I am a college student studying philosophy, and currently I have a lot of misunderstandings about Aristotle's Unmoved Mover.
1. How is the unmoved mover not a conraditction of everything else Aristolte proposes in the Metaphysics?
2. In this theory, how does the unmoved mover cause motion? — Mattt

It's not a contradiction because his so-called cosmological argument demonstrates that if anything is eternal it must be actual. The actual eternal thing cannot be moved because it is already eternal, yet it moves, as a cause. It is a perfect circular motion, which by the nature of a circle, has no beginning or end.

It causes motion to others by being a final cause, to add.

This is doubtful, and where we might find some contradiction if we dig deep enough. The eternal circular motion described by Aristotle is a form, and therefore a formal cause rather than a final cause.

I think that for the unmoved movers, he meant them as a final cause.

It is a perfect circular motion, which by the nature of a circle, has no beginning or end. — Metaphysician Undercover

I had the understanding that the unmoved mover was necessary as it solved the issue of infinite regress, which Aristotle had an issue with based on the third man argument. If the unmoved mover is part of the perfect circular motion isn't it moving with the universe rather than causing the motion?

Simply put, the unmoved mover is contradictory. There is obviously a lot of technical philosophical machinery regarding causation that Aristotle develops independently from the cosmo argument he makes that underlies it, but sticking to just the concept of motion, here is a simple summary of the argument:

1. Motion exists
2. Anything in motion must have been brought into motion by something else
2a. A thing cannot cause itself to move (this needs to be either an assumption or inference from 2 in order for Aristotle to avoid obviously circular argumentation)
3. However, there cannot be an infinite chain of agents causing movement
4. Therefore, there must be something that causes motion which itself is not caused to move.

The conclusion at 4 contradicts the proposition in 2 from which it is derived. You can engage in all sorts of interpretative tricks to try and tease some deeper truth out of the argument, but at the end of the day it is simply illogical and does not work as sound human reasoning. The issue, of course, is the tension b/w premises 2 & 3. Aristotle is committed to both, but at least in the context of this argument they are neither coherent or compatible together. He is committed to 2 because he is scientific/empirical and cannot deny the obvious truth that there is motion in the world. He is committed to 3 because he believes that if there is no final cause (the unmoved mover in this case) then you can never give an explanation for the phenomena you're investigating, which in this case is motion.

Hold on, aren't unmoved movers supposed to be immaterial in nature?

How does it matter if they are?

It matters because motion, according to Aristotle, happens only in, say, the material universe, not the immaterial one.

This gets to why I didn't get into what I was calling his "technical philosophical machinery". You can restate the cosmological argument in terms of causes that don't necessarily reference motion, but that's not what the OP was focused on. You still get the same contradictions when you try to give the argument just in terms of causes. However, in that case you won't be able to invoke an arbitrary distinction b/w material and immaterial to try to save the day since causes for A could be either.

I think that Aristotle takes unmoved movers to be immaterial by definition. So they are not affected by motion in the material plane, and are thus immovable in that sense. They do however cause motion by thought, intellect, love and inspiration, beings in the material world doing that towards them, so they are movers. As for their causes, i think we can say they are their own cause, causa sui, how is it called. All this might be wrong and totally unfounded, but i dont see how it is contradictory.

I think you are correct in the immaterial nature of the unmoved. So does that make the unmoved an actuality or potentiality as it isn't in motion? As something that is immaterial by definition cannot perform physical action, making it a potentiality, which further my question as to how it creates motion.

1. The whole immaterial/material thing is kind of what I mean by saying you can engage in a lot of interpretative trickery to try to get this argument to work. However, when all is said and done, you can substitute "cause" for "motion" in the above outline I gave and get the same contradictory results, w/o having to posit any distinction b/w material and immaterial. The argument outline holds just as well for "immaterial" causes as for "material" one. That is why it is contradictory no matter how you interpret it.

Suffice it to say, on an intuitive level it seems to me that if you think immaterial causes explain material causes, like motion, but behave differently than material causes, that is an obvious begging of the question. The question begged is "how do immaterial causes bring about change to material objects without themselves being subject to causation?" The "unmoved mover" is no answer to this question, it is simply the claim that "well, they (i.e. immaterial causes) just do affect them". Either it is true that every cause itself has a cause (as A seems to think), or it is not. Aristotle can't have it both ways and maintain logical coherence.

2. w/re to causa sui, if A accepts such things, then he's failed at his own project. Causes are introduced in order to offer explanations for why things are the way they are (the Aristotelian "dia ti" question). A self-caused cause is no cause at all because it doesn't offer an explanation for why it whatever it is.

Well first of all, to say that I dont really know how or what creates motion, we are just discussing here Aristotle's philosophy on the matter, to see what he was blabbering about.

Now, I think unmoved movers would have to be full actuality, having capitalized on and exploited their potential in full, so that to become or rather be actual. Like someone who aspires to become a pilot, but isn't yet, well when he becomes, we can say that he actualized his potential, so that he is now an actual pilot instead of a potential one, with potentiality having been stripped away from him and turned into actuality. The idea that moved him in the first place was that of a pilot, so this was his unmoved mover, forever immovable, static and speechless, but nevertheless inspired him to move accordingly. So this is how motion in the physical world is created.

It's pure actuality. That's why their activity is thinking; Aristotle does not considers activity a motion. — Πετροκότσυφας

In terms of just Aristotelian interpretation, this is is probably as good as you're going to get. @Mattt

1. Motion exists
2. Anything in motion must have been brought into motion by something else
2a. A thing cannot cause itself to move (this needs to be either an assumption or inference from 2 in order for Aristotle to avoid obviously circular argumentation)
3. However, there cannot be an infinite chain of agents causing movement
4. Therefore, there must be something that causes motion which itself is not caused to move. — Mentalusion

Do you believe that any agency can occur in absence of motive(s) for that which the agents perform (think, act, etc.)?

I personally don’t. But then this evokes an issue of motives as driving forces for any agent's performance—and I don’t take motives to be in and of themselves agents but, instead, that which agents intend to manifest.

To my understanding, in Aristotelian causal structures, motives are teleological causes/reasons for motion—i.e., they are part and parcel of Aristotle’s final causes.

So, in this given line of thought, it’s not about an infinite chain of agents but an infinite chain of motives via which agents act.

Now, I’ve only read of Aristotelian metaphysics from secondhand sources—with excerpts from De Anima as exception—so I’m not claiming to go by first-hand knowledge of what Aristotle argued.

Nevertheless, given the reasons aforementioned, Aristotle’s “unmoved mover” then seems to me to be an uncreated fixed motive that either encapsulates or else results in all other motives, including those antagonistic to it … this rather than an agent (i.e.., something that engages in [motive-driven] thoughts).

I’ll certainly not argue against those who hold first-hand knowledge of Aristotle’s metaphysics, but this is how I’ve so far interpreted Aristotle’s position.

He doesn't have it both ways. He differentiates between an efficient cause and a final cause. If the prime mover was an efficient cause, it would be an uncaused caused and he would have it both ways. That's why in his system motion is eternal as are prime movers which are final causes, not efficient causes. — Πετροκότσυφας

I don't disagree with this as a reading of what A wants to say, and in particular that he differentiates final and efficient cause (among other types of cause, I believe). My only point was that it does not seem to me that the distinction b/w final and efficient causes in fact tells you anything about how efficient cause comes to be in the first place, except by introducing a tertium quid the sole (or one main) purpose of which is to avoid an infinite regress. The OP said that the concept of an "unmoved mover" seemed contradictory to him/her. I was merely trying to point out that one reason it seems that way is because it may in fact be so, despite A's complex efforts to make it otherwise.

Do you believe that any agency can occur in absence of motive(s) for that which the agents perform (think, act, etc.)? — javra

I was merely attempting to provide a very coarse, formal outline for what I take a cosmological argument to look like and was not advocating for the soundness of any of the premises.

OK. However: Were Aristotle’s unmoved mover to be a motive rather than an agency, would you still find 2 & 4 to necessarily contradict?

As for me, Aristotle’s difficulty from the vantage of today’s world is in showing how inanimate objects are governed by motives. But again, while I’m aware that concepts such as that of the Anima Mundi were prevalent back then, I haven’t read his works myself.

I'll say that I find A's taxonomy of causes interesting and reasonable (although not rational). I think it also tells us something - maybe even a lot - about what a platonic "secret teaching" might have looked like, if you accept there was such a thing. However, when all is said and done, I do not understand (and that is the pejorative "i don't understand") how one type of cause can affect another type cause such that the explanation for how that happens is not either contradictory or question begging.

However, when all is said and done, I do not understand (and that is the pejorative "i don't understand") how one type of cause can affect another type cause such that the explanation for how that happens is not either contradictory or question begging. — Mentalusion

In case you’d like to explore the issue:

As to agents, such as ourselves, our motives are not of themselves efficient causes for what we choose. In a way, at least, that which we choose to do is itself an efficient causation—one which commences with our current state of being making the choice to act and which holds the particular act as the resulting effect. Our motive(s) for these choices, however, governs what we choose by serving at a telos: a future we intend to manifest and are driven by in the choices we make between alternatives. Though which alternative best satisfies out motive-as-telos is fully up to us to decide upon. This is of course conceivable only when one entertains the possibility of a reality that is not fully governed by strict causal determinism.

As to efficient causation that occurs between all inanimate givens, by today’s standards one can hypothetically conjoin what we know of physical entropy (which I take to be somewhat different then entropy as defined by IT) with Aristotelian notions of final cause so as to result in the following: all inanimate efficient causation holds as its motive optimal entropy.

I’m not trying to insinuate that so entertaining of a sudden resolves everything. But I think both scenarios can illustrate how different types of causes—here, namely, particular efficient and final causes—can interact in manners such that both are conceivably governed by an “eternal” final causation.

So I'm not here intending to address the details of how things work but to illustrate how different types of causes can conceivably interact in manners that are neither contradictory nor question begging.

The big issue here, imo, is how agency interacts with inanimate efficient causation in manners that, as you say, are neither contradictory not question begging. To me, one very good example of this would be how inanimate organic matter results in a living—rather than dead—unicellular organism; inanimate matter being of inanimate efficient causation and the living unicellular organism being of a very undeveloped yet still present agency. This would of course be contingent on the entire metaphysical ontology that is presupposed, and I don’t know enough about Aristotelian philosophy to comment on how Aristotle resolves this. Well, other than that he also makes use of formal causation.

Yeah, you are probably right that they are not self caused.
Huh, the unmoved movers always troubled me!

1. It is not our fault that Aristotle makes a distinction between the two, the immaterial/material I mean, but I don't see it as trickery. Apart from that, I agree with Πετροκότσυφας. And I think that A introduces the concept of unmoved movers out of necessity, logical necessity that is, that there has to be such entities, if motion in the world can be explained at all. He arrived there to avoid circular argumentation, as has already been said, but then again objects affected by the unmoved movers move in circular motion, so it seems that the circle has been transferred from the logical and the metaphysical to the physical.

2. Duly noted.

I guess if you could give an example of how you think his cosmological argument is formulated, that would be helpful for making sure we're on the same page in terms of understanding what argument we're talking about. My concern is that in the formulation I give you can't avoid a contradiction without introducing ambiguity into the terms of the argument/ The relevant term in this case obviously being 'cause' which means "efficient cause" in one context, but "final cause" in another in the same argument. That is not a valid form of argument, even for Aristotle.

"trickery" is admittedly unfair since it suggests he is being dishonest somehow, but is only meant to convey the illegitimate semantic dance he does as described above in order to make the argument go through.

It's been a while since I studied Aristotle, and I don't have the time nor energy to go through it again, so I will answer by memory, whatever I remember, like I were on a desert island with no access to resources.

So he says that there are four causes, if I remember him correctly, efficient, formal, final and one more I think, which eludes me. When he discuses unmoved movers, he says that they are final causes, not efficient nor formal or whatsoever, probably owing to the fact that they are immaterial. But objects in the physical world that consist of matter, they ... are all four causes, I think he uses the example of a sculptor that makes a statue to explain better what he means. So I don't see a contradiction there, but one can say that he makes arbitrary and unsolicited distinctions, which is a different thing.

It's been a while since I studied Aristotle — Pussycat

same here.

efficient, formal, final and one more I think, which eludes me. — Pussycat

I think those are right and that the 4th one is the 'material' cause - basically, the 'stuff' a thing is made from.