This train of thought, popularized by William Paley, and now at the heart of the Intelligent Design movement, is opposed not only by skeptics but also, notoriously, by Thomists and other Christians, largely on theological grounds. I am beginning to see how the debate ties into the much older dispute about conservation and concurrentism. Alfred Freddoso's lengthy introduction to Suárez's Metaphysical Disputations XX–XXII discusses the issue at length, and it is on my mind from reading Walter Ott's Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy. I will not go into much detail in this post, since I only want to note a passage in the Summa theologica (I, CIII, iii) which caught me off-guard when I read it in Ott's book (p. 52; my emphasis):
Certain ancient philosophers denied the government of the world, saying that all things happened by chance. But such an opinion can be refuted … by observation of things themselves: for we observe that in nature things happen always or nearly always for the best; which would not be the case unless some sort of providence directed nature towards good as an end; which is to govern. Wherefore the unfailing order we observe in things is a sign of their being governed; for instance, if we enter a well-ordered house we gather therefrom the intention of him that put it in order, as Tullius says (De Nat. Deorum ii), quoting Aristotle [Cleanthes].
[Benzinger translation]
Some ancient philosophers denied governance to the world, claiming that everything occurs by chance (fortuito agi). But … this position is impossible: First, from what is apparent in the things themselves. For we see among natural things that what is better occurs either always or for the most part (semper aut in pluribus). But this would not happen if natural things were not directed by some sort of providence toward the good as an end (ad finem boni)—which is what it is to govern. Hence, the fixed order of things itself clearly demonstrates the governance of the world. As Tully, quoting Aristotle, says in De Natura Deorum, if someone entered a well-ordered house, he would, because of the very order within the house, arrive at the idea of someone responsible for the order (ordinatoris rationem perpenderet).
[Freddoso translation]
…quidam antiqui philosophi gubernationem mundo subtraxerunt, dicentes omnia fortuito agi. Sed haec positio ostenditur esse impossibilis … ex eo quod apparet in ipsis rebus. Videmus enim in rebus naturalibus provenire quod melius est, aut semper aut in pluribus, quod non contingeret, nisi per aliquam providentiam res naturales dirigerentur ad finem boni, quod est gubernare. Unde ipse ordo certus rerum manifeste demonstrat gubernationem mundi, sicut si quis intraret domum bene ordinatam, ex ipsa domus ordinatione ordinatoris rationem perpenderet; ut, ab Aristotele dictum, Tullius introducit in libro de natura deorum.
How different is this from Paley's argument? The narrative format is even similar: Walking along one day, you come upon a … and have every reason to infer, etc. As Prof. Feser has written at great length, however, the difference between Paley's and Aquinas' argument about intelligent "governance" has to do with the role of finality in each thinker's worldview. For Paley, and for IDers in general, given that the world is a mechanical system, the only way for blind matter in motion to produce complex functional entities would be by the intervention of an Intelligent Designer.
Aquinas' argument seems to say the same thing, but it actually goes much deeper, metaphysically, than Paley's. For, even if we can discover how any and all complex entities arose by "purely natural" means, we could not deny the fundamental lawfulness of the universe which supports those natural means themselves. Since, in Thomism, and Aristotelianism generally, finite beings have their own immanent finality––their own dynamism towards existing and flourishing––, we should not be surprised to find a process of natural development among nature's harmonious parts. Since God works in the world through the natures of His creatures, rather than upon them as inert voids, we have reason to expect they will develop "on their own", as it were. So, even though evolutionary theory may be able to explain how a watch, as it were, came to be in the forest without the intervention of a watchmaker, it cannot explain how the processes described by the theory themselves hold "either always or for the most part." That level of persistent order is what grounds any subsequent natural developments that become the intelligible content of scientific theory. As Suárez writes (XXII.x.10; my emphasis):
The general concourse of the world––indeed, the very fact that all created entities form a unified world, a cosmos––is the deep sign of creative intelligence, not simply this or that "irreducibly complex" object or operation.
…there are many changes or actions of physical objects which cannot be adequately explained in terms of internal characteristics or tendencies of individual things [i.e. discrete material objects]. E.g. water rises up in order to fill a vacuum; and this cannot be explained from the specific nature of water and its own energy, but only from the purpose which is to be found in the perfection of the whole universe, and which must be intended by some other, superior agent [ex fine qui in perfectione totius universi sit positus, quem oportet ab alio superiori agente intendi]. It is the same with the water of the sea, which restrains the force of its breakers on the shore so that it never overwhelms the earth. This is certainly for the preservation … of living beings, which is a purpose intended by the supreme Governor of nature. From this we can see that when these natural objects change or act in accordance with their own specific tendencies, if by these they serve the convenience and preservation of the whole universe, its species or even individuals [cum per illas etiam deserviant commodis et conservationi totius universi et suarum specierum, vel etiam individuorum] (especially humans), they also manifest goal-directedness through subordination to a superior agent.
The general concourse of the world––indeed, the very fact that all created entities form a unified world, a cosmos––is the deep sign of creative intelligence, not simply this or that "irreducibly complex" object or operation.
Interestingly, far from being in conflict, the Scholastic doctrine of immanent cosmic order could very well be read as the (premature) converse of the theory of natural selection (TNS). TNS says that organisms which are better adapted to their niche in the world tend to produce more offspring, and thus such adaptations tend to proliferate. The Scholastic doctrine has it that no organisms really exist that don't contribute to the orderliness of the world as a whole. In both cases, it is only because the relations between world and organisms are well ordered that the former shows the variety it does and that the latter flourishes like they do. There is, in both cases, a tight empirical link between how well-fitted, or how discordant, a being's actual operations are with the general "layout" of the world. The world as we know it does not, according to TNS, contain any organisms or processes which do not "mesh with" or contribute to the actual operations of the world, which have not succeeded thus far. Everything fits. If something doesn't fit, if something tends toward compromising the orderly governance of the world, it thereby ceases to be an integral part of the natural order.
Why, according to TNS, do we see the "survival of the fittest" instead of the survival of anything in random fashion? To cite Aquinas again, it is because "we see among natural things that what is better occurs either always or for the most part … [which] would not happen if natural things were not directed by some sort of providence toward the good as an end." Thus, even the evolutionary "weeding out" process preserves natural order; indeed, it is only because the world has a natural tendency to operate "always or for most part" in the same ways that there is any weeding out at all. A plant cell remains turgid and functional by maintaining a fluid-nutrient balance: its vital turgidity tends to "weed out" what compromises the plant as a whole. Likewise, the many niches of the world maintain an ecological turgidity by admitting and expelling new inhabitants in the larger homeostasis of the world. If the world did not operate in such an orderly fashion, there would be no firm structure, no selective lattice, which could filter out incompatible subparts. This is not to say Thomism just is Darwinism. It is however to argue that a metaphysic which posits both that material entities are intrinsically subject to change and corruption due to the correlation of their diverse parts, and that the world is ordered by its intelligent source, has the means to account for the kind of changes described by evolutionary theory, yet without succumbing to materialism.
12 comments:
So, even though evolutionary theory may be able to explain how a watch, as it were, came to be in the forest without the intervention of a watchmaker, it cannot explain how the processes described by the theory themselves hold "either always or for the most part." That level of persistent order is what grounds any subsequent natural developments that become the intelligible content of scientific theory.
I think this is key, and often missed. People seem so often to just grant the existence of an orderly, organized system of nature as a given, without stopping to wonder how in the world this is actually the case. Granted, this takes us to questions that go beyond what science could really ever hope to shed light on - but I think people's insistence that we therefore treat it as a non-question and just take it as brute, is a weak response. Actually, I suppose it's a non-response.
I think it goes a bit far to connect scholastic immanent order with the theory of natural selection (I think TNS is starting to morph more and more anyway), but I do think that the idea of the cosmos as having an immanent cosmic order does - at the very least - lay the groundwork for such an idea. Rather like how the existence of this or that operating system sets the ground for a variety of programs.
Hi Codgitator,
Yes, I agree that if we found out that the origin and evolution of life could be explained by naturally, that this would not defeat a design argument. In fact it would show that natural laws had final causes.
However, it could be that the final causes of natural laws were not meant to originate life, but only to provide the material that was to be used to form life.
My objection to Feser's objection is that he doesn't seem to allow for this possibility, even though Aquinas certainly allowed for it, at least when it came to forming the first human body.
We seem to have a natural explanation for how the first human body came to be: evolution from a non-human body. But we do not have an explanation for how the first forms of life came to be. And it could be that evolution itself cannot be explained naturally.
Why must we believe that it must be explained naturally?
And in case anyone is misled by Aquinas' quotation of Cicero's quotation of Aristotle, it is from a lost dialogue in which he is probably explaining how people formed the idea of gods, not giving an argument of his own for the existence of gods. On that score, he's right. But in his serious extant works there are no arguments of that sort.
I'm not sure why my longer initial response didn't show up, but that's disappointing. I was raking all this muck and then it disappears! Oh well...
DJR:
Don't be fooled by the failed post notice, just copy and paste your comments before submitting, and go "page back" in the combox window to see if it showed up. I have your comment in my email, so I will post it here.
from djr:
I don't think I can even begin to answer Bilbo's question until I know what it would be for something to be explained naturally, and what the alternative is supposed to be. We might think ID-ish arguments are a good example, but I don't think that will do the trick. Not because the existence of an intelligent designer is impossible or incoherent, but because there doesn't seem to be anything unnatural, non-natural, or supernatural about explanations that appeal to the intentions of a rational agent. Even supposing that some features of the world can only be explained as the products of some such agent, that agent would, presumably, still be a particular being whose particular exercise of its causal powers explains the features we find. Unless "supernatural" and the like just mean "really unusual and outside the bounds of what currently respectable science affirms as true or highly likely," then I don't see why such an explanation wouldn't be a natural one.
I do, though, have a few worries about Elliot's post. First, there is some suggestion here that TNS rejects or fails to recognize the existence and persistence of poorly adapted organisms. But that is false; for a good example of one, consider the recently discovered snub-nosed monkey that can't stop sneezing when it rains. Maladaptations that do not lead to a species' extinction pose no problem for TNS, because all that TNS requires is that the organisms be well-adapted enough to survive and outbreed their competitors. Insofar as Aquinas or anyone else insists that the teleological character of natural entities requires that they be optimally adapted to their environment, he is just mistaken: a function can be poorly adapted and still be a function, as Aristotle knew well.
Second, insofar as Aquinas or anybody else takes the teleological character of natural entities as an argument for the existence of God, he is at some point or other appealing to the idea that things can't just have functions or ends without being given those functions or ends by some mind-like cause. TNS doesn't do a thing to disprove this, since what it explains is not function but adapted function: properly understood, it presupposes function (some philosophers disagree with this, of course, and argue that TNS explains functions because being-selected-for is what makes something have the function that it does; the issues here are complicated, but to my mind the problem is that the proponents of this view still think that functions, in order to be explanatory, must be somehow causal in the modern [but not only modern] sense of making something happen. More on that later, if you like). Still, it isn't a very plausible assumption: in fact, it seems far more plausible to think that functions and final causes, properly understood (i.e., understood as a feature of anything with a characteristic set of internally determined behaviors, including, say, electrons), must characterize the most basic entities in any universe that exists at all, since there would otherwise not be anything for anything to be, unless we suppose that a sheer indeterminate mess could be anything. In short, I think Aristotle was probably right not to think that the sheer existence of things that are "for the sake of something" needs to be explained by appeal to rational agency, and thus not to make anything remotely like Aquinas' teleological argument.
djr:
Your point about sub-optimal teleology is well taken, though I think it assumes more about teleology than Thomism does. Precisely because creatures are finite, they imperfectly seek their proper good. Subject to divisibility and corruption, they display an odd mix of goal-directedness and malfunction. The point, however, is that none of them exists unless they operate "aut semper aut in pluribus" to a good end.
Your second point implies that kind of teleology is more or less tautological, since only what could "exist well enough" to exist would exist! A form of the weak anthropic principle. I think you are ignoring centuries of debate in natural philosophy, though, by assuming so blithely that teleology is an obvious, even transcendental, feature of complex reality. The moderns certainly recognized the uselessness of finality and forms ("little souls", etc.), Hume showed there's no reason to assume causality––a form of finality par excellence–– held "aut semper aut in pluribus", and modern cosmological theorists themselves postulate worlds wholly lacking in the order replete in ours. It's precisely the rejection of such wholesale Democritean "Chanceism" that teleological arguments mount.
Bilbo:
"…it could be that the final causes of natural laws were not meant to originate life, but only to provide the material that was to be used to form life."
I think this is phrased poorly. If final causes are not meant to produce life in a world replete with life, then final causes were meant not to produce life, but have obviously failed, which is just an argument against finality that doesn't even know it is such an argument. More to the point, if final causes as such were "meant to" provide suitable material, then that just collapses finality into materialism, which is a rather big assumption to make in the debate for or against formal order. Additionally, if no final causes suffice to produce life in and of themselves, then every act of biogenesis, and every act of bio-formal diversification, is a direct act of God upon an otherwise teleologically inadequate nature. That is what is being rejected in ID.
Bilbo:
The reason the human form is different, and therefore amenable to a directly divine action, is that it is itself a mode of finality that is irreducible to the powers of material nature. The intellect is a tool for art and truth, whereas no non-intelligent entity in and of itself aims at art or truth, but only does so by the direction of a higher guiding intellect. Granted, humans only have this immanent finality of the rational soul because God created them with that nisus, so in an analogical sense, we are all guided tools of the Divinity. The difference, nonetheless, is that the immanently guided ends of the rational soul go beyond anything non-rational entities display. These arguments are in ST I, 77–93 and SCG II, 39–88, etc.
I think you are ignoring centuries of debate in natural philosophy, though, by assuming so blithely that teleology is an obvious, even transcendental, feature of complex reality. The moderns certainly recognized the uselessness of finality and forms ("little souls", etc.), Hume showed there's no reason to assume causality––a form of finality par excellence–– held "aut semper aut in pluribus", and modern cosmological theorists themselves postulate worlds wholly lacking in the order replete in ours. It's precisely the rejection of such wholesale Democritean "Chanceism" that teleological arguments mount.
The early moderns didn't understand what they were rejecting when they rejected "final causes." I am not well versed enough in early modern scholasticism to know whether the proponents of teleology were representing it more or less as Aristotle does (Monte Johnson's Aristotle on Teleology strongly suggests not, but has been criticized for superficiality in its treatment of the medievals). But for Aristotle ends are not something that we could dispense with: if there is going to be any change at all, it will have to be change from potentiality to actuality, and that kind of change can only be made sense of in teleological terms. When the early moderns rejected final causality, they were rejecting the idea that ends or goals could somehow cause events or actions in the sense of being a source that makes those events or actions occur. In Aristotelian terms, that is a confusion of final with efficient causes. Thus the two most popular objections to natural teleology are that it is anthropomorphic and that it requires backwards causation. But neither objection can even get off the ground until we suppose that ends are somehow bringing about the actions or events that lead to them.
Once one understands that Aristotelian teleology does not try to be a form of causal explanation in the way that moderns (and Stoics, too, fascinatingly enough) understand 'cause,' one begins to see that the same moderns are citing and relying on ends all the time. Spinoza, one of the most vociferous critics of natural teleology, gives ample space to the conatus of natural things -- a teleological idea if there ever was one. It isn't just in biology that scientists cite or presuppose ends on a daily basis: in physics, the very identification of a certain particle as an electron requires that we identify it as a thing with a certain sort of nature, a nature which includes dispositions to behave in certain regular ways in certain conditions: once again, we cannot really understand these things if we dump ends from the picture.
Aristotle's account of teleology isn't tautologous. There are plenty of things that happen which aren't for the sake of anything; there are even more that are for the sake of something only incidentally, as, for instance, acorns serve to nourish pigs, or oxygen serves to keep animals alive. There are plenty of results, consequences, and events to which teleological analysis would be inappropriate. But he does hold that none of those things could happen unless there were things that do happen 'for the sake of something': i.e., unless there are things with internal natures, there can't be anything else.
Perhaps Aristotle is mistaken. I doubt it. Democritean atomism and its modern pseudo-descendants don't really seem to offer exceptions: neither Democritean atoms nor fundamental particles act in completely random, unstructured, accidental ways -- even the random, unstructured, and apparently accidental stuff that Democritus and imaginative physicists have in mind still depends on the particles having tendencies to act and react in certain characteristic ways. If so, teleology is ineliminable from physics. If not, physics is probably unintelligible.
I suspect people resist this line of thought because it seems to make teleology boring. But nobody said that teleology in complex systems and living things was just as simple as the teleology of an electron, a Democritean atom, or Aristotelian elements. Complexity makes things more interesting, but it doesn't introduce finality into a purely efficient-causal world.
One final clarification: I do not mean to suggest that the existence of a world with things of a determinate nature requires or can receive no explanation. That is to say, I do not mean to argue that natural teleology provides no support whatsoever to the existence of God simply because unintelligent things do not need to be designed by intelligent things in order to have ends. They don't; but the existence of a world in which such things exist may still call out for explanation. It just doesn't call out for that kind of explanation, the kind that supposes -- perhaps like the early modern scholastics??? -- that finality as such presupposes a designing intellect.
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