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prodigalson2011
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A) I don’t think you understand the Aristotelian concept of “final cause”:
The final cause is that for the sake of which a thing exists, or is done - including both purposeful and instrumental actions. The final cause, or telos, is the purpose, or end, that something is supposed to serve.
Nowhere does it suggest that the imposition of this purpose by an outside force negates its having a final cause.
According to Aristotle, once a final cause is in place, the material, efficient and formal causes follow by necessity.
These other causes would include those aforementioned aspects of human conception and activity. What you fail to acknowledge is that humans have the ability to alter the nature of things. We have teleological power.
B) Once matter is arranged into the form of “hammer,” it too acquires an objective intrinsic behavior, in terms, just like atoms, of physics. To wit:
A hammer is basically a force amplifier that works by converting mechanical work into kinetic energy and back. In the swing that precedes each blow, a certain amount of kinetic energy gets stored in the hammer’s head, equal to the length D of the swing times the force f produced by the muscles of the arm and by gravity. When the hammer strikes, the head gets stopped by an opposite force coming from the target; which is equal and opposite to the force applied by the head to the target. If the target is a hard and heavy object, or if it is resting on some sort of anvil, the head can travel only a very short distance d before stopping. Since the stopping force F times that distance must be equal to the head’s kinetic energy, it follows that F will be much greater than the original driving force f — roughly, by a factor D/d. In this way, great strength is not needed to produce a force strong enough to bend steel, or crack the hardest stone.
This is behavior intrinsic to all hammers by the nature of their form.
C) Once matter is arranged into the form of “hammer”, it also acquires an identity. In English, that identity is… hammer!
Just as we recognize an atom by its physical construct and behavior, so too do we identify a hammer by the same means. If you want some common sense proof of this, try showing an intelligent human being pictures of as many different hammers as you wish and see how long it takes them to be unable to identify the hammer. Then have a scientist friend record the effects of you using different hammers and see if they deviate from the formula described above. They won’t. This is because the form of a hammer is objective inasmuch as it corresponds to a specific type of physical construction and is immediately recognizable.
These are not straw men, and this is not a matter of pride. I genuinely believe you are misguided; I don’t mean any offense, as I’m sure you mean no offense to me.
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tonyrey
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Unless persons are merely physical objects!
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prodigalson2011
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You’re in a philosophy forum. You’re going to need to be able to logically demonstrate such claims.
That life has no objective purpose assumes it is a chance event.Reality is rational in that it operates on an orderly set of principles. If reality were not rational, we wouldn’t be able to understand it. Science wouldn’t work.
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tonyrey
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tonyrey
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Peter_Plato
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Changes do not add up to “therefore a different dog.” It could be the same dog, just changed. Why assume different dog when there is not reason to do so. I am the same being I was when conceived. It is part of the nature of a human being (and pretty much every other thing) to change over time. That does not mean each thing has become something completely different just because it changed a little or even a lot.
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Peter_Plato
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This assumes a supra-supernatural point of view on your part; a purview that is beyond the universe itself and beyond any possible cosmic creator. It is a claim that accounts for all possible purpose or lack of it. What credentials do you have to make such a claim?
New ID theorists like Meyer are presenting a strong case that the DNA coding (the complex order and arrangement of the nucleotide bases along the spine of the DNA molecule) in cells could not have arisen from any biochemical process that we know of but are strongly indicative of intelligent origin. You cannot just dismiss this with a baseless claim that the universe is purposeless. How could you know that absent a supra-metaphysical perspective?
Or existing purpose might be detectable and not merely assigned by beings living in the universe; or it could originate from intentional design from outside space and time. You can’t, by fiat, simply dismiss other possibilities without justification given your limited perspective and knowledge. Evidence of design is detectable (and not merely assigned) in the universe.
A bird’s wings are clearly designed for the purpose of flight. Humans do not assign that purpose to wings, it is there and obviously so. Whether that purpose arose as a result of intentional design on the part of supernatural intelligence or whether matter has some inherent features that would allow the development and coordination of a massive array of features to enable flight is still undetermined. Evolutionary theory has confirmed the possibility of small changes to existing features over time, but has not confirmed the capacity to invent a wide array of novel, complex and functional body morphology.
You can’t just sweep that fact away blithely.
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Peter_Plato
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If beings living in the physical universe can assign purpose, then the physical universe ipso facto has purpose in it. The purposeful action of those very beings in the act of assigning purpose means that purpose exists in the universe. This refutes your first statement.
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Peter_Plato
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For the sake of clarity, the word purpose has multiple meanings. At least two of them apply here.
The problem, I believe, comes down to the presence of a subject to “intend” or assign the desired result for meaning #2 to apply. That possibility is, by some posters, restricted to **human subjects **alone, thereby eliminating any other possible subject by definition. The point is, though, that such a position begs the question by merely defining out of the picture the possibility of any other candidate subjects for assigning intent.
Take for example a chair that I design. The legs on that chair are intended (assigned purpose) to support the chair and anyone sitting in it. Also, however, the reason (inherent purpose) the legs are there is to support the weight of the sitter.
Now, abstract this idea to the legs of a bird. Obviously, the reason (inherent purpose) for the legs of a bird are, like the inherent purpose of the legs of the chair, to support the weight of the bird. This should be indisputable. The inherent purpose (the reason the legs exist in both cases) is the same: to support weight. So human-made artifacts, like a chair, can have the same inherent purpose as natural entities. This, you may recall was in hot dispute a number of posts ago.
However, the assigned purpose (meaning #2), aka the “intended result,” is still disputable. Certainly, this is subjectively assigned, so humans would likely have assigned purposes for parts of constructed objects, but in nature, assigned purpose would be dependent upon the existence of a divine Creator, which means that natural structures might not have a divinely assigned purpose if they arose sans intended design. However, human subjects could still assign purpose to naturally occuring parts for explanatory reasons. So even in nature, objects might have assigned purpose to aid our understanding of how naturally occurring entities work. Or we might even assign new purposes to natural things, for example, use a sponge for washing.
Given this I see no issue with claiming that both human artifacts and natural entities might have inherent (reason for) and assigned (intended aim) purposes.
I hope this adds some clarity to this controversial issue.
- the reason for which something exists or is done, made, used, etc.
- an intended or desired result; end; aim; goal.
The problem, I believe, comes down to the presence of a subject to “intend” or assign the desired result for meaning #2 to apply. That possibility is, by some posters, restricted to **human subjects **alone, thereby eliminating any other possible subject by definition. The point is, though, that such a position begs the question by merely defining out of the picture the possibility of any other candidate subjects for assigning intent.
Take for example a chair that I design. The legs on that chair are intended (assigned purpose) to support the chair and anyone sitting in it. Also, however, the reason (inherent purpose) the legs are there is to support the weight of the sitter.
Now, abstract this idea to the legs of a bird. Obviously, the reason (inherent purpose) for the legs of a bird are, like the inherent purpose of the legs of the chair, to support the weight of the bird. This should be indisputable. The inherent purpose (the reason the legs exist in both cases) is the same: to support weight. So human-made artifacts, like a chair, can have the same inherent purpose as natural entities. This, you may recall was in hot dispute a number of posts ago.
However, the assigned purpose (meaning #2), aka the “intended result,” is still disputable. Certainly, this is subjectively assigned, so humans would likely have assigned purposes for parts of constructed objects, but in nature, assigned purpose would be dependent upon the existence of a divine Creator, which means that natural structures might not have a divinely assigned purpose if they arose sans intended design. However, human subjects could still assign purpose to naturally occuring parts for explanatory reasons. So even in nature, objects might have assigned purpose to aid our understanding of how naturally occurring entities work. Or we might even assign new purposes to natural things, for example, use a sponge for washing.
Given this I see no issue with claiming that both human artifacts and natural entities might have inherent (reason for) and assigned (intended aim) purposes.
I hope this adds some clarity to this controversial issue.
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tonyrey
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Thanks to your post it is pellucid!- Purpose is both subjective and objective but in this context “subjective” doesn’t mean “illusory”.
- Like decisions our purposes are as real as physical objects - and often far more significant.
- Much of the needless suffering in the world is caused by what occurs in human minds.
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Sair
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A matter of semantics, as you must see. The claim that the universe is purposeless is meant in a different context to the claim that purpose exists within the universe. The universe itself requires no ultimate purpose in order to give rise, naturally, to particular purpose relating to particular entities within it. It’s quite obvious that human purpose has no meaning or significance to the grand scheme of nature - natural disasters just on our own planet should be enough evidence of that…
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tonyrey
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What evidence is there to support that dogmatic assertion?
The occurrence of natural disasters has no bearing whatsoever on the significance of personal activity - unless one assumes persons consist solely of particles… That position is at least consistent in its rejection of reason as a fundamental reality. An absurd universe naturally produces all sorts of absurdities…
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rossum
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Nor do you explain its origin, you merely assert that Purpose (capital-P) has always existed.
Purposeful activity is an emergent phenomenon of life.
A purpose is as real as anything else. Remember also that an illusion is not nothing. It may not be what is appears to be, but it is not nothing. A mirage is not water, but neither is it nothing. Nothing does not appear to be water.
rossum
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rossum
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Here is where we differ. If it is the same, then it cannot have changed. If it has changed, then it cannot be the same. To me this is the equivalent of saying 1 = 2.
You see stasis as more important, so you ignore small changes. I see change as more fundamental, so I do not.
rossum
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rossum
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Or else birds are the descendants of many ancestors, each of which could fly very slightly better than their predecessors. However, that is getting perilously close to a banned topic.
According to some definitions of “design”, (Dr. Dembski was a little careless one day), natural selection is a design mechanism – it selects between possible alternatives.
rossum
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rossum
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I exist in the universe. However, I have not always existed in the universe. I had a beginning. The same with purposes, they start and they end. They are not permanent. There is nothing fundamental about my personal existence, any more than there is anything fundamental about the existence of various purposes.
Small-p purpose exists. Capital-P Purpose does not. I am objecting to the reifying of purpose into something fundamental.
rossum
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Sair
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Um…I think the dogmatic assertion is on your side, actually - there simply is no evidence to support the notion that the universe has any underlying purpose for its existence; at the same time, there is ample evidence that what we experience as human purpose has come about through the natural processes of evolution.
Well, you’re right in the sense that there is no apparent relationship between natural disasters and human purpose - the former will happen with or without the latter, and there is plenty of evidence, through the geological record, that they did so.The occurrence of natural disasters has no bearing whatsoever on the significance of personal activity - unless one assumes persons consist solely of particles… That position is at least consistent in its rejection of reason as a fundamental reality. An absurd universe naturally produces all sorts of absurdities…
I’m not sure, actually, what point you are trying to make here - the fact of natural disasters clearly pays no heed to the existence or otherwise of sentient beings who might suffer because of such occurences; it’s quite obvious that such events as earthquakes, tsunamis, bushfires, hurricanes etc pay no heed to mere human purposes. Seems a little inconsistent with the notion of a world deliberately designed with human interests in mind, don’t you think?
And I have never claimed that reason is a fundamental reality, in the sense that it must have existed prior to the circumstances in which it arose - the universe works the way it works, and it’s actually quite consistent with the notion of a naturalistic universe to suppose that such entities as evolved within it (such as ourselves) would develop the ability to comprehend the way our particular world operates.
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Peter_Plato
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This is an assertion that is assumed not demonstrated.
In an intelligible universe where the predictable causal order is the predominant feature, i.e., causes giving rise to predictable effects, it is very easy to make a connection to consciousness as an “intended” phenomenon because consciousness of the predictable causal order is precisely what allows purposeful activity to occur. The capacity to control the predictable causal order through purposeful activity seems to be, itself, a “purposed” end of the causal chain in the universe. In a sense, it is as if matter, through the causal order purposefully allowed for the possibility of taking control of the causal order and hence its own destiny. Consciousness itself seems purposed as an “end” of the physical universe, not simply a chance emergent feature. Why would matter give rise to purposeful activity? Why would purposeless (blind causation) give rise to the complex series of antecedent conditions that would allow for purposeful activity? Emergent property perhaps, but a purposely intended one, no?
Put this together with the fine tuning of the universe and you get a strong case for purposeful activity as an inherent feature of the universe. At least a far stronger case for accepting purposeful activity as a feature than has been made for denying it. Denying it comes down to the assertion that “there is no proof.” There may not be proof, but there is strong evidence.
What is the proof for the possibility of blind causation giving rise to consciousness without simply begging the question by claiming the causal order of the universe has been blindly wrought? You can’t know that a priori!
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Peter_Plato
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This assumes the “natural process of evolution” is not a purposed one, which begs the question. It also assumes evolution originated life and hence human purpose to begin with. There is not a shred of evidence that the origin of life has anything to do with evolution. Evolution presupposes something to make changes to, it doesn’t explain why life began.
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