11. Evaluation Plato and Aristotle part 2/4

This is the second video evaluating Plato and Aristotle's theories and in this video we will be focusing on the metaphysics of causation. Aristotle explains the essence or nature of things using the idea of causation. Most objects and events seem to fit the four causal explanations suggested by Aristotle. The material cause, the formal cause, the efficient cause and the final cause. Aristotle's unmoved prime mover provides an alternate final cause for everything. Causing and setting everything in motion and gives an explanation for the series of causes existing as a whole. However, Aristotle's claim that natural things have a final cause and ender a purpose is much disputed. Counter examples can be offered of natural things that don't seem to have a purpose. Things like male nipples or the appendix. In answer to this, some interpret Aristotle's movement that the end or final cause or the telos is actually just the natural object itself. So whatever natural product lies at the end of the natural process that caused it or the means of production that brought it about is the end or the telos. In other words, the efficient cause, the natural processes, work the material cause, the natural matter, into a particular form such as a male nipple and this formed material is the end or the telos of the process, the final cause. In this sense, Aristotle said the form is the end. The form must be what things are for. So he's conflating almost the formal and the final causes there. This makes sense when we think about something like a tree. The purpose of a developing seed or a potential tree is to become a tree. There is no way to explain the efficient cause of something without referring at the same time to its final cause. So you can't talk about house building without talking about the end product of a house. The process that is the efficient cause of rain could be described as rain making, the end being the production of rain. Before we looked at the causes of a bronze statue, Aristotle talks about the efficient cause not being necessarily the artificer, the maker of the statue, but the actual process of making the statue. Statue making is the efficient cause, the statue making process, and at the end, the end of that process is the statue. So the telos could be described as a statue itself. Aristotle says that generation is for the sake of substance. Growth is for the sake of whatever is growing. However, this seems to leave open the possibility that the universe could be its own final cause with possibly no need for an external time mover. Albert Camus, the French philosopher, argued that the universe is not purposeful but chaotic. So he's undermining the whole claim of Aristotle that the universe has a final cause at all or has any final causes within it. Camus claimed that human beings determine the purposes of things depending on what they want to achieve. There is no objective purpose of things, they just are. So perhaps, as Bertrand Russell argued, the universe is just there and that's it. There is no final cause, in other words. However, Aristotle argued that and we'll touch on this more when we look at teleological arguments for the existence of God. For example, Aristotle claims it can't be chaotic or random that human mouths regularly and predictably produce teeth arranged in a particular way. Front teeth, Aristotle says, grow sharp and suitable for tearing the food and the molars grow broad and useful for grinding food and this is always the case in human mouths. It is the consistency of these occurrences of order that suggests that they are more than just chance, there is a final cause there, a purpose. Evolutionary theory offers an explanation for how natural things can appear regularly and predictably to work for a tea loss or a final cause when in fact they have none. The process of natural selection in which things are badly suited to surviving in their environment die means that only things that survive are those things that happen to be well suited to survival and these things then pass on these traits to the next generation. David Hume argued that even if everything in the universe has a final cause, it would be wrong to suppose that the whole universe has a final cause. He argued that even if something is shown to be true of the parts of a thing, we can't assume that the same will be true for the whole and this is known as the fallacy of composition. David Hume also argued that as an empiricist, it is possible to be sceptical about the idea of causation altogether. He argued that we cannot observe causation directly with our senses. All we can observe is that two events, A and B, occur consistently together and due to their constant conjunction, we believe that event A will always be followed by event B, but this is not necessarily true. For example, looking at billiard game, we observe one ball moving towards another, but we can only predict that the second ball will move based on similar past experiences called Hume's copy principle. So this gives us reason to be sceptical about the idea of causation altogether which would undermine Aristotle's theory. This video has been brought to you by Jest Education. Thank you for watching and please subscribe to find out more.