Theories Of Property Aristotle To The Present Essays

The fact that the role of efficient causes is not identical to that of the matter and the form of the entity whose features they are to explain does not require that every instance of efficient causation must issue from outside the entity moved.On the contrary, an efficient cause can also be internal.These cases are grouped by Aristotle as efficient or moving causes on the one hand and as final causes on the other.

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Hence the overlap between the two disciplines, which often verges on inseparability. This means that when an entity moves or is at rest according to its nature reference to its nature may serve as an explanation of the event.

We have to describe how—to what extent, through what other processes, and due to what agency—the preconditions for the process of change or of being at rest are present, but once we have provided an account of these preconditions, we have given a complete account of the process.

Aristotle had a lifelong interest in the study of nature.

He investigated a variety of different topics, ranging from general issues like motion, causation, place and time, to systematic explorations and explanations of natural phenomena across different kinds of natural entities.

As a rule there is a collaboration between these causes: matter provides the potentialities which are actualised by the form.

Accordingly, these causally relevant entities give rise to a hierarchic structure of explanation.Aristotle’s metaphysics and physics use a common conceptual framework, and they often address similar issues.The prime and distinctive task of first philosophy is an inquiry into first entities; these, however, are not perceptible entities, and as a result they have to be investigated through a metaphysical investigation of physical entities.Aristotle sometimes illustrates his point by appealing to the matter required for the construction of a house.If there is a house to be built, one needs building bricks, slabs, mortar, etc.The varieties of responsibilities are grouped by Aristotle under four headings, the so-called four causes.The first two of these are matter and form, what an entity is made up from according to Aristotle’s hylomorphic analysis.Even so, as will be clear from Aristotle’s discussion, this general thesis will require a host of qualifications.Because natures—beside the active and passive potentialities—are ultimate grounds in causal explanations, Aristotle sets out how they are integrated with the doctrine of causation.An explanation for a state of affairs must specify some feature or some object (in general, some abstract or concrete entity) which is responsible for it.The entity responsible is, Aristotle submits, a cause ( Different explanations of a single state of affairs are possible, and indeed usually necessary, because there are different ways of being responsible for distinct facets of the same state of affairs.