Grading an Essay on Aristotelian Teleology

Claim (i) has hold of a real feature and misnames it. The chapter argues that natural things come about for the sake of something because the parts of animals are ordered as a craft-product is ordered; it then explicitly separates that 'for the sake of which' (τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα) from deliberation, since the swallow and the spider build as they do without calculation or inquiry. The essay's inference to theology therefore runs in the wrong direction: Aristotle does not derive purpose from a divine mind, he derives it from the regularity of a natural process whose principle is internal. The note 'a cause with an agent' is fair but incomplete - the final cause here is a structural feature of the organism, and the craft analogy is analogical, tested by the case of the doctor who heals himself. On the criteria: exposition is broadly accurate, attention to the Greek is absent (the essay never distinguishes final cause from deliberating agent), and the philosophical argument is asserted rather than made. That is a 2:2, not a 2:1; record the reason locus by locus so the first marker can see where the difference lies.

Claim (ii) misidentifies whose example the rain is. The chapter opens by setting out the materialist position - rain falls of necessity, not so that the crop may grow, and the same for the parts of animals - as a view to be examined, not as Aristotle's own account. His objection is not that the coincidence never occurs but that it occurs always or for the most part, whereas the chance account can only generate it sometimes; the deviations (the 'monsters' discussed near the chapter's end) show that finality is a norm that can fail, which is precisely what chance cannot explain. So (ii) is a misreading of the passage's voice, and a very common one. Mark it down under accuracy of exposition but give credit for noticing that the rain passage is a difficulty - many candidates pass over it entirely. Reward any recognition that Aristotle keeps material necessity (he does not deny that the material cause operates) while denying that necessity alone explains the order. An essay that concedes this and then argues with the concession deserves a higher mark than its first sentence suggests.

The tutor's note points to the swallow-and-spider argument and to what follows it. With that passage in view, Aristotle's objection to Empedocles is far narrower than 'unscientific'. He grants that spontaneous generation could once have produced a well-adapted creature; what he denies is that what happens always or usually can be put down to chance, because chance is by definition the exception. The critique is therefore about explanatory adequacy in the face of regularity, not about the absence of a designer, and it is not dogmatic - it is an inference to the best explanation that the essay is free to attack, provided it attacks the actual argument. There is also a fairness point the essay misses: Empedocles' own system is not a modern selection theory, since Love and Strife do substantive causal work in it, and Aristotle is arguing with a mechanised version of it. Verdict: (iii) remains dogmatic as written because the essay cannot reconstruct the argument it rejects. That is a failure of the 'quality of argument' criterion, and it is what turns the mark.