Fichas
Aristotle's Ideas about Cause and Purpose: Question Cards
Fichas del conjunto (13)
- 1What kind of philosopher is Plato?A rationalist- uses reason and logical deductions as his primary means of finding out about the world
- 2What did Plato believe about sense experience?It is unreliable and if reason gives us evidence to contradict sense experience, then reason should be preferred.
- 3What kind of philosopher was Aristotle?He was an empiricist- he believed that we should trust sense experience over reason.
- 4How did Aristotle believe the whole physical world could be explained?In terms of four causes
- 5What are Aristotle's Four Causes?The material cause
The formal cause
The efficient cause
The final cause - 6What is the material cause?What the object or thing is made of. The material cause of a statue is marble or bronze.
- 7What is the formal cause?The blueprint which guides the thing towards its realisation. It could be the mould in the mind of the creator or the intrinsic developmental principle embodied in the matter itself (an oak tree is inherent in an acorn).
- 8What is the efficient cause?The process which brings the thing to completion (eg. the growth of the acorn).
- 9What is the final cause?Why the thing comes to be (eg. an oak tree grows in order to produce more acorns, produce timber, please the eye, etc).
- 10Why can the final cause be seen as controversial?It suggests that Aristotle has a teleological view of reality and modern science tends to reject teleology.
- 11How do people usually illustrate the four causes?Using an analogy of a statue
- 12What are "brute facts"?The idea that some things or facts are can be explained through the phrase, "they just are".
- 13Did Aristotle believe in the idea of "brute facts"?No-
"Nature does nothing in vain"