Where is the efficient cause in Aristotle's natural motion?

[thinkandmull]

**The world is a machine in which there is nothing at all to consider but the shapes and movements of particles. ** Descartes: The Principles of Philosophy, II, 36

Persons will look upon this body as a machine made by the hands of God, which is incomparably better arranged, and adequate to movements more admirable than is any machine of human invention. *Descartes: Discourse on the Method, V. *

The whole class of final causes is of no avail in natural things. Descartes: Meditations IV

In Meditations IV he was not speaking of human relation to God, but physical things. Studying a tree has nothing to do with its final cause; that question is more for theological speculation.

Also I am not aware of Descartes ever denying that the “shapes and movements of particles” can cause consciousness in animals. You might use the word “soul” for them, but since it isn’t a simple spiritual soul but a physical biological soul, then you are not referring to something contrary to Descartes. “[Animals] are not the cause of their own movement; and so they are not master of their own action” says Aquinas. Thus we can call animals “machines”

 

[thinkandmull]

“God made our body like a machine, and he wanted it to function like a universal instrument, which would always operate in the same way in accordance with its own laws”.
Descartes

He also wrote that the soul gives us “spiritual joy”, yet often from the imagination the “animal spirits” that go between the heart and brain result in “animal joy”.

So how can BOTH these accusations be maintained together: that for Descartes the soul was not the “form” of the body, AND also that things extended (non-mind) cannot feel. This glaring contradiction shows that too often Descartes is pushed aside as a modernist without real consideration

 

[Richca]

Descartes did not deny that “I am therefore I think”, but in the movement of his argument he said “I am thinking, therefore I know I exist”. He did not say his thinking caused his existence. Descartes spoke of the soul phenomologically, as experienced. He didn’t address whether technique-ly the sensible soul was really just the intellectual soul in action. He wasn’t concerned about that.

There is no concept of a sensitive soul in Descartes like that found in Aristotle and the scholastics. Descartes does speak of sense organs in animals and in the body of humans but this is nothing other than matter in motion. This follows from his own philosophical principles. What I find odd among many other things in Descartes’ philosophy is that the substance of all corporeal, material things is the same. This substance is body or extended matter. Things differ only accidentally such as their geometrical shapes, sizes, and figures which Descartes calls modes of extended substance. Thus, a tiger and an oak tree are the same substantially but differ only accidentally according to the various modes of extended substance such as magnitude, figure, and various movements or motions in their bodies or bodily parts. Descartes identified matter with quantity or extension. The essence of matter is spatial extension. Quantity or extension is an accident of substance and matter in Aristotle/Aquinas. Using Descartes’ own method of doubt, I find his idea of the nature and essence of corporeal substance highly doubtful and even erroneous in light of the Aristotlelian/Thomistic metaphysics.

Another oddity in Descartes philosophy is that color, smell, taste, sound, and light are not in external things. These qualities are nothing in external things “but the various dispositions of these objects which have the power of moving our nerves in various ways.” They are “nothing more, as far as is known to us, than certain dispositions of objects consisting of magnitude, figure, and motion.” Thus these “secondary” qualities exist in us as sentient subjects rather than in external things. Galileo was apparently of like mind. These qualities are subjective which means they only exist in our mind as ideas. For example, corporeal movements stimulate the senses, and on occasion of these movements the mind produces its idea of color. I was thinking about this yesterday as I took a walk in a local park which has a lot of sycamore trees with large green leaves. My senses tell me unmistakeably that the leaves are green and that the color green is in the leaves. When I’m 30 feet away from the tree, the tree and its green leaves are over there and I’m here. To suggest that the leaves are not actually green themselves but that the color green is only in my mind, I find to be absurd. This idea that colors, smells, tastes, light, ect, are only in our minds means that when we see beautiful sunsets, the colors we see are not actually out there in the sunset but only in our mind; or when we see a tiger with orange and black stripes, the tiger is not actually colored but is pretty much some kind of geometrical figure without color. The light we see from the sun is only in our head. All of this is absurd beyond recognition.

I would agree with Descartes and Galileo that color is not matter. But I hold it to be an accident or form in a substance and not just in our heads.

Emphasizing words like “mechanical machines or automata” are missing the point about animals too: all Descartes was saying was that the animals were biological-physical, and we partly spiritual.

 

[thinkandmull]

Modern science says that a green object actually has all the colors except green, but our eyes pick up green. This is “indirect representationalism” which people say Galileo believed in. You quoted Descartes as saying “the various dispositions of these objects which have the power of moving our nerves in various ways” are “nothing more, as far as is known to us, than certain dispositions of objects consisting of magnitude, figure, and motion.” These words don’t say that we see things differently than they really are. I am in agreement with you in being offended when science says there is more empty space in this chair than matter. I’ve read about the subjective side of quantum physics, and I guess something subjective was happening when the scientists were doing there experiments. However, I would like to see a direct quote from Descartes that says we don’t perceive things are they really are

As for the tiger and the oak tree, they have different biology. When Aquinas says the sperm has a power from the male to cause the vegetable egg to become a sensible soul and then the sperm with its power dies, he was describing things in his own language, but it was about biology. I don’t see Descartes as contradicting the idea of an animal soul. If someone believes in animal consciousness, then that is the same as saying he believes in an animal soul. The word soul might help many have a better appreciation of the beauty of life, but with words “there are no accounting for taste” as the Romans say

 

[thinkandmull]

There is no concept of a sensitive soul in Descartes like that found in Aristotle and the scholastics. Descartes does speak of sense organs in animals and in the body of humans but this is nothing other than matter in motion. This follows from his own philosophical principles. What I find odd among many other things in Descartes’ philosophy is that the substance of all corporeal, material things is the same. This substance is body or extended matter. Things differ only accidentally such as their geometrical shapes, sizes, and figures which Descartes calls modes of extended substance. Thus, a tiger and an oak tree are the same substantially but differ only accidentally according to the various modes of extended substance such as magnitude, figure, and various movements or motions in their bodies or bodily parts. Descartes identified matter with quantity or extension. The essence of matter is spatial extension. Quantity or extension is an accident of substance and matter in Aristotle/Aquinas. Using Descartes’ own method of doubt, I find his idea of the nature and essence of corporeal substance highly doubtful and even erroneous in light of the Aristotlelian/Thomistic metaphysics.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Modern science says that a green object actually has all the colors except green, but our eyes pick up green.

A small point, but modern science doesn’t say a green object “has all the colors except green.” What it says is that all the wavelengths which would cause our eyes to see those colors are absorbed by the object. Only the specific “green” wavelength is reflected to our eyes which is why we see green.

 

[thinkandmull]

Ok I was misinformed I guess. However, I think science says that atoms are 99.9999999999999 per cent empty space. So there is more empty space than matter in this computer screen? If you say there are forces between the atoms, if these forces are tangible than it is no longer empty space. I have gotten skeptical about modern science recently

 

[Peter_Plato]

Ok I was misinformed I guess. However, I think science says that atoms are 99.9999999999999 per cent empty space. So there is more empty space than matter in this computer screen? If you say there are forces between the atoms, if these forces are tangible than it is no longer empty space. I have gotten skeptical about modern science recently

It also says matter and energy are convertible. Theoretically, that would mean there could be no matter and all energy or no energy and all matter. Theoretically.

 

[thinkandmull]

Aquinas:

“What is receptive of color must be without color, as what is receptive of sound must be without sound: for nothing receives what it already has: and so it is clear that the transparent must be without color.” In De Anima II

From the same work:

“Now the organ of any sense should not have in act the contraries of which the sense is perceptive, but should be in potency to them, so that it can receive them, since the recipient should be deprived of the thing received. . . . For the organ of vision, obviously the pupil, entirely lacks white and black and generally every kind of color; and it is the same in hearing and in smell.”

So in order to see magnitude, Aquinas would have the soul seeing DIRECTLY through the eye. Its interesting

 

[thinkandmull]

When he says"**generally **every kind of color" he must mean that is the seeing part of the pupil has color, that person is blind to that color (partially blind).

Now he tries, from this medieval principle of physics that “any sense should not have in act have the contraries of which the sense is perceptive, but should be in potency to them” to still say that it is the “organ of any sense” which are “perceptive”. I think he paragraph in clear on these points.

However, how can the seeing part of the pupil, and/or the part behind it leading to the brain, see figure and magnitude is it has figure and magnitude.

So Aquinas’s medieval physics actually leads him to the extreme position of holding that the soul alone, not the organ, perceives

 

[Peter_Plato]

When he says"**generally **every kind of color" he must mean that is the seeing part of the pupil has color, that person is blind to that color (partially blind).

Now he tries, from this medieval principle of physics that “any sense should not have in act have the contraries of which the sense is perceptive, but should be in potency to them” to still say that it is the “organ of any sense” which are “perceptive”. I think he paragraph in clear on these points.

However, how can the seeing part of the pupil, and/or the part behind it leading to the brain, see figure and magnitude is it has figure and magnitude.

So Aquinas’s medieval physics actually leads him to the extreme position of holding that the soul alone, not the organ, perceives

I’m not clear how this position is “extreme.” If you understand Aquinas as getting at the idea of the subjective awareness of what the organs perceive, I suspect he is quite correct. The organs are not aware of what is perceived, but the subject recipient of the experience (soul?) is – the subject directly experiences what is sensed, in fact.

 

[Peter_Plato]

So in order to see magnitude, Aquinas would have the soul seeing DIRECTLY through the eye. Its interesting

Or experiencing DIRECTLY what is seen through the eye, perhaps.

 

[Richca]

When he says"**generally **every kind of color" he must mean that is the seeing part of the pupil has color, that person is blind to that color (partially blind).

Now he tries, from this medieval principle of physics that “any sense should not have in act have the contraries of which the sense is perceptive, but should be in potency to them” to still say that it is the “organ of any sense” which are “perceptive”. I think he paragraph in clear on these points.

However, how can the seeing part of the pupil, and/or the part behind it leading to the brain, see figure and magnitude is it has figure and magnitude.

So Aquinas’s medieval physics actually leads him to the extreme position of holding that the soul alone, not the organ, perceives

In regards to your last sentence here, Aquinas follows Aristotle in that sensory perception is an act or operation of both the soul or power of the soul, for example the power of sight, and the organ, for example the eye. Without the eye, the soul’s power of sight is not going to work because we see through our eyes. Accordingly, seeing is an operation of the composite animal composed of matter and form and we could say it is the whole animal who sees. It is the man who sees and not just his eyes or his soul.

The soul is the form or act of the body because matter is potentiality. Matter is not a principle of action or operation. Forms are acts and so a thing acts through its form. And so in this sense, I think we could say it is the soul or some form that perceives although the soul is in matter or is the act of it for the soul is the act of the entire body. In regard to the eye organs, I think the soul’s power of sight is as the form or act of the eye which is made out of matter. And so, seeing is an act of the composite, namely, the soul’s power of sight which is the act of the material eye. The subject of the soul’s powers and body is the individual subsistent thing. So it is the man or animal who sees and perceives and not just the soul alone or the body alone, however it is the form or soul that is the principle of actions and operations.

 

[Richca]

Ok I was misinformed I guess. However, I think science says that atoms are 99.9999999999999 per cent empty space. So there is more empty space than matter in this computer screen? If you say there are forces between the atoms, if these forces are tangible than it is no longer empty space. I have gotten skeptical about modern science recently

You make a good point here. According to quantum theory, I don’t think there is an “empty” space in an atom in which there is not a field of some kind, i.e., electromagnetic, gravity, or strong and weak force, if not from the atom itself, from other objects. According to physics theory, I don’t think there is an “empty” space in the whole universe that does not have an electromagnetic or gravitational field of some kind especially if we consider the theories of dark energy and dark matter. Newton’s universal law of gravitation implies, I believe, that gravity is everywhere in the universe. The theory that light can propagate through a void or empty space is kind of a misnomer since, if I’m understanding physics theory correct, there is no void or empty space in the entire universe.

 

[Richca]

Automata means self-moving in a regular way. Leibniz, in arguing that we have ‘freedom of spontaneity’ speaks of the human soul as ‘a kind of spiritual automaton’. (Theodicy I, 52) Don’t we all believe there are only two substances: “spiritual thinking substances and corporeal extended substances”.

To me, saying that a chair has both matter and form seems to say that matter can be without form, which is impossible. Matter can be made into different things, but the basic building blocks are a certain way essentially so I don’t see that it is NECESSARY from philosophy to say it has two principles, one of matter and one of form. As a poor analogy, blue exists in its own right, even though green and red together can make it. Aquinas also speaks of existence as it was a quality, instead of merely a word we use to speak of something that is real.

An important point in Thomistic philosophy is to not invent reality but to discover it since God is the creator of the universe and its reality. The chair undeniably has form and matter if we were to give any kind of accurate description of it or if we were to inquire into its causes. The formal cause answers the question “What is it?” Answer: a chair. The material cause answers the question “What is it made of?” Answer: lets say wood. We could also inquire into the efficient cause “Who made it or who brought it into being?” and the final cause “What is it for?” We’ll leave out the efficient and final causes for the time being.

I see no reason why saying that the chair has matter and form implies that matter can be without form. That the chair has matter and form is simply reality whatever else we may want to say about it whether truthfully or falsely.

I think it is necessary to say that the chair has matter and form because this is simply the reality of the chair, this is how we perceive it, how our intellects perceive reality. This is how our minds work and how it perceives reality and we don’t want to go against how our intellects work and how they perceive reality. We do not want to go against our human nature, the human nature God created us with, but we want to follow it as it were. We do not invent reality but discover it.

In our example of the chair, it is actually an accidental form of wood because wood is a substance, but it is still an example of form and matter. The substance wood is also a composite of form and matter. Wood is the form, the substantial form, and the material or “stuff” the wood is made of is the matter. The wood though can take on another substantial form if, for example, we burn the chair which results in a pile of ashes. Now the matter of the wood has a new form, i.e., ashes or elemental substances or compound elemental substances.

One of Descartes’ mistakes concerning corporeal substance was that he abstracted all forms or qualities from matter except quantity or extension. Yet, at the same time, he says magnitude or size is a mode (accident in scholasticism) of extended corporeal substance. For Descartes then, size follows extension. However, if we abstracted all size from matter or body, matter would have no size at all, it would be dimensionless. For some unknown reason, for Descartes, if you abstract all size or magnitude from body, somehow you are still left with body and dimensions. Quantity is clearly an accident of substance. Our quantity has increased since we were babies and we are sometimes now a little more skinnier or a little more fatter.

For Aristotle/Aquinas, quantity, dimensions, and body are a consequence of matter, they follow matter. Quantity is not matter but an accident or form that follows matter. It is a form that determines matter, or better yet modifies or further determines the substance, and gives it spatial extension and thus results a body; just after the fashion of the form of chair determines the shape of the wood. If we abstract all qualities and quantity from matter, we are left with matter without any determinable characteristics, or prime matter which is just potentiality. Forms determine matter. Though matter is a part of the substance of a tiger, for example, it is not matter that determines why a tiger is a tiger. As we have just seen, matter doesn’t determine anything, it is pure potentiality. What determines a tiger to be a tiger and have the nature of a tiger is called the substantial form. The substantial form and prime matter constitute the substance of the tiger from which proceeds the tiger’s proper accidents.

 

[Richca]

For Aristotle/Aquinas, quantity, dimensions, and body are a consequence of matter, they follow matter. Quantity is not matter but an accident or form that follows matter. It is a form that determines matter, or better yet modifies or further determines the substance, and gives it spatial extension and thus results a body; just after the fashion of the form of chair determines the shape of the wood. If we abstract all qualities and quantity from matter, we are left with matter without any determinable characteristics, or prime matter which is just potentiality. Forms determine matter. Though matter is a part of the substance of a tiger, for example, it is not matter that determines why a tiger is a tiger. As we have just seen, matter doesn’t determine anything, it is pure potentiality. What determines a tiger to be a tiger and have the nature of a tiger is called the substantial form. The substantial form and prime matter constitute the substance of the tiger from which proceeds the tiger’s proper accidents.

(continued)
The substantial form is the form of the whole tiger, for no part of the tiger is tiger or called tiger.

 

[thinkandmull]

Or experiencing DIRECTLY what is seen through the eye, perhaps.

“Seen by the eyes” would be impossible from Aquinas’s physics because the eye and the object in sight both have magnitude and matter, and “for nothing receives what it already has” he says. He didn’t realize that his physics lead to ultra-hylomorphism for he says “Now the **organ of any sense **should not have in act the contraries of which the sense is perceptive, but should be in potency to them, so that it can receive them, since the recipient should be deprived of the thing received”

 

[thinkandmull]

An important point in Thomistic philosophy is to not invent reality but to discover it since God is the creator of the universe and its reality. The chair undeniably has form and matter if we were to give any kind of accurate description of it or if we were to inquire into its causes. The formal cause answers the question “What is it?” Answer: a chair. The material cause answers the question “What is it made of?” Answer: lets say wood. We could also inquire into the efficient cause “Who made it or who brought it into being?” and the final cause “What is it for?” We’ll leave out the efficient and final causes for the time being.

I see no reason why saying that the chair has matter and form implies that matter can be without form. That the chair has matter and form is simply reality whatever else we may want to say about it whether truthfully or falsely.

I think it is necessary to say that the chair has matter and form because this is simply the reality of the chair, this is how we perceive it, how our intellects perceive reality. This is how our minds work and how it perceives reality and we don’t want to go against how our intellects work and how they perceive reality. We do not want to go against our human nature, the human nature God created us with, but we want to follow it as it were. We do not invent reality but discover it.

In our example of the chair, it is actually an accidental form of wood because wood is a substance, but it is still an example of form and matter. The substance wood is also a composite of form and matter. Wood is the form, the substantial form, and the material or “stuff” the wood is made of is the matter. The wood though can take on another substantial form if, for example, we burn the chair which results in a pile of ashes. Now the matter of the wood has a new form, i.e., ashes or elemental substances or compound elemental substances.

One of Descartes’ mistakes concerning corporeal substance was that he abstracted all forms or qualities from matter except quantity or extension. Yet, at the same time, he says magnitude or size is a mode (accident in scholasticism) of extended corporeal substance. For Descartes then, size follows extension. However, if we abstracted all size from matter or body, matter would have no size at all, it would be dimensionless. For some unknown reason, for Descartes, if you abstract all size or magnitude from body, somehow you are still left with body and dimensions. Quantity is clearly an accident of substance. Our quantity has increased since we were babies and we are sometimes now a little more skinnier or a little more fatter.

For Aristotle/Aquinas, quantity, dimensions, and body are a consequence of matter, they follow matter. Quantity is not matter but an accident or form that follows matter. It is a form that determines matter, or better yet modifies or further determines the substance, and gives it spatial extension and thus results a body; just after the fashion of the form of chair determines the shape of the wood. If we abstract all qualities and quantity from matter, we are left with matter without any determinable characteristics, or prime matter which is just potentiality. Forms determine matter. Though matter is a part of the substance of a tiger, for example, it is not matter that determines why a tiger is a tiger. As we have just seen, matter doesn’t determine anything, it is pure potentiality. What determines a tiger to be a tiger and have the nature of a tiger is called the substantial form. The substantial form and prime matter constitute the substance of the tiger from which proceeds the tiger’s proper accidents.

For Descartes, size was more accidental than extension and I think that’s correct. When you say “Wood is the form, the substantial form, and the material or ‘stuff’ the wood is made of is the matter” shows that Thomist are saying something MORE than what people usually mean by matter and the different forms it takes. For most people a piece of wood IS what it is, and it also has a certain shape. They don’t have the philosophical thought of a principle of potentiality united to an unseen form to make matter. This is purely Aquinas’s thought, and like the idea that existence is an actual quality, it could be beautifully said but I don’t know if it has reality to it…

Descartes talks about the substance of wax remaining whether it is cold, hard, and smelly or whether it is hot and liquid. That is not the substance as understood by Aquinas; Descartes’s substance is the substance that is the subject of color, for example. Aquinas substance is so much further out there from this that the “bread” is still physical after consecration and thus still retains prime matter and form, but loses its invisible substance which is only known by the mind. Aquinas writes (1) that “it is impossible that what is the substantial form of one thing should be the accidental form of another”, yet the invisible substance of the bread which consecration replaces was the substance of the substance that the white of the bread resided in, so again this invisible substance is SO FAR away from what most people think of substance that the law that “it is impossible that what is the substantial form of one thing should be the accidental form of another” between the two substances (“physical” and “invisible”) of the bread.

Descartes thought scientifically. Aquinas’s understanding of something having 6 elements (accidents and its substance, invisible substance, form, matter, and existence) is foreign to Descartes new scientific method, but who am I to say that a saint was in error on such a major point?

(1 biblehub.com/library/aquinas/summa_theologica/whether_light_is_a_quality.htm)

 

[thinkandmull]

But maybe I don’t know what I am talking about, and something must be without color to receive color but can have size and shape and still receive size and shape intentionally.

 

[Richca]

(continued)
The substantial form is the form of the whole tiger, for no part of the tiger is tiger or called tiger.

I have a few more thoughts I would like to share. St Thomas says that the substantial form is only known by the intellect, i.e., it is not sense observable. I think this is evidenced from the statement in the above quote. Tiger is a universal concept that applies to all tigers but no part of the tiger is the tiger, for the head is not tiger but a part of the tiger, nor are any other sensible qualities or parts of the tiger’s body or the body itself “tiger,” these are all predicated of the subject, tiger. We perceive things as wholes and so the concept tiger is derived from the substantial form of the tiger which is the form of the whole as well as every one of the parts of the tiger. For an individual tiger is one thing and so it has but one substantial form which along with prime matter constitutes the substance of the tiger.

A few thoughts on Descartes’ idea of corporeal substance which includes all material substances such as elements, plants, and animals. Descartes agreed with the common notion of substance as that which exists in itself and from which other properties, attributes, qualities, etc. of things are founded on. As I mentioned in a previous post, Descartes identified quantity or extension in the three dimensions of length, breadth, and depth with matter, so that the very nature or essence of matter is extension or body. Accordingly, for Descartes, the substance of all material things is body or matter with dimensions which is the definition of body. All other attributes or properties of some thing are founded on body which is matter extended in the three dimensions. The problem with this theory I think is that in the real world there are no bodies that exist in themselves but we find that all such material bodies are the bodies of some thing, a subject, for example, the body of a tiger, or of a lion, or of an oak tree, or of an element. Tiger is not predicated of body such that we would say, “the body has a tiger.” Rather, we say “The tiger has a body.” Body is predicated of the subject tiger and it belongs to the tiger and body would belong to a definition of tiger, the subject, if we were to give a definition of tiger.

According to this analysis of Descartes’ theory of corporeal substance, it is not conceptually logical.