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philosophy- Ancient philosophical influences Aristotle, What's the…

- - - - marble/ statue example
        -for example, the block of marble has the potential to become an actual statue
        -the statue is latent withing the block of marble- the block of marble has the capacity to become a statue
        
        potency and act are distinct
        -the marble cannot be both a block and statue at the same time
        -in another example a piece of wood cannot be both potentially on fire and actually on fire at the same time- sp change is this movement between potential and actual
- - - - beyond material/ efficient causes
        -aristotle did not beleive we could stop with ust the material and efficient causes 9the what and the how)
        -he believed that as the materual has undergone a change of form from a potentian thing to an actual thing, that part of its explanation was what the characteristics of it were
        
        formal cause
        -if we were to ask a person 'what makes you the person you are?' they would probably not list of the elements that compose them, such as carbon. they would probably talk about their upbringing or give a character trait such as 'im happy go lucky'
        -so we need to add another cause to get a full explaination of a thing- we to talk about characteristics eg a chair is more than just some wood, it is an object with four legs and a space to sit.
        
        formal cause- statue example
        -the formal cause would be its particular qualities of marble sculpted into the form of a body, head etc
        -the formal cause of something is the 'fprm' of the thing- the pattern which makes it what it is.
        
        in the case of a building, it would be the blueprint
        -this is not as easily understandable as the other causes and has been seen as slightly controversial
        -but clearly, much debate surrounds the notion of a form and many agree that aristotle is no less flawed than platos
  - - - acheieving the telos
        -the potential of something may be latent until something else aacts upon it
        -but is that thing acts upon it in a dircted manner and brings about its potental, then we can say the telos of something has been achieved
        
        using teleological reasons
        -when we are talking aboit the human world, it makes sense to talk about why soething happened in terms of a final cause. for exaple
        
        whu did john stay in last night rather than go to marys party he wanted to avoid seeing jane who he dislikes
        
        why did you make that cake for peter? i wanted to cheer him up
        -these are teleological reasons- they make sense in terms of what goal someone had in mind. we would not get a very good understanding of those actions if we left them out
- - - - the principle of the prime mover
        -the movements of the spheres causes teh change in the universe- each spehere causes the one inside it to move until you get to the outmost sphere, which has to be moved by somehing which is not iteself moved (or it would need an explanation for its own movement)
        -this is called the prime mover
        
        prime mover: te cause of motion
        -the object of desire moves other things without itself moving (think of how a saucer of milk draws a cat to it)- in this way the prime mover is the cause of the motion of all other things
        -they are being drawn to it as their own final end
        
        prime mover vs form of the good
        -both are linked in the domain of ethics:
        
        prime mover: through the idea of everything being drawn to its own purpose
        
        form of the good: as the means by which everything that exists is known
        -the prime mover is based on arguments the appeal to a posterioiri (observed) evidence; the form of the good on a priori arguments
        -theu are both 'ultimates', whicg appeal to non theistic deists- impersonal sources of reality, arrived at through philosophical speculation rather than faith
        
        rationalism vs empricism
        -ow dependant on our senses are we for knowledge?
        
        empiricists argue that sense experience is the ultimate source of knowledge
        
        rationalists argue that concepts are independant of sense experience
        -therefore it is a debate in the fielf od epistemology (philosophy of knowledge)
        -the empiricist Hume says that ideas do not exist in themselves independantky from objects other than as a relation between objects