Aristotle’s Four Causes: Coaction, Not Redundancy

Abstract

Aristotle famously held that there are four distinct types of causes, and he is quite promiscuous with respect to the ontological categories of causes. Since early modern times, however, philosophers have often singled out efficient causation between events as the true causal structure, and considered the other three kinds of causes incoherent, or, at best, causally redundant. In this paper, we argue against several key reductive positions in the literature, and defend the view that the four types of causes do not stand in a relation of causal redundancy to each other and that they are sui generis. We argue that the relations between the four causes are to be explained in the same way as Aristotle’s categorical promiscuity: The various causes need to be coactive, and it is frequently the case that all four types of causes act together to bring about the effect.