No Infinite Regress: The Moved Mover, the Train, and the First Matter (Metaphysics II, Readings 2–3)

Orientation #

He is in the second half of the second reading, where Aristotle restates what will be shown in the third and fourth readings; at the end he breaks before taking up the fourth reading. He refers back to a principle “we saw the previous in the beginning of the second reading” (prev. lecture) — that what causes another to be F is more F itself.

The class, in order #

1. Not unlimited in a straight line (“either in a straight line or by kind”) #

The point: causes are limited in kind (there are four) and also not endless in a straight line.

• Straight-line series illustrated at the board: this is moved by the chalk, the chalk by my hand, my hand by something else — and so on forever. That “forever” is what is denied.
• Applied to the kinds: material — flesh from earth, earth from air, air from fire, without stop; mover — the man moved by the air, this by the sun, the sun by strife (an example of Empedocles’ opinion).
• Aside: Heisenberg, in a book he saw, said “I never could believe this went on forever,” and that now we have come to a beginning in matter.

2. Why matter and mover first, end and form last (“end and form are the main causes for the wise man”) #

The point: the order of treatment has reasons, seen better later.

1. The argument he will give is stated in terms of the mover, but mutatis mutandis applies to all four kinds.
2. With matter he does something different — shows something other than what he announced.
3. End and form get a whole number of arguments, because end and form are the main causes for the wise man, then the mover, least of all matter (matter is not really a cause of all things).
4. There may also be a special verbal opposition: if A is for the sake of B, B of C, C of D, endlessly, then everything is a means and there is no end; and “definition” comes from finis, end or limit, so if it is limitless there is no definition.

• Text: “that for the sake of which” is the definition of the cause called end; walking for health, health for happiness, happiness for something else. Happiness as desired for its own sake was already developed in Nicomachean Ethics I, and Plato/Socrates talks of it in the Symposium.

3. The same conclusions already seen in the particular sciences (“in a completely what universal way”) #

The point: what Metaphysics shows universally about all causes, the lower sciences show about one cause each.

• First mover: brought out in Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics] VII and VIII.
• First matter: the Greeks thought there was one, not much of a doubtful thing; natural philosophy.
• “What was to be” [ed.: essence/form]: brought out in logic, where you talk of the ten highest genera.
• End: in ethics.

4. Albert the Great: does wisdom depend on experience? (“wisdom is among those that depend upon experience”) #

The point: a digression from Msgr. Dionne’s course, distinguishing sciences by dependence on experience.

• Geometry does not require experience — you can construct the things in imagination, sitting in your bare room. Natural philosophy requires observing the world; political philosophy requires studying governments in the concrete.
• Albert places wisdom among those depending on experience. Dionne’s gloss: he does not mean “experience of being” (that is what a contemporary Thomist would say, not Albert); nor exactly the same experience as in natural or political philosophy, which is the Proemium’s sense — many memories of the same sort of singular brought together (this cat meows, that cat meows — you never saw a cat bark; this government gave rise to that, that government fell because of this).
• What wisdom’s “experience” is: a foundation in the less universal sciences — natural philosophy, ethics, logic — more particular than wisdom though not singular; you see something in a partial way there, and in a universal way in wisdom.

5. The argument from the middle (“it makes no difference whether they be one or many”) #

The point: “This is kind of overly simple, but easily missed.” Text read: in middle things, outside of which there is something last and before, the before must be the cause of what comes after; if asked which of three is the cause we would say the first, not the last; what is last is cause of nothing, the middle only of one; and it makes no difference whether they be one or many, unlimited or limited — for all the parts of unlimited things and of the unlimited in general are likewise middle things; hence if nothing is first, there is no cause at all. Argument:

1. Let A move B, B move C. C is not the mover (moves nothing). B moves C only insofar as it is moved by A. So A is really the mover — first; C last; B middle.
2. B is a moved mover, called middle because something is before it and something after.
3. A moved mover moves nothing if there is nothing before it.
4. If every mover were a moved mover, everything is in the middle position, nothing is before — so there is no motion.
5. It makes no difference whether the middle is one or many, and if many, whether a limited or an infinite multitude: the whole series is “like one grand moved mover.” Conclusion: there must be an unmoved mover, a first mover.

6. The train (“the caboose is just being pulled”) #

A “homely comparison” for the same argument: engine, wagon, caboose. The caboose pulls nobody. The wagon is a pulled puller — it pulls the caboose only insofar as it is itself pulled; by definition a middle. Add one wagon, two, four, or infinitely many: the whole string is still one grand pulled puller, so no matter how many you add the caboose is never moved at all. You must go outside the pulled pullers to something before them — the locomotive — and that is most of all the mover (by the principle from the beginning of the second reading: if this is a puller because of that, that is more the puller). So: beginning, middle, end — you cannot have the middle without something before it.

7. The lover of plots is in a way a philosopher (“philomuthos is in a way a philosopher”) #

The point: an extension of the Proemium’s saying.

• In the Proemium, philomuthos — lover of myths, of fairy tales — is like the philosopher because he is filled with wonder; his wonder is a stepping stone to the philosopher’s.
• But muthos broadens from “myth” to “story” and finally, in the Poetics, to “plot.” So the lover of plots is in a way a philosopher: plot is divided sometimes into tying and untying the knot, sometimes into beginning, middle and end — and Aristotle’s point here is precisely that you cannot have end and middle without a beginning.
• Homer: Aristotle praises him as teaching all the Greeks how to make a plot — the unity of a plot is not being about one man (he did not take everything Odysseus or Achilles did), but a course of action with a beginning, a middle and an end, since many things in a man’s life have no connection with one another.
• Aside: coming in at the middle of a movie in the old days, when you could enter anytime and stay as long as you liked — you are puzzled and dissatisfied, and your reason naturally looks for what came before, so you stay till the movie starts again. (Ten cents at the Saint Clair Theater in Saint Paul.) The causal case is even stronger than the plot: without something before it, the caused cause causes nothing at all.

8. Generalizing to the caused cause (“can you have a caused cause without an effect?”) #

The point: the argument, standardly stated of the mover, applies mutatis mutandis to every kind of cause.

• A caused cause has something after it — the effect, since otherwise it is no cause — and, because it is caused, something before it. So if all you have is caused causes, there are no causes at all.

9. Why no separate argument for a first matter (“I can give three partial answers”) #

1. The argument just given can simply be generalized and applied to matter and to every other kind of cause; the basis is already here.
2. A first matter was not doubtful for the earlier Greek philosophers. They all held the cause called matter — the kind of cause most known — and all held a first matter; they disagreed only whether it was water, air, fire or all four.
3. Matter cannot be the first cause of all things if there are immaterial things; so it is of less concern to the wise man.

• Student: could the reason also be that he has already established it in a prior work, the Natural Hearing? He agrees (“yeah, yeah”), adding that even there the question is rather what the first matter is than that there is one.
• Confirmation from Book III: when Aristotle begins the dialectic on the problems of wisdom, the question is never “is matter a cause?” — nobody doubts that — but “is there any cause besides matter?” and then, if so, does it exist only in matter, or is there a cause that does not exist in matter at all. Some earlier philosophers had not yet seen the mover as a cause, but all saw matter.

10. Going downwards (“having a beginning above”) #

The point: in the rest of the third reading Aristotle reverses direction — granted a first matter, does something come from it, and from that something else, endlessly downwards?

• Digression on “downwards”: the Greeks (and to some extent the Latins) imagine the cause as above the effect — hence depend, and a pendant is what hangs down; the effect hangs from the cause like this lamp from the ceiling, so going from cause to effect is going downwards. The English word is rather ground, the cause as upholding — hence we speak of the “underlying cause.” This fits matter being the cause most known, most undeniable, “ground” to us.
• Text: neither is it possible to go downwards without end, having a beginning above — as from fire water, from this earth, and thus always some other kind.

11. The two ways of coming-to-be, neither endless (“for the corruption of one is the generation of the other”) #

The point: an either–or argument; “this comes to be from that” (really coming to be from, not merely after in time) happens in two ways, and neither runs on forever.

• (i) As the man from the boy: the perfect from the imperfect, the tree from the seed. Coming to be is always between to be and not to be; the learner is becoming a knower, and the knower comes to be from the learner.
• (ii) As air from water: between two contraries, one being corrupted — as with the weather, hot comes from cold and then cold from hot, backwards and forwards.
• Hence the first kind does not turn back: the child does not come to be from the man (said only metaphorically — “second childhood”). What has become does not come to be from the becoming but is after it: so the day from the dawn, because after it; and the dawn does not come to be from the day. The second kind does turn back.
• Conclusion as he states it: in both ways it is impossible to go on without end — for the between-things there is necessarily an end, and the others turn back into each other, the corruption of one being the generation of the other. Generation of man does not go on forever; change from hot to cold does not, because you go to one contrary and back.
• He notes the text then treats the incorruptibility of the first matter, which is a little outside the main business of the third and fourth readings, namely that there are first causes.
• Aside: “I’m going to be just about seventy” — could he turn around and grow back to sixty, fifty, forty? Nice for a while, at the prime of life, but he would not go all the way back to being a baby; though you would get into the movies for ten cents.

His words #

• Straight line — an endless series of one cause moved by another, as against endlessness “by kind” (there are four kinds).
• Mutatis mutandis — the argument stated of the mover, changed as needed, applies to each kind of cause.
• Moved mover / pulled puller — a mover that moves only insofar as it is itself moved; by definition a middle.
• Middle — what has something before it and something after it.
• Caused cause — the generalization of moved mover to any kind of cause.
• “What was to be” — the cause called form, as treated in logic [ed.: quod quid erat esse / essence].
• Natural Hearing — [ed.: Aristotle’s Physics], “the so-called physics.”
• Experience — in the Proemium’s sense, many memories of the same sort of singular brought together; in wisdom’s sense, a foundation in the less universal sciences.
• Philomuthos — lover of myths; muthos widening from myth to story to plot.
• Depend / pendant vs. ground — Greek-Latin image of the cause as above and holding up; English image of the cause as underlying.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics II, second reading, second half: “it is clear that there is a beginning, and the causes of what is are not unlimited either in a straight line or by kind”; the examples of flesh from earth and of Empedocles’ sun and strife; “that for the sake of which is unable to go on without limit.”
• Aristotle, Metaphysics II, third reading: the passage on middle things (“if nothing is first, there is no cause at all”); the passage on going downwards and the two ways of coming-to-be (man from boy, air from water; day from dawn); the closing remark on the incorruptibility of first matter.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics I, Proemium (philomuthos; experience).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics III: is there any cause besides matter, and does it exist only in matter?
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I: happiness not desired for the sake of anything else.
• Plato, Symposium: the same about happiness.
• Aristotle, Physics (“Natural Hearing”) VII–VIII: the first mover.
• Aristotle, Poetics: plot, its division, praise of Homer.
• Albert the Great, on sciences that depend on experience (as presented in Msgr. Dionne’s course).
• Heisenberg, a book (title not given): “I never could believe this went on forever.”

His questions #

• Why does he mention matter and mover first, and come to end and form last? Because end and form are the main causes for the wise man, then the mover, least of all matter — and there is a special opposition between endlessness and the very notions of end and definition (finis).
• Of A, B and C, which is the mover? A — since B moves C only insofar as it is moved by A.
• Will a moved mover move anything if there is nothing before it? No; so if every mover were moved, there would be no motion at all, and there must be a first, unmoved mover.
• Does it make any difference whether there is one wagon between engine and caboose, or many, or infinitely many? No — the whole series is one grand pulled puller, and the caboose still never moves.
• Can you have a caused cause without an effect? Can you have one that causes without anything before it? No to both — it is the very nature of a caused cause to have something before it.
• Why does he not develop an argument for a first matter? Three partial answers: the general argument already covers it; a first matter was not doubtful to the earlier Greeks; and matter cannot be first cause of all things if there are immaterial things.
• Why does Aristotle say “downwards”? Because the Greeks and Latins imagine the effect as hanging from the cause (pendant, depend), where English says ground and “underlying cause.”
• Does the generation of man go on forever? Does the change from hot to cold? No: the first has a necessary end, being between to-be and not-to-be; the second turns back between contraries.