PHIL 203 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Syllogism, Rarefaction
3 May 2018
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History of Ancient Philosophy
11.02 Lecture Notes – Aristotle, Metaphysics and Physics
Aistotle’s Vie of Koledge
- Not iate, like Plato’s ies
- Gained by experience of particulars
o Memory allows us to string together all these experiences to create knowledge
- Knowledge is a product of a syllogistic argument
o Deduction relationship between premises and conclusion is that of causation
and is due to the formal cause or essence
- True knowledge is the knowledge of causes
o Conclusion is necessary, conclusion cannot be otherwise a pretty strict
restriction to what Aristotle regards as knowledge
o Understanding of essence (which are things that objects necessarily possess) –
necessity for knowledge
- Four causes (explains different aspects of the changes of a thing)
o Material cause
o Formal cause
o Efficient cause
o Final cause
- Rocks falls because their natural place is to be there
o A teleological explanation of nature
o Purpose-driven nature of life
o This is eliminated in modern biology, evolutionary biology, and physics
▪ Started using mechanistic causes
- Statue made of marble
o Material: marble
o Formal: the shape that it takes in virtue of which it is a statue of that thing
o Efficient: carved
o Fial: sulpto’s desie to eate the statue
- Aristotle’s theory of causation
o In order for us to have knowledge of a thing, we must know the cause
o The h uestio = aseed ausall iestigatig thigs
o 4 causes – can be thought of as types of explanations for why a thing is the way
it is
o Explanations are not competing in any sense, they can be true all at the same
time because they explain different aspects of things
o Why is this table the way it is?
▪ You can cite the material, the reason why it cae to e, the pupose…
o Theory is intended to be general, supposed to apply to everything, including
human actions and changing things
o Not everything will have an answer to all 4 causes
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