“Today is a great triumph. There is a king of Spain. He has been found at last. That king is me.” ~ Nikolai Gogol
What makes a “social object” “really real”? What is a “social object”, and what would it mean for anything to be “really real”, as opposed to just plain real? The common-sense (ala naive) understanding, is to suggest that things like chairs and tennis balls and bullets are “really real”, while things like “money” and “borders” and “kings” are only just “socially” real (if real at all). However, depending on the scope of the analysis, it is not so easy to draw the line implicit in the previous examples.
Aristotle’s argument in Physics II 8 can be summarized as follows:
Dogs typically develop teeth good for biting and chewing.
A typical result is not a coincidence.
So it’s not a coincidence that dogs develop teeth good for biting and chewing.
If the development is not coincidental, it must be “for something”.
So the dog’s development is “for something”. (that is, it is goal-directed)
The problem with this argument lies in premise 4. Aristotle’s use of “for something”, implies some conscious agent that has intended the thing to be the case. You make this implication clear yourself, by calling the development “goal directed”.
