause or the essence is the main qualifier we use to call a thing “that”. For example, in the case of an eye, the essence can be sight. An eye can have all the right parts but without sight, the eye cannot perform the function it was made for. The same can be said for a body. A dead body could have the right organs in the right places and still it would not qualify for a human being because it lacks the essence that makes a living thing. We can then think of the body as a potential living thing that needs the essence, soul, to make it an actuality or a living …show more content…

The first possible answer Aristotle looks at is nutrition. Nutrition is a common function of all living things including plants because it is the one function all living things need to perform to sustain life. Another function that most but not all living things perform is sense which includes awareness of possible pleasures and pains to the organism. He also recognizes motion as the common function of all animals. (414a26-414b1)
While the three functions are helpful in classifying other living organisms, human beings have an additional function they perform which sets them apart from all other living things: thought. Thought Aristotle says is a function unique to humans and the divine (415a8-10). The essence of being human must not then lie in what is common to all beings; rather, it must be dependent on what is unique to humans alone (1098a1-5). Therefore, the function of a human being lies in reason, not in other parts of the soul, and is living a life of reason and

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To do this I must first explain several concepts of Aristotle which are: (1) how he concludes that the human function is reason, (2) what he means by happiness and how it is the human good, and (3) why he believes that the activity of the soul must be virtuous to become

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“The Merriam Webster Dictionary,” he replied, “defines being human as having human form or attributes. I am thinking and responding right now, and I process the world around me. ‘ Cogito ergo sum’, isn’t that what the famous philosopher Rene Descartes

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In response to the long-standing philosophical question of immorality, many philosophers have posited the soul criterion, which asserts the soul constitutes personal identity and survives physical death. In The Myth of the Soul, Clarence Darrow rejects the existence of the soul in his case against the notion of immortality and an afterlife. His primary argument against the soul criterion is that no good explanation exists for how a soul enters a body, or when its beginning might occur. (Darrow 43) After first explicating Darrow 's view, I will present what I believe is its greatest shortcoming, an inconsistent use of the term soul, and argue that this weakness impacts the overall strength of his argument.

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He reasons that the idea of the body is the ideas of something extended like shape and size. This predicts the mind and body dualism, and the regulation of essential and supplementary qualities. Descartes found the essence of the mind which is to think; and the embodiment of matter, which is to be expanded. He also infers that despite his underlying beliefs, the psyche is a far superior knower than the body and that it is more realistic than the material world. Descartes infers that he must know his mind more than anything.

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“In this world, the body is the word and text by which meaning is produced and received.” (Gale

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Finally, both texts convey the concept of the body being the vessel of the mind and soul. Yusufali insists that, "It [the body] is the vessel of an intelligent mind and strong soul." (page 52). She states the importance of the body, that after all it should not be objectified as a mere tool of advertisement or to be jeered

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Socrates contended that our immortal souls, which reside in the ideal spiritual realm, are pulled into the physical realm by human bodies. However, Socrates claimed that reason is an effective tool that our souls could use in the physical realm to communicate with our imperfect bodies. Because our spirits and bodies come from different realms, it would be difficult for them to connect fully without reason. Socrates' concept of dualism brought in a new era in philosophy, and his achievements and contributions to philosophy will never be

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For example, given Plato’s logic a painting isn’t beautiful because of brush strokes and the meticulous placement of them, yet it is because the painting holds the essence of beauty and participates in the form of beauty. However, given difference of opinion not everyone will find the painting beautiful, and so how are innate forms classified and when? Another question being as to when the soul leaves the body. For example, if a heart is still beating while the brain is dead does the body still carry the essence of immortality and thus the soul? While we may never know, I still find Plato’s explanations vacuously platitudinous, hardly truly giving an explanation at all and instead to be grasping at straws to ease Socrates own fears of death before execution within the

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To explore what human’s function is, Aristotle proposes 3 options. Firstly, he mentions “life of nutrition and growth”, which is the function that even the plants share, involving only the basic life functions of living and growing. Secondly, he mentions the life of perception. Although this involves having emotions, desires, and higher functions of life, it is also shared with animals and not distinctive to humans. Finally, he reaches the conclusion that “the active life of the element has reason” (1098a2) is the most distinctive function of human beings.

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In Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle brings up the idea that in order to discover the human good we must first develop a certain understanding and identify the function of a human being. Aristotle’s function argument is brought up through his belief that the human function is rational activity, meaning that our good as human beings is rational activity performed fine because this is what leads to living well. The good Aristotle tries to get across can be seen in many different forms depending on how it is viewed, because of the idea that the main function of anything is to reach a final end, the final end is considered the good. “The end of medicine is health, that of shipbuilding, a ship, that of military science, victory…” (Nicomachean,

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Conclusion: The mind is substantively different from the body and indeed matter in general. Because in this conception the mind is substantively distinct from the body it becomes plausible for us to doubt the intuitive connection between mind and body. Indeed there are many aspects of the external world that do not appear to have minds and yet appear none the less real in spite of this for example mountains, sticks or lamps, given this we can begin to rationalize that perhaps minds can exist without bodies, and we only lack the capacity to perceive them.

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Remember that for Aristotle meant something different than what we intend when we say cause. We are referring to an action or event that occurred prior to another. For Aristotle, causes meant explanation. This explanation works fine for a man made article, so how does he explain cause in nature?

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The intelligible world (the world of Forms) that gives the visible world it’s being.” (16) He believed that the soul exists without the body, and that we obtain wisdom from our thoughts and therefore we inherit this at the start of conception. Plato thinking were based on the divine being, who he believes made us, and the objects of the world. He believed, the soul was already formed, as what we see here on earth is just a reflection of what is already made.

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He argues that the body and soul are two elements that have the same underlying substance. He maintains that a person’s soul is the same as his nature of body; however, he argues that the mind differed from other parts of the body as it lacked a physical feature. In this case, he maintains that the intellect lacks a physical form, and this allows it to receive every form. It allows a person to think about anything, including the material object. In this case, he argues that if the intellect were in a material form, it could be sensitive to only some physical objects.

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However; he doesn’t talk about only four causes, but also about three separate studies. These three studies are namely unchangeable things, things which changed but cannot pass away, and things which can pass away. Of course, there is a relation between these four causes and three studies. They are not completely different things from each other, but they can be understood by examining a matter in these ways. Aristotle explains that the last three causes which are the form, the mover, and that for the sake of which “often coincide; for the what and that for the sake of which are one, while the primary source of motion is the same in species as these.”

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