The Fifth Way: Argument from Design

[IWantGod]

If God is the brute fact

God is not a brute fact.

A brute fact is something that exists for no rational reason; it’s existence is unintelligible. We say God exists because he is necessary, in the sense that there cannot be a coherent notion of existence without God. If you wish to replace that with something incoherent, then you are not really doing philosophy. You are just stating an opinion that satisfies you.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

And if you design an apple to do what it does then we cannot use the term ‘natural’ to describe it.

It depends on the context. Physical reality will behave in a particular way until an intelligence interferes with it. In a scientific context an intelligence has made it do what it wouldn’t naturally do if it were left alone.

That’s simple enough. The word natural is being used here to distinguish between events that are not being directly interfered with by an intelligence and ones that are. Outside of the scientific context words take on different meanings and relevance of a particular word has different consequences.

If God designed the laws of physics, that would have no relevance to what is meant by the word natural in scientific context. But since you wish to frame everything within the scientific context, you will continue to have difficulty understanding something quite simple.

God created nature, but God left nature to act according to it’s nature, in this sense things are acting naturally. If this is true, no amount of semantics is going to change that.

But you are not saying that physical reality is natural until an intelligence interferes with it. That’s not your proposal. Your proposal is that an intelligence has designed physical reality. And something which is designed, even if it has all the appearances of acting naturally, cannot by any stretch of the imagination be described as natural.

 

[IWantGod]

But you are not saying that physical reality is natural

I’m saying that physical reality behaves according to it’s nature and in that sense it is behaving naturally. But no, i wouldn’t say that physical reality is natural. The rest is just semantics and straw-men.

 

[AlNg]

free agent can initiate and terminate chain of causality.

What causes the free agent to act as she does?

 

[IWantGod]

What causes the free agent to act as she does?

My handsome good looks?

 

[AlNg]

The argument concerns entities lacking intelligence exhibiting causal regularity.

Why throw out any discussion of “intelligence” except that it shows that these arguments about causality and teleology are shown to be worthless when you take into account such natural factors, things which appear in nature and are part of our world.

 

[AlNg]

My handsome good looks?

This is a good example of why these arguments based on causality or teleology fail to convince skeptics who are trying to make sense of what is being argued. First of all your handsome good looks is a matter of opinion. There is a saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What one person may consider ugly, another person may find beauty. So the fact that you are handsome and have good looks is quite subjective and not something that will convince a skeptic that God or a First Cause exists.
Secondly, your good looks are not at all a mechanism for making certain decisions such as whether to have fried rice or boiled rice with your entree. The question remains as to what causes a free agent to act as she does?
Free will and consciousness are part of the natural world so there is no sense in presenting a theory of causality or teleology which is contradicted by the example of its existence.

 

[IWantGod]

So the fact that you are handsome and have good looks is quite subjective and not something that will convince a skeptic that God or a First Cause exists.

It was just a joke, calm down.

 

[Wesrock]

[I’ll no doubt proof-read and revise after hitting “Reply”, but I’ve been making noise about this for about 24 hours and I wanted to get it out there.]

So up to now I’ve simply been attempting to clarify the first proposition. I’ll now restructure the first two propositions in contemporary terms.

I. Many things lack intelligence.

While there are some people who question this, like STT did earlier, and some philosophers who hold that all natural things are first and foremost mental, I think this premise is generally accepted by most and does not require expansion for present purposes.

II. The things that lack intelligence act always, or nearly always, in the same way to produce the same results.

This is referring to causal regularity: that the same causes tend to produce the same effects rather than absolutely random effects. It is also an underlying premise of science which supposes that things of a certain type will continue to produce the same effects under the same conditions. Other causes can inhibit or prevent the effect from occurring

Propositions I and II are not intended to be deep or mysterious reflections. They are pretty self-evident and intuitive if you have any immediate experience with reality. This does not mean no one ever critiques them based on different suppositions about reality or challenges to epistemic or ontic claims. Responding to a critique may require us to get deep in order to defend and rationally justify the propositions. But the propositions themselves are pretty common sense observations and intuitions about things. How do these two propositions, if we for the sake of argument accept them as true, lead us to knowledge of God? St. Thomas provides us with the third proposition, which we will proceed to unpack and attempt to restate. In St. Thomas’ own words, “Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer.”

Do things that lack intelligence (see prop I) but still tend towards certain ends (see prop II) require “aiming” by something intelligent in order to do so? St. Thomas believes yes, but why?

Continued in next post.

 

[Wesrock]

Continued from previous post.

In the modern day we are very familiar with the notion of efficient causes. When I say that effect Z is caused by entity A, I am identifying A as the efficient cause of Z. An efficient cause is what brings an effect about, whether that effect is a thing or an event. In more Aristotlean terms, when I ask what actualized the potential of entity S to do or be effect Z, I am asking for the efficient cause, which in this example is entity A. This is all well and good. But to St. Thomas and Aristotleans today that is not enough to provide a coherent explanation, for why is A determined to cause Z (under the given conditions)? It is not that “Z” is special. It’s not a question of what are the chances of the effect being Z instead of X or y? We’re more interested in why A tends to any regularity at all, which in this case just happens to be to producing Z. There must be something about A that explains its regularity towards its ends, and Aristotleans call this determinant a final cause.

The final cause or end of an agent must be present to that agent in some way, otherwise it wouldn’t do anything at all. But it cannot be present as a real being. The end is only present as a real being after it has been produced, but the agent for as long as it is what it is is always ordered towards producing that end even before the end exists as a real being (and even if there are absolutely no other instances of that effect in reality). The final cause is always present to it even when the agent is not producing the effect, it is a relation to a future effect. For human beings this doesn’t pose an issue as we are intelligent actors. A builder intending to build a house has that house as an end present mentally, as a “mental being” or in an intelligible mode of existence. There is not a real house in the builder’s head or prior to the builder constructing it. But what of the many things that lack intelligence but still tends towards specific ends? These things do not have a capacity for intelligence and knowledge and so the end is neither present to it really or mentally. At this point we have not identified any sufficient reason that efficient causes are determined to produce any type of effect. That is the essential problem that St. Thomas has identified. The world as we find it is not consistent with the notion that agents which are efficient causes have no final causes. If there is no such determination there would be no causal regularity. But there is causal regularity.

The resolution is that something else must have these ends mentally and has the power to make those ends present to the things which are efficient causes, and if this thing (or things, as we haven’t yet ruled out multiples) has these ends as mental objects that just means it is also an intelligence.

Continued in next post.

 

[Wesrock]

Final. Continued from previous post.

Now does St. Thomas believe that God just makes the effects happen when certain occasions occur? No, that is not how he understands nature. Neither are the effects distributed arbitrarily or designed from the ground up in arbitrary ways. It the nature of water to freeze at 0 degrees Celsius and to evaporate at 100 degrees when under (what we’d call) standard atmospheric conditions. Water, as such, just lacks intelligence and so is incapable of knowing its final cause to tend towards (or having its end present to it). The tendency is imbued or given to the intelligence-lacking agent, such that it has it. The agent has it innately even if it is not the ultimate cause of it having it. The final cause is imbedded into it as an innate, ontological intentionality. This intelligence is what provides sufficient reason for final causes in nature, which when paired with efficient causes are necessary to explain causal regularity.

I hastily threw together this syllogism based on the more in depth, informal discussion above. It was my original intent to create one and I only just realized I never got that point.

---

I. Many things lack intelligence.

II. The things that lack intelligence act always, or nearly always, in the same way to produce the same results.

III. There must be something present to an agent to determine it to an end. This is called a final cause.

IV. The final cause cannot be present to an agent as a real being prior to it existing.

V. The alternative is for it to be present to the agent as a mental being.

VI. But many things with final causes lack intelligence and so are not capable of having mental beings.

VII. Therefore things that lack intelligence must be determined to their end by some thing that has their ends as mental beings, and that just means this something must be intelligent.

---

And… I’ve hit the three consecutive posts limit.

 

[o_mlly]

This is my fault. The title of the OP is a bit misleading. It’s not an argument against evolution.

I don’t even think Aquinas would be against evolution if he were here today.

?

Does this argument really work?

Really?

Aquinas’ syllogism does not really work if any of its premises can be falsified.

Weak and strong evolution theory, if true, falsifies premise 1 and strong evolution theory falsifies premise 3.

Therefore, Aquinas could not logically accept evolution and propose the Fifth Argument from Design.

 

[IWantGod]

The final cause or end of an agent must be present to that agent in some way, otherwise it wouldn’t do anything at all. But it cannot be present as a real being. The end is only present as a real being after it has been produced, but the agent for as long as it is what it is is always ordered towards producing that end even before the end exists as a real being (and even if there are absolutely no other instances of that effect in reality).

Sorry, having some difficulty.

Are you basically saying for example that a puddle of goo is a possible end of a rubber ball, but because the puddle of goo is not actually present in the rubber ball, there must be something other than the rubber ball that is making it true. Since this truth is not actually present in the ball, the only way that this could be true and not actual at the same time is for it to exist in the mind of an intelligence which is making it true?

 

[AlNg]

VII. Therefore things that lack intelligence must be determined to their end by some thing that has their ends as mental beings, and that just means this something must be intelligent.

1. This still does not prove the existence of a Supreme Being. There is no reason given as to why this intelligent being who is guiding so much around us is not itself maintained in existence by another intelligent being on a higher level. Then the second intelligent being could be under the power of a third being or even of several other beings in a complex manifold. And it could go on.
2. Also the intelligent being may be guiding the things that lack intelligence toward some end, but that does not prove that he created them. i can guide my car to the gas station. But that does not mean that I created my car or that I put it into existence. i am just moving the car towards its end to get gas at the gas station.
3. Intelligence, consciousness and free will are part of the natural world. So it is conceivable that there might exist some complex natural reality in an emergent multiverse of complex systems, having some sort of consciousness and free will which is heretofore either not observed or not well understood but is working to guide unintelligent beings on earth and elsewhere to certain goals.

 

[Wesrock]

Weak and strong evolution theory, if true, falsifies premise 1 and strong evolution theory falsifies premise 3.

That is not correct. You’re making the same errors as others in regards to chance which I’ve already spoken to at length.

I’ll try and speak to the rest tomorrow. I may not have much opportunity to post during the day.

 

[HarryStotle]

Prove it. Knowledge is in fact codded in reality.

If knowledge is, in fact, coded in reality then that would be de facto, an argument for God.

By definition, knowledge is the fact or condition of knowing something by awareness or understanding.

Things that are not aware cannot have knowledge of anything since they cannot be aware of or apprehend what can be known.

Your reply doesn’t actually engage with the meaning of the premise, it merely dismisses it offhand, which is why it is no better than any other response in your post.

In fact, it can be shown that the mere existence of beings with the potential to know implies a non-material aspect to existence and that the universe is not purely caused.

CS Lewis laid out a good argument (in Mere Christianity, I think) from both the possibility of knowing the truth and the possibility of knowing/valuing the good.

In a strictly materialistic causal order, based as it is upon physics and chemistry, implies an inherently causal nature to reality. That implies that materialism (absent God), being fundamentally causally ordered, provides no grounds upon which to derive either a proper morality or a proper epistemology of truth.

I agree with CS Lewis on this one.

A causal order (strict materialism) provides no foundation upon which to build a ground-consequent epistemology , such as would be required by any claim to know anything to be true.

Being caused by the chemistry of your brain to “know” something is no assurance that you have any logical grounds for thinking that ‘something’ or anything to be true. Therefore, it would be impossible to truly know any truth at all, because being caused to believe a proposition is nothing like reasoning to the truth of that proposition.

A true belief cannot be caused in your brain. That would be the opposite of knowing the truth since your brain in a purely causal order is merely being compelled to believe what it does by chemistry and physics rather than be convinced about the truth of any proposition by arriving logically to it from grasping the grounds or premises upon which the consequent belief is assented to.

Ground → Consequent reasoning is an entirely different beast from Cause → Effect.

Continued…

 

[HarryStotle]

And neither does being caused by the chemistry of your brain to value something entail that that something has any real value of its own accord in reality. So value becomes completely unmoored from any objective grounding unless a transcendent reality, above a merely causal order, exists.

If all ends are purely caused then there is no such possibility as some ends being preferable or better than others. Ends would simply be determined.

A claim that for something to be valued it must be valued by someone, if taken to its logical conclusion – together with the materialism implied by material causality – means that all valuing by human beings is merely an effect or impression caused by human brain chemistry and things are not in any objective sense more or less valuable.

If human brains are mere biochemistry, then beliefs about value are causally derived from brain chemistry and say nothing about what is or is not valuable in reality.

 

[Freddy]

A claim that for something to be valued it must be valued by someone, if taken to its logical conclusion – together with the materialism implied by material causality – means that all valuing by human beings is merely an effect or impression caused by human brain chemistry and things are not in any objective sense more or less valuable.

By George, I think he’s got it!

 

[o_mlly]

That is not correct. You’re making the same errors as others in regards to chance which I’ve already spoken to at length.

First, it is important to note that I do not disagree with Aquinas’ conclusion. I do recognize that hard (explains the rational animal) and soft (explains the irrational animal) evolution theories do not agree. Therefore, the need for an argument that refutes evolutionary theory is in order to support, as I do, Aquinas’ conclusion.

Aquinas’ syllogism does not really work if any of its premises can be falsified.

Weak and strong evolution theory, if true, falsifies premise 1 and strong evolution theory falsifies premise 3.

Therefore, Aquinas could not logically accept evolution and propose the Fifth Argument from Design.

1. We see that natural bodies work toward some goal, and do not do so by chance.

Aquinas’ world picture was one of perfect order, immutable, hierarchical, and anthropocentric. The first part of premise 1, “We see that natural bodies work toward some goal”, reflects his world view. Today’s scientific worldview rightly rejects the medieval view. Being true (perhaps, subconsciously) to his worldview, Aquinas’ uses the word “goal” implying that all natural bodies have a purpose to their movement or a formal/final cause. The argument for the formal/final cause in scholasticism was strongest in giving explanations for the existence of beings which required knowledge as efficient cause, e.g., the bronze statue argument. The existence of knowledge presupposes an intelligent being as its material/efficient cause. Science in general, and evolution theory in particular reject the necessity of formal/final causes to explain observed phenomena.

3. But as an arrow reaches its target because it is directed by an archer, what lacks intelligence achieves goals by being directed by something intelligent.

Evolution theory proposes that random mutations (the arrows) precede natural selection (the archer) as a process which, w/o intelligence, directs a living being to flourish (target) in a given environment. The randomness of the mutations insures that the vast majority of mutations will bring about no change in descendants but some will cause early death, or other impairment to the generated beings. The “target” for these mutants is extinction. Only a very few mutations could improve the survival possibilities or enhance the being of descendants. This ratio of few to many implies the existence of chance events.

The claim of the evolutionary contra Aquinas, is that an unintelligent force, natural selection (archer), works on chance occurrences, random mutations (arrows), to survive (target).

 

[SeekerOfTruth7]

Your not understanding the premise of what I said, and clearly wanting to argue. No reason for me to continue to explain because your not understanding the fundamental level of the argument from teleology.