The Problem of Change
This is the most apparent reality revealed by our sense experience.
What is motion/change?
This is a thing's capacity or potential to become otherwise.
What is potency?
This is a self-subsistent being that cannot be predicated of another (exists by itself).
What is substance?
Name all four of Aristotle's causes.
What are material, formal, efficient, and final causes?
This is the internal organizing principle responsible for a thing's characteristic motion and rest.
What is nature?
Parmenides argued that change is impossible because it would require something to be both of these things.
What is being and becoming?
This accounts for a thing's real existence or fulfillment.
What is actuality?
This is something that is predicated of another and cannot exist independently.
The bronze from which a statue is made is what kind of cause?
What is the material cause?
Aristotle's doctrine that material substances are composites of matter and form.
What is hylomorphism?
Heraclitus famously illustrated his philosophy of constant change with this image.
What is a river?
True or False: Act is related to form as matter is related to potency.
What is true?
Socrates is white. What category of accident is "white"?
What is quality?
The shape or specific kind of the statue is what kind of cause?
What is the formal cause?
An acorn becomes an oak tree. Has a substantial change occurred?
What is yes?
This philosophical problem asks how reality can be both unified and yet composed of many distinct things.
What is the Problem of the One and the Many?
An acorn has the potential to become an oak tree. In this example, being an oak tree is the acorn's ______.
What is actuality?
Socrates is six feet tall. Socrates is standing. Socrates is in Athens. Identify the three relevant categories.
What are quantity, position, and place?
The sculptor who produces the statue is what kind of cause?
What is the efficient cause?
True or False: An accident can exist independently of a substance.
What is false?
Aristotle resolves the conflict between Parmenides and Heraclitus by distinguishing these two principles of being.
What are potency and actuality?
Explain why Aristotle needs both potency and actuality to explain motion.
What is because motion is the actualization of a potency?
True or False: If Socrates ceases to be white, Socrates himself ceases to exist.
What is False?
The purpose for which the statue was made is what kind of cause?
What is the final cause?
Unlike Plato's separate Forms, Aristotle holds that the forms of material things exist in this.
What is matter/material substances?