skip to content
camaleon's log Adapting's Blog

A framework for presentations based on Aristotle's metaphysics

/ 6 min read

non-technical, philosophy

The good thing about abstract branches of knowledge is that they can be applied to virtually anything. I know, this is a little bit of a contradiction, suddenly the most theoretical approach is the most applicable? But hear (read) me out a little bit.

1. Here comes ontology

Ontology is a branch of metaphysics concerned with the study of being. The nice thing is that whatever you find out about being you find out about basically anything, because anything is. For instance, we could be concerned with what makes a thing be a thing. Why would you want to do that?

If we understand what general characteristics define something, we have a road-map for understanding the things we don’t know yet. Let’s say you encounter something unknown: be it a new business practice, a technology, a concept, a political argument. What questions would you ask to start getting acquainted with the new thing?

This is not relevant for us understanding the thing but for everyone that we talk to understanding whatever we want to convey. Hence the idea of considering presentations. Let’s see what Aristotle’s metaphysics has to offer.

2. Aristotle’s account of causation

We do not have knowledge of a thing until we have grasped its why, that is to say, its cause.

Aristotle had somewhat of an anthropocentric definition of causation, which is philosophically objectionable; but since we are concerned with presentations, and generally presentations are about human made stuff, this turns out to be a feature more than a bug.

His understanding of cause is a little bit distinct from what we think today as we will see. He distinguished four kinds of causes:

  1. Efficient. This is the cause that precedes the thing and its aligned with our common understanding of cause. For instance, smoke can be caused by fire.
  2. Final. This is the cause that succeeds the thing. It’s an answer to the question “what for?”, for instance the final cause of studying a degree may be getting a certain kind of job.
  3. Material. This is the substrate that allows for the thing existence. For instance the material cause of a wooden table is the wood that it’s made of.
  4. Formal. This is the essence that defines the thing as the thing it is. For instance in the case of a table it’s the design and the properties that make it a table1.

How would you go about applying these four categories in the aforementioned examples of understanding a business, a technology, a concept or a political argument?

3. The four causes in action

Basically the question of “why” is a question which can be answered in four different levels: (1) what happened that brought it to existence, (2) what was the motivation in making it happen, (3) what allowed it to be, and (4) what’s the definition or the blueprint that defines that thing.

For the purpose of a business presentation we could do something like this:

  1. Efficient cause. What’s the need or problem that brought us here? In case this does not fit to our case, we consider we ourselves (or our company) is the efficient cause, and turn into a “Who we are?” section.
  2. Final cause. What are the benefits or expected results of moving forward this project or idea?
  3. Formal cause. What are the features of the proposal that make it fit for the desired outcome? For instance: What are the essential characteristics that make the solution a solution?
  4. Material cause. What are the requirements to bring the proposal to fruition? This could be money, people, time, data or other kinds of resources.

In the case that concerns us most, Data Science projects, usually 1. and 2. have a greater business orientation while 3. and 4. get more technical. According to Wikipedia Thomas Aquinas would prefer a slight rearrangement and use the order 2-1-3-4 instead:

[Thomas Aquinas] also introduced a priority order according to which “matter is made perfect by the form, form is made perfect by the agent [efficient cause], and agent is made perfect by the finality.” Hence, the finality is the cause of causes or, equivalently, the queen of causes.

In any case, since we are using a very broad schema we need to be very flexible to achieve proper fit in each application. In fact, if you have read Aristotle you may spot quite a few inaccuracies in our exposition as our intention was not to be faithful but useful. Similarly, it’s sometimes better to drop one of the elements or even to ignore this completely if it results too constraining for a more storytelling approach you want to pursue.

The purpose of this framework is that it makes it very easy to get started and land a quick reasonable draft. You may be still unsatisfied and look for something better, but you’ve set the engine running and now it’s easier to keep moving forward.

Besides, having a comprehensive set of categories helps guide thinking and communication. Details are usually the things that take us the most time to work out, and so it’s easy to get drawn by them, but they are the least relevant when conveying an idea. This framework helps stay focused on the broad perspective, the question after all is “why?”, “why are we here?”, “why are we doing this?“.

Footnotes

  1. Actually defining a table is not so easy, it can have 4 legs or just 1, it definitely has a flat surface but many other pieces of furniture do too (a chair to begin with). This suggests it has to be defined by its function, but there are so many different things one can do on it. It’s striking to see that something so simple that it’s omnipresent in our everyday lives is so hard to define. Spanish philosopher Gustavo Bueno defined it as “the hands’ floor”, which I find very ingenious. ↩