In Metaphysics Aristotle considers and addresses the most fundamental features of reality. While experience of what happens is a key to all demonstrative knowledge, Aristotle supposes that the study of “being qua being” must delve much more deeply in order to understand why things happen the way they do. The Milesians emphasized material causes, Anaxagoras emphasized mind and Plato the theory of forms.
The abstractness of metaphysical reasoning requires that we think about the processes we employ as we use them in search of truth. Aristotle assumes that the structure of language and logic naturally mirrors the way things really are; and as such, Metaphysics can be seen as being a careful analysis of linguistic as a guide to the ultimate is nature.
To begin with the simplest rules of logic, which embody the most fundamental principles which apply to everything that is requires that we be aware of The Law of Non-Contradiction: a logic which notes that no assertion is both true and false. When applied to reality this rule demonstrates that nothing can both “be . . . ” and “not be . . . ” simultaneously. Allowances has to be made or accounted for with respect to ahance or change since things do, in fact, undergo changes. This adheres to neither relativism nor immutability nor offers a concrete account of the nature of reality.
” …. ‘being’ is, in one way, divided into individual things, quality and quantity; and in another way distinguished in respect to of potency, reality and function.” (Metaphysics pg 820 BkIX 1, ln 33-5)
The Law of Excluded Middle in logic states the necessity exists that either an assertion or a negation must be true, and that there be indeterminacy with respect to reality. Our knowledge of an assertion often falls short of what we need in order to decide whether it is true or false
To achieve the required abstract necessity, metaphysics must be constructed from similar principles. Aristotle believes this to be the case because metaphysics is concerned with unique subject matter. Natural science deals with moveable, separable things, while mathematics focusses on things which are immoveable, inseparable. Metaphysics, in its strictest sense and of the most abstract varieties, has as its objects only those things which are both immoveable and separable. As a consequence, we learn through or from metaphysics of those things which are immutable, eternal, the essence of individual things and of nature itself..
Central to Metaphysics, Aristotle tries to develop an adequate analysis of subject- predicate judgments. Since logic and language rely heavily upon the transformative “is,” study of its uses reveal a relationship that holds between substances and their features. Something which Plato addresses in his account of the relationship between reality and the abstract forms which invariably give rise to material substratum.
Aristotle argues that the theory of forms is flawed. That is, it is not supported by good or solid, irrefutable arguments – it requires a form for each thing. He also believes that its too mathematical. For Aristotle, the theory of forms cannot adequately explain the occurrence of change: in identifying the thing with its essence, the theory cannot account for the generation of new substances. He offers up an altern1tive explanation or position – that of the differentiate between matter and form; and allows for a dynamic relationship between the two.
“.. all potentcies that conform to the same type are originative sources of some kind; .. called potencies in reference to one primary kind of potency, which is an originative source of change in another thing or in the thing itself.” (Metaphysics pg 820 BkIX 1, 1046,a ln 8-11)
Aristotle also maintains that each individual substance is a composite which involves both matter and form, as a whole. Predication involves assigning attributes on an abstract level to universals and individual or particulars. That is,
“One kind is a potency of being acted on – the originative source, in the very thing acted on … being passively changed by anothing or itself; and another kind is a state of insusceptibility to change … and to destruction by another or by the thing itself. (Metaphysics pg 820 BkIX 1, 1046,a ln 8-11)
Aristotle details this dynamic process of change, potentiality which can be either of a passive capacity where it is possible for a substance is to undergo or become changed; or, in the case of animate beings, it’s an active capacity which results in the production of change in substances in a verify or determinate manner.
Actuality appears to be a realization of one of these potentialities, which most significant when it includes not merely the movement but also its purpose. Becoming, then, is the process in which the potentiality present in one individual substance is actualized through the agency of something else which is already actual. Thus, for Aristotle, change of any kind requires the actual existence of something which causes the change.
The truths of such things as theology arise from an application of notions which are, in essence, a speculative study of being qua being. Every being a composite whose form and matter have been brought together by some cause; and since there cannot be infinite such causes, then everything that happens is ultimately attributable to a single universal cause. A cause which is itself eternal and immutable. This self-caused “first mover,” from which all else derives, is often regarded as mind, whose actual process of thinking is its nature and purpose.
Goodness in the universe, therefore, must be supposed to exist or reside in some sort of unity as the will of a single intelligent being.
According to Aristotle, every animate being is a living thing which can move itself only because it has a soul. Animals and plants, along with human beings, are more like each other than any of them are like any inanimate object, since each of them has a soul. All such beings, as a consequence, have soul which initiates and guides their most basic functions. (Raising the possibility that animals and, perhaps, plants, also have a sensitive soul by means of which they perceive features of their surroundings and move in response to the stimuli this provides. The difference, however, between Humans and plants or animals is that human appear to possess a rational soul allows for and or permits representation and thought. In this way, we note that each living thing has ‘one soul’, the actions of which exhibit some degree of sensitive, and/or rational functioning. This soul is the formal, efficient, and the final cause of the existence; and only its material cause resides in the body.
Sensations represents the method or form by which the passive capacity of the soul comes about to be and is changed through contact with external, physical objects. In each variety of sensation soul is able to actualise itself and becomes, this ability to ‘become’ representative of its potentiality. It is, thus, without any necessary exchange of matter, the soul takes on the form of the object
The intellect or Thoughts is the active process of engagement in the forms are manipulated without any contact with an external, sensate or physical object. And so, thinking is a potential – independent of the objects of thought, from which it abstracts the form alone. The imagination involves the operation of the ‘common sense’ which is a recognition of the stimulation of the sensory organs.
And so, all knowledge must begin with information acquired through the senses, its results achieved by rational means. Transcending the sensory with particulars, the soul employs a more formal method of logic to discern and understand the relationships among abstract forms.
Driving all this, of course, appears to be desire which is the origin of movement toward some particular goal. Every animate being, to some degree, is capable of responding to its own internal states and those of its external sphere in such a way as to ‘satisfy’ a felt or perceived absence or lack of some pleasure or the felt presence of some pain. Actions taken as a result of intellectual deliberation, according to Aristotle supposes, produces motion the invocation physical desires or sensation.
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