Topics Philosophers

Question I have been reading recently about Aristotle's "4 Causes" (Material, Formal, Efficient, and Final). Examples illustrate material as having to do with actual physical material. (E.g. the material cause of a table might be wood). What is the corresponding material cause of something "virtual"? For example what is the material cause of a file on my computer? Is it the magnetic medium that the file resides upon? This doesn't seem correct as the file simply has no material. Does material cause even apply to a file?

Accepted:
February 11, 2010

Comments

I'm not sure what Aristotle would say, but I note that many contemporary thinkers see nothing wrong with thinking that the matter that constitutes our brains and nervous systems is the "that out of which" our mental states are created. (If you want to know more about some of the extremely interesting contemporary work done on this and related topics, this encyclopedia entry on supervenience is a good place to start: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/supervenience/.)

If those contemporary philosophers are right that, say, physical brain matter can cause immaterial thoughts, is it any more mysterious to say that the various components of a electronic storage device are the "that out of which" a computer file is created? Indeed, I think your example may be a lot less mysterious than mine. I note that you used scare quotes when attributing a non-physical ontological status to the computer file. Is it really the case that the information we store on physical electronic media has a non-physical ontological status? I suspect not, and so I suspect that the problem that bothers you may not arise in your example -- at least, I would want to be shown that there exists a compelling case why it is metaphysically egregious to view each computer file on a physical storage device as a physical thing created in ways that are mysterious to regular users but could be explained by computer scientists and engineers by reference to, say, whatever complex physical encoding system the physical storage device uses.

I hope that a panelist with expertise on Aristotle will say more about how he might have viewed this case. Suppose you are right that the computer file does have a non-physical ontological status. Does Aristotle write about cases where something physical is a material cause of something non-physical? (Perception of physical objects, perhaps?) If so, what does Aristotle say about this, and does what he say bear on your case?