Aristotle

Aristotle

1. Four causes

   • Material- What is is made from
   • Efficient- Who made it
   • Formal- It characteristics
   • Final- Its purpose/telos

2. Infinite regress

   • Rejected by Aristotle
     • No empericial knowledge to prove the final cause
       • Needs tangable evidence
       • Cosomological- everything that exists has a cause- infinite regress
       • Telelogical- everything has a purpose- must be designed by God
     • Our world is correct- awe and wonder leads us to curiotisity
       • Also rejects Plato's theory of forms

3. The prime mover

   • God is the prime mover
     • He is the cause thar actualises the poteintal
       • Attributes/ Predicates
         • Immutable
           • unchanging/incapable of change
         • Enternal
           • Must have always been around
         • Perfect
           • No badness= lacks nothing
         • Immaterial
           • Transcendent/metaphysical
             • Nescesary being- not reliant on anything else for existance

4. Prime mover vs Four causes

   • Aristotle observes nature and material word= emperical
     • Concluded there was four causes to everything
       • Decides it must apply to the universe
         • Rejected infinite regress- must be a final cause
           • Final cause is the prime mover- God

5. Strengths and weaknesses

   • Not empericially proven- based on logic, not maths or science
   • Contradicts- rejects a metaphysical idea and replaces it with another
   • Not everything has a purpose
   • Doesn't have abstract reasoning; maths or logic
   • Why can there only be empericial knowledge