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Aristotle's Influence (Prime Mover (Heavily influenced both the…
Aristotle's Influence
Prime Mover
Heavily influenced both the cosmological argument and - opposed to this - the idea of Deism (an unfeeling and unknowing creator who does not get involved in the personal lives of humans)
In following his idea of four causes, Aristotle believed that the universe itself must have both a cause and a purpose
An immensely powerful being must therefore be the universe's 'efficient cause' otherwise there would be no way for the universe to move between its material and formal causes
The final cause behind everything is the Prime Mover as everything is drawn towards its perfection. Aristotle called this 'Pure Actuality'
However, this is too perfect to even know that the universe exists and is completely unaware of his creation
Influenced the Christian idea of an all powerful God that set everything in motion although still a personal God
Criticisms:
Nietzsche - Nihilism - Existence is without objective meaning, purpose or intrinsic value and so Aristotle's idea that all beings are drawn to God's perfection can never happen. Humans can make their own meaning but their is no intrinsic higher meaning to anything
Hume - We cannot deduce cause and effect unless we observe it - e.g. we only know the cause of a house because we have seen one being built - . We also cannot assume that there is only one unbroken chain of cause and effect leading back to a first cause
Quantum Physics - Modern science has shown that particles can pop into existence in a vacuum seemingly without a cause and can move without an external force acting upon them
The Prime Mover lacks potentiality as that would require it to have had a material cause. It is in a perpetual state of actuality
Four Causes
Everything in the universe follows the idea of four causes which they constantly move through throughout their lifetime and towards some sort of goal
Four Causes:
Material Cause - What something is made up of (for a human, flesh and bone)
Efficient Cause - What brings together the material cause to form the object (i.e conception between mother and father)
Formal Cause - The properties of the object (i.e. what a human looks like)
Final Cause - All objects move towards an unknown final 'telos' which is the purpose for their existence. Aristotle called this state Eudaimonia
Agreed with Heraclitus in saying that the universe is constantly in motion - 'No man ever steps in the same river twice'
Criticisms:
Camus - Absurdism - Humans are purposeless and inhabit an equally purposeless universe. The Absurd refers to mans never ending search for purpose in the universe despite it never being there.
Sartre - Existentialism - Four causes must fail as there is no final cause to the universe because there is no purpose to the universe. This also makes the other causes pointless as there are not working towards any kind of goal thus undermining the whole idea of the four causes
Voltaire - 'Spectacles fit so well on the nose. Therefore, the nose is made for the spectacles' - If there is a telos to anything then we can never know what that is
Influenced the teleological argument in saying that everything that has a 'telos' which is endowed upon us by God. Heavily influenced Aquinas as his 'Archer analogy' is very similar to the four causes and he too believed in eudaimonia although he called it the 'visio beatifica'
The efficient cause moves something from being in a state of potentiality (being merely a concept de dicto) to being in a state of actuality (being a physical thing de re)
Body and Soul
Hierarchy of Faculties
All living things have a soul including plants and animals however not all souls are equal and are arranged on in a hierarchy
The Hierarchy of Faculties:
Intellective - Rational soul possessing reason found only in humans
Locomotive- Mobility found in humans and plants but not plants
Deriderative - Able to have desire and appetite. Found in humans and animals
Perceptive - Able to sense pleasure and pain. Found in humans and animals
Nutritive - Ability to feed and reproduce. Plants only possess this type of soul
A Dualist like Plato would disagree and say that it is only humans that possess a soul as the whole point of a soul is the ability to reason. A Materialist would also disagree and say that no beings have souls and our ability to reason is simply as a result of evolution
Monism
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Copper Statue Analogy - You cannot separate the matter of a copper statue (the copper) and still call it a copper statue. Likewise you cannot remove the form of a statue from the copper statue and still call it a statue
Empiricism
Unlike Plato, Aristotle's knowledge relied almost solely on a posteriori knowledge (knowledge acquired through sense experience)
This meant that he only believed things which he could interact with or that could be reliably tested
Because of this, he rejected the afterlife and formed the modern day scientific method
Criticisms:
Descartes - Believed that the senses could not be trusted and we have no idea if our whole world is an illusion. We can only be confident of one thing which is that we exist
Plato - Your senses cannot be trusted as what we see is not always the truth and can be influenced through teachers and politicians so that we only see what they want us to see. Only an enlightened philosopher using reason can attain real truth
Synthetic Statements - Things that needed to be checked using a posteriori knowledge. E.g. 'The cat is brown' needs to be checked because being brown is not within the definition of a cat
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