Ancient Philosophy
Buildup of the aristotelian system based on biology. Aristotle comes to some conclusions about the methodology of establishing a scientific system.
We need an instrument: the Ourganon. This is the name for his works on logic. They are the instruments we need to do science. To argue from one place to another, or to build up a consequence of arguments, we need an established methodology for sound reasoning.
That methodology teaches us that we have 10 ways of speaking, categoria. Now it has retained the technical meaning that Aristotle gave to it, but it originally meant talking about something basically. 10 manners of speaking. Most of the ancient philosophers are philosophical realists, so they think that any structure in the mind corresponds to reality. We describe things as mentally having colours, and if I conceive it as coloured, I can be sure it is coloured in reality. Our vision may be confused and see things slightly differently than others, but we know and agree that there is colour. The structures of logic in our mind are the rational buildup of reality as such. If we lose that connection, than our methodology are only going to be an exemplification of the structures of our mind, like in Kant. And then Hegel comes and says ’well that’s reality after all’.
The only one who kind of denies this is Protagoras.
Within this structure of the categories, there is a very specific hierarchy to be made. There are actually 2 groups of categroies, one of 9, and one of 1. If I ask, what is the quantity of a thing, I refer to a thing that exists. The first question is the most central, ie. what it is it? If we leave this out there is nothing to talk about at all. You have to have a thing to talk about. The first question is therefore about the Ousia which is the noun of ’to be’. This is the centerpiece of aristotelian metaphysics. You need a central bearer of all other things. Each other 9 category really falls to the substance, the things that accidere, the accident. Whatever colour you have, the colour of your hair, may change eventually, but it doesn’t necessarily change the person. These things shouldn’t affect the substantial nature of the being itself. In Aristotle’s mind, substances are individuals.
In Plato Ousia is the level of being, meaning universal ideas, for Aristotle this cannot be the centerpiece of metaphysics. Because all you find in reality are individuals. The world is built up primarily of individually existent things. Substances are natural bodies, artefacts, etc. Basically anything you can apply an analysis onto can also be a substance. Aristotle points to everything and calls it ’a this’. A concrete individual existing thing. This takes on any of the qualities of the categories in invariable constellations. The substance is unaffected by whatever accidents it takes on.
The substance is really the innermost cornerstone of Aristotle’s metaphysics, which take on accidents.
Two sets of question for this scheme? How can a thing be what it is when I find it existing? – What can I describe as being here? Just describe it as is. So now, after this static perspective, how can this thing change? What is the differentiation of the thing?
In the static perspective we find the Hyle and the Morphe. They don’t entirely coincide with the causes. We have here two causes, the formal cause and the material cause. It refers to the form in the things. It is the form pot as you find it existing in the pot as you describe it. And then matter, which has the word for timber, kind of the primary material of a house. He is trying to find a terminology that doesn’t really exist yet. Hylomorphism refers to the static perspective of things, in which you refer to things according to form and matter. If you raise the question about what a form that is instantiated in a ’this’? It is indeed a form that come in multiple instances, you will see about the same structure. This present form can occur in many other occasions. You need to describe it as something more universal. The term Aristotle uses for this is also ousia like Plato. He is of course not following Plato in saying that they have a seperate transcendental existence that exist elsewhere. For Aristotle there is only one world. You cannot find the forms as such. But there are forms in the world which are ’instantiated’. The metaphysics in much is about the different meanings of ousia. It is almost illogical to use that word all over the place. Ousia is both the individual thing and used for what is now called essence. Essence for Aristotle would have called it ousia in a secondary being. What Plato would understand as the form, but then detached from its transcendence. Essence is the species or the genus to which things belong on the universal level.
To ti en einai. It is what it is.
The greeks really liked reifying their slavery. Aristotel does this a lot. Being a slave is on an ontological level. This doesn’t continue with roman aristotelians who really respect their freed slaves. Freed slaves for Aristotle are almost a seperate subspecies. Once a slave always a slave.
Aristotle actually picks up the platonic notion of universality, without calling it eidos. But the name being is already platonic. The fact that this secondary substance is also called Ousia is a referens to platonic thinking. However he is adamant to deny any likeness to Plato’s theory of ideas.
For Aristotle, Plato doubles the world by introducing the world of ideas. It doesn’t really explain the world. Cows are cows because they belong to cowness, they are cows because they are cows. And what is the extent of the theory of forms? Of which things are there forms? Is there an idea of evil, of negation etc.? It’s really unclear why there shouldn’t be. And Plato also has ideas of qualities, like pure white. Why is whiteness, an accident, a form? And also the problem of artefacts, in the republic Plato gives the example of a bed, but a bed is not a form. Back to Alexander of Aphrodisias’ third man argument is also something that Aristotle brings up.
What we know of things is abstraction. We start from observation in order to do science. And what we do in observation is gain knowledge.
You cannot talk about the individual by itself. As an individual you describe it on the basis of universal concepts. The qualifications we give to a substance are only universals. You can only understand the individual through universals, through essences.
We leave matter apart, and we abstract, we take out, the form from the constellation of form and matter. What we know is always going to be form in the meaning of secondary ousia. We abstract the universal from the individual. We dematerialise the things, and disindividualise them in the same movement. I cannot know you as an individual apart from name without a combination of universal terms in relation to accidental characteristics you have. But each accident in and of itself is only in general terms.
Thus we have logos in the sense of a fine described definition of an individual, a description based on the elements that make up the essential characteristics one has.
And so what about matter then? What is matter?
It is very easy to say that an individual thing is a combination of matter and form. But what is that matter? In each case it differs. Maybe a table is made out of planks. But planks are already a form of wood and this continues. Whatever I would describe as material would by itself actually be a formal description? So where do I get matter as such? Prime matter, out of which everything is built? (prime matter is from the later tradition). In present day science it would be the atoms, or the constituents of the atoms. You can reduce to basic constituents, but these would be fundamentally formed, as the periodic table is a description of things at a universal level which is at the level of form. The total absence of form can only be found in the limit to infinity of a shape. But the mind cannot grasp that because to grasp anything you need formal determinations. Knowledge of matter without form is impossible. Matter in itself is an empty concept, it is a kind of nothingness from which the universe is built up. It is onconceivable as such, but is determined as total and sheer receptivity to form. It can take on any form imaginable. Matter in its purest state is totally formless, and by that fact it is open to receiving any form. Matter is a little bit like stem cells in our body – more or less fully receptive to form. You can get very close to sheer formlessness but you can never get there in entirety.
If aristotle were to know kantian theory he would say that he speaks specifically of the thing in itself. Aristotle would call kant’s structures of mind as being only in the mind crazy. If we know structures in your mind it reflects reality because they are not produced by our mind, but in and by existing in reality.
Teleology. The function and the aim are going to be coinciding by the operation of making something what it is. But the same is true for nature. It does nothing in vain. The organism that is our body is constituted of a combination of organs that all have their own functions, and hence a form. In combination with a form always follow a sort of a function, a teleology.
Empedocles had the theory that out of humans any monster can be born. There must be a reason to believe then that nature does this on purpose. But this isn’t the case. Nature always make sure that anything it produces follows nature-as-such’s proper aim. Nature is not a conscious being however, so doesn’t really have any known logic. It just reporoduces itself according to physical laws. In nature everything has a kind of inherent purpose. Things in themselves have their own inherent goals, which is always perfection.
Most evil deeds in Aristotle are done by going against our better judgement, akrasia. An argument against socratic intellectualism. We are just unable to do the good even though we know what it would be. It does not take away the fact that our human nature is aimed at doing good.