The Christian Vanguard

I recorded my class session at Holy Innocents. I may do this regularly. The topic for today was on marriage and divorce.

Here is the last assignment on Aristotle I turned in for my class. Footnotes have been omitted. I'm done with this class. Booyah.  Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics is primarily concerned with what the good, or best, life is. Book II of the Nicomachean Ethics is primarily concerned with what the virtuous life is, which is what the best life is to have been as discovered in Book I. Aristotle develops this by first noting that all acts have some end to which they aim. But even these aims may have a greater aim for which they strive for, so there must be some final end where all the striving is terminated. Aristotle found that it is happiness which all other things strive for. In order to find out what makes us happy, Aristotle wants to know what the end of man is since a good man is he who functions well. That function, which is a rational activity of his human soul, is to be virtuous. Having laid down the more broad inquiry of what kind of life we should be striving for, he then...

The following was submitted for a class assignment. Footnotes have been omitted.  Aristotle says that one becomes virtuous by habit. Just as men become builders by building or men become brave by doing brave acts, so one becomes virtuous by doing and practicing virtuous acts. However, doing one virtuous act every now and again while most other times we behave viciously isn’t sufficient to be a virtuous person. What is needed are like cases where we habitually do a virtuous act so that the state of being a virtuous character arises. It is also not sufficient that we merely do virtuous acts. We must also take pleasure in them and not be annoyed by them. The younger we begin to form these habits, the better. If they are taught to us early in our youth, they become more deeply ingrained into our lives and are more difficult to corrupt. These virtues need to be taught because they are not part of our human nature. If they were part of our human nature, then it would not be possible...

I turned this in for a class assignment. Footnotes have not been included.  Aristotle recognizes that generally, men say that happiness is the highest of goods to which men aim. However, since some men say that to have health or wealth when one is sick or poor is happiness, or that some ideal above those appetitive pleasures is what happiness is, the disagreement among men makes it unclear as to what the answer is. So, Aristotle points out that there is an end to which all ends strive. A man practices medicine to obtain health, but what is the end of health? The end of strategy is victory, but what is the end of victory? All these ends have a final end, or good, to which they strive. It is final in the sense that the line of questioning or justification terminates there. That end for which other ends strive has nothing else which it strives for. This is what happiness is. It does not make sense to ask what it is that happiness strives for. It is an end unto itself. Since happi...

Another assignment for my class. Footnotes have been omitted.  Aristotle thinks it is important to ascertain the function of a man because human happiness is an end of an action. So in order to know what is good and bad for human happiness, we must know what mans function is. To determine what it's function is, we have to determine what kind of soul it has. If the function of a flute player is to play the flute, then playing the flute well is what makes the flute player a good flute player. Likewise with man, whatever our function is, doing that function well is what makes us a good man. The powers and function of man is not to be found in the body alone, but in the soul since material bodies are just potentiality and souls is what actualizes the matter into the kind of bodies that they are. So, as body-soul composites are those which exist by nature, that is they have an internal principle of change, they also have an end, or function. Further, for anything that has a form it ...

The following is a short assignment I turned in for my class. Footnotes are omitted.  Aristotle’s argument for teleology is a disjunctive syllogism. Things are either a result of a coincidence or an end. Things are not the result of coincidences. Therefore, they are a result of an end. Aristotle considers a problem of explaining why things happen. Rain happens but it does so not for the sake of the crops, which do benefit from the rainfall. If it can be said that it happens out of necessity, that is for material causes devoid of final causes, why should it not be said for all else that we think would have an end, like teeth? According to this view, the reason these things are observed is because those with those incidental features happened to survive. Aristotle’s argument against this is to say that it cannot explain why these things, if they are accidents, why they happen regularly. Coincidental causes, as they are causes without an end for the sake of which they strive, can...

The following was written for a class assignment. Footnotes are omitted.  Chance is a species of the genus spontaneity. Chance is a cause, but unlike other causes it doesn’t have a regular effect. This is because chance does not have an end or telos for the sake of which it strives. While our understanding of causes has a necessary connection to their effects, the connection a cause by chance had with the effect is accidental. So for example, someone may heal an injured person, and he does so because he is a trained doctor. So the doctor is the cause of healing. The doctor may also be a surfer, and it would also be true that the surfer healed the person, but his status as a surfer is not what caused the healing. The surfer status is an accident, that is, it has no necessary connection to the effect. In the same way, chance causes have no necessary connection to their effects. Chance happens for a purpose, but that purpose does not cause it since incidental cause never come...

I wrote the following for a class assignment. It deals with Book 2, Chapter 1 of the Physics. Footnotes are omitted.  Aristotle’s line of thought is that some things exist by nature and by nature he means that which has an internal principle of change. This principle is to be found within the thing itself and not in an accidental attribute. One account of nature says that the matter which constitutes the thing is what the nature should be identified as. Antiphon, a proponent of this view, points out the wood of a bed is the nature of a bed since if you were to plant the wood of the bed what would sprout is not another bed but wood. Since nature tends to produce more of itself, and wooden beds do not produce other wooden beds but only wood, the bed is only an accidental attribute of the wood. Those who wish to identify nature with the form point out that matter considered by itself is only a potential, and doesn’t exist until it receives some form to inform it to be the kind of...

The following was an essay I turned in for class. There were footnotes, but those didn't copy over. The copying also made the Bayesian formula a little weird, but I did my best to make it look like a legit equation.  David Hume has a two pronged argument against belief in miracles. The first is granting for the sake of argument that a full proof could be given for a miracle. Since the full proof for a miracle stands against a full proof against it, the miracle cannot be believed. The second is that in actuality, there has never been a full proof mounted for a miracle, so even more so miracle cannot be believed.  Hume sets out as a principle of knowledge that one proportions his belief to evidence. When one comes to two competing propositions that needs to be judged, one proposition may tip the scales, so to speak, and the weightier proposition will be the more probable one. Now miracles are defined as a violation of the laws of nature. What establishes a law of nature...

The following was a paper I turned in for class. There are footnotes, but they don't copy over for whatever reason.  Socrates argues that the soul has three parts, the appetite, the spirit, and reason. “Part” refers to a faculty that moves us to act. Since there are movements of the human soul that desire contradictory things, the origins of those desires must therefore be distinct. He argues for this by first putting forth the principle of noncontradiction when he says a thing cannot want or do contradictory things. If the soul wanted to do something contradictory, like to drink and not to drink, then we would be dealing with something else other than a whole unified soul. We would be dealing with some part of the soul instead. In further establishing this approach, Socrates deals with some possible counter examples, such as a moving man or a spinning top. In the case of a man who may move his arms and legs, this is dealt with by distinguishing the parts of the man which move...