What is the nature of ultimate reality? What is there once we get beyond the appearances? What are the ultimate units of the world? Why are they the ultimate units of the world? Such are the questions of metaphysics? Such were the kinds of questions which stand at the origin of philosophy among the Presocratics.

We have seen the general contours of historical development of answers to these questions, most broadly described as the movement from matter-metaphysics to form-metaphysics, the attempt to account for physical phenomena in terms of that which is material (in the Presocratic tradition) and to do so in terms of what is immaterial (in Plato).

Aristotle's thought must be viewed over against the background of the matter-metaphysics of the naturalists and the form-metaphysics of Plato as answers to this question. Aristotle sees his own thought as largely an attempt to reconcile these two types of metaphysical outlooks. Like the naturalists, Aristotle studies nature; like Plato, he employs dialectical concepts and arguments. Aristotle gives us the transition from form-metaphysics to substance metaphysics.

Difficulties with the Presocratic outlook: Inadequate empirical observation

Difficulties with Plato's approach: Too removed from the empirical world

Aristotle's thought is characterized by empirical starting-points, adequately pursued, and then the development of theories to explain the data of observation. But unless we have our data correct, we will not know what we need our theories to explain.

Aristotle’s philosophy give us what might be called substance metaphysics.

Three orders of entity:

1. Those that have separate substantial existence but are subject to change. (Physics)

2. Those which are free from change but do not have separate substantial existence (but exist only as distinguishable aspects of concrete realities) (Mathematics)

3. Those that have separate substantial existence and are free from change (Metaphysics)

In the Categories, Aristotle explains the nature of predication [X is Y]. Predication is the act of the application of terms to things in the world. But any such treatment must begin by classifying the things that are. The Categories concerns the highest ways of being (i.e., existing) in the direction of generality.

There are ten categories, all based on the different senses of "is a" or "are" when we assert [X is Y].

Substance (what x is) [secondary substance]

quality (what x is like)

quantity (how much or many xs there are)

relation (how x is related to something else)

place (where x is spatially located)

time (where x is temporally located)

condition or state (a description of x at some time)

activity (what x is doing)

passivity (what is being done to x)

But there is something more fundamental than all these categories: a primary substance. The world is split up into such substances. A substance (ousia) Aristotle takes to be that which is individual, one in number, and not said of any subject (nor in any subject). These are prior to all the categories because an ousia can exist by itself. The Categories gives us a view of the individuation if things at a given time: synchronic individuation. Substances, in general, are the permanent furniture of the world, invariants of existence.

Although a primary substance exists by itself, there are in fact no primary substances that exist without a secondary substances. A secondary substance will be a special class of predicates that define a thing by locating it in a genus: horse, man, animal. We can think of something like the modern notion of "properties", properties of genera and species, which define the nature of a thing and so without which it cannot exist. Secondary substances are universals and cannot exist by themselves. Secondary substances may be said of other things, but not so with primary substances.

Elvis [primary substance] is a man [secondary substance]

Man does not exist itself, but Elvis has such existence. We can point to Elvis, and we can point to individual men; but we cannot point to "man" as such. The distinction is thought to be self-evident.

So we have the following three divisions:

1. Primary substance: a particular subject of change or the existing, particular individual. Example: Socrates is a man. "Socrates" is a substance.

2. Secondary substance: what a primary substance must have to exist, but which cannot exist in its own right. In other terms, the essential properties of a substance. A secondary substance shows us what a primary substance is. Examples: Socrates is a man. "Man" is a secondary substance."

3. Non-substantial particulars or universals (belonging to the categories of quality, quantity, relation, etc. Socrates is fat. "Fat" is a nonsubstantial universal.

Why is this object as it is? 4 answers in terms of 4 causes.

Where X is a primary substance:

1. Material Cause: That out of which X is made.

2. Efficient Cause: That which acts, as an agent, to produce X.

3. Formal Cause: That which X is (to be), the form of X.

4. Final Cause: That for which X is made (end or purpose).

So a bronze statue of Elvis: is made of bronze (material cause), represents Elvis (formal cause), was made by someone (the efficient cause), and is intended to represent Elvis (final cause).

Aristotle notes in Physics 2:7 that formal, final, and efficient cause are often one, for "what something is and what it is for are one, and the first source of motion is the same in species as these. E.g., man generates a man.

In every (primary) substance we can distinguish between the stuff of which it consists and the structural law of formation which peculiar to the kind of thing it is. These are not real parts, but only logical parts - a conceptual distinction which cannot in fact be separated.

matter: hyle, materia

form: eidos, formos

Matter is the particular subject which underlies and Form is what the matter acquires when a primary substance comes into bring. So the bronze of the statue is the statue’s matter and the form is the shape and representation the bronze takes on. It is made of bronze and is a statue.

Every individual is matter organized in accordance with a determinate principle of structure. Matter is not necessarily the same as a body, for Aristotle extends it the sense of the indeterminate which must be given determination. Think of the character of a person, for instance. As an adult it has form, but this has arisen out of previous dispositions and tendencies. Matter may be immaterial, then.

substance = MATTER + FORM

Every substance in the universe is an individual thing; the universal as such has no independent existence, though it is real and objective. Aristotle is against the substantiality of universals. His great polemic against Plato. Universals only exist in substances.

In addition to individuating things at a time, we can talk about individuation through time: diachronic individuation. That is, we ask not only what things there are but what makes them the ultimate units they are. How does an individual persist through time? Aristotle's two great questions are: what things are there and how do they become the things they are?

The Presocratics were led to see the ultimate stuff of the world as matter primarily because they held that Nature is that which persists through change and matter is what persists through change. Aristotle will modify this conception. To underlie a change, X must be there before the change and after the change.

1. All change involves some subject which undergoes change and the subject undergoes the change by losing one of a pair of contrary properties and acquiring the other.

2. Two general types of Change

Aristotle recognizes two general kinds of change: one in which there is a persisting subject (qualified coming into Being) and one in which a new subject comes into being (unqualified coming into Being).

Every concrete individual thing in nature can change in four ways:

1. It can move in space (local motion) - movement

2. It can change in quality - alteration (or quality)

3. It can become larger or smaller - growth and diminution (or quantity)

4. it can be destroyed - substantial change

Matter is what is presupposed for Aristotle in all change. Matter explains change. A thing will have the capacity to change in the four ways above to the extent it is embedded, as it were, in four layers of matter local matter, matter of alternation, etc.

terrestrial bodies experience always have 2-3. heavenly bodies - the celestial sphere experiences only local motion. Everything in the world, except minds, is a union of form with at least local matter.

Nature for Aristotle is that which has a principle of motion within itself. Natural philosophy is thus concerned with the principles of change. Note that is natural is distinct from what is an artifact. So natural for Aristotle is contrasted with crafts not supernatural.

Static Analysis of the individual thing: Matter and Form

Dynamic Analysis of change: Potentiality and Actuality

Change, in any of the sense above, is the reduction of potency to act. That is, "change is the Actuality of the Potential as such." "change is the actuality of the changeable as changeable."

We can distinguish between things actually being so-and-so and things being potentially so-and-so. It is one thing to possess potential, another to actualize it.

Consider my potentiality at age 12 to be a good guitarist. At time t1 I was potentially a good guitarist; at time tn+1 I was actually a good guitarist, now - not having practiced.

Consider the growth of a living organism. If a botanist were to look at any number of seeds, he might not be able to tell to what species the germ belongs. Nor does it appear to be what it will be. Germ x may be potentially an oak, but it is not actually an oak. If no one interferes with the seed, it will become an oak; it will become an oak without any interference. There is, in it, an inbuilt tendency to move toward a certain end. There is a tendency for it to be worked up into a certain form. Matter then is the persistent underlying substratum in which the development of the Form takes place.

That which is finally determined by Form is the actuality of which the undeveloped matter was only the potentiality.

Notice that such a process does move toward an end. It does not go on forever. The buck stops somewhere.

Act is prior to potency in several aspects.

1. in definition, for in specifying a potency we must state what it is a potency for, and that means naming an actuality.

2. in time, before there can be potential so-and-sos there must be actual so-and-sos. Potential men presuppose actual men. For what is actually so and so comes to be so and so from being from being potentially so and so by means of something which is actually so and so. There is a transmission of character. You can transmit what you do not possess.

So potential being musical comes from actual being musical.

Aristotle has a non-evolutionary theory of natural generation. Contemporary biological evolutionary theory uses the word "nature", but this usage of nature (derived from Darwin) is not Aristotle’s view. Nature, for Aristotle, is something determinate (form: species), and it is transmitted in procreation. Like begets like.

Although we can have knowledge of sensible particulars, according to Aristotle:

Sense perception is only of a particular fact F.

Wisdom (or science) involves knowing why F is.

Knowledge is of the necessary (that which cannot be otherwise than it is)

Opinion is of the contingent (that which can be otherwise than it is)

Knowledge of perception is immediate

Knowledge of science is mediated knowledge

S believes that "Man is an animal" => S judges that animal is of the essence of being a man

vs. Judging that some particular person happens to have this attribute.

Metaphysics is concerned with finding the highest causes of things: a knowledge of things as existing things. Since this goal is not pursued for any end or goal beyond itself, it is a theoretical knowledge (as opposed to practical knowledge where causes are sought for their utility.

© Michael Sudduth 1996