How Aristotle Thought about the World

[@rfvtgbzhn]

As a physicist I can tell you that domain specifity also exits in modern physics. It's usually not called like that because physicists usually don't know much about classical philosophy, however massless particles interact very different from particles which have a (rest) mass, they can't even be described by the same fundamental laws. For example the momentum of a particle with mass depends on it's mass and velocity. while the momentum of a massless particle just depends on the wavelength of it's wave function.

[@frankjohnson123]

It isn’t the laws that are changing, it’s the object to which they’re being applied.

[@Heyu7her3]

Which is SOOOO wild to me because quantum & string theory are pretty metaphysical

[@rfvtgbzhn]

@@Heyu7her3 Quantum theory is actually mathematically quite clear. What is different is the interpretation, even the ones that are more or less mainstream are aot, Wikipedia lists about 2 dozen of them. But if you just "shut up and calculate" instead of tying to find an explanation why it mathematically behaves like it does, you get very accurate results that agree with measurements to a huligh decree. But one big problem is that we haven't yet unified it with gravity, so we there is a lot don't know about black holes. For example the theoretical prediction for the maximum mass that a neutron star can have before collapsing to a black hole can only be calculated very roughly. Empirical data has narrowed it down much more. String Theory is one of a few attempts to unify the theory of gravity and quantum theory, but all of them have issues and sre far from being complete theories.

[@nabilfares555]

First, thank you very much for your outstanding videos and explanations. Instead of ‘nature’, scientists talk of ‘emergence’ which is functionally the same. Emergent properties arise in certain structures/dynamics/scale but cannot be explained by them.

[@ruprecht9997]

Good point, connecting what we consider emergent properties to Aristotle's "nature" or "function".

[@yakiudon7921]

Was going to come here to say the same thing. Aristotle's 'Nature of something' is simply a primitive version of the emergent properties of matter, a chaotic result of complex combinations of fundamental principles. Yeah, these videos are great.

[@patrickcorliss8878]

Check out Sabine Hossenfelder "What is emergence? What does "emergent" mean?" on KZbin.

[@Robinson8491]

That glass plates function has been naturally selected by evolution to showcase us Mr Kaplan's exquisite lectures

[@anastasiya256]

It was its purpose designated by God at the beginning of time 😂 And then that triggered many processes which gave rise to its current function as the board 🤔

[@RyanApplegatePhD]

Seems a bit suspect that we can say "a heart doesn't have a function" without also concluding "moral facts have no function". If we take natural selection seriously, we can argue just as you did for the heart: Moral facts are just something human started saying that helped them survive. It's actually a pretty compelling case for moral skepticism or at least moral anti-realism.

[@lloydgush]

Actually does the opposite. Imagine not understanding that it would imply "heart skepticism" and "heart anti-realism".

[@afsmapping6092]

You don’t even need to say that. If no argument is presented in favor of objective morality, then you can just deny it without even trying to discover the origin of the idea.

[@gaseredtune5284]

@@afsmapping6092 ridiculous.

[@gaseredtune5284]

@@afsmapping6092 obviously one could do the same about subjective morality, unless of course the concept of morality itself is what you choose to not interact with, which you don't and no one does. You say things because you assume they have meaning and could be true. why would you say anything unless you valued truth? If you do value truth that is a moral stance. if you don't nothing you say should be treated as having any value.

[@101Mant]

​@@gaseredtune5284 you can value truth for entirely pragmatic reasons. True information lets you more accurately predict the outcomes of you actions and so helps you reach your goals whatever they are. So for social animals with communication in general the group being truthful with each other is likely a better survival strategy. Valuing truth doesn't have to be a moral thing anymore than valuing food or shelter. It can be, humans have built a lot of stuff on top of the basic evolutionary behaviours and justification for them but it's different things to say truth is good and truth is useful.

[@rvs1]

I love how you take inspiration from different fields of science to explain your points but a minor detail is that in the "modern worldview" elements are not invisible. If by the definition invisible means "cannot be seen ever". Here we might be better at noting that the elementary particles are so small they are not visible to the naked eye and only when enough of these elements gather together and light gets reflected upon it we can see the matter to be there. Note on "just matter", i know we need a broad sense of the modern worldview and were actually trying to dive into the aristotlean worldview. But besides matter the most important other quantifiable property that comes in many forms is Energy. For instance, light has no matter but exists, it does however have energy.

[@joyflowmonger248]

I really liked this video. To me, it was worth the time it took to watch. I particularly enjoy Kaplan's animated and passionate expressiveness . I was almost expecting the word "character" to be used in the Aristotolian half of the columns; as in, " The power of expression is not so much in the content of the expression, but, rather, more in the quality, nature, and character of the expression"... or perhaps more accurately, of the expressor. Great expression, Kaplan! I really enjoyed both your information as well as your presentation.

[@Spreadsheeter]

Dude you are amazing. I came here after some kind of help while I’m reading Nichomachian Ethics, in the beginning I thought “ok, this video is about something else but it’s pretty interesting..” then on the second half of the video everything get blended and very well connected. This is all about philosophical thinking, following the reason and get to logical conclusion on a broad range of topics. Simply amazing man

[@gautamsvid]

@jeffrey Kaplan: I don't agree, that people in modern times do not think like aristotle. When it comes to any behavioural process (which can be reduced to physical processes in a brain ), we start thinking in the aristotlean way only. Let's consider something as simple and basic as "friendship". We think about it qualitatively (not possible to quantify). We try to define it in terms of behavioural elements just the way aristotle was doing with physical objects. Also friendship is domain specific and there are ethics, morality and nature involved. Today, most people on earth don't try to quantify the "friendship" they experience / or believe that there are universal laws governing friendship / or friendship is just a movement of chemicals.

[@tacitozetticci9308]

tbh I do, and I think most people I know do, and I have good friends regardless. In my view, I am governed by universal laws which I didn't decide, and I ended up becoming a person I didn't decide to become, and so did my friends, and so did our friendships. What I end up doing though is that I go for the "just don't think about it" mindset, so no matter if I know that in my view every person has the same value and the same guilts and merits (none), no matter if I know that a terrorist and a serial killer would both deserve the same amount of love, sacrifice and good from me as my friends, I end up reserving those for the latter because that's more in tune with my human emotive part. Then there's also a pretty good rational justification: rewarding "good people" and punishing the baddies leads to a better society, and that's ultimately best for all, tit for tat. In my view though, that translates to inflicting punishments to a bunch of innocent lambs for the greater good, it's bad, especially when you are the one who has to do it in a 1 on 1 setting. That's way different than picturing it in your head in the grand scheme of things.

[@veschyoleg]

Even in sciences, biology is not a subdivision of physics, and sociology is not a subdivision of either of them. Abstractly, we may believe that physics explains all the phenomena there is. But pragmatically, some systems such as an organism or a society are too complex, and functionally, they exhibit their own behaviors that are studied separately from the behaviors of their constituents like matter.

[@Troy-ol5fk]

In ancient Chinese culture there are five basic elements: metal,wood,water,fire and earth

[@xfactorb25222]

shh...that's an ancient Chinese secret!

[@chrisw4562]

Thanks for another great video! I am probably not fully understanding the point about function. Is it not fair to say many things in nature do serve a function in a larger system, for example predators and prey in an ecosystem? Maybe the difference between modern science and Aristotle's view is that that function is not fixed or pre-determined, it developed over time. But the observation that things have functions and purpose within their domaine seems common between the two.

[@psychonaut689]

Elements are identified in ancient Indian literature. The idea that two men, living at the same time sprang out of nowhere and started western civilisation is a bit suspect imo. I bet there are many antecedents to Plato and Aristotle, which have been forgotten in the re-telling of the story of the West.

[@Janny890]

If Herodotus is any indicator they were greatly influenced by their Mycenaean forebears as well as the Ancient Egyptians. It is apparent civilizations in Hellas (Greece), Near East (Egypt/Levant) and the Indus Valley (Indo/Pak) sprang up with robust cultures, the advent of writing and similar ideas however it’s good to remember history is a looong time. This happened over the course of hundreds of years. Socrates/Plato/Aristotle are most likely given a lot of importance due to the fact Aristotle’s student was Alexander the Great.

[@lloydgush]

"shoulders of Giants". And we won't know a single one of them.

[@mithrae4525]

Psychonaut, Carl Sagan in Cosmos suggests that Plato, Aristotle and the views they represented STIFLED civilization for thousands of years to come. Apparently the pro-Socratic philosophers of the 'Ionian Awakening' - such as Thales, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Pythagoras, Democritus (from the Ionian colony of Abdera) - mostly tended to try to understand the world in monist/materialist, naturalist terms, some of them with hints of edging towards an empirical/experimental approach. Sagan suggests that those hopeful beginnings started to be stifled particularly with Plato: Empirical experiments are practical work, and hence slave work in Plato's view; hence the 'Platonic ideal' was loosely speaking a world of abstraction, of pure thought. In Sagan's view, assuming I'm recalling correctly, the influence of Plato and Aristotle helped make abstract philosophy the dominant academic discipline in the Western world, rather than the promising beginnings of what would could have become (and eventually did become, albeit delayed by fifteen centuries) experimental science. Philosophy is all well and good for questions which can't be approached in terms of quantifiable observation and experimentation, and for informing the epistemic framework of science, but obviously science should always be the first approach and our source of most reliable knowledge, where applicable: One can't help but wonder where we would be today, if those social prejudices hadn't stifled the experimental approach for so long.

[@will-tani]

​@@mithrae4525 > "In Sagan's view, assuming I'm recalling correctly, the influence of Plato and Aristotle helped make abstract philosophy the dominant academic discipline in the Western world, rather than the promising beginnings of what would could have become (and eventually did become, albeit delayed by fifteen centuries) experimental science." Except Aristotle's views were antithetical to any pursuit of a "Platonic ideal". Meanwhile, there was no cohesive philosophy among the Sophists save perhaps two ideas: that complete communication is impossible (see Gorgios) and, in following, that there is no objective truth (or, that "reality" is whatever forms an intended set of actions consequent to persuasion / the results of whatever you can convince people it is). The latter was the reason for Plato's polemics against them; he considered them lawyers-in-the-derogatory-sense, who mostly plied their trade by being the best liar in the room and/or teaching (at exorbitant cost*) young men how to be better liars. * (Plato taught without pay and believed that those not willing to teach for free what they professed to be of value should be held suspect, on the assumption that they those who find value in the ideas would love it and would teach what they love when able regardless of pay. It's also worth noting that, more broadly, charging for mentorship was considered in poor taste at that time.) Abstract philosophy, meanwhile, is merely what's typically called the 'comparative' or 'reconciliatory' approach -- "In what way is this like that?" From that you also get the 'differential' approach -- "In what way is this NOT like that?" "How can I a sufficient solution be made for all parties involved?" "Rather than just focusing on where two things are vaguely alike, let us figure out where their needs actually diverge, such that we have something actionable." It was not an invention of Aristotle or Plato or particularly anyone. It's just a way of working from what you have to try to figure out what makes things work/tick/etc., without needing to know precisely the smallest components of each thing and to work your way up from the bottom. Plato's innovation was merely the insistence on checking that those in discussion approach the discourse in cooperative sincerity (rather than purely *eristic* [battling] intent, or the desire to win the argument without necessarily having polished either idea through that discussion), and that the participants check that they're actually speaking about the same thing (instead of, say, meaning barely overlapping ideas by one person's "liberal" vs. the other's "liberal"). Aristotle's addition was to just plot out suggestions for thoroughness, checking for broken cohesion or trickery ("fallacies"), and sort of a quick-sampling guide for his students of ways to quickly break down what might be happening, based on "commonplaces" (topoi) by which to locate the ways the question at hand could be usefully framed for further actionable discourse, both field-specific and general. Much more representative of Aristotle's additions would be his taxonomies of logical methods into the inductive and deductive, and what would later become known as the "Scientific Method". * That interest in figuring out where things differ, btw, is the etymological basis of "science". Skei (to split) [PEI] -> Scire (to know [the difference between this and that / the bounds of something]) [Latin] -> Sciens (knowing, knowledgable, skilled) -> Scientia (knowledge, expertise) -> Science (what has been learned; learning; corpus of human wisdom) [Old French] -> Science (modern usage) [French].

[@thebenevolentsun6575]

They didn't spring out of nowhere though. It's so easy to forget the scale of time when looking at ancient history. Aristotle and Plato are just the first written and decipherable ideas on philosophy found in the west, 99% of history is lost.

[@lawrenceralph7481]

So clear. So profound. So intriguing.

[@karelvorster7414]

Nothing beats Rudolf Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom. In my opinion this is a truly modern rendition of Aristotelian philosophy in the realm of epistemology and ethics.

[@chris8mon]

Why shouldn’t we go from our growing knowledge in the field of neuroscience to ethical or moral conclusions? Especially our knowledge about trauma should actually lead to moral guidelines, how people should threat one another to not cause „invisible“ damage.

[@mannedhandle]

Where does Aristotle say that things can't be understood in terms of numbers?

[@Panda-pz3em]

Once you get down to Quantum Physics particles don’t always behave according to any obvious rules, there seems to be some totally random behaviour at least whenever they’re not being observed. The act of observing their behaviour seems to cause them to behave in a predictable way, although they also seem to manage to be in two different places at the same time. I’m no expert so I may have got that wrong or the wrong way around, but as yet scientists seem to have difficulty predicting the behaviour of subatomic particles and derive a set of rules. This seems to align with the idea that human minds assign things particular functions.

[@Opposite271]

I am skeptical about our ability to discover universal laws. We can maybe establish with induction, that a oil drop move downwards in the air but that doesn’t imply that it moves in that direction in water. We can only discover local regularities. With „local“ I don’t mean depending on position although it can include it. I mean that it depends on many parameters like velocity, size, mass and other factors. Newtons theory of gravity correctly describes to motion of bodies in space in some cases but it is not universally a correct description of motion through gravity in all cases. If the particle is charged and not a photon, then it doesn’t participate in electromagnetic interactions. So not all particles follow the regularity of the electromagnetic force. This is similar to the divide of the nature of the Elements of the sublunary sphere and the aether of the spheres above.

[@thebenevolentsun6575]

The exceptions to rules you state here are all defined by their own rules. The parameters are all included in the laws of physics as we know, them and the way those parameters affect the world is explainable except in a few fields. I think a theory of everything is possible, or a practical theory of everything. I mean it is possible that 5 trillion light years away the laws of physics are different, but that wouldnt really matter as far as we are concerned. The same way knowing the value of pi past the 20th digit doesn't really matter.

[@Opposite271]

@@thebenevolentsun6575 The problem is that the idea of universal natural laws are based on what I would call „regularity foundationalism“. But induction never establishes the existence of a foundation, a inductive argument is compatible with a infinite regress of regularities which can be reduced to more general regularities. My intention is not to argue against the possibility of a rule that is valid for all practical purposes. I argue against our ability to infer a rule that is universal, which means without exceptions in the entire universe. This is not something trivial. If I am correct then this undermines the Big Bang theory as a description of the beginning of the entire universe. Don’t get me wrong, this is not fatal for the idea of a Big Bang as a local event in which the observable universe, as we know it, came to be.

[@thebenevolentsun6575]

@@Opposite271 Yes I'm not disagreeing with the fact that the laws of the universe may change over extremely large distances. I'm saying that for our purposes it isn't really relevant because we will literally never know as we cannot experience anything outside of our observable universe, and any fluctuations in the laws of physics would be outside our observable universe. If the laws of physics were different in different regions then yes it would affect how we see the big bang, however it's pointless to even think about because it's literally impossible to experience anything outside the observable universe, either personally or by observing phenomena proxy to phenomena outside the observable universe. You might say "we might be able to leave the observable universe if we develop faster than light travel" We will almost certainly not discover faster than light travel. The speed of light is one of those rules that are foundational.

[@Opposite271]

@@thebenevolentsun6575 The lack of universality may not only by a matter of position (being outside the observable universe). It can also be a matter of scale (smaller as the planck length) or a matter of time (regularities change over large time scales) or it can be about different types of matter (dark matter for example). To be fair the time skepticism, at least about the past, can may be answered by observing long distances in the observable universe. It can also be used as a answer to the fine tuning problem without having to postulate a multiverse or creator.

[@Watersnake777]

People still often examine and operate upon gleaning the nature of a thing before trying to quantify it. Example: Not reading operating instructions before using or assembly. Windows tried to develop intuitive (nature) rather than text based input (quantification) so that everyone could do it.

[@parheliaa]

Aristotle: The creator of Object Oriented Programming

[@justingreen2432]

For a minute I was like...............HOW THE HELL IS HE SO GOOD AT WRITING THINGS BACKWARDS? but then I thought.......this is a video.......the footage is flipped. 😂😂😂😂

[@adrianuspont6367]

how did i not think of that 🤦‍♂

[@Т1000-м1и]

More importantly, who's in favor of the argument that he learned to write backwards and who's in favor of the idea that this is flipped in post

[@unhingedconnoisseur164]

6:28 long ago, the 4 nations lived in harmony, then everything changed when the roman nation attacked only the aristotle, master of all 4 elements could stop them , but when the world needed him most, he vanished then my brother and i discovered a new aristotle, a young macedonian named alexander and although his fighting skills are great, he has alot to learn before hes ready to save anyone but i believe alexander can save the world (theme music)

[@blade7506]

😂😂😂😂😂

[@stanochocki8984]

No---at 8:15, he misses the whole Meta-physical aspect of what Aristotle was stating; and hence---misses the whole point. Enjoy his lectures, but they seem mostly to be a metaphor of how Freud and Jung, got along.

[@dansheppard2965]

Great lecture as ever! I know it's kinda tangential to the purpose of your lecture, but I was in a discussion among scientists where the idea of "the function of the heart" was actually salient when labelling things (genes, in this case). This wasn't for speculative purposes, but a pragmatic need to get something done. Could you, for example, say that it's a function of the heart to support the pericardium, for example, a membrane which surrounds and protects the heart. It certainly does this, but it seems a bit silly to say that's a purpose of the heart, like putting the cart before the horse. But in other cases (most!) it's not so clear and you can't really trace the evolutionary purpose. In the end, in the bit of the discussion I was involved with, the most *useful* (if not correct) idea was that you can best practically detect what you might call a function of a thing in terms of its kind of most remarkable engineering (or perhaps chemical) *form* or *process*, its "specialism", what is different as a result of this not being an amorphous blob, or whatever. In the same way you say a spoon is a spoon because the various striking features which distinguish it from knives and forks all serve to facilitate spooning things, though a spoon could also be used in other ways, or seen in other lights. There's this idea of a kind of bath of undifferentiated *stuff* which things distinguish themselves from, which points to their function. Presumably this works because evolution tends to be parsimonious, at least in energetic/entropic terms. Any old blob of this or that could support the pericardium, the remarkably specific structure of the heart isn't unique here, so you didn't say this was part of the heart's primary function. Everyone knew very well (to masters level, at least) *how* evolution works and it was their day-job, the fallacy of teleology, and so on, but, being practical people, this seemed to be the best to be getting on with on a day-to-day basis, so that you can say *something* about *something*. It proved particularly useful for processes which you were uncertain where they fitted into the bigger picture. (eg "well this protein makes X, that's clearly its function as its various parts are very tightly tuned to doing that -- making X not Y; but we don't know what X is 'for'").

[@Eudaimonia469]

I think Aristotles world view continues to work even if you replace his 4 elements with modern science. I still think it's the best ethical system to actually live by that anyone has every thought of.

[@samuelefraizzoli1070]

Very clear synthesis of the essentials of Aristotle's philosophy and of the reasons of its relevance until a few centuries ago and, partly, still today.

[@karlijnlike4lane]

linguistics, madude: semantics absolutely matter. the word "function" has the potential to cause confusion here. when you got to "functions come from minds," it made sense when I heard it (for some reason), but after you wrote it and I read it, I realized that "function" couldn't possibly be the word you really wanted. first & possibly foremost, it doesn't have a Greek etymology, so it's unlikely to be as close as it could be to what Aristotle said or meant. the etymology of "function" is from Latin through French to English (16th c.), and it's about "perform": a function is what something *does* of its own accord. in that sense, "function" does seem to represent what Aristotle meant: the way it is dictates how it works. and we still use "nature" to express this concept - "it is in the nature of water to seek its own level" - and you relate of Aristotle's worldview that it would assert "it's in the nature of trees that they function in a certain way." but when you begin to discuss "not only what it did but what it ought to do," without switching to the word "purpose" (intention, aim goal), you're now using "function" in an entirely different way that's an artefact of the tendency of modern English to oversimplify vocabulary by merging divergent definitions into one word as variant "senses." (I'm old enough to have heard or read a statement from early to mid-20th c. like "the function of a tree is to become big and tall and strong" and to have understood that what that statement was intended to convey was "the way that trees 'work,' or do what trees do, is [shown in the way they] grow big and tall and strong.") at 13:33, you state this merger explicitly, and thereafter begin using "function" and "purpose" interchangeably, and the problem is that this is a case in which that vocabulary oversimplification doesn't work. in fact, if you look at your auto-generated chapter titles, they are Aristotle, Modern Worldview, Laws of Nature, Domains of Nature, Elements, Morality, Purpose, Functions, The Heart, Outro. (If YT can tell the difference ...) it's when you get to the function of the rock that it first becomes telling. a rock has a nature. rocks by their nature can have many functions (ways of being rocks). when a mind imposes a purpose (to use or operate on an object in a certain way), that purpose gives the object an imposed purposive function: your mind has im-posed (put on) on the rock one of its many natural possible functions (ways it can work) specifically for your own purpósed (put forth) goals. so ... the function of the heart *is* to pump blood, and things *do* have functions, ways they operate owing to their nature. what's not built-in is *purposes.* these words simply can't be used interchangeably when it comes to a subject as subtle as philosophy. thanks for listening.

[@kristianandersen9726]

Do you have any videos on his metaphysics?

[@johnostambaugh8638]

Modern Worldview came as more was learned which allows new methods to learn more. Morality rarely changes. Murder is still murder and stealling is still stealling.

[@captainzork6109]

Aristotle's ought-is link between morality and nature is quite satisfying tbh

[@iliasmastoris529]

The four elements can be best understood to expressions of the three stages of matter (solid, liquid and gas), and energy.

[@Methlab]

crazy how good he is at writing on the small camera lens

[@teaflows9219]

Which ethical philosophy is it if i say "you can do whatever ever you want and is possible by the rules of the universe and human capabilities, you just have to live with the consequences resulting you action don't excuse your actions just be accountable for it own what you did there is no inherently good or bad action." ?

[@ELIOSANFELIU]

Cogito,ergo sum???Right or wrong ??I don't know it¡¡

[@APhilosopherWhoWantstobeKing]

Such a huge objection of this in my mind. That which you call the "Modern world view" is really an old and thoroughly disproven "Newtonian" view of the world. Our Quantum reality shares a great deal of similarities with Aristotle's view. You really seem to not understand the difference between describing things and relationships. The same issue that most mathematicians and physicists struggle to understand. The best example is the old idea of universal laws. Some relationships can be understood mathematically, because the laws are universal. Distance has no effect on the relationship. Where as the relationship of things in which Gravity affects the 'resulting instance', the math only helps our understanding when the laws actually change. (Sorry, forget the word you prefer to use when things are "real", or "solid".)

[@fortitude120]

It's a philosopher talking about science

[@Opposite271]

Yes, I think we should just give up on „universal law“. Sorry that I repeat my comment but I think it fits very well as a answer: I am skeptical about our ability to discover universal laws. We can maybe establish with induction, that a oil drop move downwards in the air but that doesn’t imply that it moves in that direction in water. We can only discover local regularities. With „local“ I don’t mean depending on position although it can include it. I mean that it depends on many parameters like velocity, size, mass and other factors. Newtons theory of gravity correctly describes to motion of bodies in space in some cases but it is not universally a correct description of motion through gravity in all cases. If the particle is charged and not a photon, then it doesn’t participate in electromagnetic interactions. So not all particles follow the regularity of the electromagnetic force. This is similar to the divide of the nature of the Elements of the sublunary sphere and the aether of the spheres above.

[@Menschenthier]

Great video! However, there are modern virtue ethics (people like Elisabeth Anscombe, Alasdair McIntyre or Philippa Foot) who rely heavily on the Aristotelian view. In this revival, “good” is actually something that fulfills its function. And people fulfill their function when they live virtuously.

[@jensphiliphohmann1876]

Interesting that in English you just relocate a single letter to flip between mono- and polytheism: "If God exists,..." vs. "If gods exist,..."

[@ELIOSANFELIU]

Jeffrey:Human beings will think in phylosophical topics in some minute of the day to day ??Nice work ¡¡Thank you very much¡¡

[@psychonaut689]

Love the videos btw

[@johnostambaugh8638]

How often do modern world people think trees, whales, seals and cattle should NOT be killed, and eating them is cruel and unhuman?

[@jessewallace12able]

Did you miss that Aristotle started all of this?

[@mr.cauliflower3536]

On the modern scientific worldview trees have the same built-in purpose as animals and bacteria and even viruses. To make more of their genes. That's what they're made for. We can say that we have some moral purpose due to our sentience, but that's just an opinion.

[@lisajennie9453]

What part of us is fire?

[@vanodyssey1659]

Perhaps the electrical aspect of neurons and the nervous system.

[@borislaviliev251]

The fact that we are warmblooded animals?

[@fortitude120]

@@borislaviliev251 yes

[@dadsonworldwide3238]

When we have two known standards we can be more objective. But unfortunately many do treat subjective man-made tools tuned to speak in approximation as if they are objective. 4 % physical universe 96% idealistic space/time We are in a major world view change now thanks to computation and qauntom physics. A more idealistic one. The industrial revolutionary mindset of consumption and materialism is antiquated and outdated. I dont think very many people will miss it either. 😆

[@Ahmad_code]

Would you ever consider doing a video on Thomas Aquinas? He wrote so much that it's hard for an interested person to know what books to read to get a better understanding. I myself have a interest in Aristotle / Aquinas, but have only read Nicomachean Ethics and want to go further. Recommended reading / watching appreciated 🙏

[@kellykizer6718]

Form and function. Man is designed for women. Women is designed for man. The design the function the purpose is how you determine things.

[@rayremnant.u]

The lecture is pretty neutral, I was expecting at some point to address the "tree" as a "slave" instead. It's not noticeable at first how believing in the "nature" of things makes us unempathic at best, tyrannical at worst. Slaves are slaves because they were meant to be, it's in their nature, you can see it on their faces. Your weak nature meant that you were supposed to be killed, it is just a natural consequence. Virtuous or not virtuous? I, which nature bestowed with virtue, can help you, but a lamb will always be a lamb.

[@ContemplativeSoul]

He was pretty much on the nose when he said the future Germans and Rus were nothing more than drunk brutes tho

[@stop8738]

Gonna have to disagree with you about your comments on God. I would argue that what God has is entirely something else. To call it “a more powerful consciousness” is a very arrogant human thought. Otherwise I loved this video, thank you for your content and keep up the good work! 🙌

[@chuckmyntti]

You should redo this vid and talk about DNA and it's function of design in biology... Your lectures are fun mostly but your were really struggling with this one.

[@veschyoleg]

I’m a cave person. I enjoy caves. Sounds a bit funny. Maybe “a cave-dwelling human” or “a prehistoric human living in cave” would be more appropriate.

[@psychonaut689]

Elements aren't invisible; perhaps you meant atoms?😉

[@kadecampbell8098]

atoms aren't invisible either though

[@ahmedxaziz2960]

An atom is not visible, atoms indeed are

[@davidireland1766]

He means invisible to the human eye I.e. worldview

[@rho7754]

5:19 X-Files Theme plays

[@carlloeber]

You're right, the heart does have a function.. And we feel emotions there too..

[@pkarrk6893]

You feel emotions everywhere in your body, it doesn't come from the heart. Do you not feel hot in the face when you get embarrassed or angry?

[@carlloeber]

@@pkarrk6893 I can remember at least one time when I felt it in my bones.. at a lot of times in my gut

[@carlloeber]

@@pkarrk6893 Nope

[@ruprecht9997]

Thanks for yet another video, explained with enthusiasm and good examples. I assume that Aristotle really talked about the basic four states of matter (solid, fluid, gas, plasma), not literally earth, water etc. His philosophy might be based on what you see when you open your eyes at the world, but his genius is perhaps how the sum is greater than the parts, and further that morality factors out from nature or function again. Aristotle really was a great thinker. Just a tiny note: the modern world view isn't "just matter". There are fields and forces as well, but it's all quantifiable, except at a certain level when it is declared that properties (in Quantum Mechanics) are unpredictable and statistical in nature, and further it has been proved that those properties are not a result of hidden variables, but truly statistical.

[@jeffreyscott4997]

No he meant earth water fire and air, literally. It was that cutting edge science of the times, that those four things ultimate constituents were the atoms out of which all other things are compounded. It should be noted that Aristotle neither came up that belief nor argued for it, but just took it as given "Earth Air Water and Fire (or whatever)" was his attitude.

[@jeffreywyatt431]

Or perhaps he was speaking about spirituality an Mithraism?

[@konchu5221]

I got an epic beard ad before watching this just thought you should know

[@karelvorster7414]

Is it really an advantage to look at the world through the dumb and unthinking eyes of machines?

[@danwylie-sears1134]

"This is shorthand for some facts about natural selection." True, but reversible: natural selection gives things, not exactly a telos, not exactly a function in the way Aristotle thought of it, but something with a discernible resemblance to a function. Insofar as that's how we think about function, we're being even more reductionist than you've said, because we're assuming that function itself is reducible. The modern world view is equivocal on this. Mostly, we do think of function as being externally imposed by mind. And mostly, we do think of mind as an irreducible essence. But we also say that DNA contains information in the sequence of its base pairs, and we think of information as being something like mind-stuff. So our understanding of mind as irreducible is provisional: maybe, we assume, mind can be explained reductively, and we just don't have the theory to do so yet.

[@theobolt250]

Oops. You can SEE elements! 😂😂 Iron? Gold? 😜😁😁 (you tripped up yourself. But you're forgiven).

[@magicsinglez]

But, isn’t Plato’s view of the world correct? Isn’t that what our world was truly based on, up to 100 years ago or so?

[@thebenevolentsun6575]

Are you saying we viewed the world in the same way for nearly 3000 years? Calculus was discovered/invented nearly 400 years ago, Decartes was writing around the same time. There have been massive changes in philosophy science and mathematics since Plato lmao.

[@magicsinglez]

@@thebenevolentsun6575: I’m saying our society was based upon the philosophy of Plato up until around 100 years ago. There are those who even say Plato invented Christianity. Or Christian philosophy. I’m also saying that Aristotle is smarter than this doofus, as well as being more intelligent than you or I as well as having a better understanding of human beings virtue morality and human behavior.

[@thebenevolentsun6575]

@@magicsinglez Well no, our society wasn't based on the works of Plato until 100 years ago. They served as the foundation for further thought on philosophy. When people say "western philosophy is a series of commentaries on Plato" they aren't saying society is based on Plato, they're saying that all of western philosophy essentially used Plato as a reference point. That doesn't mean our society was based on his teachings, it means that western philosophy can be traced back to Plato, it evolved from Plato. We evolved from chimps but we are nothing like chimps today. Platos philosophy was nothing like christian philosophy, his idea of utopia is a slave state where the masters use their free time for study while the slaves do all the manual labour. Compare that to the new testament where the underclass is seen as august "the meek will inherit the earth". Plato was influential, and that's why we study them, but most of their value was in coming first, not in their actual ideas. Aristotles intelligence has nothing to do with the validity of his arguments, plenty of smart people have said stupid things, if you want to show that Aristotles world view is correct then write an essay on one of his works. Don't just say "Aristotle is super smart so he can't be wrong"

[@magicsinglez]

@@thebenevolentsun6575: “When people say ‘western philosophy is a series of commentaries on Plato’, they aren't saying society is based on Plato”. I was saying that.

[@thebenevolentsun6575]

@@magicsinglez You just said society was based on Plato up until the last 100 years. That isn't true.

[@Chris-ty8iu]

How does he write so quickly backwards wtf

[@pranayvenkatesh8815]

He's writing forwards on a glass plate and then reversing the video before uploading.

[@veschyoleg]

That’s just in his nature, to write backwards 😂

[@jeanetjensen6474]

Thanks for a good videos 👍🙏🌎❤️🇩🇰 but we all fall down all the time incl the earth, its call gravity, and we sure as h dont stand still. We are hurdeling thou the galaxy whit enormes speed 🌎😉🤣

[@greendeane1]

but we do say folks with a certain brain should behave a particular way.

[@chinitowon]

The elements indicated by Aristotle are to be understood at an esoteric, and not literal, level.

[@ad4id]

The modern worldview focuses on quantifiability and universality. But is that currently in fashion? Aristotle's nature of the thing hypothesis suggests that it is not possible to fully understand the nature of a thing, such as a human being, simply by examining its individual components, such as water, earth, air, and fire, and the arrangement of these components. According to Aristotle, there is an additional nature, the nature of the whole thing, and the nature of the larger whole, that cannot be reduced to the elements that make up that thing. Matter or particles (vs) a combination of matter and the nature or the form of stuff. Owen Barfield's book "Saving the Appearances: A Study of Idolatry" argues that the scientific view of reality, if left unchecked, could lead to the elimination of all meaning and coherence in the world. According to Barfield, the scientific view tends to reduce reality to a collection of objective facts, which can result in a loss of meaning and coherence in the world. Barfield argues that the scientific view is limited in its ability to capture the full complexity and richness of reality and that it tends to ignore the subjective and cultural aspects of reality. He suggests that this narrow view of reality can lead to a fragmented and meaningless world, where everything is reduced to a collection of objective facts and relationships. During a Senate confirmation hearing for a Supreme Court justice, a female nominee was unable to provide a definition for the term "woman." Despite being a double Harvard graduate and a federal judge, she stated that she was not a biologist and therefore unable to provide a definition for the term. She was unable to describe her own identity. According to the modern view, a woman is defined by her reproductive anatomy and chromosomes, specifically as a person with a womb and two X-chromosomes. However, the Supreme Court justice in question, Justice Jackson, believes that this definition does not fully capture the complexity and depth of what it means to be a woman. She suggests that a woman is more than just her chromosomes and reproductive anatomy and that there is a deeper and more meaningful aspect to what it means to be a woman. So, it’s a legitimate question today. Are girls just genitals and chromosomes (vs) Girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice. I’m on the fence...but sugar and spice and everything nice, suggests that there is more to a woman’s identity than just their anatomy and chromosomes.#Aristotlewasright #FrodoLives

[@Opposite271]

A word can have multiple types of referents. For example the word „blue“ refers to my sense experience, light with a certain wavelength and how a object interacts with light. The word woman can both mean a individual with certain biological characteristics like „adult human female“ and a individual who looks, dresses and interacts with its cultural environment in a way, that is associated by the surrounding culture with biological women. If I define „blue“ as light with a certain wavelength, then it is not a failure of the definition that it doesn’t capture subjective sense experiences. But of curse people should keep in mind that this is not the only correct definition of „blue“.

[@ad4id]

@@Opposite271 The presence of double meanings for some words in English does not apply in this context, as it has been stated that "blue remains blue" regardless. Thus, when referring to women, it must at the very least be in the biological sense of the term. The condition of being transgender is based on the concept of two genders, whether one identifies as a man in a woman's body or a woman in a man's body. Therefore, the definition of a woman involves a binary choice and, in your mind, relies on some subjective experience. When expressing that one feels like a woman, they are referring to characteristics commonly associated with the female sex. Given that biological sex is determined by anatomy and chromosomes, with women having XX chromosomes, the notion that one can be a woman without having XX chromosomes must be considered false based on this definition. It is possible for a man to possess effeminate characteristics and feel more feminine than masculine. However, this does not make them a woman; it merely classifies them as an effeminate man. The erotic component of transsexualism it is theorized is the prime factor in why most transsexuals are males, and transsexualism has been far less a manifestation in the female community. Therefore, I do not think it is possible to separate the fetishistic aspect of why many men who identify as women from the majority of transgender men. With regards to females, behaviors such as bulimia or self-harm through cutting can become widespread in a particular community. It would not be appropriate to tell someone struggling with bulimia that they are fat, just as it would not be appropriate to tell a woman who identifies as a man that she is actually male. She may exhibit masculine traits, but she remains female.

[@xfactorb25222]

@@ad4id I think you're putting too much thought into this. Don't get me wrong, the "Woke" culture is annoying, I'm old. People can always grab extreme anecdotal stories too. But, for the most part, this is just a fad. Same as the 70's hippies who were going to ruin the world, then the 80's rock band satanist who were going to kill everyone, because of the "devil music"...the gays were going to ruin the atomic family, and give everyone AIDS etc. This life is long and tricky, everyone has their own struggles.For the people who actually have some identity issues, I'm sure they have enough on their plate to deal with... I don't understand it, but I'm not them. Same as the people who believe in angels and demons, doesn't make sense to me, seems like a mental condition. But, if it makes life easier for them, so be it.

[@ad4id]

@@xfactorb25222 So, am I overthinking this? Is this statement coming from someone who fails to acknowledge that LGBT...B represents a binary lifestyle? Someone who disregards the fact that a woman who sits on the highest court of the modern free world cannot define what a woman is? And yet, I am the one guilty of overthinking this? The sexual revolution of the Hippies era didn't quite work out as planned, did it? The concept of "no means no" is merely a reinterpretation of traditional morality. I'm quite certain that Nietzche had already addressed the 80s hair bands' obsession with the occult. I don't remember anyone ever suggesting that the gay community would destroy the nuclear family. The impact on marriage, which is a tangential matter, is likely what was being addressed. Nevertheless, let’s look at the nuclear family numbers, shall we? Daniel Patrick Moynihan - the Negro family: The case for National action. (1965) The fundamental problem....is that of family structure, {T}he negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling. A middle-class group has managed to save itself, but for vast numbers of the unskilled....{and} poorly educated....the fabric of conventional social relationships has all but disintegrated.....So, long as this situation persists, the cycle of poverty and disadvantage will continue to repeat itself. When Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote those words the illegitimacy among black Americans was 25% today the illegitimacy rate among white Americans is 35%, among Hispanics 50% among Blacks it is above 70% (for context to our discussion) This is a result of policy beginning in the 1960s, not of Slavery. There are classic studies that go back to pre-civil war America and black children during that era lived with their parents. The change happened in the 1960s the era of hippies and the sexual revolution. The welfare programs (the 1960s) which rewarded single-parent households with more money were a prime mover of this rise in single-parent households, primarily black communities first and then the demographics of all low-income ethnic households. The sexual revolution and the birth control pill did change society both white, black, Asian, and Hispanic and that’s not in dispute. So save me fromthe transgender trend isn't a matter of concern. How did we even reach this point in our debate? If one cannot properly define a woman, then what happens to epistemology? It's a problem.

[@ad4id]

@@xfactorb25222 So, am I overthinking this? Is this statement coming from someone who fails to acknowledge that LGBT...B represents a binary lifestyle? Someone who disregards the fact that a woman who sits on the highest court of the modern free world cannot define what a woman is? And yet, I am the one guilty of overthinking this? The sexual revolution of the Hippies era didn't quite work out as planned, did it? The concept of "no means no" is merely a reinterpretation of traditional morality. I'm quite certain that Nietzche had already addressed the 80s hair bands' obsession with the occult. I don't remember anyone ever suggesting that the gay community would destroy the nuclear family. The impact on marriage, which is a tangential matter, is likely what was being addressed. Nevertheless, let’s look at the nuclear family numbers, shall we? Daniel Patrick Moynihan - the Negro family: The case for National action. (1965) The fundamental problem....is that of family structure, {T}he negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling. A middle-class group has managed to save itself, but for vast numbers of the unskilled....{and} poorly educated....the fabric of conventional social relationships has all but disintegrated.....So, long as this situation persists, the cycle of poverty and disadvantage will continue to repeat itself. When Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote those words the illegitimacy among black Americans was 25% today the illegitimacy rate among white Americans is 35%, among Hispanics 50% among Blacks it is above 70% (for context to our discussion) This is a result of policy beginning in the 1960s, not of Slavery. There are classic studies that go back to pre-civil war America and black children during that era lived with their parents. The change happened in the 1960s the era of hippies and the sexual revolution. The welfare programs (the 1960s) which rewarded single-parent households with more money were a prime mover of this rise in single-parent households, primarily black communities first and then the demographics of all low-income ethnic households. The sexual revolution and the birth control pill did change society both white, black, Asian, and Hispanic and that’s not in dispute. I don't want to hear that the transgender trend isn't a matter of concern. How did we even reach this point in our debate? If one cannot properly define a woman, then what happens to epistemology?

[@patera124]

Interesting that in order to defend the modern world-view against Aristotelianism, you arrive unequivocally at nihilism. If survival and living are good merely because "we think" that they are good, then an individual who decides that survival and living are not good and goes on a killing spree is not in any sense objectively wrong. He can be no more objectively wrong than a person who held the world to be round in a time when it was generally held to be flat.

[@rfvtgbzhn]

9:39 that's not really correct, you also need the state of every particle, from which you can describe the interactions. for example I am juts made out of up quarks, down quarks and electrons, but you could make something completely different out of the same up quarks, down quarks and electrons if they are in different states.

[@OneLine122]

Great video, I am Aristotelian myself, too many "whatever" in the modern view, and or course it's amoral. The modern will also give function for it's utility, to us, so put a human goal and the function of the object is to fulfill that goal, otherwise it's garbage. It's highly narcissistic. Even the mind concept is quite delusional and the whole natural selection thing is a fallacy. However, if you read Darwin, it's quite Aristotelian by itself. It posits current Man as the end of evolution, and explains the movement according to his current nature, which makes sense from an Aristotelian point of view, but not a modern one. So the modern view still needs Aristotle just to talk about natural functions. They just pretend it comes from them. They also pretend it comes from their theory of evolution based on whatever, which it does not, they just kept the word, replaced the philosophy and kept the right to function. There is another way they will cheat. Those particles, they also have a form and nature. They might refuse to give nature to big stuff, but they will to small invisible stuff. The atoms, they have rules that govern their interaction which depends on their nature, so they might attract or repulse, and then you add rules like entropy for the overall movement, which comes from Aristotle as well. So they will still be Aristotelian at the chemical level, which is also why they can pretend to have universal laws and so on, at least in practice. And it's why science works. If it was just for their philosophy, you would have to believe everything is chaos unless some human orders it, which is what atheists and Marx believed, as well as most materialists. It's the basis of humanism, but it's got nothing to do with actual science, although it is changing slowly as science gets politicized which is inevitable with that belief and it will stop working. This being said, the quantitative and qualitative difference is not as it looks, it's not a difference in worldview, it's a difference between philosophy and techniques. Philosophy is the art of finding qualities and nature, techniques deal with quantity. So there are technicians in the Aristotelian worldview, they measure things. They might even find commonalities and "laws" that govern numbers, patterns in the numbers, but it's up to the philosopher to qualify them into human experience, so you have both in the Aristotelian worldview, while in the modern one, the philosophy is hidden underneath everything in order to push some sort of political view. It's clunky to say the least.

[@GenX_Saves_America]

We need to get back to his teachings.

[@gregpappas]

I think your presentation of Aristotle is over drawn. You could make Aristotle look very different if you compared nature and purpose to capacity, in the way we think about genetics. Your analysis is anachronistic as much as trying to make Aristotle look like a scientist. This over drawn comparison is not helping us understand science or Aristotle.

[@xboxbreadbox8404]

Every time u write it sounds like a funny little bird

[@cronistamundano8189]

Aristotle, Aristotle, was a beggar for the bottle

[@nkoppa5332]

Aristotle did not believe in evolution.

[@Dismythed]

I don't buy this strictly semantic idea that "function" is a creation of mind. When something does a thing, that is a function. If that thing done is indispensable to the operation of an object, then that is objectively a function. It cannot be denied simply by the absence of a human to perceive that function or to name it "function". There is no subjectivity to this AT ALL. A function is a real and actual thing. You could not say running is not running just because there is no one around to name it. That's ridiculous. And just because the word expresses an abstract concept does not mean the thing done associated with the abstraction is not that abstraction. Semantic arguments are the weakest form of arguments that rarely hold up to scrutiny.

[@scottanderson3577]

...or whatever.

[@glaoak1787]

You can't explain Aristotle out of the current state do science. Unless you trying to show how oudated and simplistic Aristotle was. Big mistake.

[@jessewilley531]

Aristotle thought you could make everything out of Earth, Fire, Wind and Water? Really? You can't even make Captain Planet out of that.

[@TheGeenat]

Almost, if not every - creature on the planet had a heart. I’m supposed to believe it’s all one big coincidence and a function of randomness and mutation… I think not.

[@gaseredtune5284]

Materialism is so preposterous, and you perfectly exhibited how apparently Aristotle understood the world better than you. Telos is not to be dismissed out of hand, but materialism dismisses itself.

[@magicsinglez]

Why has the prof spent 12:00 on nothing…or imagining he is superior to Aristotle? What a puny mind, spending 15:00 explaining how he or we are superior to someone from 2,000 years ago? I doubt this guy is more intelligent than Aristotle’s dog. . .

[@pearlwhitson]

You seem to be preoccupied with ranking and status rather than reasoned dialogue. Ad hominem does not advances your position (which is not clear). You leave me imagining you are sitting in your parent's basement in your underwear wishing you were more than someone yelling at the computer to no avail. Better to be Aristotle's dog.

[@magicsinglez]

@@pearlwhitson: Maybe so. I’m criticizing someone else’s position. I don’t necessarily have to advance another or my own, or even have a position, other than noting how this guy seems to imagine he’s superior to Aristotle. Perhaps that is the limit of his intellectual endeavors?

[@Opposite271]

@@magicsinglez The man in the video said himself, that if you where a extremely intelligent caveman without the technology for further investigation, that you would come to the same conclusion then Aristotle. He even said that it would be completely rational to come to the same conclusion. 4:50 You are making a claim about his mental state but I can not see any evidence to make this inference. Instead there is even evidence to the contrary.

[@magicsinglez]

@@Opposite271: I don’t know much, but whatever conclusion this guy comes up with I want to come up withthe exact opposite conclusion. I don’t know about cave men. And I don’t know about ancient humans. But I do know it is very fortunate to live in a time where it is possible, 100% of the time, to know what is really true. It’s so easy - I think Harold Bloom called this ‘wisdom’ in ‘where shall wisdom be found’ - so easy, it leads to complete intellectual atrophy. However, one need only to look to our media, or as Mr. Bloom would say, our ‘media-varsities’ to know what is actually true every time.

[@williamjenkins4913]

What the heck are you talking about? He didnt make a single value statement in this entire video. If you think a basic description is a value statement that is your own brain projecting.