Airtotle's four causes

 First off, Aristotle's 4 "causes" are not all causes in the way that most
modern English speakers think of causes.
 For Aristotle, science = causal knowledge
o Thus knowledge of what causes are is essential for every science
o we think we have knowledge of a thing only when we have
grasped its cause (APost. 71 b 9-11. Cf. APost. 94 a 20)
o we think we do not have knowledge of a thing until we have
grasped its why, that is to say, its cause (Phys. 194 b 17-20)
 Aristotle's "causes" are often better thought of as "explanations" or
"reasons."
 Take any single thing, then ask yourself four questions:

1. What is it made of?

2. What made it/what action/what trigger led to its creation/coming to
be/happening/becoming what it is?
3. What is it: shape, structure, arrangement? What makes it one sort
of thing rather than another? What holds it together? What about
the way it is put together makes it work?
4. What is it for? What end is it likely to serve? What goal is it likely
to reach?

 Those four questions correspond to Aristotle's four causes:

o Material cause: "that out of which" it is made.
o Efficient Cause: the source of the objects principle of change or
stability.
o Formal Cause: the essence of the object.
o Final Cause: the end/goal of the object, or what the object is
good for.
 A note about final causes: they always presuppose the
formal cause: in order to explain the goal/purpose/end, you
must use the formal cause.
 Each of those four questions leads to a different sort of explanation of
the thing.
o The material cause: “that out of which”, e.g., the bronze of a
statue, the letters of a syllable.
 o The formal cause: “the form”, “the account of what-it-is-to-be”,
e.g., the shape of a statue, the arrangement of a syllable, the
functional structure of a machine or an organism.
o The efficient cause: “the primary source of the change or rest”,
e.g., the artisan, the art of bronze-casting the statue, the man who
gives advice, the father of the child.
o The final cause: “the end, that for the sake of which a thing is
done”, e.g., health is the end of the following things: walking,
losing weight, purging, drugs, and surgical tools.
 Take a statue:
o Its material explains its existence: a bronze statue is a certain
sort of thing, and its material constituents, the elements that make
up bronze, cause it to have certain properties and explain a lot
about it.
 Some qualities of bronze are important for the statue-ness
of the statue. Others are not. Those that are
important explain the statue and are the material cause.
 bronze is also the subject of change, that is, the thing that
undergoes the change and results in a statue.
o art of bronze casting in the artisan = efficient cause or the
principle that produces the statue (Phys. 195 a 6-8. Cf. Metaph.
1013 b 6-9).
 the artisan manifests specific knowledge, which is the
salient explanatory factor that one should pick as the most
accurate specification of the efficient cause (Phys. 195 b 21-
25).
 this knowledge is not dependent upon and does not make
reference to the desires, beliefs and intentions of the
individual artisan
 it helps us to understand what it takes to produce the
statue: what steps are required
o Its form explains its existence: it is not *just* a lump of bronze, it
also has a certain shape, structure, and arrangement.
o can an explanation of this type be given without a reference to the
statue? no!
 Its purpose as a statue explains it: it is "to commemorate,"
"to instantiate beauty," "to decorate," or some combination
of those or something else. The need for a commemorative
object, or the need to express beauty, or the need for a
decorative object can explain the statue.
  bronze is melted and poured in the wax cast. Both the prior
and the subsequent stage are for the sake of a certain
end, the production of the statue.
 Clearly the statue enters in the explanation of each step of
the artistic production as the final cause or that for the sake
of which everything is done.
 conceptually the efficient and the final cause can be
separated, but the formal and final causes are tightly linked.
o By "final causes," Aristotle offers an explanation that refers to
the telos or end of the process= a teleological explanation
 teleological explanation does not necessarily depend upon
the application of psychological concepts such as desires,
beliefs and intentions. But if they are present, they are often
integral to the final cause, although it's possible that they
are merely accidental to whatever is the object of
explanation.
 Aristotle explains natural process on the basis of a
teleological model
 the artistic model is understood in non-psychological
terms.
 Causes, like primary substances, have what we can call species and
genera, and the species and genera of the cause are also causes (we
might call them secondary causes).
o The material cause of the statue, bronze, is a metal, and so metal
is a material cause of the statue.
o In somewhat modern terms, the material cause of our body,
organs, are made up of something like tissue as their matter,
which is made up of cells as its matter, which are made up of
cellular organs as their matter, which are made up of plasms,
which are made up of molecules, which are made up of elements,
etc.
 all the way down this ladder, we may have mere matter and
most basic form.
 Causes also have coincidental properties/aspects, which are
coincidental causes.
o For instance, let us say that Joe the sculptor makes a statue: Joe
is the efficient cause of the statue. But Joe also is a mountain
climber, and so we might say that a mountain climber is the
efficient cause of the statue. If we are more precise, we say that
Joe's sculpting craft is the efficient cause, and the other qualities
of Joe are coincidental efficient causes.
 Aristotle's project with causes is scientific explanation
o thus he is interested in general causes for general phenomena
o that is not to say he does not understand that particular things
have particular causes
 this statue is caused by this bronze, this sculptor's
skill, this form, and for this end.
 Aristotle searches “for general causes of general things and
for particular causes of particular things” (Phys. 195 a 25-
26)
 idiosyncrasies that may be important in studying a particular
bronze statue as the great achievement of an individual
artisan may be extraneous to the more general case of
statues.
 Chance causes some things, as does luck.
o luck is a subset of chance (note that this is slightly different
terminology from that in our translation: I am using "luck" for what
was termed "chance" there)
o Only things that can act can be lucky.
 "Acting" is being confined to "agents" on this terminology: a
pebble is not an agent. A person is.
o Things that cannot act cannot be lucky, but can be affected by
chance.
 A pebble is affected by chance. A person is affected by luck.
 An example of chance is coincidence: coincidence can be a cause, but
coincidences have no cause (Physics 2.4 ff.):
o A scenario: 10 people fall and hurt themselves on a single day in
a single building: no single thing is the cause of those 10 falls
(one falls because she wore very slippery shoes and happened to
step in a puddle of grease, another falls because a man pushed
her out of his way, another falls because he had a heart attack,
etc. The institution that owns the building decides to radically
overhaul their building to avoid accidental falls BECAUSE of the
coincidence of 10 falls, which drew their attention to potential
liability. But THERE IS NO SINGLE CAUSE for those 10 falls all
occurring in the same building on the same day.
o Cf. Aristotle's man who ate spicy food, went to well, was killed by
brigands: no tight causal connection between spicy food and
being killed by brigands, but that is nonetheless why the man was
killed: bad luck.
 There is no direct cause of chance/luck, even though every thing has a
cause.
 oIn the scenario above, each accidental fall has its own causes,
and so you can explain all ten of those falls via direct causes.
What you cannot explain is why they all happened on the same
day: that is the coincidental part of the scenario. But that
coincidental part is what CAUSED the institution that owns the
building to revise its policies.
 ABOUT FINAL CAUSES
o Physics II 8 is Aristotle's general defense of final causes.
 He needs to defend them because, he claims, his
predecessors believed only in efficient and material causes.
 His defence of final causes shows that there are aspects of
nature that cannot be explained by efficient and material
causes alone.
 Final causes, he claims, are the best explanation for these
aspects of nature.
o Aristotle holds, for example, that certain teeth have certain shapes
because of what they are for. Those of carnivores are designed to
tear and rip. Those of herbivores are designed to crush
(cf. Physics 198b24-27).
o "Final" causation is often referred to as "teleology," which derives
from Greek τελος "end, goal."
o Teleology is often thought of as requiring an agent separate from
the thing that has a final cause. For instance, if an oak tree has a
final cause, must there not be something apart from the oak tree
that uses the oak tree for some goal or end?
o The ultimate result of many teleological views is that there must
be a God who designs the world: if things have a purpose, whose
purpose? If things have a design that makes them FOR certain
goals, there must be a designer.
o Aristotle would say that there is no need for such a separate
agent, no need for a designer, for there to be teleology. The goal
of the acorn is to become an oak tree. The acorn aims to fully
actualize the form of a full-grown oak tree, but is not an agent,
and no agent set it in motion. It is a "self-mover."
o A question to ask about teleology is whether it uses an occurrence
in the future to explain something that happens now. If that is the
case, how can we call it a cause? If the thing that does the
causing occurs AFTER the thing that is caused, the normal
relation of cause to caused is backwards.
o Well, what of it? Think of genes: they provide a sort of set of
instructions for the acorn to build itself. They cause the oak to
 react to its environment in certain ways. They cause the oak tree
to produce more acorns (which is perhaps its purpose). I see no
need for god to enter the picture, and I see no need for a future
event to cause a present one there. Can we characterize genes
as involving final causes? I think so. The final cause in nature is a
potential within things to become what they become.
 The Rain, for example:
o Phys 198b19-21 explains that it rains because of material
processes: warm air is drawn up and cools off and becomes
water, which comes down as rain.
o 198b21-23 explains that the crops may be nourished or spoiled as
a result of the rain, and yet it does not rain for the sake of that
result. It is a coincidence.
o Why is it not a coincidence that the front teeth grow sharp for
cutting, while the rear teeth are broad for grinding? When the
animal's teeth grow that way, it survives. When they do not, it
dies. Why not a coincidence? (198b23-27)
o Aristotle replies that he wants an explanation of why it is a regular
occurrence that the teeth grow in such a way that the animal
survives. It is implausible that it is a coincidence every time. Final
causation is offered to explain the regularity.
o In some ways, it is just a bandaid: we want to know more about
how that works: Darwin offered a mechanism: does that
mechanism make final causes extraneous?
 Darwin's theory holds that natural selection works like a
giant filter: those traits that confer a reproductive or survival
advantage survive.
 Is this different from final causation?
 an advantage is toward some goal: there can't be an
advantage that is not for some goal
 the goal is primarily survival of the species and
secondarily survival of the individual
 it levels the goal of humanity and that of gnats
and protozoans: is that a problem for Aristotle?\
perhaps tertiarily there might be some favoring
of "well-being" and "development of potential" in
that individuals who are faring well are more
likely to also mate and reproduce?
 A house and an organism, for examples
 o In de Partibus Animalium (Parts of Animals), Book I, Aristotle
presents an argument for the priority of the final cause over the
efficient cause.
o Take a house:
 all the building materials are delivered
 they are necessary: without them a house cannot be
built
 they are not sufficient: they will just sit there unless
there is something more
 the builder comes: the skill she has is an efficient cause
 but all of this is for the sake of a house: a house is the final
cause.
 from the very start, all is done with the house in view
as the goal
 without it, nothing happens
o Take an organism:
 Parts of Animals 640a18-19 says that "generation is for the
sake of substance, not substance for the sake of
generation"
 the chicken came first!
 the proper way to explain the generation of an animal is to
begin with the end of the process, the adult full-grown
animal.
 when Empedocles explains the formation of the spine as
the result of some fetal behavior, Aristotle says that is
insufficient:
 first off, the fetus had to have the power to move, so
that must be part of the explanation
 furthermore, the spine is for-the-sake of support of an
adult human's weight. That must be part of the
explanation as well.
 procreation and causality
o Aristotle maintained that something that is in motion requires an
efficient cause not just to set it in motion, but also to keep it in
motion.
 Aristotle had no concept of inertia!!!
 also no concept of causation at a distance (gravity,
magnetism, etc.)
 For Aristotle, efficient causation required contact, and that
contact had to occur as long as the caused thing was
changing/moving
o So what about procreation? see Generation of Animals I and II.
 animals procreate, because it is the closest they can get to
immortality (immortality is a goal because it would involve
permanent being, which would involve more full actuality)
 males are superior: they contribute more form for the
human: they contribte the last thing that is necessary to
create a viable human.
 remember this is Aristotle: he was limited in some
ways by his environment and culture: nonetheless, as
a philosopher, he might/could/should have risen
above those limits.
 females contribute menses, cooked-up blood that falls short
of human form: it is closer to human than earth, air, fire, and
water, but it falls short.
 The female residue [menses] is potentially what the
animal is by nature, and it contains the parts
potentially, although not actually, and because when
something active and something passive come into
contact ... the one immediately acts and the other is
acted upon in the manner in which they are active
and passive. And the female provides the matter, the
male the origin of the change. (GA II4 740b19-25)
 active and passive is explained at Metaphysics
Theta, 1046a4-18
 active and passive correspond to efficient and
material cause
 the male is the efficient cause, the source of the
change
 the female is material cause, the thing acted on
 the semen does its work, then evaporates!
 so what about the need for an efficient cause to
maintain contact while the change is taking
place?
 does Aristotle think that the change to a human
soul takes place right away?
 What is sought now is not the material out of which
but the agency by which the parts come to be. For
either something outside them makes them, or
something which exists within the seed and the
semen; and whatever it is must either be a part of
soul or soul, or something which possesses soul. But
 it seems unreasonable to suppose that anything
outside could create anything to do with the viscera,
or any of the other parts; for it cannot cause
movement without being in contact, and nothing can
be affected by it unless it causes movement.
Therefore it must be something which exists within
the fetation, either as a part of it or as distinct from
it. (GA II1 733b32-734a6)
 in the case of things with natures, the nature operates
by permeating the material and operating from within,
not from without.
 the father's semen apparently causes a change to the
material, which then acquires a nature which works
from within.
 the materialists hold that mechanical materialistic
explanations work for it all, but Aristotle wants an
explanation of the organization of the growth of the
human fetus.
 God and the final cause
o God, for Aristotle, is necessary, because there has to be
something which is purely actual. More on this elsewhere: please
accept for now that Aristotle thinks there must be something that
is pure actuality.
o God exists as pure actuality consisting in rational contemplation of
the best thing, god itself.
 God is the final cause of EVERYTHING
 everything aims to imitate God's perfect actuality
 everything seeks actuality, the fulfillment of its potential, full
being.
 this "aiming" or "seeking" need not be conscious, involving
beliefs, etc.:
 even the elements, earth, air, fire, and water, strive to
become fully actual, which would involve their fulfilling
their potential:
 each has its own proper place, which is part of
its goal.
 Causal explanation
o the best explanations will consist of all four causes, but the formal
and final will have priority over the efficient and material.
o Aristotle realized that not everything has all 4 causes.
  An eclipse of the moon has no final cause
(Metaphysics 1044b12)
 deprivation of light by the interposition of the earth
between the sun and the moon is the efficient cause
 there is no final cause
o Aristotle thought that the natural world has nisuses or strivings
within its members:
 acorns are simply aimed at becoming oaks
 human embryos are aimed at becoming adult humans
 thus he thinks that developmental biology is an error-
theory: the thing that needs to be explained is not why
things become what they do, but why in so many
cases they fail.
 common objection: Aristotle is just saying that things do
what they do because that is the sort of things they do.
 where's the explanation in that?
 reply:
 until we come up with a way to bridge the gap from a
mechanical/material explanation at the most basic
microscopic level (atoms? quarks? energy?) to the
macroscopic level (us, plants, mountains), there is a
point to asking what is different about the
macroscopic level
 Aristotle's theory sorts the world into natural kinds:
humans beget humans, plants beget plants. Certain
things come to be from certain things, and that has to
do with their form and their goal.
 if we believe DNA is the code of life, how far are
we from Aristotle? Think of it as a formula for
local decrease in entropy: that's what a "final
goal" is: the instructions for a local decrease in
entropy: DNA is the formula
 Also, Aristotle's theory contributes to our
understanding of how organisms work: the function of
parts and the relation to wholes. That's what final and
formal causes are about.
 Thus formal and final causes do a bit more work than
merely saying that things do what they do because
that's the sort of thing they do.
 Aristotle as historian of philosophy
o Aristotle begins the Metaphysics with a survey of how his
predecessors investigated causes
 this is part of Aristotle's typical procedure: phainomena,
endoxa, puzzles, then solutions.
 among the most important predecessors:
 Leucippus and Democritus developed ancient
atomism: a materialistic theory which posited
atoms and void as the basis of reality.
 Empedocles posited four elements: earth, air,
fire, and water, which can be compounded and
dissolved by two forces, Love and Strife
 Anaxagoras held that everything had the seeds
of everything else in it, but Mind directed it all.
 Pythagoreans held that number imposed a limit
or structure on matter's indeterminacy.
 Plato held that there is material and formal
causation, according to Aristotle. Plato also held
that everything is arranged for the best, which is
a sort of teleology, but not like Aristotle's.
 Aristotle's comment:
 While all generation and destruction may well be from
one or more elements, still why does this occur, and
because of what cause (aition)? For it can't be that
the substrate moves itself. I mean for instance that
neither wood nor bronze are responsible (aitios) for
each of their changes: it's not the wood which makes
the bed or the bronze the statue, but something else
is the cause of the change in each case. To
investigate this is to investigate the other cause, that
from which comes the origination of
change. (Metaphysics A3 984a19-27)
 For neither earth nor anything else of that sort seeem
a likely cause of things either being or becoming good
and beautiful, and nor did they seem so to
them (Aristotle's predecessors). Nor can it be right to
entrust such a matter to chance and
fortune (Metaphysics A3 984b11-15)
o Aristotle was the first to engage in anything like a history of
philosophy.
 But he is not an impartial historian.
 o Aristotle's account of his predecessors is oriented almost
completely toward his own way of viewing causes: thus he claims
predecessors who have a different idea got it wrong or missed
crucial things.
 This situation is frustrating, because Aristotle's account of
his predecessors, especially those called "Pre-Socratics," is
often our best source for our own knowledge of his
predecessors: the Aristotelian lens distorts their intentions
and makes it difficult to see their ideas clearly.
 Unfortunately, many people blame Aristotle for this. That is
unfair, because Aristotle was not trying to give a
disinterested account of his predecessors' thoughts. He is,
rather, trying to show that his ideas have a history, but are
new, different, and better in various ways.
 The fact that his account is often our best information about
his predecessors is not his fault. But it's still frustrating,
because we would really like to know more about those
predecessors.

 Texts of interest for Aristotelian causes

o Physics II.3 (general discussion of types of causes)
o Physics II.8 (final cause: has bits tantalizingly close to
evolutionary theory)