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3/21/2015 Aristotle: Reality and Knowledge

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Aristotle: Forms and Souls

Metaphysics

Aristotle considered the most fundamental features of reality in the twelve books of the (Metaphysics). Although experience of what happens is a key to all demonstrativeknowledge, Aristotle supposed that the abstract study of "being qua being" must delve moredeeply, in order to understand why things happen the way they do. A quick review of past attemptsat achieving this goal reveals that earlier philosophers had created more difficult questions thanthey had answered: the Milesians over-emphasized material causes; Anaxagoras over-emphasizedmind; and Plato got bogged down in the theory of forms. Aristotle intended to do better.

Although any disciplined study is promising because there is an ultimate truth to be discovered,the abstractness of metaphysical reasoning requires that we think about the processes we areemploying even as we use them in search of that truth. As always, Aristotle assumed that thestructure of language and logic naturally mirrors the way things really are. Thus, the major pointsof each book are made by carefully analyzing our linguistic practices as a guide to the ultimatenature of what is.

Fundamental Truths

It is reasonable to begin, therefore, with the simplest rules of logic, which embody the mostfundamental principles applying to absolutely everything that is:

The Law of Non-Contradiction in logic merely notes that no assertion is both true and false, butapplied to reality this simple rule entails that nothing can both "be . . . " and "not be . . . " at thesame time, although we will of course want to find room to allow for things to change. Thus,neither strict Protagorean relativism nor Parmenidean immutability offer a correct account of thenature of reality. (Metaphysics IV 3-6)

The Law of Excluded Middle in logic states the necessity that either an assertion or its negationmust be true, and this entails that there is no profound indeterminacy in the realm of reality.Although our knowledge of an assertion may sometimes fall short of what we need in order todecide whether it is true or false, we can be sure that either it or its negation is true. (MetaphysicsIV 7-8)

In order to achieve its required abstract necessity, all of metaphysics must be constructed fromsimilar principles. Aristotle believed this to be the case because metaphysics is concerned with agenuinely unique subject matter. While natural science deals with moveable, separable things andmathematics focusses upon immoveable, inseparable things, metaphysics (especially in its highest,most abstract varieties) has as its objects only things that are both immoveable and separable. Thus,what we learn in metaphysics is nothing less than the immutable eternal nature, or essence, ofindividual things.



Universals

In the central books of the Metaphysics, Aristotle tried to develop an adequate analysis ofsubject-predicate judgments. Since logic and language rely heavily upon the copulative use of "is,"careful study of these uses should reveal the genuine relationship that holds between substances andtheir features. Of course, Plato had already offered an extended account of this relationship,emphasizing the reality of the abstract forms rather than their material substratum.

But Aristotle argued that the theory of forms is seriously flawed: it is not supported by goodarguments; it requires a form for each thing; and it is too mathematical. Worst of all, on Aristotle'sview, the theory of forms cannot adequately explain the occurrence of change. By identifying thething with its essence, the theory cannot account for the generation of new substances.(Metaphysics VII) A more reasonable position must differentiate between matter and form andallow for a dynamic relation between the two.

Aristotle therefore maintained that each individual substance is a hylomorphic compositeinvolving both matter and form together. Ordinary predication, then, involves paronymouslyattributing an abstract universal of a concrete individual, and our experience of this green thing ismore significant than our apprehension of the form of greenness. This account, with its emphasison the particularity of individual substances, provided Aristotle with a firm foundation in practicalexperience.

Higher Truths

Aristotle also offered a detailed account of the dynamic process of change. A potentiality {Gk. [dynamis]} is either the passive capacity of a substance to be changed or (in the case ofanimate beings) its active capacity to produce change in other substances in determinate ways. Anactuality {Gk. [energeia]} is just the realization of one of these potentialities, which ismost significant when it includes not merely the movement but also its purpose. Becoming, then, isthe process in which the potentiality present in one individual substance is actualized through theagency of something else which is already actual. (Metaphysics IX) Thus, for Aristotle, change ofany kind requires the actual existence of something which causes the change.

The higher truths of what Aristotle called "theology" arise from an application of these notionsto the more purely speculative study of being qua being. Since every being is a composite whoseform and matter have been brought together by some cause, and since there cannot be infinitelymany such causes, he concluded that everything that happens is ultimately attributable to a singleuniversal cause, itself eternal and immutable. (Metaphysics XII 6) This self-caused "first mover,"from which all else derives, must be regarded as a mind, whose actual thinking is its whole nature.The goodness of the entire universe, Aristotle supposed, resides in its teleological unity as the willof a single intelligent being.

The Nature of Souls

According to Aristotle, every animate being is a living thing which can move itself only becauseit has a soul. Animals and plants, along with human beings, are more like each other than any of



them are like any inanimate object, since each of them has a soul. Thus, his great treatise onpsychology, On The Soul, offers interconnected explanations for the functions and operations of allliving organisms.

All such beings, on Aristotle's view, have a nutritive soul which initiates and guides their mostbasic functions, the absorption of food, growth, and reproduction of its kind. All animals (andperhaps some plants) also have a sensitive soul by means of which they perceive features of theirsurroundings and move in response to the stimuli this provides. Human beings also possess (inaddition to the rest) a rational soul that permits representation and thought. (On the Soul II 2)

Notice that each living thing has just one soul, the actions of which exhibit some degree ofnutritive, sensitive, and/or rational functioning. This soul is the formal, efficient, and final cause ofthe existence of the organism; only its material cause resides purely in the body. Thus, all of theoperations of the organism are to be explained in terms of the functions of its soul.

Human Knowledge

Sensation is the passive capacity for the soul to be changed through the contact of theassociated body with external objects. In each variety of sensation, the normal operations of theappropriate organ of sense result in the soul's becoming potentially what the object is in actuality.Thus, without any necessary exchange of matter, the soul takes on the form of the object: when Ifeel the point of a pin, its shape makes an impression on my finger, conveying this form to mysensitive soul (resulting in information). (On the Soul II 5)

Thought is the more active process of engaging in the manipulation of forms without anycontact with external objects at all. Thus, thinking is potentially independent of the objects ofthought, from which it abstracts the form alone. Even the imagination, according to Aristotle,involves the operation of the common sense without stimulation by the sensory organs of the body.Hence, although all knowledge must begin with information acquired through the senses, its resultsare achieved by rational means. Transcending the sensory preoccupation with particulars, the soulemploys the formal methods of logic to cognize the relationships among abstract forms. (On theSoul III 4)

Desire is the origin of movement toward some goal. Every animate being, to some degree, iscapable of responding to its own internal states and those of its external environment in such a wayas to alleviate the felt absence or lack of some pleasure or the felt presence of some pain. Evenactions taken as a result of intellectual deliberation, Aristotle supposed, produce motion onlythrough the collateral evocation of a concrete desire. (On the Soul III 10)

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