BMCR 2009.04.16: Sharples on John Mouracade, Aristotle on Life

John Mouracade (ed.), Aristotle on Life.  Kelowna, BC:  Academic
Printing and Publishing, 2008.  Pp. x, 197.  ISBN 9780920980972.
$28.95 (pb).

Reviewed by R. W. Sharples, University College London (UCL)
([email protected])
Word count:  1604 words
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[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]

After centuries of relative neglect, the importance of Aristotle's
biological enquiries to our understanding of his philosophy has been
increasingly realised in the last thirty years or so. The papers in
this special issue of Apeiron, the proceedings of a conference at the
University of Alaska Anchorage in August 2007, contribute to that
development. They are not primarily concerned with Aristotle's views on
the biology or physiology of living things, but with how living things
are accounted for in his ontological discussions, and indeed how, as
the paradigm cases of sublunary substances (see further below), they
influence those discussions.

Paul Studtmann analyses the various ways in which Aristotle speaks of
form, or rather, since one of them is as species, of eidos. "Essence"
is also, Studtmann argues (23), ambiguous between form (a particular)
and species (a universal; Studtmann's "form-m" and "form-c"
respectively). Studtmann succeeds in showing that the situation is
extremely complex, more so perhaps than has been recognised in most
discussions, which have focused on just a few of the senses: "form" is
used in over thirty different ways in the Metaphysics (3). He argues
that the core notion is that of order, whether taxonomical (form as
species) or dynamic (form as final cause). This however leaves the
question: if one of these types of order is basic and the other
derivative from it, which is derived from the other? "Derivation" here
could, moreover, be understood either in terms of how Aristotle arrived
at his final position, or in terms of how we should analyse that final
position. Certainty may be impossible, but the question is important
for our understanding of Aristotelianism.

Margaret Scharle examines the part played by material and efficient
causes in Aristotle's teleology, and argues for the radical view that
for Aristotle there simply cannot be any meaningful discussion of
material or efficient causes that does not depend on formal and final
causes; Aristotle would not have recognised the idea that inanimate
nature must be, or even can legitimately be, discussed in its own
terms, different from those that apply to living things. This fits, it
seems to me, with the way in which Aristotle's biological works have
come to be recognised as the climax of his discussion of physics;[[1]]
it also means that the question how efficient causation and purpose are
to be reconciled is misplaced as far as Aristotle is concerned, and
that the view that for him teleology applies only to some natural
phenomena (viz. living things), and not all, is simply wrong. The
question whether Aristotle has anything to contribute to contemporary
discussions of the mind-body problem thus becomes a philosophical,
rather than a physiological issue. The underlying question here, that
of the boundary in our contemporary situation between scientific issues
on the one hand and philosophical issues on the other, is one also
raised in Mouracade's paper (below).

Devin Henry (with whom I should declare a connection, as one of the
examiners for his PhD) argues that the natures of living organisms are
for Aristotle derived from underlying causal powers, in a way that
avoids the vacuity of Molie\re's virtus dormitiva, that these natures
are to some extent peculiar to individuals rather than to the species
of which they are members, and that inherited variations within a
species are neither accidental (since they are not by-products of the
powers that produce them) nor for a purpose (since if they were they
would be characteristic of the whole species: Generation of Animals 5.1
778a32-34). Henry also points to Generation of Animals 4.6 785b27-786a2
as suggesting that a species as a whole can have a propensity for
different colours, and, perhaps uniquely, that this is not simply a
generalisation over the individuals in the species, but a statement
about the nature of the whole species.

Julie K. Ward considers whether "human" is an ambiguous or homonymous
term for Aristotle, in the light of his notorious remarks in Politics
1.13 on the limited deliberative capacity of women and slaves. She
concludes that for Aristotle women and slaves possess the capacity for
deliberation in a way that does not make the capacity itself
homonymous; "they actualize it in the sense of making decisions about
their future ends and projects in spite of lacking a complete notion of
the good that virtuous, male Athenians have" (92). She supports this by
arguing (90, cf. 96) that in the Nicomachean Ethics deliberation is "a
common albeit distinctively human capacity". More generally, one might
also note Aristotle's insistence at Metaphysics 10.9 1058a29-b25 that
male and female are not different in species. But the question remains
how far one should go in interpreting particular passages of Aristotle
in a way that eliminates inconsistencies. (Ward expressly distinguishes
between considerations internal to the text and external, cultural
ones: 78-79).

Errol G. Katayama considers those living things which he claims are not
substances in Aristotle's view -- sterile hybrids such as mules, and
the products of spontaneous generation. He distinguishes various senses
of unity, and argues that although mules, for example, have "logical
unity" in that they fall under a single universal, they are not members
of a natural kind where that is understood to involve the ability to
generate other individuals like themselves, and so are not themselves
properly individuals, let alone substances. From this point of view a
species is primarily something that persists over time, as is shown by
Aristotle's emphasis on reproduction as a way in which mortal things
achieve eternity (On the Soul 415a26-b7); one may compare the point
made by Marwan Rashed, that for Aristotle's commentator Alexander of
Aphrodisias universality should be thought of not so much in terms of a
plurality of concurrent instances, but rather in terms of the existence
of a succession of instances over time.[[2]]

Christopher Shields considers why artefacts, and also the elements, are
not substances at all, rejecting any notion that for Aristotle there
are degrees of substantiality and that living things are just the
paradigm cases of substances, rather than the only ones. He argues that
it is because to be a substance involves some internal end-directed
self-governance; the elements can rise or fall, but they cannot stop
themselves or go into reverse (Physics 8.4 255a6-11; 138). And the end
has to be one that is intrinsic to the thing itself, not arbitrarily
imposed by some outside agency (which rules out artificial mechanisms
set up by their constructors to be self-governing by means of some
feedback principle). The question thus arises (129-130), if artefacts
are not substances, into which Aristotelian category do they fall?
Shields' answer is (144): into none, for they are not anything
determinate at all in the first place, since their identity conditions
are not stable in the way that those of living creatures are; artefacts
are liable to paradoxes of the Ship of Theseus type, living creatures
are not. As Shields puts it, "Aristotle in the Metaphysics is not
undertaking to precisify some sort of vague folk ontology; instead, he
is conducting first philosophy, a branch of theoretical science whose
deliverances may amaze us no less than the claims of the physicists."
But the initial question (129-130) why Aristotle regularly uses
artefacts as examples of substances in his discussion seems to be left
unanswered. Perhaps part of the answer is that artificial production
suits Aristotle's purposes because it is easier to distinguish the role
of the different causes than it is in natural generation, and that
artificial production is more self-evidently guided by a purpose.

When Shields at 131 and n.6 says that the view that artefacts are not
substances extends back at least as far as Aquinas, he underestimates
by a millennium; it is the view already held by Alexander of
Aphrodisias.[[3]] I am not sure why Shields says (143) that living
things "have limited and patterned growth in two dimensions" (my
emphasis), rather than three.

John Mouracade uses similar notions of internal self-regulation
directed towards an end to argue that Aristotelian hylomorphism
provides a better solution than some, notably Bernard Williams (162),
have supposed to the dilemma: reductive materialism or dualism? -- and
also a better answer than other versions of non-reductive materialism
which, he argues, are too ready to leave it to biological science to
settle issues which properly belong within the competence of
philosophy. As Scharle puts it in her paper (43), Aristotle's
teleological analysis of living things and the processes by which they
generate each other and maintain themselves raises issues which are
philosophical rather than biological; "there are philosophically rich a
priori issues at stake that cannot simply be settled by contemporary
scientists."

This review began with a contrast between the study of Aristotelian
biology as such, and the question how living things fit into and affect
Aristotle's more general ontological theories. Some of the papers in
this volume are inevitably going to be of interest to specialists in
Aristotle rather than to the wider philosophical community. But what
they collectively show is that the question whether Aristotle's views
have anything to contribute to contemporary debates concerning
teleology and the nature of life -- two issues which may be more
closely linked than is always acknowledged -- is one that is still
open.

Contents:


Paul Studtmann, 'On the Several Senses of "Form" in Aristotle'.
Margaret Scharle, 'The Role of Material and Efficient Causes in
Aristotle's Natural Teleology'.
Devin Henry, 'Organismal Natures'.
Julie K. Ward, 'Is "Human" a Homonym for Aristotle?'.
Errol G. Katayama, 'Substantial Unity and Living Things in Aristotle'.
Christopher Shields, 'Substance and Life in Aristotle'.
John Mouracade, 'Aristotelian Hylomorphism and Non-Reductive
Materialism'.
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Notes:


1.   J.G. Lennox, 'The Place of Zoology in Aristotle's Natural
Philosophy', in R.W. Sharples, ed., Philosophy and the Sciences in
Antiquity, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005, 55-71, at 61-62.

2.   M. Rashed, Essentialisme: Alexandre d'Aphrodise entre logique,
physique et cosmologie, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007, 259.

3.   e.g. Alexander of Aphrodisias, De anima 5.1-4, De anima libri
mantissa, 103.29, cf. 121.17-18. (But he also allows the elements as
substances, contrary to Aristotle; cf. Shields 135, 137-138.)