Episode 38: Christopher Frey discusses Aristotle on living organisms and their parts
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hello and welcome to Elucidations, a philosophy podcast recorded at the University of Chicago.
What is Aristotle’s teleological view of living things?
I'm Matt Teichman.
And I'm Jamie Edwards.
With us today is Christopher Frey, assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago, and he's here to talk to us about Aristotle on living organisms and their parts. Christopher Frey, welcome.
Thank you for having me.
So maybe we could begin with a little bit of stage setting. Central to Aristotle's notion of what a living thing is, is the idea of teleology, the idea of things being related in sort of means and relationships, or of things having a purpose. So maybe we could just sort of say a bit about that. You know, what do we mean by teleology?
Yeah, I mean, whenever one wants to understand why something changes in one way rather than another, or why it comes to be with some characteristic rather than another, it's usually quite useful and one often has to invoke the notion of an end or a goal. In the Ercatelian lingo, it's that for the sake of which something happens, or that for the sake of which something comes to be with one characteristic rather than another. And these sort of explanations, teleological explanations, explanations that appeal to an end or a goal, are invoked throughout Aristotle's attempts to understand natural things. So for example, if you take an acorn to completely understand an acorn, one has to To appeal to the ultimate form that it will eventually realize if it's placed in the right environment and nothing external hinders it, it's going to grow and eventually take on the form of a mature oak tree and exercise all the capacities that one needs to exercise in order to live the sort of life typical of an oak tree.
And these sort of explanations, citing a gold, you know, it's not only limited. To these large scale processes, but in citing a goal, one doesn't just talk in a large scale way about these developments from initial stages to mature stages, but it's also useful in explaining why some part comes to be with the function that it has, right? So in order for a human being to come to be in its mature state and live the sort of life typical of human beings, well you're going to need things like hearts. A heart has to come to be and perform its particular function, that namely pumping blood. It pumps blood because it needs to, in order for the human being to come to be and exemplify its form in its fullest sense.
Yeah. So throughout one's attempts to explain natural beings and what they do, one has to see them as being directed towards a goal or some end.
Normally when we talk about goals we talk about the goals that like a person would have, you know, uh as in I want to be a really good ice skater or something. So this is I guess a goal in somewhat of a different sense.
How does Aristotle distinguish matter and form using artifacts like statues and houses?
This is more like, you know, in order to understand what it is to be an acorn, you have to understand that the purpose of an acorn is to sprout into this mature tree and to live the life of a tree. We're really talking about a goal in in that sense, rather than it's my goal to be a great ice skater someday since
Yes, um of course teleological explanations are quite common when discussing action, right? Or desires, say, what one is after or what one is attempting to do. This isn't the same sort of goal or end that one is invoking when one's talking about natural happenings, what's generally called natural teleology. In these cases, one doesn't want to think of the acorn as having a purpose in the sense that an individual human being has a purpose when he acts. He's trying to consciously strive to achieve some end. It's not as if we're attributing small minds that are desiring things or trying to strive for things. So it might be at least misleading to think of acorns as having a purpose in this way. One just has to recognize in order to understand what an acorn is doing, one has to recognize that if nothing external is preventing it from acting in the way it does, this is ultimately what is going to happen, what's going to occur.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:40
2
What is Aristotle’s teleological view of living things?
0:40–3:30
3
How does Aristotle distinguish matter and form using artifacts like statues and houses?
3:30–6:44
4
Why does Aristotle claim a severed hand is not a hand in the same sense?
6:44–9:03
5
What is the homonymy principle and how does it apply to biological parts?
9:03–11:25
6
What are the ‘hard‑nosed’ and ‘wimpy’ readings of the homonymy principle?
11:25–14:19
7
How does Aristotle define the soul as the form of a living organism?
14:19–16:51
8
Why does Aristotle reject the idea of a persisting ‘matter’ in living bodies?
16:51–25:08
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Elucidations
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