The Natural and the Artificial

    Things within the natural world are in a constant state of change, and through the changes made, whether out of necessity or chance, gain purpose and reveal their true nature. Aristotle thinks that while all things can have both stability and change, only a natural thing has the ability of these two qualities within itself, or without the help if an outside source (Physics 201). He understood and believed this through observation of action taking place, and came to the conclusion that change within subjects in the natural world can be divided into four main causes: Material Cause, Efficient Cause, Formal Cause, and the Final Cause (Physics 205).
    Something that is natural is created with the ability to change through time on its own, and originates with its nature intact. A substance that is created from an outside source and with a purpose in mind, whether out of necessity or not, is an artificial object (Physics 201). However, both artificial and natural objects have many causes for being, which help us to “find why something is so,” and which ultimately leads to knowledge and greater understanding of a substance and the world as a whole (Physics 205). In summary, there is the Material Cause, or the materials that make up a subject; the Formal Cause, or what gives form to an object; the Efficient Cause, or the motive for something being created; and the Final Cause, which is the purpose of a subject existing (Physics 205). So from the beginning, subjects within the world, whether natural or artificial, develop and go through phases, with an end purpose in mind. While only a natural object is capable of acting out its purpose within itself (Physics 201). It is this nature and purpose of an object that shapes or creates it’s form.
    The question then becomes, what exactly sets off these phases and the changes that lead to the nature and purpose of both natural and artificial objects being in existence? For instance, is it out of necessity that the changes take place, such as when a human needs shelter and builds an artificial object for that purpose (Physics 209)? Or perhaps it is out of chance and coincidence that the events take place, and thus cause and effect is enacted? However, it is most likely a combination of all factors, working together to set about events and the motions taking place. Thus, leading to the form of the natural world being brought about by the substances within it.

Causes, Luck and Chance

Causes, Luck and Chance

In “Physics, Book II,” Aristotle examines the nature of cause and effect. Aristotle argues that effects can be attributed to one of four causes: “material, formal, efficient and final.” The essential causes are causes which have a natural order. The “Material cause” includes the materials that something is going to be made from: i.e. we need stone and wood to build a house.  The “Formal cause” is, for example, the blueprints used to design a house. The “Efficient cause” is “the source of the primary origin of change or stability,” (Physics, 207) such as a carpenter making a product to create the final product, e.g., the house. The same thing may have more than one cause, but it’s “The final” cause that makes the big difference as it’s the purpose of result of all the other causes. Aristotle maintains that these four causes can be thought of as essential because they directly produce an effect.  Thus, any natural change must be the result of one or more of these four causes. After presenting his well developed thoughts on these four essential causes one might ask why Aristotle went further into other causes namely as accidental causes?

 Aristotle observes that some natural changes appear to be caused by accident. When this occurs, we attribute such coincidences to luck or chance. This presented a logical problem for Aristotle because he already argued that all natural changes are the result of his essential causes. Aristotle further notes that while past philosophers had even described events as caused by luck in their writings, they completely ignored this apparent cause in their formal analyses of cause and effect. Aristotle sought to address this contradiction.

To account for this apparent contradiction, Aristotle makes a clear distinction between essential causes and accidental causes. Essential causes have a direct impact on an outcome, but accidental causes can affect an outcome only indirectly through their effect on an essential cause. Aristotle provides a useful example to illustrate this subtle point. Suppose person A goes to the market for some unrelated reason with no awareness that person B, who owes A money, will be there. So A ends up in the same place as B purely by coincidence, which gives A the opportunity to collect the money from B. Thus, in this example, while it was clearly lucky that A ran into B, this coincidence could not have occurred if A had not decided to go to the market in the first place. So in this sense, while the outcome was largely a product of luck because A was not aware that B would be there, the “lucky” event could not have happened if A had not first chosen to go to the market.

 Aristotle goes even further by making a definite distinction between chance and luck. Even though they are similar “luck” is something that happens because of a purpose involved, whereas “chance” is something that happens by itself with no decision at all. Since, according to Aristotle, only adults are able to make conscious decisions, we can say that luck leads to coincidental outcomes for adults, but chance leads to coincidental outcomes for beasts, children and inanimate objects, as Aristotle argues “Chance on the other had belongs to other animals that man and to many inanimate object” (Physics, 210), because none of the latter categories are capable of conscious thought. If rock falls and hits a passerby, it did not make a conscious decision to do so therefore it is not luck.

        Aristotle elevates his four causes, such that luck and chance only comes after these causes. Aristotle shows us that neither luck nor chance exists without the other four causes. With difference between them being, that in thinking beings we call it luck; in non thinking beings we call it nature as chance is caused by nature.

Example of a good blog post

This is a post by a student from a course that I taught last semester.  Look at it for an example of what I think is a good post.

 http://philo215fall2011.blogspot.com/2011/10/contra-mind-body-dualism-gw-leibniz.html

The main details are:

1. it states what it is going to do in the first sentence.  I.e., it has a thesis. The post will explain Leibniz' account of reality in the theory of monads and how this theory is a solution to the mind-body problem.
2. In the second paragraph he gets right into that theory of monads.  Now he uses a good quotation, but he does not explain that quotation (that is a shortcoming), but one can already see that it has something to do with the relation of souls/spirits/monads to bodies.
3. It explains the monad theory and especially the issue of pre-established harmony.
4. In the third paragraph he raises some questions.  He should try to answer these questions.  Instead, in the fourth paragraph he goes back to the other part of his thesis that has not been dealt with--the mind-body problem.

This is not a perfect blog post.  However, it is pretty good.

FYI.

Origin of Nature: Form, Matter and Change

            There must be a basic principle or a root behind an object in nature for one to understand its change or process. For example when a seed becomes a mature plant the process the seed took to become itself must have existed before the seed ever became a plant. Aristotle considers this idea to be one of the principles of nature because anything that is natural has in itself an origin of change(Physics, 201). The change takes places according to four different causes.

            Aristotle believes that some things that happen are just natural and others occur from different reasons(Physics, 201). All change or process  involves "growth and decay" or "alteration" to show its distinct form. He describes items that have no "innate impulse" like a bed but still can change because in itself has nature(Physics, 201). A bed made out of wood would ultimately decompose only because of the material it is created with. When it does decompose the rotting residue would become wood and not a bed because the wood is natural(Physics, 202). 

            When Aristotle states, "For something is called whatever it is when it is actually so, more than when it is only potentially so"(Physics, 202) he talks about the wood that is used to make the bed is only considered a bed until it looks  and is shaped like one(Physics, 202). Aristotle believes that since the form is what makes something the thing, the form is the thing's "nature".  As flesh and bone do not have nature until the "form" is how we define flesh or bone(Physics, 202). Nature is the shape and form which all have an origin of change. 

            Aristotle’s ideas led him to believe that in nature, matter and form cannot exist independently. Any amount of matter would have a form(Physics, 202). He uses a bed and statue as an example because one is made out of wood and the other made out of bronze to show that the "form" needs "matter"(Physics, 202). Anything that has matter also needs a form. 

 What does Aristotle mean when he states " The same applies to everything else that is produced; for none of them has in itself the origin of production. In some a house and each of the other products of handicraft - their origin is in other, external things. In others, those that might come to be coincidental causes for themselves, the origin is in them, but is not in accord with what they are in themselves"(Physics, 201). 

A Good Statesman

            Plato’s, Gorgias, is now at the point where Socrates is restating all the arguments he has made throughout the book. While still arguing with Callicles, he brings up the argument of good statesman and the cities they were in charge of.  The purposes of these jobs were to make the citizens better then what they were. Socrates believes that if you are going to be a good statesman, you have to have impacted the citizen in some way because they should become better people. Socrates challenges Callicles on the choice of former politicians he considered “good”.

            In the beginning of the argument, Socrates questions if Callicles thought if he changed any one of his citizens’ lives when he decided to become part of public service. Callicles takes offense to this and Socrates just wants to know how the Athenian people are going to be managed (Gorgias, 117). He goes on to being up the former member of the community that Callicles considered to be good. He seems to be confusing pleasure over good again. Socrates began to pick at each and every man.

            Within Pericles, “what he should have done is leave them more moral than when he found them” (Gorgias, 119). The reason of leading others should be about making them better people and a better society. What Plato is showing in Socrates is that morals are what make a person good and a statesman should be good. If you mix up pleasure with good while being a leader, the people are bound to turn. As Socrates quotes Homers that “to be moral is to be tamed” (Gorgias, 119). The job of a statesman or a politician entails keeping their community in order. If you don’t have order and give into pleasure or freedom, then there is no good in what they are doing. Socrates won his argument with Callicles’s argument that Pericles was a good statesman because he ended up leaving the Athenians worse off than when he started. The others were also proven wrong by Socrates and were all eventually thrown out.

            Socrates also states that these men wouldn’t have been thrown from their reign if they were good from the start. He uses the analogy that “ good wagoners- ones who don’t get thrown out of their wagons in the first place… after they’ve been looking after their horses and have improved as wagoners” (Gorgias, 120). He believes that because they were also rhetoricians that their authenticity and flattery weren’t up, that it affected their power as well. I think that if a politician isn’t able to persuade the people to be better, then how are they supposed to be good politicians?