Aristotle's Arguments for Nature Acting for an End, and the Objections

Orientation #

He opens mid-sentence (“you have to be aware of those and how much they influence people”), i.e. after the discussion of custom (prev. lecture), and says “now finally we come down to the arguments for or against.” He ends by proposing “we should leave for next time to reply to these arguments.” The previous class treated custom’s influence on belief and the historical sources of modern intellectual habits; the next replies to the three objections.

The class, in order #

1. Plan of the handout: six for, three against (“six outweighs three”) #

The point: before the mind can rest it must weigh the arguments on both sides and answer the other side.

• Handout order as he describes it: Aristotle’s “five or so” arguments for; three arguments against “in ancient times and more modern times”; his restatement of Aristotle expanding some and splitting the third into two, so six; then his replies to the three.
• Grouping of the six: (1)–(2) from observation of how nature produces the good; (3)–(4) from human art acting for an end, two ways of reasoning (all the arts / the arts that help nature); (5) the “inductive argument” (Aristotle’s fourth), strongest the more intimate one’s experience of insects; (6) matter for the sake of form (Aristotle’s fifth), “a little more general,” applicable even to the non-living, whereas the others stress animals and plants.
• Purpose is more obvious in the living than the non-living: hard to see a purpose for water unless related to living things; hard to deny it for an eye, ear, teeth.
• Aside: great physicists (Bohr, Heisenberg) are more open to purpose in the living world than some biologists, who imitate physics’ neglect of end because it is the oldest part of modern science; a few biologists (“Denton and so on in Australia”) have recently begun to bring end back. Great minds see their limits better than their “fawning” followers: Newton said he did not know why the stone falls, only how to calculate it, though his editor made it seem he had found the cause; Einstein in England said he admired Newton more for knowing what he didn’t know.

2. First argument: nature produces the good almost always (“nature produces the good almost always”) #

1. Nature in animals and plants produces the good almost always; the defective baby is not the usual baby, and even it has only one or two defective organs among many sound ones.
2. What comes by luck or chance comes rarely (Aristotle takes this up after treating luck and chance).
3. Either nature produces the good because directed to it, or by chance; so, directed to it.

• Chair-leg example: cutting a replacement leg at random, only one length is right and infinitely many are too long or short, so the chance of the right length is “practically nil”; and that is extremely simple next to an eye or ear, where size and arrangement must all be right.
• He notes this will be developed further in the reply to the third argument against.

3. Second argument: ordered steps toward the good (“an ordered number of steps”) #

1. Nature produces the good by an ordered number of steps such as to result in the good: broccoli starts from a particular seed, not just anywhere; embryology enumerates where the human body is at one, two, three weeks, when the heart starts pumping.
2. Such a thing is not by chance: following a recipe yields lemon meringue pie and not chocolate cream pie; whereas in chance events “anything might lead to anything” (running into your car; meeting someone at a restaurant after ten years could have happened in any number of ways).
3. So nature is apt to act for the sake of the good.

• The two arguments are separate and each good, “but together they’re even stronger”: nature both produces the good most of the time and does so in an orderly way, both contrary to merely happening to produce it.

4. Third argument: art cannot act for an end without imitating nature (“cannot act for an end without imitating”) #

The point: human art, which we know acts for an end, cannot do so without imitating what nature already does; if art merely sometimes matched nature it would be a coincidence, but it is impossible otherwise.

• Two things nature does in animals and plants: (a) makes each part of a material suitable to its function: teeth vs. tongue, heart vs. bones (a heart of bone, bones of lip-flesh would leave you “on the floor in a pile”); (b) gives that matter a form suitable to its function: front teeth shaped to bite, back teeth to chew, the inside of the front teeth curved back so food is sent to the chewing teeth rather than stuck.
• Art must do both: a paper chair, a cardboard saw fail (a); a pillow shaped like a saw fails (b). “Imitating” because nature is older than us.
• Analogy from philosophy: the Apology is the most used introductory text and Socrates the model philosopher; if you cannot philosophize without imitating Socrates, that is a good sign Socrates was doing philosophy.

5. Fourth argument: the arts that help nature (“go over and help Joe”) #

1. Some arts help nature: farming and gardening (seeds grow into plants without man; the farmer helps them grow healthy), medicine (the doctor helps nature push the baby out), the midwife-like teacher helping the mind give birth to thoughts.
2. Like all arts these act for an end.
3. You cannot purposively help another do what it is trying to do unless that other is trying to do something (“go help Joe”: if Joe is trying to accomplish nothing at all, you cannot help him).
4. So nature must be trying to do something.

6. Fifth argument, inductive: insects and organs (“whether they have a mind”) #

The point: action for an end in lowly insects strikes us where cat and dog no longer do; Aristotle observes that some people wonder whether bees and ants have a mind, which shows they see action for an end and associate it with mind.

• What’s important to see: Aristotle is “neither reasoning from the bee having a mind, or from the bee not having a mind, but being a product of some greater mind”; you would not even ask either question unless you first saw the action is for the sake of something.
• Spider web: circles sticky, spokes not, so the spider can cross quickly to a struggling fly and lasso it before it escapes (it can free itself if caught but would be impeded).
• Fabre’s insect: squeezes the victim’s head enough to paralyze but not kill (dead, it would corrupt and be unfit food; too little, it walks off), digs a hole, drags the victim by the antenna, lays eggs on it, covers it; Fabre could not reproduce the exact pressure. Footnote “not important for this argument”: with the antenna cut off the insect reached for it, then refilled the hole, though it could have dragged by “a million and one other places” (stone-age man would drag by the leg if the hair came out); so one might conclude it lacks the mind Anaxagoras described.
• Bees: a bee finds flowers, returns, does the “dance,” others fly off in the right direction; hypothesis that they use the angle sun–hive–flower; test: cover the hive two hours after the dance and the bees shoot off in the wrong direction, keeping the same angle though the sun has moved. Again, one might conclude the bee has no mind, but the point is only that what it does is obviously for the sake of something.
• Injunction: the argument cannot be done justice in class; observe, or read a detailed observer like Fabre.
• “Organic body”: organ from Greek organon, the common word for tool (hence Aristotle’s logical works the Organon, tool of philosophy); a living body is a body composed of tools, teeth for biting, eyes for seeing, heart for pumping, cat’s claws for grabbing; nothing is more obviously for the sake of something than a tool; a stone is not a body of tools. Induction means “many individuals.”

7. Sixth argument: matter is for the sake of form (“matter is for the sake of form”) #

1. As seen earlier when studying matter, lack of form and form (prev. lecture reference by him), matter is for the sake of form, as ability is for the sake of act; form is the end of matter.
2. Aristotle’s analogy of three arts in every industry: the art that prepares the matter, the art that forms the product, the art that uses the product; the using art commands the forming art (use reveals the defect: his father’s farm-machinery company testing an engineer’s new idea on the farm; Detroit recalling automobiles), the forming art commands the preparing art (his father’s company telling the steel company what size, breadth, thickness).
3. Nature’s operation is such as to form matter; so nature acts for an end.

• Objection: eating breaks food down and removes form. Reply: in the whole picture it is broken down to be re-formed into muscle, bone, flesh. If more formed animals arise over time, there is more and more form even in the course of time.
• Closing remark on the six: to deny it is to say my eyes are not for seeing though I see with them, the cat’s claws not for catching mice; “kind of unreasonable.” Student: are these arguments really self-evident? He: thinking about your own body and the cat’s, “pretty hard to deny.”

8. First argument against: action for an end requires a mind (“action for an end requires a mind”) #

1. The end is a strange cause: sitting is a cause of the chair, yet does not exist until the chair is made; how can the non-existent cause the existent? It must be because the carpenter has sitting in mind; historically Socrates began looking for end in nature after reading Anaxagoras on a greater mind. So it is “highly probable” action for an end requires a mind.
2. Nature has no mind: not the insects (the antenna case), not the tree (nobody thinks the tree deliberates whether to put its seeds in something the wind carries, something that sticks to pants, or an apple an eagle carries).
3. So nature cannot act for an end. Attributing it is “anthropomorphic” (student mentions Lewis/Tolkien’s trees).

• This argument says it is impossible for nature to act for an end.

9. Second argument against: nature produces the bad (“the end and the good are the same”) #

1. The end and the good are the same (Aristotle’s own premise).
2. Nature makes defective babies, kills with tornadoes, earthquakes, disease.
3. So nature in fact does not act for an end. Different from the first: not impossibility but fact.

10. Third argument against: the principle of fewness (“fewer causes are better if they are enough”) #

1. Fewer causes are better if they are enough; Einstein calls this the underlying idea of natural science from the Greeks on; Aristotle himself uses it.
2. Matter, form and mover, by mathematical chance, are enough to explain the good, so no fourth cause is needed. Origin in Empedocles: mindless love brings earth, air, fire, water together over and over, mostly in crazy combinations that perish (the mermaid with lungs cannot live in the sea and has no legs for land; the unicorn stuck in a tree is easy prey), until a good combination happens.

• Anecdote: a top space biologist at Saint Mary’s College could not formulate his opposition until Berquist named it “Occam’s razor” — do not multiply beings (causes) without necessity.
• He grants some evidence that nature in some cases produces the good by mathematical chance: the huge number of seeds (mushrooms would cover the world; dandelions cannot be eradicated, he keeps his neighbours supplied).
• Student: isn’t mathematical chance itself a fourth cause? He: no, it is an aspect of the third cause, the mover producing over and over until one “hits the lucky number.”
• The whole issue becomes: are the three causes through mathematical chance in fact enough? If not, fewness cannot be invoked. Replies left for next time.

11. Weighing, and modern forms of the third argument (“that’s my theory”) #

• Six is more than three but quality must be weighed; the three are the main arguments he has heard in one form or another.
• The third goes back in form to Empedocles, whose full thinking Aristotle gives “in the second book,” beyond the fragments; Warren Murray explaining it to biologists was told “that’s my theory.” Modern form: random mutations, nine of ten worse, the one survives; antibiotic resistance, where the medicine kills 999 of 1000 and the resistant one multiplies, hence the warning against unnecessary medication.
• Aristotle, comparing Empedocles and Anaxagoras on things coming to be forever, praises Empedocles for explaining with a limited multitude of causes against Anaxagoras’s unlimited one; so Aristotle states the principle of fewness (one of the first, if not first, to state it clearly) and uses it even for the man he disagrees with, yet does not find the three causes sufficient. It must be examined whether they are.
• Aside: students’ “sleepless nights” weighing these; your whole life depends on the answer; consistency from a bad principle: abortion leads to euthanasia, governments admitting killing people without asking. Brief exchange on the president’s speech (“protecting all life”).

12. Tail digression: higher arts subordinated to lower, and natural to technical science (“turned us away from a contemplative attitude”) #

• Opera: the dramatic is subordinated to the musical; ballet: music is for the sake of the dance, so the higher art is subordinated to the lower (Tchaikovsky’s ballet music good but not the best music); dance cannot represent emotion as deeply or subtly as music. Adult playing with a kid plays the kid’s game; men in philosophical conversation are drawn down to the woman’s more social level (Aunt Margaret’s “no philosophy today” at Thanksgiving; Laval’s vin d’honneur where philosophers would rather talk philosophy; Monsignor Dionne relaxed only when asked a question).
• Application: in the union of natural and technical science, technical science does not become natural science though it gains vigour from it; Heisenberg says it turned us from a contemplative to a pragmatic attitude, and that Americans’ addiction to the practical comes from the pressure of democratic times (inventions from washing machines to computers applauded for easing labour); still some men (Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr) show the inborn desire to know, “how hard it is to hide the sparks of nature,” but government and industry support science for what you can do with it (Warren developing a new glue at Minnesota Mining; the space biologist confined to practical problems, who quit). Student: is this fallen nature tending downward? He: that is behind everything.

His words #

• “inductive argument”: Aristotle’s fourth (his fifth), from many individuals, especially insects
• “ability” for the sake of “act” [ed.: potency/act]
• “lack of form” [ed.: privation]
• “principle of fewness”: fewer causes are better if they are enough [ed.: Occam’s razor / parsimony]; he links it to “Occam’s razor”
• “mathematical chance”: aspect of the third cause (mover), repeated production until one combination succeeds
• “organic body”: body composed of tools, from organon
• “Organon”: Aristotle’s logical works, tool of philosophy
• “arts that help nature”: medicine, farming, gardening, midwifery of the mind
• “anthropomorphic”: reading mind into trees and ants
• “vin d’honneur”: Laval social function

Texts #

Read in class (from the handout, paraphrased rather than quoted):

• Aristotle, Physics II, the arguments that nature acts for an end (inferred: II.8); the remark that people wonder whether bees and ants have a mind; the three-arts analogy Mentioned:
• Aristotle, Physics II, discussion of Empedocles (“the second book”); comparison of Empedocles and Anaxagoras on limited vs. unlimited causes (locus not stated)
• Plato, Apology (Socrates as model philosopher)
• Anaxagoras on mind; Socrates reading Anaxagoras
• Empedocles’ fragments
• Fabre (insect observations)
• Newton’s editor; Einstein’s talk on Newton; Einstein on fewness; Heisenberg on contemplative vs. pragmatic attitude and democratic times
• Denton (Australia) on end in biology; C. S. Lewis / Tolkien’s trees

His questions #

• If nature was producing the good by luck, how often would you expect it to produce the good? Rarely; but it produces it almost always, so it is directed to the good.
• If I cut a piece of wood at random, what are the chances of getting the right length? Practically nil; one right length, infinitely many wrong.
• Can human art act for an end without making things of suitable materials and giving them a suitable form? No; so it cannot act for an end without imitating nature.
• If Joe isn’t trying to do anything, how can you go over and help Joe? You can’t; helping presupposes the other is trying to do something good.
• Does the insect have a mind? Not what Aristotle argues from; he argues only that its action is obviously for an end.
• What does “organ” come from? Greek organon, tool; a living body is a body of tools.
• Isn’t eating an exception to nature forming matter? No; food is broken down to be re-formed into muscle, bone, flesh.
• How can something that doesn’t exist be a cause of what exists? It seems to require a mind, as the carpenter has sitting in mind.
• Isn’t mathematical chance itself a fourth cause? No; it is an aspect of the third cause, the mover.
• Are the first three causes through mathematical chance enough to explain the good? Left open; replies next time.