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Aristotle on the Hollowing Out of His Ideas

By Savvy Inquirer

November 25, 2024

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Savvy Inquirer: We are here again with Aristotle, one of the foremost philosophers in Western civilization. Through the wonders of the still experimental time machine invented by Elon Musk, Aristotle has made many trips from his time to various eras of history including our own. While he has much that he can share with us, facts about our past and present as well as his own ideas, our readers will be disappointed that he is unable to tell us about our future because it doesn’t exist yet. Isn’t that correct, Mr. Aristotle?

Aristotle: That is essentially correct, Savvy, and please continue to call me Ari as you did in our previous conversation. In fact, though, while Mr. Musk’s time machine go to any era, past, present, or future, anyone traveling in it is unable to tell people about what lies in their future. For instance, just as I am unable to tell you about things I have seen and heard 200 years from now, once I return home to my own time, I will be unable to tell my fellow Athenians about what I have experienced in my visits here with you. Though perhaps that is for the best.

Savvy Inquirer: Perhaps so, Ari. But as you know, your ideas have been very influential in the intellectual world for over 2000 years, thanks to the roughly 25% of your written works that survived Antiquity. How do you feel about your thoughts having had such a deep and lasting effect on the human race?

Aristotle: I wish that I could say otherwise, but unfortunately, I have mixed feelings about it. I cannot deny that it pleases and gratifies me that my ideas have helped to improve the living conditions of the human race. The great advances in science and mathematics based on my thinking have made possible a level of human well-being and happiness that was unimaginable in my time, and indeed for a good many centuries after that.

However, as much human good as my ideas have led to, they themselves have not fared as well. In fact, as I see it, there has been a significant erosion of the full and actual meaning of my key insights—what your renowned storyteller J. K. Rowling might have called a “deadly hollowing.” Part of the impetus for my repeated visits to your time is thus to try to remedy this sad state of affairs by restoring to whatever extent I can the original understanding of my philosophy. What use you and your fellow humans of this era make of this new perspective is, of course, up to you.

There has been a significant erosion of the full and actual meaning of my key insights—what J. K. Rowling might have called a “deadly hollowing.”

Savvy Inquirer: Well, that certainly sounds both alarming and daunting, Ari. How do you propose that we begin? Are there many corrections that you feel need to be made?

Aristotle: Oh, there are more than several, Savvy, but to properly address even three or four of them might require that many separate conversations. What I propose to do today is to preview what I think are the most important deadly hollowings as briefly and clearly as I can, and then we can explore them at more length in future visits. Does that sound agreeable to you?

Savvy Inquirer: Certainly, Ari. So, where would you like to start?

Aristotle: With logic, our method of knowing. I find it amusing that I am often referred to as the Father of Logic. I swear to you that I was never in that kind of relationship with Logic’s mother…Wait, you are laughing, Savvy?

Savvy Inquirer: Of course, Ari. I only know of you as having been a lecturer whose thoughts were dry and abstract. But you really have a great sense of humor.

Aristotle: Oh, I slip in an attempt at wit here and there, and some can even be found in my logical works. Sadly, much of my funniest material perished along with the 75% of my works that did not survive down to the present. Perhaps some will be retrieved from the ruins of Herculaneum or some yet undiscovered ancient temple.

But to be honest, Parmenides deserves the credit for first stating that things which exist, do exist, and that those which do not exist, do not exist. You can’t get much more logical than that. And my teacher Plato and his teacher Socrates were quite adept at logic and at insisting that we eschew contradictions. What I did was to examine all of the excellent thinking that had been done up to my time and to find in it the patterns and principles that allow us to think truly about the world, and then to state those patterns and principles in as full and orderly a manner as possible.

I never uttered the phrase “Law of Identity” or the formula “A is A.” I spoke exclusively in terms of “sameness” and “difference.”

One thing that is vital to my logic, though, was something I barely mentioned in my Organon or in my Metaphysics, and that is the Law of Identity. Of course, I never uttered the phrase “Law of Identity.” I spoke exclusively in terms of “sameness” and “difference.” Also among the various other things that have been attributed to me, but which I did not say, was the basic formula “A is A.” Perhaps I should have.

One of your era’s best thinkers did correctly note that I stated, in her words, “the rule of all knowledge …A thing is itself.” I will state it more emphatically now: if you do not keep in mind that a thing is itself and not something else, then you do not understand identity and sameness, and you can never know anything—or, at the very least, you cannot completely understand why you know it. Worse, you may find yourself spending far too much time dismantling, or even falling into, some of the logical fallacies that my more perverse critics trafficked in back in Athens. More on this another time…

If you do not keep in mind that a thing is itself and not something else, you may fall into some of the logical fallacies that my more perverse critics trafficked in.

I should add, however, that one of the worst consequences of the failure to grasp this principle—and we can take this as our second example of deadly hollowings of my thought—is that modern logicians have taken this “what a thing is” version of the Law of Identity as a weapon with which to eviscerate my Square of Opposition. It’s the famous diagram with four possible types of assertion: All x are y, Some x are not y, Some x are y, and No x are y.

I would refer you to a standard logic text for an illustration, but I must remind you that they have all been thoroughly debauched by the baleful influence of the moderns. After they had their way with my beloved Square, it became a hollowed-out shell of its former self, and it is no longer able to serve as a tool with which to assess the truth or falsity of propositions about imaginary or non-existent things. It so happens, though, that we can make any number of true and false statements about things like goat-stags and square circles, so long as we understand “is” most deeply as standing for sameness or identity. As before, we will continue this later.

After the moderns had their way with my beloved Square, it became a hollowed-out shell of its former self…no longer able to assess the truth or falsity of propositions about imaginary or non-existent things.

Savvy Inquirer: That’s already a lot to chew on, Ari. What about your important ideas about the real world?

Aristotle: Oh, I assure you that logic is vitally important to the real world. But I do know what you mean: the world of natural objects and living beings and, indeed, I must say that science, and especially biology, are almost as fascinating and beloved to me as logic. In fact, admirers have so persistently referred to me as the Father of Science that I have to repeatedly reassure my wife that I have not had some sort of clandestine affair with Science’s mother…Ah, I see that you managed to avoid spraying yourself with coffee this time. I guess I need to get some new humorous material.

The physical sciences, unlike logic or mathematics, involve differences between a particular thing at one time and that thing at another time—or, to put it another way, processes of cause-and-effect engaged in by substances (“entities,” as you call them). I am known for having said that a full explanation of any such process of change, a full accounting of the reasons why that change occurred as it did, must include four basic factors. These four necessary aspects of all change are sometimes called the four “causes,” and they include the so-called efficient cause or the thing driving the change, the final cause or the result of that change, the formal cause or the nature of the thing driving the change, and the material cause or what the change is imposed upon.

A full accounting of change must include four basic factors. Some of my detractors have denied that one or more of these factors were basic or necessary to all or even some change.

I say so-called because the word “cause” is very misleading—and that is unfortunate. When we ask what the cause of something is, we want to know why it happened, the reason that it occurred. However, when we seek the reason for something happening, why it happened, we want to know all of the necessary features of change without which our understanding of a process of change will not be complete. The problem is that the word “cause” also has the strong connotation of that which makes something happen (the efficient factor or acting agent), and this tends to infect and distort one’s understanding of the other factors of change. As a result, there is more of that hollowing out that I have referred to.

The word “cause” is very misleading. It has the connotation of making something happen, and this tends to distort one’s understanding of the other factors of change.

First, it tends to suggest that the form and matter in a process of change somehow make the change occur. Some—ignoring the clear meaning of my words—have even argued that the mind, as the form of one’s body, causes one’s actions by “formal causation,” rather than oneself as a whole substance or entity being the cause of one’s actions. However, neither form nor matter is the agent of change, and thus it is not legitimate to think of them as a cause in the sense of making something happen. Instead, the formal cause is that by virtue of which something imposes change, and the material cause is that upon which that something imposes the change—that something being the acting agent or efficient cause. Both of these are utterly necessary to one’s total understanding of change, but neither of them makes something happen. That is exclusively the role of an active agent, a body that engages in an action.

Both formal and material causation are utterly necessary to totally understand change, but neither of them makes something happen.

Second, and worse, it suggests that the final cause or outcome somehow exerts a backward influence, “pulling” the change into being, as the efficient cause “pushes” it into being. The final cause or end results because it must occur, not because of some sort of backward efficient causation, somehow making itself occur by reaching backward through time and making something else happen that leads to its occurrence. One of your greatest scientists, Isaac Newton, recognized this in one of his laws of motion: a body will continue in its state of motion or rest unless acted upon by some other body—and by “will,” he meant necessarily will, i.e., “must.”

The final end or “cause” results because it must occur, not because it somehow makes itself occur by reaching backward through time.

I thought I had made all of this clear. Yet, it seems that no sooner had the words gone from my lips to Zeus’s ears than some of my detractors were intent upon denying that one or more of these factors were basic and necessary to all, or even some, cases of change.

This is especially true for the final cause, and here we cannot blame just modern thinkers, for philosophers several hundred years ago were already adamantly claiming that final cause only operated in the biological realm. Modern philosophers only made matters worse by insisting that final cause didn’t even exist in biology or psychology. This was an understandable attempt to answer the religious claim that the entire world is driven by the purposes of a divine being, and thus that final causation is not just a necessary natural result of change, but the consciously intended aim of such a supernatural deity. However, I think that this maneuver threw out some or all of the naturalistic baby with the theistic bathwater, if you will forgive how I have mangled your idiom. Perhaps I should have stated more emphatically that the basic meaning of final cause is the final outcome.

Finally, I must add that, in many cases, even those who partly or fully accept the existence of all four factors of change have oversimplified the nature of change. They took my examples to mean that all change is just one thing changing or acting, or one thing acting upon another thing. Yet more hollowing out of my view of things. In truth, however, the real situation is always one in which two (or more) things interact with one another. Once you grasp this, you will realize that there is not one but two efficient causes in any instance of change, that not one but two sets of four factors operating in cause-and-effect, and therefore, in a manner of speaking, that no entity is an island.

The real situation is always one in which two (or more) things (or parts of things) interact with one another…In a manner of speaking, no entity is an island.

Again, your great scientist, Isaac Newton, seems to have recognized this fact—as did the great Renaissance thinker, Leonardo da Vinci, 200 years before him. It is another of Newton’s famous laws of motion that clearly implies that no change occurs unless at least two bodies are interacting. Certain more recent modern thinkers have oversimplified the matter by pointing out my view that there is no action without a body that acts. True enough, but that is only part of the story. The full and complete truth is that there is no action without bodies or parts of bodies that interact. I challenge your readers to come up with an example to the contrary.

That will have to suffice for this conversation. I’ll see you again soon, Savvy.

Savvy Inquirer: So long for now, Ari.

 

 

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