OCR ↗︎
Philosophy ↗︎
Question preparation ↓

Intro:

Heraclitus was an ancient greek philosopher who cast doubt on the possibility of gaining knowledge. He famously said “a man never steps into the same river twice”.
This is because both the man and the river change. The world is in a state of ‘flux’ (change). So the moment we know something, it has changed. So how do we get knowledge?
Both Plato and Aristotle are trying to answer this challenge.

AO1: Plato’s rationalism: theory of forms & Allegory of cave

Rationalism is the epistemological theory that knowledge can only be gained a priori, not from experience.
Plato’s cave illustrates his rationalism and theory of forms.
Prisoners (us) are shackled (minds trapped in ignorance) in a cave (the world of appearances) all their life.
They think shadows (objects of experience) they see on the wall are the real world, because it’s all they’ve ever known (we assume that about the world we percieve).
A prisoner (philosopher) escapes (use of a priori reason) and sees the real world (knows the world of forms).
Forms are abstract objects; perfect, eternal and immutible forms of the everyday things we experience.
What we experience are imperfect versions/representations of the real form those things partake in.
E.g. if we look at a beautiful sunset, we are looking at the form of beauty, but because our minds are shackled in ignorance, we see a changable imperfect particular beautiful thing.
Plato is accepting Heraclitus’ issue that we can’t gain knowledge from experience, but is proposing another method: pure a priori reason.

AO2: Plato’s cave as an argument for rationalism

Plato’s cave is a form of the veil of perception, extended by Descartes’ evil demon and Bostrom’s simulation argument.
Empiricism seems to require that our perceptions grant epistemic access to reality, either through direct immediacy or indirect representation.
The issue is, it seems impossible for empiricism to justify that our experience is related to reality in either of those ways.
Any evidence we could possibly draw on to show that we are not in Plato’s cave or a simulation, could itself be a shadow in the cave or artifice of the simulation.
Empiricism appears to lead to philosophical scepticism, which Plato thinks justifies the alternate epistemology of rationalism.

Counter:

A common reaction is pointing to the lack of evidence for the forms, but this doesn’t work.
Plato’s whole point is that we should not rely on evidence which could be shadows on the wall of the cave.
Criticising Plato requires showing that he’s wrong to discount evidence.
Aristotle attempts this, claiming that study of causal processes responsible for the change/flux we observe yields knowledge.
He argues this makes Platonic forms ‘meaningless’; an unnecessary hypothesis, where even if they existed they would be ‘wholly irrelevant’, as we can explain experience without them.

Evaluation:

Aristotle’s approach is partially successful but it needs developing with the modern scientific method.
Aristotle’s method functioned primarily through observation, but that is vulnerable to Plato’s cave illustration that we could be observing illusions.
Modern science combines observation with experiment.
This has allowed us to systematically control, transform and predict the world orders of magnitude more than was dreamed of in ancient Greece.
This has granted us an active dynamic relationship with experience, which cannot be reduced to prisoners passively observing shadows.
So, the success of modern science escapes Plato’s cave critique, showing he’s wrong to disregard the value of evidence.

AO1: The hierarchy of forms & form of the good

Plato’s ontology is set out in his ‘divided line’.
This conceives of there being degrees of reality which are hierarchical, each with a corresponding level of cognition required for epistemic access.
The highest is the form of the good, illustrated in the analogy of the cave by the sun; the first thing the escaped prisoner (philosopher) sees.
The sun illuminates and nourishes the world, just as the form of the good enables apprehension and is responsible for the existence of the other forms.
Anyone who understands the form of the good becomes a morally perfect person, for whom doing wrong is impossible.
Knowing the good shows a person what is truly desirable. They cannot then be tempted by desires which are addictive, tyrannical, prideful, greedy, etc, as they understand how these run contrary to the true good.
A philosopher with this understanding should be crowned a ‘philosopher king’.
Below the form of the good are the higher forms like justice, beauty and truth: knowledge gained by understanding (Noēsis).
Below those are perfect mathematical forms: knowledge gained by reasoning (Dianoia)
Below those are the forms of the things we see in our experience, e.g. the form of tableness, opinion gained by belief.
Finally, images, shadows, reflections and art: opinion gained by imagination.

AO2: Plato vs Aristotle on the the form of goodness

Plato’s highest good is transcendent and perfects a soul which knows it, freeing reason from earthly appetites, rendering wrongdoing impossible.
However, morally perfected rationality appears utopian because such a person has never existed.
Reason appears inexorably influenced by desire; the question is how, and how far.
Aristotle’s immanent realism rejects goodness as a separate transcendent Form.
His pinnacle of reality is the Prime Mover, whose influence is indirect and need not be known:
As final cause, it grounds the teleological order by which each thing seeks the good proper to its form.
Human goodness therefore becomes the right ordering of our nature: eudaimonia, achieved by aligning reason and emotion through virtuous habit.
Immorality is not mere ignorance, but practical reason being misdirected by bodily drives.

Counter

Hume went further than Aristotle, arguing reason is a rationalising faculty which helps us justify and obtain what we desire; a “slave of the passions”.
Reason is more like a lawyer than a Platonic philosopher or Aristotelian scientist.
Nietzsche diagnosed Plato’s Form of the Good a ‘dangerous error’ caused by desire for power as a philosopher king.

Evaluation

However, Jonathan Haidt illustrates how Hume & Nietzsche go too far, leaving Aristotle’s model the ideal middle ground:
Reason is like a rider guiding an elephant through learning its desires, training and redirection.
Reason cannot directly control emotion, but can gradually align it through habituation.
E.g., Emotionally, a student may not want to revise, but can use breaks and rewards to align desire with their rational goal.
Plato rejected empiricism because the senses can mislead us, but reason can also be misled by emotional influence.
This distortion cannot be transcended through Plato’s rationalist fantasy of escaping bodily desire, but nor are we enslaved by it as Hume thought.
Desire can be trained into harmony with reason, as Aristotle’s empirical teleology understands.

AO2: Plato’s argument from recollection

Plato justifies the existence of an immaterial soul and world of forms through his argument from recollection.
We have ideas of perfect things, like the idea of two sticks being perfectly equal in length, or a perfect circle or perfect justice.
Yet, we have never experienced such perfect things in the world of appearances.
So, we must have apprehended these ideas from a world of perfect forms, where perfect forms of circles and justice exist.
Our imperfect body couldn’t be part of that perfect realm.
And Plato’s epistemological likeness principle entails that the part of us which knows immaterial forms must also be immaterial.
So, we must have an immaterial soul which was in the world of perfect forms before we were born.
We now gain knowledge through anamnesis, where experience of particulars triggers a a recollection of the perfect forms they partake in.

Counter

Hume counters that justice and beauty were subjective, though Plato’s argument could still function on the geometry examples, since maths is not subjective.
However, Hume claims we can actually create the idea of perfection ourselves.
Through abstract negation we imagine imperfect circles ‘not imperfect’, which creates the idea of perfection.
So, it seems we can explain perfect concepts without a soul or realm of forms.

Evaluation:

Plato’s argument fails at two points.
Hume’s proposal shows that we could get perfect concepts from pure a priori reasoning alone, without their being innate.
But even if we were born with perfect concepts, it’s a leap to think a soul and realm of forms must explain that.
E.g., evolution may have programmed us with geometric awareness to enable our survival.
So, Plato was wrong to think a soul & realm of forms must exist as the explanation.

AO1: Aristotle’s four causes

Aristotle’s empiricism claims we can gain knowledge from experience.
He thinks that universals like form are not abstract entities, but are aspects of the things we observe, a view called immanent realism.
Material objects are thus hylomorphic, a combination of matter and form.
He argues that to have knowledge of a thing requires understanding why it exists.
We can determine the causal processes operative in the various aspects of a thing’s being which are responsible for the change we experience. This allows us to understand what we are observing and why it exists. We can thus gain knowledge despite the world being in flux, is Aristotle’s response to Heraclitus.
Aristotle thinks there are four types of causation involved in change:
material – what something’s made of – e.g. the ‘wood’ of a chair
formal – a thing’s essence or defining characteristic, – e.g. the shape of a chair – a chair essentially has the shape of a thing that can be sat on.
efficient – what brought it into being – e.g. a carpenter
final – end goal of the thing built into its nature – telos – e.g. for a chair, to be sat on
This is an early version of the scientific method.
A scientist could explain that if you add the efficient cause of fire to a chair , then because of its material structure of wood the result will be ashes.
This is how science works – we look for patterns in the world and try to gain general knowledge from them.

AO2: the modern scientific critique of telos

Since Francis Bacon in the early enlightenment, telos has been rejected as metaphysical and unempirical.
Modern science explains the universe through atoms, energy and forces, not purpose.
There is no space in our scientific understanding of the universe for anything like a purpose to exist.
Sean Carroll concludes purpose is not built into the universe’s ‘architecture’.
Change Aristotle explained through telos can instead be explained non-teleologically.
E.g., Aristotle explains an acorn becoming an oak tree through final causation, but modern science explains it purely through material (DNA) and efficient (environment) causation.
So telos appears obsolete.

Counter

Physicist and theologian Polkinghorne defends the empiricism of telos.
He argues that science investigates the ‘what’, e.g., what laws of physics exist, but not why we have any laws at all, especially ones fine-tuned for our existence.
On this view, science does point to the need for an ultimate explanation of purpose, which is beyond the limits of empiricism to fully understand.
This shifts telos towards justifying Christian theology rather than Aristotelian philosophy.

Evaluation

However, even this more contemporary development of purpose cannot survive modern empirical critique.
Max Tegmark argues science may one day explain why the universe exists, reducing the ‘why’ to non-teleological concepts.
Or, Russell could be right that there is no ‘why’: the universe could be a brute fact.
So, final causation is an unnecessary unscientific concept.
The laws of nature are a mystery, but Polkinghorne risks an unempirical God of the gaps fallacy in assuming the explanation must be teleological.
Until we have a clear observation of change which requires telos to explain, the enlightenment rejection of aristotelian final causation as obsolete is justified.
So Aristotle may have been right in his empirical method and regarding some forms of material & efficient causation, but not final causation.

AO1: Aristotle’s prime mover

To explain the ultimate source of the change we observe, Aristotle argued there must exist a prime mover.
For Aristotle motion involves all the change we experience.
Aristotle thought the universe had always existed, but thought that nonetheless the continual motion within it needed an explanation.
Observation suggests this, e.g. if you roll a ball, it will stop.
The stars and planets have not stopped moving, however.
So, there must be a prime mover eternally sustaining the motion of the stars, as well as the terrestrial motion and change we experience.
This ultimate source of motion could not derive its motion from something else. It must therefore be unmovable, with no potentiality to change, a being of pure actuality.
It could not be physical, since material beings are subject to change and decay. It is an eternal immaterial mind. If it thought about anything changeable, it would itself change. So it must be engaged in pure contemplation, never thinking of anything else.
Aristotle thought immaterial beings could not directly push or pull physical beings.
So prime mover is not the efficient cause of the universe or the motion in the universe.
It is the final cause of the universe. It causes motion through the attraction of things to its perfection. Imperfect things oriented towards their good end are thereby attracted to the perfect actuality of the prime mover.
This is what explains the motion that we observe, it is the transition of things from potential to actual through four causes due to attraction to the final cause of the prime mover.

AO2: evaluation of the prime mover

Modern science since Newton has rejected Aristotle’s views on motion.
Newtonian inertia says a moving thing continues unless met by an opposing force.
A rolling ball stops because kinetic energy transfers into friction, not because motion ‘runs out’.
In space there is little friction, which explains the continued motion of stars and planets.
Continuous motion therefore does not need sustaining by a special explanation like a prime mover.
Anthony Kenny concludes Newton’s law “wrecks” Aristotle’s argument.

Counter

However, Aquinas refocused Aristotle’s argument on the universe’s efficient cause.
This application of Aristotle’s concepts avoids Newton’s critique.
We need an ultimate explanation of the causation in the universe.
Even if cause and effect go back forever in an infinite series, that series still needs an explanation.
As Aristotle put it, we can still ask why an infinite series exists.
Aquinas had faith that this was the Christian God, but technically through his natural theology only intended the argument to only show that some generic ‘uncaused cause’ exists.
So Aristotle’s ideas might still imply a special origin of motion.

Evaluation

However, Hume shows even this upgraded form of Aristotle’s argument fails.
Hume illustrates with a collection of 20 particles.
Explaining each particle explains the collection. It would be absurd to demand a further explanation for the whole collection itself.
An infinite series works the same way:
If all its parts have an explanation, then the whole series does too.
So, Aquinas commits the reification fallacy: mistaking an abstract entity for a concrete thing.
A series is nothing over and above its parts, meaning it’s not a thing in itself, in need of its own explanation.
So, Aristotle’s premise is misapplied: an infinite series might indeed need an explanation, but that is found in its parts, not anything external.
So, modern science and philosophy show neither Aristotle’s ideas nor their developments can prove anything like a prime mover.

AO1: Aristotle’s materialist view of the soul

Aristotle thought Plato was wrong to think that ‘form’ existed in another realm.
Form is instead an inseparable part of objects, their essence or ‘formal cause’. This view is called hylomorphism.
The formal cause of all living things is a soul which gives them their vital characteristics.
Plants have a vegetative soul which enables nutrition. Animal souls have that plus locomotion. Human souls have all that plus rational thought.
So the soul is the formal cause of the body, giving humans their defining essential characteristic of rational thought.
Aristotle illustrates that the soul is like the imprint left in wax by a stamp, whereas the wax is like the body. The imprint is not actually a thing itself, but gives characteristic to the wax.
Similarly, the soul is not a distinct entity. It can’t be separated from the body but gives us rational thought..

AO2: Critique of formal causation by modern materialism

Modern science rejects formal causation.
A classic scholastic example is that the whiteness of snow is explained by its form.
But we now know snow’s colour to be a feature of its material structure interacting with light.
After Francis Bacon, it became a feature of the emerging scientific method, to sideline as purely ‘metaphysical’, concepts which have no explanatory necessity.

Aristotle insists rational thought is the activity of the soul, which is the form of the body.
Modern scientists treat the mind as brain structures and their processes.
Just as with the whiteness of snow, what is attributed to formal causation can in principle be accounted for by material and efficient causation alone.

Counter

Contemporary hylomorphists reply that this move isn’t justified.
Material explanation has not succeeded in the crucial area of consciousness or rational thought.
So, we cannot legitimately claim to have eliminated the need for formal causation.

Evaluation

However, something being unexplained does not justify a special kind of metaphysical cause.
The history of science contains many cases once thought to require special categories (life-force, phlogiston), that were later eliminated by material explanations.
The case of the whiteness of snow illustrates this pattern clearly.
This doesn’t disprove formal causation, but it does undermine its credibility.
Consciousness and thought are indeed mysteries, but the question is how to scientifically approach mystery.
Scientific mysteries like dark matter and black holes could require new metaphysical categories, but likewise, they may not.
The same is true of consciousness.
So, unless we actually have clear evidence for the necessity of formal causation, it is an unnecessary concept.
We have vast evidence for the applicability of material and efficient causation, but none for formal causation.
Therefore, we are justified in proceeding to investigate consciousness materially rather than formally.

Question preparation

Revision paragraphs:

AO1: Plato’s rationalism: theory of forms & Allegory of cave
AO2: Plato’s cave as an argument for rationalism
AO1: The hierarchy of forms & form of the good
AO2: Plato vs Aristotle on the the form of goodness
AO2: Plato’s argument from recollection
AO1: Aristotle’s four causes
AO2: the modern scientific critique of telos
AO1: Aristotle’s prime mover
AO2: evaluation of the prime mover
AO1: Aristotle’s materialist view of the soul
AO2: Critique of formal causation by modern materialism

Question types:

Questions on, or critically comparing, any of the following:

Rationalism
World of forms
The cave
The hierarchy of forms
The Form of the Good
Empiricism
Teleology
The Four causes
The Prime mover

We have three evaluation paragraphs for Plato, and 3 for Aristotle. So for easy questions focused straightforwardly on Plato or Aristotle in general, we have three for each.

Questions which focus on one part of Plato or Aristotle can be answered the same way, but you need to bring out the relationship between their parts to make the parts not mentioned by the question relevant to the part that is:

The form of the good depends on and is an outworking of Plato’s rationalism and theory of forms in general, and features in the cave as the sun.

Likewise, Aristotle’s prime mover depends on and is an outworking of his theory of the four causes.

Questions which require critical comparison are best answered with AO2 sections where plato and aristotle are put against each other:

AO2: Plato’s cave as an argument for rationalism
AO2: Plato vs Aristotle on the the form of goodness
You could also include an AO2 on Aristotle – either on telos, of formal causation, or the prime mover – which all show modern science disproves Aristotle’s beliefs (though not his underlying method). Showing that while both Plato and Aristotle’s beliefs about reality are unconvincing, Aristotle is ultimately more convincing in his underlying method, in fact its contemporary developments of that method which have shown his particular beliefs to be unconvincing.

Assess Plato’s hierarchy of the forms [40]

AO1: The hierarchy of forms & form of the good
AO2: Plato vs Aristotle on the the form of goodness
AO2: Plato’s cave as an argument for rationalism
- Linking sentence: Plato justified his hierarchy of the forms on this basis of his rationalist epistemology, which he illustrated with his allegory of the cave.

AO2: Plato’s argument from recollection
- Linking sentence: Plato justified his belief in a hierarchy of forms with his argument from recollection.

Analyse Aristotle’s four causes. [40]

AO1: Aristotle’s four causes
AO2: the modern scientific critique of telos
AO2: evaluation of the prime mover
- Intro sentence: Aristotle argued his theory of the four causes allowed us to infer the existence of a final cause of all the motion in the world.
- Outro sentence: So, the four causes are undermined because they lead to a concept of the prime mover which Newton showed to fail. However, Aristotle’s underling method of gaining knowledge through experience is still valid, in fact that’s the method Newton himself used.
AO1: Aristotle’s materialist view of the soul
AO2: Critique of formal causation by modern materialism

Critically compare Plato’s Form of the good with Aristotle’s prime mover [40]

AO1: The hierarchy of forms & form of the good
AO2: Plato vs Aristotle on the the form of goodness
AO1: Aristotle’s prime mover
AO2: evaluation of the prime mover
AO2: Plato’s cave as an argument for rationalism
- Linking sentence: Plato’s form of the good and Aristotle’s Prime mover are products of divergent theories of how we gain knowledge. Plato thought his grounding was justified by his allegory of the Cave, which is an argument for rationalism and critique of the empirical grounding for Aristotle’s Prime mover.

Weirdly worded questions:

Assess Aristotle’s teleology OR: Assess the role of telos in Aristotle’s understanding of reality [40]

For Aristotle – teleology just means his empiricism – his four causes & the prime mover – since they involve teleological (telos) elements.
This is just asking you to assess Aristotle’s theory and its use of telos – in the four causes (final causation) & regarding the prime mover (as the final cause of the universe).