Aristotle Metaphysics Help

What's that a doctorate dissertation?
Why would you think you might get help with that here?

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Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

It’s actually summer work for my first year at university since exams have been cancelled, I just want to explore ideas with people as I can’t access my lecturers too easily at the moment.. I’m not expecting an essay just some help

So to answer that question, you need to read, and thoroughly understand "Categories", "Physics", and "Metaphysics". To understand "Metaphysics" you'll need to understand "on the Soul".

Have you read all these yet?

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

I have, my struggle is fully understanding the connection between Aristotle’s four fold distinction and his three degrees of soul.. because of the pandemic we were unable to have a lecture and have been sent some very weak notes and without my lecturer responding to any emails, I’m struggling to construct an in-depth understanding

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Quoting Millie Regler

I have, my struggle is fully understanding the connection between Aristotle’s four fold distinction and his three degrees of soul.

By "four fold distinction" due you mean the four ways in which "cause" is used, describe in Physics. I think the three degrees of soul are self-nourishment (vegetative), self-movement (sensitive), and intellection. Each of the three being a potency, or capacity of the soul, while the soul itself is an actuality.

Aristotle's conceives of different causes as different explanations; or more precisely, different "whys" or "becauses."

Matter (hyle) is an "out of which" that a thing consists of or comes out of (i.e. potentiality) -- the letters of syllables, the brass of a statue, the parts of a whole, etc.
Form (eidos) is the thing conceived as a whole; that is, its essence or composition; the organization or function (i.e. actuality)
The moving cause, or efficient cause, is that which does something or starts something (e.g. the doctor, the plotter, the father, the seed, etc.).
End (telos) is the "for the sake of which" something is or happens; that is, what something is for, or what is good about it, in relation to itself and other things.

*End and form often coincide. Not all natural changes are generations; there is also growth and decay, quality change and locomotion

[quote=Millie Regler]I have, my struggle is fully understanding the connection between Aristotle’s four fold distinction and his three degrees of soul..[/quote]

For Aristotle the connection is this: a soul's essence is defined by its organic composition (i.e. self-nourishment, self-movement, intellect, etc.), and its organic composition can be analyzed, determined, or explained in terms of its causes.

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Reply to tim wood
"On The Soul", BK 2 Ch 1, 412a, 20 -30.
29: "That is why the soul is the first grade of actuality of a natural body have life potentially in it".

This is a very important principle and the entire description needs to be understood. First he distinguishes matter as potentiality, and form as actuality (10). A living body is a composite of matter and form. Because the soul is the form, or actuality of that natural body, it is responsible (as actual cause) for the actual existence of that natural body. "Actual" refers to the form, and the form of that natural body is an organized body, having the potential for self-nutrition and growth, along with the correlative implied by "potential", decay. The type of actuality he assigns to the soul is described as "possessing knowledge" as distinguished from exercising knowledge.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

Sorry for confusion, I mean the four fold distinction of things that are... being said of, being said in etc

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Quoting tim wood

On the basis of that, or, arguing from that, do you hold that the soul is any kind of a thing at all? I'm not interested in what I think, or a fortiori what you think, but rather only in what Aristotle said, and meant, if we can get to it. And it could be on that we agree!

I'll go through what he says at 412a and see if we can make sense of it:
10. Matter is potentiality, form actuality,
15. A natural body which has life in it is a composite substance.
20. The soul is a substance in the sense of the form of a natural body having life potentially in it.
22 Substance in the sense of form, is an actuality, hence the soul is the actuality of the mentioned body.
23. The word actuality has two senses corresponding to the possession of knowledge and the exercising of knowledge.
25. The soul is an actuality in the sense of possession of knowledge.

So it appears clear that the soul is a substance in the same sense that a form is a substance.

Quoting tim wood

I argue that "actuality" is too easily mistaken for, and has been mistaken for, understood as, something actual.

If to be a substance is to be "actual", then I don't see the problem. An actuality, is a substance and therefore actual. Notice though that he distinguished two types of "actuality", one possessing knowledge, the other exercising knowledge. The latter is necessarily an "activity" as we use the word. But the former may be an actuality which is not an activity, and that's the type of actuality he said the soul is.

Quoting tim wood

But to extract any thing actual or real from either word, I argue, is a brutal misreading.

I think you're wrong here. He clearly states that the soul is "substance". Substance for Aristotle is what grounds logic in reality. So I don't see how you can remove reality from the soul, which is said to be an actuality as a substance. That would leave you with an odd concept of "real", if Aristotelian substance and actuality are not interpreted as real.

Quoting tim wood

It becomes alive when its capacity to be alive is actualized (or realized), and for so long as it is alive. In this Aristotle is marking a difference with a distinction, that between a body and what makes it alive, which he calls psyche, ????.

The body does not "become" alive. It has no actual existence without a soul. There is no body without the soul. Aristotle is explicit in his metaphysics that there is no such thing as matter without a form. And, the form of a natural body is prior in time to the material existence of that body, because material things are generated, they come into being. And the form of the body must be prior to the material body to ensure that the body comes into being as the body which it comes into being as. Bodies are not random, they have ordered existence. And, a body cannot be other than the body it is, by the law of identity. Therefore the form of the body must be prior to the material body, as the cause of it being the body which it is.

Quoting tim wood

But specifically I do not find in this any notion or even suggestion of anything like a Christian soul. In other words, neither actualization or that which is actualized is any kind of material or substantial thing at all. To my way of thinking, the best we can do is call them ideas. Are we in agreement?

You make the mistake of equating "substantial" with "material". This is not consistent with classical metaphysics.

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Quoting tim wood

But it could be just the claim that this is how Aristotle saw it and described it. Except I do not think that's correct. He troubled to reason that body and soul were different. Maybe a living body has, arguably, in his terms, ????, But I am unaware of anywhere he posits a dead body as having that.

It is how Aristotle described it, and you don't seem very well versed in the principles he outlined in his Metaphysics, so I'll take the claim that you don't think it's correct, as insignificant. Are you familiar with what is commonly called "the cosmological argument"?

Quoting tim wood

To my way of thinking, the best we can do is call them ideas. Are we in agreement?

No we're not at all in agreement here. Human ideas, as dependent on the human body, are complete distinct from the soul, which the living body is dependent on. This is the significant advancement which Aristotle made over Pythagorean idealism, in response to the problems of such idealism which Plato exposed. Aristotle demonstrated that human ideas cannot be eternal, and depend upon the human mind to receive actual existence, thus refuting Pythagorean idealism, and what he called that type of Platonism, which assigned eternal existence to these ideas through the theory of participation. However, the same argument which is used in this refutation, the cosmological argument, also demonstrates the necessity for an actuality, a form, which is prior to all material existence.

So Neo-Platonists reject Pythagorean idealism (what we call Platonism), accepting the cosmological argument which demonstrates a separation between human ideas and the immaterial Forms required for material existence. Christian theologians accept this division between human ideas which require the material body, and the immaterial Forms which we are required to assume in order to account for the reality of material existence. This separation is necessary to account for the reality of human mistakes. Human ideas are often wrong, and therefore cannot be the same as the independent Forms which are responsible for material existence.

Here's an example which may help you to understand this. Many people make a distinction between "the laws of physics", and "the laws of nature". Both of these refer to immaterial forms. The laws of physics are artificial, created by human beings, as descriptions of physical existence. They are wrong when human beings misunderstand. The laws of nature are the actual immaterial laws which govern the way matter behaves.

Quoting tim wood

Near as I can tell from my read of Aristotle, his ???? is a that-which. He knows what he needs for his account, so he embodies it into a that-which meets that need as account. In accounting terms a contra-asset - not a thing in itself but an offset, something set off, against something else.

You seem to be completely ignoring the fact that Aristotle defines the soul as a substance, trying to rationalize some other idea which makes more sense to you because you refuse to take the time required to understand immaterial substance, being consumed by materialist presuppositions. Do you accept the principle of sufficient reason from Leibniz? Each and every material object must have a reason for it being the object which it is, because an object cannot be a disorderly random occurrence. If random disorderly things existed, they would not appear to us as objects. Only orderly things appear as objects. Order is a necessary requirement of "object". And, if a thing has order there is a reason for that order, a cause of it (PSR). This necessitates the conclusion that there is a cause which is prior to material existence. This is necessarily an immaterial cause.

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