Not So Obscure: Thoughts on the eve of the new fast

In one of my recent comments on this blog I invoke Aristotle's Four Cause Theory-- that an effect has four identifiable causes;

1. Material Cause: the material of which the effect is made (a statue of stone, so the material cause of a statue is stone)
2. Efficient Cause: the (physical?) agency that marshals the effort to shape the material (human arms that chiseled the statue)
3. Formal Cause: The design that artists mind, or the program that drives the agency in (2) above.
4. Final Cause: The purpose that motivates the final cause. For the statue, it may be the need to satisfy a customer.

The Supreme Court recently heard a case on the patentability of software. As you'd see from the list above, it is unclear where "software" lies among (2) and (3) above. I hold that patent laws have been seen in the US justice system to apply to the "efficient cause". In the case of software, is it the efficient cause or the formal cause of problem solving? I'd say that is the nub of the issue.

I hold that it is the efficient cause, and so should be patentable. Red Hat lawyers, on the other had, do not. They argue,

"the Supreme Court and lower courts had held that abstractions couldn't be patented and that a patent needed to cover an abstraction incorporated into a particular machine, or be a process that "transforms a particular article into a different state or thing," Tiller wrote."

The wording "an abstraction incorporated into a particular machine," suggests they believe the machine is the efficient cause, the code the formal cause. And therefore a machines is patentable, and software not patentable.

This just to illustrate that these philosophical concepts are more applicable than we credit them. And that fasting is productive of philosophical thought.