 Well, we've seen what Aristotle has to say about substance. This is his work in answering these two problems of metaphysics. The first part of the, or the two parts of the problem of metaphysics. The first part is answering the question, what does it mean to exist or what exists? Second part is answering, why does it exist? His answer to the first part is substance, and substance as you should know by now is a composite of form and matter. His answer to the second part of the problem of metaphysics is the four causes. The formal, the material, the efficient, and the final. So we're going to talk about Aristotle's four causes here, I guess we better define them. Now keep in mind Aristotle is not using cause the way that we use the word cause, right? We mean something like what brought it into existence or some action or something like this. That's not what Aristotle is doing. He means cause, the way he means cause is probably what means something like explanation. So this is the four explanations. So he's got formal, material, efficient, and final. The formal cause is the form of the substance, right? And we talked about this before, but that's the genus and the species of the substance. Easy enough. The material cause is the matter. Is the matter for the substance. And that's pretty much everything in the categories, right? Quantity, quality, relation, time, place, posture, possession, action, passion. You put that together, you got the material cause for the substance. The efficient cause is by what the thing exists, what brought the thing into existence. Now this might, this probably means more than you think, right? We might think of a particular object and that's fine, but that's probably not the end of the efficient cause and we have to pretty much consider everything that brings it into existence. So this camera that I'm using is Canon, right? It's one of the efficient causes, it's company Canon that brought into existence. We could also talk about the individual people on the line that manufactured the camera, put the pieces together, whoever made the lenses, who made the circuit boards, the memory chip that's in there, right? All of this would go into the efficient cause. So we could also talk about the conditions for its use, right? There's a particular group of people that would use this camera. There are lots of people who wouldn't, who would use maybe something that's more advanced, so DSLR camera. This is just a camcorder, right? This is not a very special camera. And there are plenty of people who wouldn't use the camera at all, right? So the demand for the camera and this particular type of camera is also part of the efficient cause. And finally the final cause is the purpose for the substance, right? For what it exists. So the efficient cause is by what it exists, the final cause is for what does it exist? So the purpose of the reason for its existence. So to record a video, right? That's part of the purpose of this, of this camera. These four causes were taken together, Aristotle says, explains why the substance exists, right? Why the substance exists. So I thought that for this we practiced using these four categories on a couple of substances that we have out there. Well, aren't I lucky? I was able to find a substance that lets me take a break. Okay, so we want Aristotle wants to explain the existence of this thing and he has four kinds of explanations, right? The four causes, formal, material, efficient, and final. Let's start with the formal cause. So what is the formal cause for this? Now immediately you might say bench, okay, right? That's its name. And as such it would be part of the categories, right? That tenth, he says substance is the tenth category that means when you use the name of the thing to describe the thing, well then it's a predicate and then one of the categories. So bench is its name, but that's one of the categories, not the form. What's the form? Well the form is going to be the genus and the species, right? Now remember what the genus is. It's the kind to which a thing belongs, right? The kind to which a thing belongs, okay, well that's all well and good. But to what kind does this belong, right? First of all it's not a natural thing, right? It's outside, but it's not a natural thing. This is created by people, right? It's a kind of artifact created by people. Okay, but what kind of artifact, right? That's really broad to say that it's an artifact. Well let's narrow it down a little bit, right? When we're talking about the genus we want to kind of get like just one level of abstraction, right? So it's not, right, it's not a vehicle, it's not a building, it's not artwork, right? This is a piece of furniture, right? This is a piece of furniture, okay. Well we got the genus, it's a piece of furniture. What's the species thing? What makes this different from other kinds of furniture? Now remember all the different kinds of furniture that they had, we went through this a little bit already. So we have benches, we've got chairs, we've got couches, we've got desks, we've got tables, we've got bookshelves. Well how's this different from say a table? Well this is a piece of furniture that you sit on, right? Okay, well what are the kinds of furniture do you sit on? You sit on couches and stools and chairs, right? So what makes this different from stools and chairs? Well for starters this is for more than one person to sit on, right? More than one person to sit on, okay. So we got a piece of furniture for more than one person to sit on. Well what's another kind of piece of furniture for a person to sit on? Well that's a couch, right? A couch. And both couches and benches are meant for people to sit on. Well what's gonna be the difference between a bench and a couch? Well a couch typically has padding like a lot of it. It's supposed to be very soft when you sit on it. If it doesn't have that kind of padding, well then more than likely you got a bench, right? And so that's what we have here is, and also this is supposed to be used outside, all right? So we have the genus and the species. This is a piece of furniture for more than one person to sit on. There's a piece of furniture with a back for more than one person to sit on outside that does not have padding. Bingo, there's your form, right? We got our form for bench for this thing here, okay. Well then let's go on to the material cause. What's gonna be the material cause? Well we got quantity, right? So it's about what, five and a half feet long. It's about, the seat is about two feet off the ground. The back goes up about three feet off the ground, right? It's got four legs. The seat is what, a foot and a quarter, maybe like 16 inches wide. The back is about 20 inches tall. It's got two arm rests. We can have the number of these little rung things here, right? That's all quantity, quality. It's green, it's smooth, it's rigid, right? These are qualities. Time, right? We could talk about today's date, which is, what is today's date? Oh my gosh, there's blank, I think it's the 12th. I think it's, October 12th. There's something like that. Is daytime, it's in the afternoon, right? That's the time. We could talk about the time when this was installed, the number of years ago, how long it's gonna last. It's probably gonna last a good 40 years. Let's hope it's gonna last a good 40 years, right? This is all part of the time. Place, it is on a walkway. It is in the park, and the name of the park escapes me. It's outside. This is also all involved with place. Relation, right? It's sitting within a little enclave here. It's sitting outside, it is beneath me. We've got time, we've got place, we've got relation. It's off to the side of the walkway, right? That's part of the relation. What else do we have? Possession, it has some bolts, which are holding it to the walkway. It has rigidity, it can support a lot of weight. It's a posture, right? The legs are on the furthest length sides, right? That's part of the posture. The back is slightly obtuse, I think that's the word obtuse, right? Compared to the seat, right? We can talk more about posture there. Passion, right? I am sitting upon it. The sun is shining on it, right? Action, right? How's it acting? Well, it is sitting on top of the walkway. It is supporting me, right? That's passion. All of this is material cause, as well as what this is probably, I'm gonna guess aluminum, right? Some kind of, it's definitely metal, I'm gonna guess aluminum, and this slightly gray-green paint, right? That's also part of the material cause. All of that, right? All of that is the material cause for this thing. So already, you might think that the answer to the question, you know, why does this thing exist? It might be kind of short and simple. For Aristotle, it's already complicated, and we've already seen it with the form of the material cause, just for this thing here. Okay, efficient cause. Whatever company produced this bench is the efficient cause, that's part of it. Whatever workers were involved and welding the pieces together, shaping the metal, right? Whoever, whatever company produced the metal itself, this is all part of the efficient cause. The city of San Antonio, which purchased, or this might be Selma, the city of Selma who purchased this bench, right? Ordered its construction and use out here, right? That's also part of the efficient cause. You know, even me, in a sense, I'm part of the efficient cause because people like me are gonna wanna sit on this, and this is the reason why Selma, the city of Selma decided to purchase these. All right, so the final cause for what it exists, okay? So obviously, I mean, one thing we could point to already is to be sat upon, right? Yes, that's definitely part of it to be sat upon. And when we're talking about its actuality potentiality, right, we're gonna be referred to this final cause. Okay, so sitting upon this is part of its final cause. Now, but that's not all, right? Now it might be worthwhile to also talk about actuality potentiality of this form. Remember the difference between these two. Actuality is the extent to which a thing has fulfilled its final cause. Potentiality is the extent to which it has yet to fulfill its final cause, all right? So you might be tempted to say that since I'm sitting on it, it's fulfilled its final cause, it's fully actualized, well, we'll know, right? This was not built just for me to sit upon it. This wasn't built for somebody to sit upon for one day or one month or one year, right? This is a sturdy piece of furniture, outdoor furniture is bolted to this walkway. It's supposed to stay here a long time, right? A long, long time. Like I said, probably about 40 years is my guess as to how long this is supposed to last. Well, let's assume that's true, right? Well, then this is gonna be its final cause to be used outdoors for people to sit upon in the public park for about 40 years, for about 40 years time, okay? Well, in terms of actuality, this is just getting started, right? This has been out here, I think, maybe a year or two, tops, right? Still looks really, this is like no rust on it right now. It's in really good shape, right? Hardly, hardly been used. In terms of actuality, just getting started, maybe a year. In terms of potentiality, it's got probably another 38, 39 years left, right? This has got a lot of potentiality, a long way to go in terms of fulfilling its final cause. So we got formal, efficient, that's our formal material efficient final cause, and we understand actuality and potentiality in terms of the final cause. There are always two sides of the coin, right? Actuality is the extent to which it has fulfilled. Potentiality is the extent to which it has yet to fulfill the final cause. All right, well that's gonna explain, according to Aristotle, that's gonna explain this thing's existence, and we're even giving, given kind of a sense of its age or, you know, its fulfillment of that final cause in terms of actuality and potentiality.