Abstract

Aristotle's doctrine of natural teleology and his account of moral responsibility have a common feature. In the former, Aristotle claims that form, more than matter, is the "origin" of natural change. In the latter, he claims that we are the "origins" of our voluntary actions. These claims about origins are not indeterminist claims because Aristotle's search for origins in each of these cases is a search for the non-accidental efficient cause of the phenomenon in question , and the activity of a non-accidental efficient cause may be causally determined . ;Aristotle, however, adduces other considerations in his defence of these two doctrines--considerations which do appear to be indeterminist. He claims that form is an "unmoved mover" while matter is only a moved mover; and that matter is "hypothetically necessary." He also claims that some actions are "up to us to do and not to do." But none of these considerations is in fact indeterminist, for each is ultimately explicable in terms of claims about non-accidental efficient causes . Therefore, Aristotle's defence of natural teleology and his account of moral responsibility are at least implicitly compatibilist. ;Along the way to establishing the conclusion that the doctrines in question are compatibilist, I argue that the central issue in Aristotle's dispute with the Presocratic materialists is not the truth of materialism or of determinism but of eliminative materialism . I also argue that Aristotle has a plausible account of moral responsibility whose roots are in the basic concepts of his physical theory but that he is mistaken to identify the class of actions which are up to us with the class of actions which are voluntary