 Well, now that we've finished describing reality using the categories, Aristotle wants to move from the description to what's going on or what's real. And this is where we start talking about the problem of metaphysics. Now, when we're talking about the problem of metaphysics, the way it's dealt with in the book and the way that Aristotle deals with, another way to understand this is the question of metaphysics. And what that means is what question are we trying to answer when we're dealing with metaphysics. So to think about this, think about questions in other fields. So I've already given some kind of off-the-cuff responses as to what these different fields study. So if we're dealing with the physical sciences, the question that's being asked is what are the causal relationships between material objects? If we're dealing with mathematics, what are the relationships between quantities? If we're dealing with, say, history, what events have happened and what are the reasons or the explanations for those events? And these all have kind of a general form. And the general form is what are objects of this kind or what are the things of this kind and why do they happen? So with physical sciences, the question is what are the physical objects and with the why, we're looking for what are the causal relationships between material objects. Now, something to note is that physical sciences don't ask about relationships that we deal with in metaphysics or in history. For dealing with English, what is a piece of written work and how can it be evaluated? That would be something to deal with in English, but that's not what's happening in the physical sciences. So this is kind of division. In history, the objects or the things that they're dealing with are the events. These are the subjects or the objects of study for history. And then the explanation or the why, well, that's going to deal with what kinds of relationships exist between events. History won't necessarily involve causal relationships with material objects, sometimes, but not always. Sometimes it's with human motivation and psychological reasons. Mathematics, same thing. Mathematics deals with relationships between quantities, but these are specific kinds of relationships such as additions, subtraction, multiplication, division. We can kind of go on from there. So when you're dealing with a question or problem within a particular field, you're dealing with objects of a particular kind or things of a particular kind and relationships that exist between those things. It would be strange in the physical sciences to start asking what beauty is in a poem. That's appropriate for English, not so for sciences. Well, this leads us to metaphysics. Metaphysics is broader than these other more specific questions, these other more specific fields. Metaphysics, as Aristotle is dealing with, is metaphysics is dealing with real things, not just some, but all real things. So where physics deals with material objects, history deals with events, mathematics deals with quantities, metaphysics deals with all of them, and we can go on further. What does it mean to be a poem? What does it mean to be a novel? What does it mean to be a beautiful poem or to have beauty in those written forms? What does it mean to be a piece of art? What does it mean to be a beautiful piece of art? Metaphysics deals with all of it. There's nothing outside the purview of metaphysics. So this question, remember the general form of the question when we're dealing with all these particular, with all these specific kinds of questions, is what is it to be things of this kind and what are the relationships? You know, what's going to explain the relationships between them? Well, the problem of metaphysics is much broader. The problem of metaphysics is what is it to be? What is it to be an existing thing? That's the first part, and the second part is why does it exist? Aristotle's categories are going to attempt an answer to both of those parts. And in this video, we're going to deal with the first part. What is it to be? And the categories are going to have a very direct answer for that. So we were talking about the categories in the previous video. Now I don't know if you picked up on this, but there's a very important point that you have to get when talking with the categories. So remember what's going on. We're dealing with substance and with accident, or another way of saying this is we're dealing with subject and predicate. So you have substance and accident, or you might even say, you know, substance and predicate, you could start mixing and matching there, but that might get confusing real fast. Now the predicates describe the substance, and the substance is what is described. So those are three important points there. We're dealing with substance and predicate, or substance and accident. Substance is what is described, predicate is what describes. Well, there's something that follows from this. Predicates do not describe themselves. Predicates do not describe themselves. So to think of a really kind of a simple example, consider the predicate red. Actually, since we're out here, consider the predicate green. So these trees back here are green. There's several bushes in this grass that's green. Now the predicate green does not describe itself. The predicate itself is not green. I know this sounds strange to you, but the predicate itself is not green. The trees, the bushes, the grass, that's green, but the predicate itself is not. Take this one step at a time. Here we have several shades of green. We've got some dark greens in the shadows. We've got some almost yellow greens where the light is striking the green. We've got some almost pale green with the grass because it's got some more browns in it so it's not vibrant green as the rest. We can start going on and on. Here I've provided a spectrum of green. We've got several shades of green happening right here. Now suppose we say that the predicate green does describe itself. That means that one of these shades of green is the predicate green. What does this mean? None of these shades are identical to each other. We can even produce more shades when we start talking about shade in between. You can have many shades of green real fast, but if green is one of those shades and that shade is not identical to the rest, then the rest of these shades are not green. They're something else. The rest of the shades are green. Green is not any one of these particular shades. It's not any particular shade in the trees here. Green is what all these shades have in common. Green is what they all have in common, but that doesn't look like any particular shade of green. Green is what they have in common. The predicate green is itself not green. The predicate green is what all green things have in common. So right now I ask you to imagine the predicate green. You're not imagining the predicate green. You're imagining a particular shade of green. So again, look at the shades that we have here. It's not any one of these shades. It's what they all have in common. Now what is it? Remember Plato and Aristotle's carrying on with this. The predicate green, what's really real there, is not the appearance. So it's not something you see. It's what you comprehend. What you comprehend is what all the shades of green have in common. I don't know if that was quite confusing enough for you, but I can try some other way. Again, think of squares. So here we have some squares. The predicate square, what it means to be a square, is not any individual one of these squares. It's what they all have in common. Well, what are we supposed to carry from this? Well, the predicates do not predicate themselves. So when the predicates predicate the subject, the subject is not identical to the predicates. I'll say that again. The subject is not identical to the predicates. So looking out here, when we have these trees, we have green, we have rough bark, we can talk about the structure of the tree, start thinking about the categories, the structure of the tree, its place, its time. We can look at it mathematically. We start quantifying it. We can talk about its relation to the other trees. These are all the predicates of the tree, but the tree is not identical to those predicates. There's something else, right? But it's not identical to the predicates. So this is a really important point to remember. The substance, so we have substance and accident. Substance is not just the accidents. It's not just the collection of accidents. There's something else. What this means is that the substance is what is described by the accidents. But the substance is not identical to the collection of accidents. So there are these trees out here, and we can have the collection of the accidents, the green, the branches, the tight, its place, the time. We can have all that collection of accidents. But the substance is something else. It's what is described by the accidents. So this is a really important point to remember here with Aristotle. The same thing happens with Plato, too. The substance is not just the collection of accidents. Also, you probably and rightfully ask right now, well, what the heck is substance then? That's the question, right? For Aristotle, just to kind of preview or forecast here, Aristotle, the first part of the problem metaphysics is what does it mean to be, and what explains or what causes that being. And for Aristotle, the first part of that question, what does it mean to be? Well, it means to be a substance. That's what exists, our substances. So what are they? Well, before we dive into that, let's take a step back for a second, and I want to return to the accidents for a second. All right. Now, some of these accidents, some accidents with particular things, with these things that exist around us, are essential to these things. So when we're dealing with these trees here, if it's a healthy tree, with the cedar trees and some of the oaks, if it's a healthy tree, if it's a living tree, an existing tree, then it has green, especially with the evergreens. The needles are going to be green. They're not going to be maroon. They're not going to be black. Maybe you can start pushing a point and say, okay, when the tree is dying, then the needles are going to die in turn. Okay, that's fair. But the point you get across here, though, is that what's essential to that tree, what's a living, it's a vibrant tree, is that the needles are green. Green is essential to the tree. What else is essential to the tree? Well, with cedar trees, they have a particular kind of bark. That's essential to the cedar tree. It's more strip-like. You can kind of take off the bark. So looking at this cedar tree here, we have this bark. It's very strip-like. It can be kind of taken off in strips. That's essential to a cedar tree. That's essential for the bark of a cedar tree. When we're dealing with trees like oak, the bark is different. It's more block-like is the way that I describe it. You pull it off in little pieces. So that's essential to the cedar tree. Well, this is an accident. It is an accident. It's a predicate. It's a description of the cedar tree. But because of the kind of thing it is, it has that kind of bark. Now, it's going to vary from tree to tree, sure. But there are even going to be things that are essential to be a tree. So needing water. That's essential to a tree. Again, I'm showing my ignorance in botany here. Trees are going to require carbon monoxide to process into oxygen. They're going to need certain minerals and nutrients from the ground. They're going to need to be rooted in the ground. I believe that's an essential characteristic of a tree that has roots. So these are essential to the tree, meaning it can't vary. You can't black this thing and still be a tree. So that's what an essential accident is. It's a predicate. It's an accident or essential predicate, I should say. An essential predicate is a predicate that can't fail to be with that kind of thing. There are essential predicates and there are accidental predicates. So these trees around us, for instance, they have a certain number of branches. Now, there might be a range in which they have to be, but say the range begins at 5 and ends at 105. The tree has to have between 5 and 105 branches. But any particular number in there, that's not essential. Some of these trees have 40 branches. Some of them have 25. The number, so that's an accident when I talk about the quantity, the number of branches is accidental to the tree. It can have a variety of different predicates there. It just takes me. There are lots of accidental predicates about me right now. One of the categories is possession and I'm wearing a black shirt. I have a black shirt. Well, I have lots of shirts. I could be wearing one of my red shirts. I could be wearing that shirt that caused everybody problems whether it was maroon or black or brown or whatever it was. I have a blue shirt. That possession, well, that's accidental. I could have a variety of shirts. I could even be shirtless right now. I'm not going to do that. Even having a shirt is not essential. I can still be what I am and not wear a shirt. So this is the distinction between essential predicates and accidental predicates. An essential predicate is what a thing has to have because of the kind of thing it is. An accidental predicate is pretty much any other predicate. I can have this predicate or not and still be the kind of thing it is. I'm human. One of the essential predicates of me is that I'm human. I can't be me and be a reptile. Since I'm human, one of the essential predicates of being human is being warm-blooded. So that's an essential predicate. But there's lots of ways that a human being can exist. For instance, human beings can exist in the United States and they can exist in Mexico and in the Philippines and Africa. So they were talking about a place there. Human beings can exist in a wide variety of places. Well, that would be accidental. What's essential would be warm-blooded. So now we have another distinction. We have a distinction between form and matter. And this should be pretty familiar to you by now. Again, we're appealing to Pythagoras. The form is the universal. It's the definition as the essence of the thing. And the matter is the stuff. Aristotle takes it a little bit further. Lots of things can be matter without necessarily being physical. So for instance, matter... We're appealing to this distinction between form and matter before. Form is the kind of thing that it is. And matter is what composes it. Matter is the composition. What do you put together to make the thing? And the form is the kind of thing. So part of my form is human, philosopher. We can start throwing in other things, male. This is all part of my form. These are the kinds of things that I am. The matter, in turn, is what comes together to make that. So matter, again, for appealing to physical, it's also going to be flesh, bone, muscle, blood. But also part of that will be my experiences. This isn't necessarily physical. Maybe yes, maybe no. That's subject for debate. But this comes together for the kind of thing that I am. My education. I am, amongst other things, a philosopher. Well, the particulars of my education come together to make that kind of thing. To make me a philosopher. That's what composes my being a philosopher. So form is the kind of thing. It's the universal. It's the abstract. It's the essence. It's the definition. It's the meaning. Matter is what composes, what comes together to make that kind of thing. Not only the physical, but events in history, personal experiences, thoughts and beliefs. So a philosopher is a particular kind of person. But there's a wide variety of thoughts and beliefs that can come together to compose philosopher. Just ask the variety of philosophers that are out there. Aristotle makes a distinction between the form and the matter. It's a fair question to ask what's the relationship between the essential predicates and the essential and accidental predicates and form and matter. It's kind of hard to nail this down, but a handy way to start to think about it is that the essential predicates are the form. The essential predicates are the form. And the accidental predicates, well that's the matter. That could come together to compose that kind of thing. We might push on that in class, so don't take that as just a hard line answer right now. But it's a way of trying to think about that answer. So this is what we talked about. We talked about substance and accident, about the subject of the predicate. And this is supposed to help us answer the probable metaphysics, which is what does it mean to be and what's the cause of the explanation of that being. And we'll be dealing with substance. And substance is not the same thing as the predicate. Predicate is what describes the substance. It's not the same thing as the predicate. So we're real familiar with predicates, we're real familiar with descriptions. So what does it mean to be that substance? Well we've also been dealing with form and we're dealing with matter. So how is Aristotle going to answer this question? He wants to answer the question what does it mean to be, what does it mean to exist? What's his answer? Don't you figure it out yet? The problem with metaphysics is what does it mean to be, what exists? Aristotle is focusing on substance. The question is what is substance? Well substance is a composite of form and matter. Substance is a composite of form and matter. These two things come together, the kind of thing and what composes the thing, and that's what exists. The kind of thing and the composite and what composes the thing, that's what exists. So looking at these here, these are substances. There's the kind of thing and the kind of thing is it's a tree, it's a cedar tree. And there's the matter. I mean that particular grouping of bark and minerals and water and sap, it's location. All of the categories coming together, that's the matter of the thing. Where is it? How long has it been here? What's its relation to other things? All of that is the matter. So what exists is substance. What's substance is a composite of form and matter. Form is the universal, it's the kind of thing. Matter is what composes it. What composes it to make that kind of thing. Now this is going to have some serious implications which are very different from Plato's view. So ask yourself for Plato, you know what exists, or you might even ask yourself what's the most real thing for Plato? Is it the particular objects or is it the form? For Plato what's most real is the form. For Plato what's most real is the form. Therefore for Plato you can have form without matter. So matter of fact that's the most real thing, it's form without matter. Aristotle disagrees. What's real is substance. Now what is substance is a composite of form and matter. You can't separate the form from the substance. You do that, you don't have a real thing anymore. Same thing is true with the matter. So if we're dealing with Annex Amanda where he's talking about the boundless, that's matter without form. Aristotle says you can't do that either because what exists is substance and what is substance is a composite of form and matter. So the boundless doesn't exist for Aristotle. If there's matter there has to be form. This is a pretty different view than Plato. Still appealing to some of the same ideas though. Aristotle still wants to hang on to universals. And the reason why he wants to hang on to universals is because we can't do for instance any science without universals. If I can't talk about tree as a kind of thing, I cannot study trees. I'll study that and that and that and that and that. But if there's nothing that they have in common, I'm just studying five individual things. I'm not studying tree. Same thing with gravity. If we're going to talk about physical objects, we're going to deal with that too. So if we're dealing with protons, neutrons, electrons, well as many talk about proton, neutron, electron, you're dealing with a form. So you can't do away with form. Aristotle's answer is pretty different. The answer to the question of what does it mean to be? The answer is it's to be substance. What does it mean to be substance? It's to be a composite of form and matter. And the categories come in when we start, again, we might question this later on, but at least the way to start thinking about it is what's the form or that's the essential predicates and what's the matter or that's the accidental predicates. We'll push on that in class, but that's at least a way to start thinking about it. So this is the answer to the first part of the question, the problem of metaphysics. In the next video, you remember the question of the problem of metaphysics is what does it mean to be and why? What's the cause, the explanation of that being? Well, the next video deals with a why.