Two types of learning
- From perception to habit. Animal association of particulars.
- From perception to belief. Rational cognition of particulars. This is the learning of experience (emperia).
being qua being
Metaphysics: The philosophical study of being qua being
Against Plato
- being = idea
- how do ideas cause particulars?
- how do ideas cause motion?
ideas, immaterial and changeless, are real seems unrealistic
Form: a thing’s organization or disposition to behave
Essence: a principle of reality
Matter: potential for a substance to change
Are Aristotle’s forms the same as Plato’s Ideas?
They are similar in what they are expected to do, but they work in different ways.
For Plato, the Idea of horse is different from every particular horse. It is a separate entity, immaterial, changeless, and better, more real than any fleshy animal.
For Aristotle, forms have no existence separate from the individual substances whose form they are. Where there is a form, there is a particular substance.
Light is the actualization of a potential state of a transparent medium.
It is an accident of a transparent medium.
The medium is a substance: air.
It has accidents.
One of these accidents is to become illuminated in the presence of colored bodies.
Which is what we see as light.
The Unmoved Mover (Metaphysics, Books 12, Chapter 6-7)
Unmoved Mover causes motion without itself moving.
Even without moving, a thing can cause other things to move toward it by causing love or desire.
Something loved or desired need make no motion of its own to cause things move toward it; it initiates motion without moving.
That is how the Unmoved Mover moves things—by being the object of love and desire
• Necessarily exists (cannot not exist) • The final cause of motion in nature • The comprehensive reason for everything else • Divine • Alive and happy (because imperturbable)