sept172024

Daily comments on Sept. 17th and some thoughts from Jacques about them.
Aristotle claims that the presence of a pilot can cause a ship not to crash but the absence of a captain can cause the contrary, that a ship crash. Mary Beth thinks that that example is fishy because a ship can crash even with a pilot or even because of the pilot, and not crash even without a pilot.

A first response might be that Aristotle's examples are meant to illustrate his point: if they don't do that for us, we should ask whether his point is sound and then ask if we can come up with a better example. Examples are tricky. We need to give him the benefit of the doubt when it comes to examples.
But Aristotle might also claim that the skill of being a pilot does save ships, and if a pilot is present and a ship crashes anyway, it may be either that nothing could have saved the ship or that that person is a pilot in name only but lacks the piloting skill.

Cameron and Zi Qin preferred the method of conducting class that talks about Aristotle's text directly.

Oliver says Aristotle is making sense to him, and he thought it never would. Alexa has a similar comment.

Great to hear! Thank you for saying that.
it's interesting, because some of us find Aristotelian causes confusing and hard.

Iris finds the formal cause the most difficult, the most abstract, and thinks it overlaps with the other causes.

The formal cause of any thing, a statue, a sculptor, a word, is what makes it that thing as opposed to something else, what defines it as itself: so it is what makes a statue a statue, a sculptor a sculptor, a word a word. In other words, it is the 'form' or 'essence' of that thing as what it is. I'm not sure if I'm just repeating confusing things.
It certainly overlaps with the final cause: understanding the final cause involves understanding what something is for, what its goal is, and you cannot do that without understanding what a thing is.
One might think it overlaps with the material cause, but I don't think so: a statue made of bronze is 'made of bronze,' but it is a statue, which is its form. The material affects what can be formed from it, but the material is not what is formed from the material. So why would one think it overlaps? Because bronze itself has a form, what makes it bronze as opposed to brass or platinum or whatever. It matters what one is trying to explain whether bronze is the material cause or the formal cause: if one is trying to explain bronze things, like rings and statues and daggers, then bronze is the material, but if one is trying to explain metals like bronze and brass, then bronze is the form.

What makes a circle a circle? It is not whether it is metal or plastic (its material) or who made it (its efficient cause) or what it is for (if circles even have a purpose).

SO what is it that makes a circle a circle? It is that it fits the definition (the form) of circle, and that is a shape, so shape can be the cause. In that sense, it is a cause of the circle. You might not use the word 'cause' of such things, but Aristotle does. He thinks that one of the basic things you need to figure out about a thing is what it is that makes it what it is, and the calls that a cause. And if you are dealing with shapes, you need to understand what it is that makes each shape the shape it is, and that is what Aristotle calls the formal cause.

Letters are used to make words: they are its constituent parts: in that sense they are the material of words, much like water is what makes a lake. We don't ordinarily call that a cause, but it is an indispensable part of understanding and explaining what words are, and so it is a cause for Aristotle.

I wish I knew: all we have are a very few of his words, perhaps, and other people's reports about what he said. He is usually considered the first philosopher in Greece. The idea that a great number of things can be reduced to a simpler single thing is a powerful move and tool of thought. Also the idea that you can change the density or temperature of one thing (water) and have it take many different forms and have many different qualities is a really powerful idea. It can be called the idea that quantitative change can be or lead to qualitative change (put enough heat into ice and it becomes water: change the quantity of heat and you change the qualities of the ice drastically).

I think I hear you on that, but I'd like to hear more, because I remain convinced that matter is different from form.
When you ask about what a thing is made of (the material), you are asking for a very different analysis of the thing than when you ask what the material was made into (the form).
Example: my ring is made of gold, and that it is made of gold explains a lot about it, but that it is a ring has nothing essentially to do with gold and everything to do with ringiness (whatever it is that makes rings rings). The structure, shape, coherence, etc. of a thing are different from what it is made of. Sure, some material won't work for some forms (you can't make a finger ring out of gas, for instance), and some material works very well for some forms (metals work very well for finger rings, better than styrofoam or jello or fabric), but that does not make the material a good explanation of what a thing is in itself.
One thing to keep in mind is that materials have form too: gold is made up of protons and electrons and neutrons (its matter). But its structure (its form) is different from the structure of lead or arsenic or benzene, which are also made up of protons and electrons etc.

First, a concordance is a work that catalogues every word of an author, gives where it occurs and catalogues the meaning it has at each passage. The detail is overwhelming.
Bonitz wrote a concordance to Aristotle's Greek text.
Writing a concordance for English translations would be almost pointless, I think.
There is, however, a very good index at the back of your books.

It might help to think of them as labels for things: the genus of a thing is the general sort of thing it is, whereas species is a more specific label.
Genus is always more general than species, but both genus and species are classifications.
Or maybe think of it as classifications and sub-classifications: the bigger classification is the genus of the sub-classification, which is a species within the bigger classification.
I feel as if I'm repeating myself: not sure what else to do: keep asking questions to help us all understand more.

Thaddeus wants to know how the books and chapters are organized in Aristotle's original works in ancient Greek.

The exact same way as our translation, usually.
The times when they might not be are when it's just not clear how they were organized in ancient Greek: then the translator has to make a choice, as does the person who constructs the printed ancient Greek text, but often times a good introduction will talk about that sort of problem.

Olivia is not convinced that all causes fit into the 4 categories of causes that Aristotle identifies.

Great idea to challenge him. You may be right: at least it will force you to think hard. I think I'll kick the ball back over to you and ask you to try to identify some cause that does not fit.