Metaphysics
- Philosophy 1
- Spring, 2002
- G. J. Mattey
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The Origins of Knowledge
- Sense-perception is the first requirement for knowledge, and is found in animals
- Memory with sense-preception allows for a single experience
- Experience gives rise to science and craft
- Craft arises through induction: many thoughts that arise from experience result in one universal judgment about similar things
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Knowledge of Causes
- Experience concerns particulars, while craft gives a rational account, using universals
- If one does not know particulars, rational accounts may be misapplied
- Craft is superior to mere experience because it knows the cause, the reason why
- Knowing the reason why makes the master craftsman superior to the manual craftsman
- The theoretical scientist is more superior still
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Wisdom
- Wisdom is a science of causes and principles
- The highest wisdom is the study of the most universal causes and principles
- We know subordinate things through the most universal things
- Wisdom is motivated by wonder
- The highest wisdom is divine
- The gods themselves are the highest causes
- The gods would have this wisdom
- Wisdom removes wonder
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Early Attempts at Science
- Most early philosophers thought the only causes of things are material
- This does not explain why things happen, so philosophers turned to a source of motion
- The best such source is mind, because it also explains why things turn out well
- But all the early attempts were clumsy and overlooked the form and the end as causes
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Platonic Forms
- Plato recognized the need to describe the form as cause
- The common formula of things ("one over many") is the Form, which exists apart
- The particular (e.g., Socrates) is said to "participate" in the Form (Man-itself)
- Forms are said to be causes of the what-it-is of a thing
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Some Criticisms of the Forms
- Extravagance: there is a Form for whatever something has in common with another
- Some things (e.g., relatives), do not have forms
- A Form has something in common with a particular thing participating in it, so there would be a Form for the Form/particular (the "third man")
- Inefficacy: Forms cannot be causes if they are not in the world of caused things
- Unknowability: knowledge comes from perception, and "itself" adds only a word
- Unintelligibility: "Participation" is a metaphor
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Substance
- Substance is separable while the other ways of being (attributes) are not
- Sitting implies a sitting thing, but a sitting thing need not sit
- There are several candidates for substance
- Animals, plants, and their parts
- The elements: fire, water, earth, air
- What is composed of elements
- Geometrical limits of bodies
- The Platonic Forms
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What is Substance?
- There are three kinds of thing that might be substance:
- The primary subject
- The essence
- The universal
- Each of these will be considered in turn
- Substance will be shown to be the essence
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The Primary Subject
- Substance is a subject that has other things said of it but is not said of anything
- This primary subject may be:
- The matter (the bronze)
- The form (the shape of the bronze)
- The compound (the statue)
- Which is most fundamental?
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Matter
- When all that is said of a thing is taken away, only the matter remains
- Matter is "in its own right" something indeterminate, and not what is predicated of it
- But matter cannot be substance
- It is not separable from its form
- It is not a "this," a determinate something
- The composite of form and matter is derivative and cannot be substance
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The Essence
- Form will be studied through essence
- The essence is what a thing is in its own right
- It is given in a definition, not a mere account of the thing
- A definition is an account given by something is not in another (hence, not by an attribute)
- So the definition will be the species of a genus
- For example, the essence of Socrates is man
- Attributes have definitions, but these are only secondarily essences (there is a definition of pale)
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Coming to Be
- Things come to be something in three ways
- By nature
- By craft
- By chance
- In each case, an agent is responsible for their coming to be
- There is also a matter, which is potentially what the thing comes to be
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Form and Production
- What comes to be from craft has its form in the soul
- We think of the end we desire and build a chain back to something we can produce
- Healthy body --> heated body --> rubbing
- One does not produce form or matter, but form in matter (bronze sphere, not sphere)
- Separate forms cannot explain production
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Agency and Production
- Some things can be moved by their own agency in some circumstances but only by other things in others (a stone)
- If a thing attains an end when moved by another agent, the end is attained by chance
- Non-substances come to be through existing form and matter (a table from shaped wood)
- Substance comes to be only through another substance (animal from animal)
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The Universal
- Some think that the universal is the most basic cause and principle, and hence that substance is the universal
- But substance is not the universal
- The universal is common, but the substance is what is distinctive of a thing
- The universal is said of a subject, but substance is not said of a subject
- The same substance would be in different things
- The universal is not a "this"
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The Unity of Substance
- Some substances are composed of parts that are thought to be substances
- Animals are composed of parts that have their own principles of motion
- But because they are united in one substance, they are substances only in potentiality
- There are no substances composed of substances
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Final Account of Substance
- The substance of a thing is the primary cause of its being what it is
- Things that are substances are unities by nature
- What unifies a number of elements is not an element itself
- It is a form, which explains why a thing is what it is
- This form is the essence of the thing, so substance is essence
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