clopinet.com

Aristotle classified causes into 4 types.

2012

 Abstract: While Aristotle does not consider (as Libet) the physical universe causally closed, his understanding of causality is insufficient: 1. Aristotle does not grasp the indispensable role of persons for the "four causes" he distinguishes: Physical efficient causality can neither explain itself nor the entire chain of physical events, nor is it the primary form of causality, nor sufficient to explain personal agency. Also formal and final causality are inexplicable without persons. Without the essential relation to persons efficient, formal, and final causes are impossible and unintelligible. Moreover, Aristotle attributes wrongly fundamental traits (to be the source of individual being and the ultimate subject of form and change) to material causality as such, which is incorrect, because these traits belong more perfectly to spiritual persons. 2. There are entirely new causes of human acts that cannot be subsumed under the four causes encountered in intentionality, ...

The paper discusses Davidson's critique in 'Causal Relations' of Mill's idea that we can 'add' the many causes relevant to a given effect together to obtain something we can think of as the 'whole' cause of that effect. It argues that the import of that critique has been gravely underestimated and argues that several orthodoxies in philosophy of mind must crumble, once it has been properly appreciated.

Causation is one of the most important issues that are discussed in philosophy. It is an issue which exists from the almost beginning of philosophy, simultaneously with the time of Aristotle and Plato. This issue is one of the most important needs of other sciences and principles to the philosophy; since the base of all scientific attempts is the causality among the phenomena. And all sciences use this principle as a general principle. From another aspect, totality and certainty of all scientific laws are based on causation. 1 Denying of causation implies that there is no order and law in cosmos and there is no relation between two things; and it also means that all sciences are false since each science is a set of laws that exist in the universe and those laws are some kind of causation. Secondly, each law is the result of some preconditions; if there is no causation, there is no relation between those preconditions so there is no law and there is no science. 2

A cause is that which really and positively influences something, making that something depend upon it in a certain way. A cause is "a positive principle from which something really proceeds according to a dependence in being." 1 Causality is the aspect of a thing insofar as it influences the being of something else. A cause is a "principium per se influens esse in aliud." 2 A cause "importat influxum quedam ad esse causati." 3 A cause is "an ontological principle which exercises a positive influence upon the 'to be' of something else." 4

PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association

Apeiron, 1989

Particularly valuable are Gotthelf's emphasis on the connection between Aristotle's anti-reductionism and his introduction of final causes, and his insistence that Aristotle's motivations were scientific, as opposed to aprioristic.

2001

Comprehension of a phenomenon involves identifying its origin, structure, substrate, and function, and representing these factors in some formal system. Aristotle provided a clear specification of these kinds of explanation, which he called efficient causes (triggers), formal causes (models), material causes (substrates or mechanisms), and final causes (functions). In this article, Aristotle's framework is applied to conditioning and the computation-versus-association debate.