Against final causality

[tonyrey]

• The whole teleological argument is meaningless, it attempts to impose some anthropomorphic feature onto the unthinking reality.*

There is no doubt that materialists are often thoughtless because they underestimate the value and significance of thought. David Hume is a prime example with his description of thought as “a little agitation of the brain”. No wonder he retired to play backgammon when he realised the absurdity of his view that we are “bundles of perceptions”…

His ingenuity led to vacuity - in more senses than one.

 

[tonyrey]

Very good post 1AugustSon,

It appears to me that if we deny the final cause, the purpose of the thing, then we are left to say that things happen by chance. But what happens by chance or accident is outside the ordinary course of events. For we find that in the things of nature, efficient causes almost always produce a determinate effect unless they are impeded in some way or another. A man begets a man, and a lion begets a lion. An acorn becomes an oak tree. Now if it was by chance that an acorn became an oak tree, their would be no reason why an acorn might produce a man or lion at some other time which is plainly absurd. Consequently, that an acorn always produces an oak tree and a lion always begets a lion is not a consequence of chance.

In other words purposeless processes are supposed to have become purposeful by some inexplicable “scientific” conjuring trick. It would be more consistent to believe purpose is an illusion and leave it at that.

 

[tonyrey]

polytropos;11202708:

Final causes, on the Thomistic view, are generally taken to explain why efficient causes can occur, ie. A can only be the efficient cause of B if B is the final cause of A. But the final cause is there whether or not the efficient cause is (whether or not the final cause is knowable). For instance, a strand of DNA has a final cause of unwinding, duplicating, and repackaging, but its form is certainly such that it is directed toward that end whether or not it actually does.

The fact that not all ends are attained does not imply that there are no ends. It remains to be explained how efficient causes became goal-seeking in biological organisms rather than remain aimless inorganic processes.

Can final causes change, evolve? Are they fixed eternally, or can they – in principle – change in the same way that a language changes, over time. In other words, are you positing that final causes can be malleable. Over the course of millions, if not billions of years, have certain causes gone extinct – or become greatly modified – with new final causes taking their place?

The progressive development of living organisms due to goal-seeking - which is the fundamental final cause - is certainly not adequately explained by aimless efficient causes.

And can something have more than one final cause? Is it always rigidly linear, or can it more like a fork? Or perhaps, is it a case a “primary” final cause and numerous secondary final causes. I’m asking, in particular, as regards human beings. Or is it that the human being, through free will, creates the final cause of his or her behavior – the gift of freedom.

The alternative is to believe we are biological machines which are neither rational nor responsible for our thoughts or actions. Free will is a form of creative power that cannot be explained by a mechanistic interpretation of reality.

Are there, then, aspects of human life in which no final cause exists? Let’s take the question of musical appreciation. A human being may not like music, but may not be insensible to other forms of artistic expression. Or perhaps he likes music, but not classical music. Instead, he prefers jazz. How would one articulate final cause vis-a-vis this aspect of human behavior – or would one? In other words, to what extent do humans – endowed with free will and complex thought – have more “leeway”, more breathing room, vis-a-vis final causes, than a strand of DNA? Is there a final cause in every aspect of one’s humanity, or only in certain things?

It is impossible to know the exact extent of free will - and consequently of final causality - but to deny it exists is to abandon our claim to be rational. If we couldn’t choose what to think we couldn’t rely on our conclusions to any significant extent - and certainly not about the nature of reality. If thought is merely “a little agitation of the brain” we are wasting our time groping in the dark.

 

[tonyrey]

final causes can be understood as the final purpose of a thing or as an explanation of how efficient causes work.
Saddling a proponent of final causes as defending the thesis that an avalanche aims to destroy a village or that a rock falls because it “becomes jubilant,” to be in contact with the ground is to make a travesty of their position, gross distortions of what classical thinkers had in mind.

A typical evasion of how goal-seeking in living organisms originated…

 

[tonyrey]

A basic philosophical position in the Aristetolian-Thomist tradition is the notion of immanent teleology. Things “aim to” or “point to” the fulfilling of their potentialities. It is not mere efficient or formal causes at work here; telos is something “in-built” in the nature of things. Of course, just because Aquinas, Aristotle or other important thinkers defended final causes does not necessarily mean they were correct. And in fact this notion has been challenged by people like Duns Scotus (who spoke of final causes as “a flight towards fantasy”), Cardinal Cajetan, Francisco Suarez and William of Ockham.

There are at least three reasons to doubt immanent telos:

1-Parsimony. Final causes do not add anything over and above what efficient causes can do. Efficient causes are enough to do the work of immanent telos. The latter is an extra assumption we can do without.

Efficient causes are neither directive nor goal-seeking. They cannot explain the plasticity of living organisms any more than physics and chemistry can explain biology.

2-Only rational self-movers can have a purpose. What is necessary for rational beings to act for the sake of an end? Rationality, we can act for the sake of an end and order the means to achieve it. That we’re self-movers runs counter to another Thomist/Aristetolian belief, but I will not address this particular issue here. I’ll merely point out that nature lacks rationality and cannot will an end. Does lack of rationality disprove immanent teleology? Maybe not, but it suggests something else, namely, It suggests that assigning ends to non-rational nature is a category mistake: projecting our ability to conciously seeks some ends to non-concnious nature.

Nature lacks rationality but it has a rational basis. Do you believe its richness and beauty are adequately explained by **aimless **processes?

3- Sometimes it is said that final causes are needed explain the apparent purpossiveness of nature, but this is no true: God can will some ends and order the means to achieve it without need to appeal to immanent teleology.

What are those means and how do they function purposefully?

Is teleology useless, then? No, teleological talk can be useful as explanations of how efficient causes operate, but not as an extra category that is intrinsic to nature.

Telelology is not confined to how efficient causes operate because it provides a reference to future states which would otherwise be lacking. Inanimate processes have reached a dead end - in more senses than one!

 

[DanAl]

Please read my reply below.

I am a stickler for clarity. We live toady, with meanings that are assigned in today’s world. “Meanings” are not absolute, they keep changing as time goes on. To be called a “liberal” was a praise a few decades ago, its meaning was crystal clear: “someone who likes, cherishes freedom or liberty”. This meaning has been modified, and today if one wishes to express the same attitude, then a new word “libertarian” or “classic liberal” must be used. The “old” term of “liberal” is almost a “cuss-word” today and this change happened in a few decades, not many hundreds of years.

How can meaning change? Meaning simply is. What you mean is that the words and definition used to convey particular meaning changes.

Why should one accept ancient, outmoded definitions? Translate them into modern terminology. When these words have been coined, there was no understanding of the concept of “cause and effect” which exist in the physical world. Causation is a physical interaction between two objects, and it involves the exchange of elementary particles. All that gobbledygook of “final”, “material”, “formal” and “efficient” causes were developed, since the people did not understand what causation IS, and so they speculated and came up with a bunch of useless definitions.

Why shouldn’t we accept an older meaning attached to a word? Learn what is meant by something or ask around. Would you be a stickler about charms or weird particles or are you just showing your distaste for all things medieval? That would be intellectually lazy. Furthermore many of these words have no neat, condensed modern definitions; what is the modern translation of final causes or haecceity?

We know what causality is? That would come as a surprise to many physicists and modern philosophers that disagree as to what it is. Medieval terms are not useless definitions, they have specific meanings behind them…be honest; you could learn what is meant by those words but it is your apathy/ignorance that drives you to call them useless.

To assign a “telos” indicates a conscious mind. “Telos” is definitely an “end” toward something could move toward. Of course “objects” (in general) do not “tend” to move to an end. Immaterial objects are simply affected by the environment. “Living” objects attempt to maintain their homeostasis in a changing environment, and when the “transmission errors” accumulate, they cease to be “living”. That could be understood as a “final” state.

The whole “teleological argument”, which is just a different version of the “design argument” is bogus. It confuses “order” with “design”. We can observe the order in nature, but order does not imply “design”. Order can be adequately explained by the laws of nature, some of which are deterministic and others are stochastic.

Of course, telos can be re-framed as efficient causes guided by a mind, AKA God. Dismissing telos without qualification renders the order of the universe mysterious. Saying that, for example, inanimate objects are affected by the environment does not solve the problem. Are these efficient causes contingent? Then why do they behave the way they do over and over? Are they logically necessary? How so? And so forth.

 

[Bagheera]

How can meaning change? Meaning simply is.

Is what? Meaning of a “word” gets assigned in a communication channel, and it is mutually agreed upon between the sender and the receiver. The meaning is a connection between an arbitrary sequence of “letters” (or sounds) with a referent. The referent can be a physical object (table), an abstraction (number), or a fully imaginary “entity” (angels, demons, leprechauns).

Furthermore many of these words have no neat, condensed modern definitions; what is the modern translation of final causes or haecceity?

And there is a very good reason for that - they are obsolete. There are hundreds of words which are meaningless today, since they refer to nonexistent “objects” or occupations.

We know what causality is? That would come as a surprise to many physicists and modern philosophers that disagree as to what it is.

Only to some philosophers.

Of course, telos can be re-framed as efficient causes guided by a mind, AKA God.

Oh, brother. What a logical error. “Telos” needs no “God”, only a mind. To try to smuggle in God (the alleged end point of the “teleological proof”) is called the fallacy of “question begging”.

Dismissing telos without qualification renders the order of the universe mysterious. Saying that, for example, inanimate objects are affected by the environment does not solve the problem. Are these efficient causes contingent? Then why do they behave the way they do over and over? Are they logically necessary? How so? And so forth.

Nothing “mysterious” about it. The causes and their effects depend on the underlying physical reality, which is uniform. And the concept of “necessary” vs. “contingent” dichotomy is just as useless as many of the other medieval terms. There is no “entity” which would be present in all the “possible worlds” - therefore there is no “necessary” existence. In relative terms, these concepts are meaningful, of course. When a father-child relationship is contemplated, the existence of the father is logically necessary, while the existence of the child is contingent upon the father.

(By the way, every time I see the term “efficient causation”, I need to grin. What about the opposite… the INefficient causation? Something that does not succeed as intended? One example would be “teleological argument” for God’s existence, along with all the other arguments.) You can read them here.

 

[Linux]

Are these efficient causes contingent? Then why do they behave the way they do over and over? Are they logically necessary? How so? And so forth.

I think you just hit the nail on the head DanAI.

Of course, if a being is contingent, then its behaviour is contingent. If its behaviour is contingent then it does not have to behave in a particular way, for it is meaningless to say its behaviour is necessary when its very being is unnecessary. Therefore what directs it to its goal? For it is not itself that directs itself. Thus the only reasonable conclusion is that its being directed to that end by an intelligent being; otherwise you lack an efficient cause for goal directness which leads to the contradiction that the laws of a things behaviour comes out of nothing by itself.

 

[Bagheera]

I think you just hit the nail on the head DanAI.

Too bad he left his thumb on the head of that nail, when he hit it with the hammer.

Of course, if a being is contingent, then its behaviour is contingent. If its behaviour is contingent then it does not have to behave in a particular way, for it is meaningless to say its behaviour is necessary when its very being is unnecessary. Therefore what directs it to its goal? For it is not itself that directs itself. Thus the only reasonable conclusion is that its being directed to that end by an intelligent being; otherwise you lack an efficient cause for goal directness which leads to the contradiction that the laws of a things behaviour comes out of nothing by itself.

There is no “goal” in the inanimate world. Only beings with minds can have “goals”, and yes, they create their own goals.

 

[tonyrey]

I think you just hit the nail on the head DanAI.

Of course, if a being is contingent, then its behaviour is contingent. If its behaviour is contingent then it does not have to behave in a particular way, for it is meaningless to say its behaviour is necessary when its very being is unnecessary. Therefore what directs it to its goal? For it is not itself that directs itself. Thus the only reasonable conclusion is that its being directed to that end by an intelligent being; otherwise you lack an efficient cause for goal directness which leads to the contradiction that the laws of a things behaviour comes out of nothing by itself.

Materialists believe the laws of nature come out of nothing by themselves - as if by magic…

The laws of nature do not explain goals but they provide the basis for goal-seeking activity: a fact that requires explanation and reduces materialists to impotent silence.

 

[Bagheera]

Of course, if a being is contingent, then its behaviour is contingent.

The word “contingent” has two different meanings. One is that it only exists in some (but not all) possible worlds, and the other one is that it depends on another entity. You managed to confuse the two.

Electrons only exist in some of the possible worlds, but their “behavior” is not contingent upon anything. Their counterparts (positrons) also exist in some (but not all) possible worlds.

If you would like to prove the existence of a “necessary” being, then you must examine all the different possible worlds, and show that there is “some object” (abstractions are NOT objects) which exists in all of them. Since there are infinitely many possible worlds, this endeavor is impossible. On the other hand, to prove that there is no “necessary” being, all we have to do is to posit two possible worlds, which have nothing in common - and that is childishly simple.

One solution to this question are two worlds, where one consists of one (and only one) electron, and the other one consists of one (and only one) positron. Both are possible worlds, and they have nothing in common. Therefore there is no “necessary” being. Q.E.D.

 

[Bahman]

Underlying laws of nature (if we believe there is any law) are neither causal nor random.

Free will argument: Imagine the number of laws are finite which means that a creature like us can deduce how a system goes from state A to state B in causal way. You can easily understand that you can not fit free will in this picture since free will is lost once we apply the above statement to mind a human being.

 

[Bagheera]

Underlying laws of nature (if we believe there is any law) are neither causal nor random.

True. Moreover they are not the result of some “magic”, no matter how many times this idiocy is repeated.

Free will argument: Imagine the number of laws are finite which means that a creature like us can deduce how a system goes from state A to state B in causal way. You can easily understand that you can not fit free will in this picture since free will is lost once we apply the above statement to mind a human being.

Not true. “Free will” simply means that the decisions of a person are not determined by outside “forces” (of course they would be “influenced” by the environment). We have free will, if

1. the person has some desire he wishes to fulfill,
2. there are at least two possible ways that this desire can be fulfilled, and
3. the locus of decision rests with this person.

The actual process to reach that decision is irrelevant, as long as it fully resides within that person.

 

[Bahman]

1. the person has some desire he wishes to fulfill,
2. there are at least two possible ways that this desire can be fulfilled, and

These two define the state of mind before decision is made, lets call it state A.

1. the locus of decision rests with this person.

If we accept that laws of nature are causal and they apply to mind as well, then this means that the state of mind A goes to state mind B in causal way, leading to an outcome/choice that the person has no control on it whatsoever. Simply the concept of free will is lost in causal point of view.

 

[Bagheera]

If we accept that laws of nature are causal and they apply to mind as well…

Big misunderstanding. They don’t apply.

The laws of nature apply to the electro-chemical activity of the brain, but they have nothing to do with the information itself which is processed by the brain. The neurons transmit the information in the shape of electricity and the exchange of molecules. What we do with it, is not limited by the laws of nature. In our thoughts we can travel faster than light, we can perform incredible actions which are impossible in the physical reality. The laws of nature have nothing to do with the laws of information processing. And the “free will” is all about information and its processing.

 

[Richca]

These two define the state of mind before decision is made, lets call it state A.
If we accept that laws of nature are causal and they apply to mind as well, then this means that the state of mind A goes to state mind B in causal way, leading to an outcome/choice that the person has no control on it whatsoever. Simply the concept of free will is lost in causal point of view.

Hello Bahman,
This would maybe be true if man’s intellect and will was a material substance. Catholics believe that man’s intellectual nature, i.e., his intellect and will is a spiritual substance. Now a spiritual substance is not composed of matter and consequently it is not dependent on the physical laws of matter or nature. So your conclusion does not hold.
There are a number of ways in which it can be demonstrated that human beings have a spiritual nature other than just a body. For example, the body of a person may tell him/her that they are hungry but a person may choose to starve themselves to death.

 

[tonyrey]

These two define the state of mind before decision is made, lets call it state A.

If we accept that laws of nature are causal and they apply to mind as well, then this means that the state of mind A goes to state mind B in causal way, leading to an outcome/choice that the person has no control on it whatsoever. Simply the concept of free will is lost in causal point of view.

Irrefutable! There is no loophole for the materialist.

 

[tonyrey]

Hello Bahman,
This would maybe be true if man’s intellect and will was a material substance. Catholics believe that man’s intellectual nature, i.e., his intellect and will is a spiritual substance. Now a spiritual substance is not composed of matter and consequently it is not dependent on the physical laws of matter or nature. So your conclusion does not hold.
There are a number of ways in which it can be demonstrated that human beings have a spiritual nature other than just a body. For example, the body of a person may tell him/her that they are hungry but a person may choose to starve themselves to death.

I think Bahman was exposing the flaw in applying causal explanations to human decisions! He is not a materialist.

 

[Bahman]

Big misunderstanding. They don’t apply.

The laws of nature apply to the electro-chemical activity of the brain, but they have nothing to do with the information itself which is processed by the brain. The neurons transmit the information in the shape of electricity and the exchange of molecules. What we do with it, is not limited by the laws of nature. In our thoughts we can travel faster than light, we can perform incredible actions which are impossible in the physical reality. The laws of nature have nothing to do with the laws of information processing. And the “free will” is all about information and its processing.

Can you tell me what is information in the brain if it is not electromagnetic wave and chemical state of neurons?

 

[SentinelofTruth]

Richca:

man’s intellectual nature, i.e., his intellect and will is a spiritual substance.

You sure got this right!

More relevant to the original topic:
I too have a beef with the concept of final causality. If it is posited as having actual causal relevance, then it seems frivolous and stupid. Efficient causes are by definition all that is needed to explain causality. To say that anything which moves as if it had intrinsic intentionality must have it would be foolish and idiotic. Also, keep in mind (not that I expect any of you to have figured this out) that physical things don’t have inherent existence. They only exist insofar as they are perceived. And here’s to prove it:
Imagine the computer you are using to read this post.
Now imagine what your visual field would look like if it contained that computer.
The “two” images are the same, aren’t they?
Thus, to imagine a physical thing is only to imagine a perception of that thing.
Therefore, physical things only exist insofar as they are perceived. The physical world is actually a lot like the matrix (except there’s no physical reality outside of it). And if physical things don’t even inherently exist, then how could they have inherent purpose, goal, or directedness?