A Functional Understanding

Cyril C House

Ancient Metaphysics

A Functional Understanding

    Aristotle, throughout his successive series’, builds up to what has come to be labelled ‘The Function Argument’. He begins leading up to this argument  as early as Physics and makes his ultimate statement(s) regarding his thesis in Nicomachean Ethics. The intention of this short paper is to identify and assess this Function Argument. I will begin by pointing to a few highlights throughout Aristotle’s reel of argumentation, and thereafter dip into one of the common criticisms of this argument. By the end of the paper I trust to find that Aristotle’s Function Argument will remain standing tall.

    In Physics Aristotle identifies four foundational causes of things: material, formal, efficient, and final. For the sake of brevity I will assume the reader is already familiar with these causes. Of these four causes, it is primarily the final cause with which we are concerned herein. Aristotle says, of the final cause, that:

[It is] in the sense of end or ‘that for the sake of which’ a thing is done, e.g. health is the cause of walking about. (‘Why is he walking about?’ we say. ‘To be healthy’, and, having said that, we think we have assigned the cause.) The same is true also of the intermediary steps which are brought about through the action of something else as means towards the end (194b)

So it can be understood that the purpose of some-thing is its final cause, and this ‘purpose’ may be otherwise referred to as its ‘function’. The function of a tree is the resultant phenomena of all the tree-activities working in harmony, and this function is understood as ‘to tree’, the function of the tree is to do tree stuff and when the causes of the tree are in harmony with one another it is only then that the tree is ultimately tree-like. Of artifacts there is typically a function which the artisan has in mind as she creates the artifact itself, so therefore the function of a guillotine is to cut the heads off of people. The guillotine is then ultimately guillotine-like only as it is cutting the heads off of people. This argument is the beginning of how Aristotle leads up to the Function Argument itself. It can be understood from the previous reasoning that a human is only ultimately human-like as far as it is able to fulfill its function, whatever that function may be.

    Moving on throughout the writings of Aristotle, we come across De Anima. In 413a through 414b he distinguishes between differing tiers of a nested hierarchy of being. The inner most nest is nutritive and is characteristic of plants (they are able to feed themselves). The middle most nest is sensitive and is characteristic of base animals (they are able to feel things), there is also reference to locomotive capabilities in this tier. The outer most nest is rational thought and is characteristic of humans. So the inner most nest is only capable of feeding itself, while the middle most is capable both of feeding itself as well as sensing its surroundings and moving about, and the outer most nest is capable of all faculties, feeding itself, sensing its surroundings, moving about, and thinking rationally. This is how Aristotle distinguishes the unique capability of humans as apart from other forms of life. It is this uniqueness which he presumes must be the unique function of the human animal, and therefore its function. For to simply feed oneself cannot be considered to be an activity which would make one ultimately human-like, for plants and animals also do this thing. The same considerations apply to sensation and locomotion, these are not ultimately human-like for base animals are also capable of these things. So we see that De Anima, in part at least, serves to flesh out the function(s) of different living things; this is the foundation of the thesis which Aristotle will render within the framework (from Physics) of final causation in humans.

    Finally, coming to Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle puts forth the Function Argument itself. In this book he is exploring the chief good of being human. He comes to rest upon the point that the chief good of any human is to be eudaimon, roughly translated as happiness. However, it is not just any sort of happiness, and certainly not the common conception of happiness. For happiness is often constructed in such a way as that “even the same person identifies it with different things, with health when he is ill, with wealth when he is poor” (1095a). Aristotle seeks a happiness which is ”always desirable for itself and never for the sake of something else” (1097a), and in the pursuit of such a thing he unveils eudaimonia which is more like a virtuous happiness, or else the type of well-being associated with living a virtuous life. What type of life is a virtuous life? He goes on to explain that “the function of man is to live a certain kind of life, and this activity implies a rational principle, and the function of a good man is the good and noble performance of these, and if any action is well performed it is performed in accord with the appropriate excellence: if this is the case, then happiness turns out to be an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue” (1098a). He concludes that happiness, as is understood to be the rational exercise of virtue, is the ultimate function of the human animal..

   

    So what is so problematic about this view? Turning now to a criticism of the thesis, Micha Gertner tells us that “[i]t is difficult to see how this reasoning follows. Just because a thing has distinctive properties in relation to other like things does not mean that these distinctive properties are its function. Consider a tall tree in a forest of shorter trees. Is tallness the purpose or function of this tree?”. There are two things which I find flawed about this particular claim. The first is that tallness is not a distinct property, plain and simple. All things have a certain height and therefore it is flawed to assume that just because some particular tree is tall-er than other things around it that this tree’s particular tallness somehow makes the property unique to it. Secondly, if we are to assume, for a moment, that this tree’s tallness is in fact unique to it then it could follow that tallness is indeed the function of a tree. For when we consider trees we will recall, from the first paragraph of this paper, that the end goal of a tree is to do tree stuff like photosynthesis and reproduction. So if we consider a tree which performs the act of tallness poorly we can project that this tree, being buried beneath taller trees than itself, will hardly catch any sunlight, therefore being unable to photosynthesize, therefore being unable to feed itself, therefore being unable to reproduce. Is this tree truly a tree? Is it able to realize its ultimate potential? No clearly not. So to go back to Gertner’s example: the tree which performs the act of tallness well will tower above the rest and thus be able to catch the lion’s share of sunlight, therefore photosynthesizing extremely well, therefore reproducing at a greater rate than those smaller trees around it. So to perform the act of tallness well enables a tree to be the best tree it can be and such tallness actually brings about its ultimate state of tree-ness. Following this line of reasoning it is plain to see how ‘tallness’ could be considered to be the function of a tree. This is identical to the idea Aristotle actually proposes: that, for humans, to perform the act of rationally exercising virtue well enables the human to be the best human it can be, eudaimon in other words. The function seems to be the act by which the chief good is realized, and therefore any property of a thing which enables it to realize its chief good is perfectly applicable as that thing’s function.

    Throughout this short paper I have done my best, in the space available, to assert, identify, and layout the buildup towards and execution of Aristotle’s Function Argument. We first visited the Physics in which Aristotle lays out the blueprint for all things by means of the four causes, and he seems to leave the final cause of the human animal open for interpretation or guesstimation. After which we sojourned in De Anima, wherein Aristotle lays out the blueprint of the souls of all living things. We discussed the nested hierarchy of plants to animals to humans and reiterated their unique properties. For plants this property was nutrition, for animals these properties were sensation and locomotion, and for humans this property was rational thought. Leading onwards into Nicomachean Ethics we were briefed on what the two previous paragraphs had to do with one another, that was that the unique property of humans from De Anima was being fed into the partially empty blueprint from the Physics, the final cause being solved for. We saw how comfortably the two fit together and briefly examined why this seemed to be the case. Finally we departed from the exposition of the topic to consider a critical reply against the thesis. A critique which I hope to have succeeded in either shutting down, or at least weakening the resolve of. Aristotle remains a canon of philosophical thought and discourse today and this is not for no reason, and I believe that other criticisms of the Function Argument could also be readily resolved by adamant Aristotelian advocates.

Works Cited

Aristotle, and Richard McKeon. The Basics Works of Aristotle. New York: Random House, 2001. Print.

Gertner, Micha. “Aristotle’s Dysfunctional “Function Argument””. The Distributed Republic. 19/11/2004. Web. 05/04/2017.