Aristotle is famous for proposing four distinct causes (or explanations) for things in the world. Today, science generally recognizes only one. Neverthekessm, there is a great benefit afforded to the person who is able to use them as they allow a person to sketch a subject with relative ease.
For Aristotle, the concept of a cause, is the explanation of a thing. Namely: why is a particular thing the way it is? Why did this or that happen? What is necessary for such a thing to come about? The four causes are a way of understanding the various factors which contribute to a thing. In every situation, each of the four causes is present. More interestingly, each cause concerns a different part of reality, and so each offers a unique insight into the thing.
On a philosophical level, the four causes are best understood as a type of ‘applied-modality’. In philosophy, ‘modality’ refers to category of possibility. There are three classes of possibility: necessity, contingency, impossibility. Any predicate that incurs any of those is a modal predicate.
The four causes are an application of modality to causality. In science, only the contingent causes are typically given precedence, because they are the most amenable to empiricism. Nevertheless, there are aspects of causality that are better understood thru the lense of possibility.
For instance, consider a ball rolling down a hill. There are many things which have to occur simultaneously if that is to happen. The ball must be moderately circular. If it is too oddly shaped, it won’t roll, and will instead slide or even stop. Additionally, there must be gravity, without that, the ball wouldn’t go downwards. And similarly, there must be an identifiable end-point. All of these have a relation to possibility that isn’t immediately apparent without using something like the four causes.
By using them, we can sketch the necessity (modality) of the situation comprehensively. For instance, a round object without gravity will not roll, it would merely float. Similarly, with a ball-like object, since it must be round, or it won’t roll. Thus by the four causes, he merely means the four aspects of occurrence which must happen for particular situation. For the case of a rolling-ball, this is obvious, but casuality can get much more complicated.
The four causes, as he described them are:
1) Material cause – the material nature (or properties) of the objects in a situation. This means the incline of the hill, the solidity of the ball, the fact that leather is hard, existence of gravity etc. Notice how many material causes might operate simultaneously.
2) Efficient Cause – the immediate condition which gave rise to the event. In the case of a ball, it could be that the ball was thrown, and thus had some energy which was then amplified by gravity. If it was static, then gravity itself becomes the efficient cause since the ball will start rolling immediately when placed onto the hill.
3) Formal Cause – this is organized structure of the objects themselves, and typically modifies the material cause. In the case of the ball, this is that it is a sphere, and it retains that particular shape. Without its form, (if it were flattened,) it will not roll. Notice how the formal cause is grounded in the material cause – namely that the hollow shape of a leather sphere enables air pressure, and thus it can ‘be’ a basketball. If that organization of materiality is destroyed (say it is punctured), then the form of the sphere is lost, and the situation changes. We can also note that this constitutes the conceptual distinction between classes of objects within the family (ball versus not a ball).
4) Final Cause – this is the end-point of the situation. Often misunderstood to be merely purpose or goal. In physical situations like a ball rolling down a hill, there wouldn’t be a goal, but still an end-point that determines the finality (or fulfillment) of the situation. In the case above, this is where the causes themselves stop, and would be when the ball finishes its process of rolling down the hill.
By using these four causes, we can begin to clearly understand sophisticated processes in the world around us. The fact that Aristotle is still famous and taught to people is because he invented many philosophical tools, like this one. This particular tool enables us to neatly organize complex events around us. We’ll give a few examples here to illustrate how they provide immediate insight to many different aspects of life.
Before we give a more complex situation however, I’d like to give an essential definition of each of the causes, and their applied modality.
1) Material cause – the physical properties, potential, or nature of a thing. Is a necessary aspect of the material in question.
2) Efficient cause – the catalyst, and is representative of contingency in the situation.
3) Formal cause – the organization of the entity that distinguishes it from other things of similar materiality, efficiency or finality. Is a contingent operator on the material cause.
4) Final cause – the final point of the situation – the end it ‘tends toward’. Defines the limits of necessity and impossibility given the prior causes. Is ‘final’ in two senses. Firstly that it is often the last to be known (because it is predicated on the other causes). Secondly, because it represents the end-point of the causes themselves, and thus the fulfillment of the sequence.
We must stress that the four causes are extremely profound, and are not given enough attention to understand their subtlety, particularly in introductory philosophy courses. As they expand many aspects of modality, ontology and epistemology, they are an incredibly useful tool in philosophical analysis.
For the first example, consider a drug addict. The material cause is that of the drug, and its interaction with neurotransmitters. The efficient cause will be whichever contingent conditions began it. We could imagine an adolescent who is exposed to it thru friends. The formal cause is the act of being ‘addicted’ as opposed to anything else. And the final cause is the end-point, for some addicts, this tends towards death (as they live unsustainably) and in others it’s mere pleasure. We should note how each cause can be interpreted in many lights and offer many explanations in a situation like this one.
Notice how all four parts are present in most situations already, and intuitively. This is because Aristotle’s thought is at the heart of the modern paradigm. What is not appreciated however, is how they can be extended to quite sophisticated interactions, including hypotheticals. For instance, one can apply simple tests to everyday ideas to see how well they stand up.
If one were to extend the logic above to obesity for instance, and one were to say that their genetics makes them fat, we can dismiss that idea with prejudice. Where are the other three causes? Materiality is not enough. After all, it’s not in the nature of human genetics to be fat innately. There is no innate final or material cause towards obesity. If it were, then fat people would continually get fat, where instead they tend to ‘arrive’ at a certain point, typically the balance of their lifestyle and diet. We could contrast this with those children who never stop growing and eventually their body can’t support their height and they die. That would be the case with obesity if genes where a material or final cause. But without an appreciation of those two applications, it becomes easy to mistakenly apply the wrong type of causality.
For the same reason, this applies to family members, because not all family members necessarily will be fat. Instead, all four causes are needed, even if all the members happened to be fat. The difference is found in the ‘necessity to be fat’ versus the ‘tendency to be fat’ – note the modality (necessity versus contingency). The problem is that a similar group of people might be fat for the same reason, independent of genetics. Perhaps poor self-control or bad-family habits. And in the case of families, children would learn these behaviorally.
After all, the grounding of the fat itself is not rooted in genetics, it’s rooted in the over-consumption of calories, because calories are definitionally linked to fat: at a ratio of 3,500 to 1lb (formal causes are typically tautologies). Notice to get there however requires clear thinking and the realization that the formal nature of obesity (excess of acquired calories) is distinct from the material ground of it (genetic predisposition). Unless one is saying that there is a genetic predisposition to put excess calories into one’s mouth, it’s a categorical error to claim that genetics causes obesity.
Consider the following list of situations:
1) The nature of a perfect movie.
2) The best way to raise a child.
3) The qualities of a good marriage or friendship.
4) The essence of a particular emotion or state of mind.
5) Why professed religions are less popular than in decades past?
6) How to achieve happiness?
Each of the examples above can be analyzed with the four causes, and a clear understanding of the grounded origins of particular things (materiality), as long as we can distinguish between their proximate catalysts (efficiency) and their organizational structure (formality), and their nascent trajectory (finality).
To pick one, we will analyze number 4, and choose the emotion of anger. While perhaps initially difficult, the four causes give us a framework by which we can sketch the nature of anger, and in probably greater detail than most psychologists could if they were doing it by research alone. The reason for this is that the human mind thrives on principles, or entities that describe causes. Since a cause is a type of ‘understanding’, they are more satisfying than mere descriptions (which empirical studies offer). Thus to understand an emotion like anger, we the four causes aid us in finding the active principles.
We begin by recognizing that each of the four causes actually represents a different – a different aspect of mechanism. The material cause for instance, refers to mechanisms that are innate to materials (and thus permanent), but can be manipulated in order to leverage certain effects. For instance, one must build ships from wood, not stones.
For the case of anger, we begin with an understanding of the principles of emotions themselves. Emotions are rooted in the evolutionary logic of social relations (note how this is derived from a final-cause). Most animals have emotions, and indeed their emotions are very similar to ours, with anger being a sophisticated type of aggression. The material cause of anger therefore, like all emotions, is in the social realm – particularly the need to negotiate. We realize then, that anger is merely a negotiation tool for some end. Which end? We don’t know unless we understand the purpose of it. This brings us to the final cause.
If we ask ourselves why a person gets mad, we might mean several different questions. The trouble with these causes is that we often don’t recognize the subtlety in what ‘why’ means. For instance, when asking “why a person is mad?” we might mean either: 1) Why are they mad today? 2) What are they mad about? The second is the final cause, but the first is the efficient. For there are many reasons a person could be mad, but not all of them will be true today. In our hypothetical example, we’ll say that the person had an argument and so is feeling threatened. Thus the ‘why’ in terms of motive, is going to deal with the state of being threatened and thus wanting to solidify their identity by signaling others to back-off.
We should note how our language is unclear here yet again. When we say, “that the person had an argument and so is feeling threatened”, notice how the argument is embedded in our intuition of the final cause, but also signals the efficient cause. Unlike the final cause, which often signals the permanent nature or tendency of a thing; the efficient cause only signals the contingent aspects of it. For while we might (initially) think that all anger is merely a defensive posture; we can definitively state that not all anger is caused from arguments, and that instead it was contingent that this one was.
Now that we’ve covered three of the causes, we should deal with the fourth. In this particular example, the formal cause was already given – anger. In other situations however, the form of the situation is not always apparent. The reason for this is that we don’t immediately know what the particular emotion is, particularly if we’re feeling it. A situation of this sort might have easily been frustration, stress or rage. All of these are different than anger, but might have similar conditions. I gave the concept ‘anger’ early on because otherwise it would be difficult to follow the logic of the causes themselves. This is because the formal cause is typically the definition or nature that we assign to a thing, and so is the root point of reference given to all other causes in the world. But nevertheless, we should recognize that a formal cause – or the ‘form of a thing’ is the name we use to distinguish one class of events from another. Thus ‘anger’ as distinct from ‘frustration’.
In most situations where we are investigating something, we actually are looking for the formal cause, and so we use the other three in combination to try to ‘solve’ the situation.
As a final comment on the four causes, we should note why they are difficult to use, and where they succeed. The trouble with them is that they tend to reveal hidden principles about the world. And so if a person hasn’t organized their sense of the world properly, it becomes difficult to expound anything else. For instance, imagine that we didn’t use an evolutionary argument, or the social-perspective of emotion. Imagine instead that we didn’t know the purpose of emotions. In such a case, the final cause would be completely omitted and would be hard to integrate. Similarly with the material cause or formal cause for instance. We could easily imagine a situation where the material basis of emotions is not psychological, but perhaps something else. This would make it impossible to use the causes effectively. Similarly with a formal cause, but imagine if we didn’t distinguish between anger and frustration – it would also be impossible to understand the situation.
Thus the four causes are useful not only as a sketch of a particular subject, but they’re useful as a diagnostic of our intellectual development. If we’re incapable of identifying the four causes in a particular area, it signals a blind-spot to which we should dedicate further study.
