tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126049.post1481916780941859486..comments2024-01-22T11:42:42.772+08:00Comments on FideCogitActio : omnis per gratiam: Walking in a forest one day…Codgitator (Cadgertator)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00872093788960965392noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126049.post-4254367747918288352011-05-25T00:31:23.688+08:002011-05-25T00:31:23.688+08:00One final clarification: I do not mean to suggest ...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 <i>that kind</i> of explanation, the kind that supposes -- perhaps like the early modern scholastics??? -- that finality as such presupposes a designing intellect.djrhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07752946730851928276noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126049.post-51948581078656236112011-05-25T00:20:49.418+08:002011-05-25T00:20:49.418+08:00Perhaps Aristotle is mistaken. I doubt it. Democri...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. <br /><br />I suspect people resist this line of thought because it seems to make teleology <i>boring</i>. 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.djrhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07752946730851928276noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126049.post-36103947113990064252011-05-25T00:19:42.665+08:002011-05-25T00:19:42.665+08:00I think you are ignoring centuries of debate in na...<i>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.</i><br /><br />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 <i>Aristotle on Teleology</i> 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 <i>change</i> 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 <i>cause</i> 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 <i>anthropomorphic</i> and that it requires <i>backwards causation</i>. But neither objection can even get off the ground until we suppose that ends are somehow <i>bringing about</i> the actions or events that lead to them. <br /><br />Once one understands that Aristotelian teleology does not try to be a form of <i>causal</i> 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 <i>all the time</i>. Spinoza, one of the most vociferous critics of natural teleology, gives ample space to the <i>conatus</i> 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 <i>physics</i>, the very identification of a certain particle as an <i>electron</i> 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. <br /><br />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 <i>does</i> hold that none of <i>those</i> things could happen unless there were things that <i>do</i> happen 'for the sake of something': i.e., unless there are things with internal natures, there can't be anything else.djrhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07752946730851928276noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126049.post-52745127026099990292011-05-05T09:51:44.727+08:002011-05-05T09:51:44.727+08:00Bilbo:
The reason the human form is different, a...Bilbo: <br /><br />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.Codgitator (Cadgertator)https://www.blogger.com/profile/00872093788960965392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126049.post-49098698105441572802011-05-05T09:44:28.265+08:002011-05-05T09:44:28.265+08:00Bilbo:
"…it could be that the final causes ...Bilbo: <br /><br />"…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."<br /><br />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.Codgitator (Cadgertator)https://www.blogger.com/profile/00872093788960965392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126049.post-37862933320812338822011-05-05T09:32:27.803+08:002011-05-05T09:32:27.803+08:00djr:
Your point about sub-optimal teleology is w...djr: <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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.Codgitator (Cadgertator)https://www.blogger.com/profile/00872093788960965392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126049.post-16677525230367917212011-04-30T02:58:25.085+08:002011-04-30T02:58:25.085+08:00from djr:
I don't think I can even begin to ...from djr: <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.Codgitator (Cadgertator)https://www.blogger.com/profile/00872093788960965392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126049.post-62782005084184165742011-04-30T00:17:58.565+08:002011-04-30T00:17:58.565+08:00DJR:
Don't be fooled by the failed post noti...DJR: <br /><br />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.Codgitator (Cadgertator)https://www.blogger.com/profile/00872093788960965392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126049.post-67011399140542849232011-04-29T23:15:41.193+08:002011-04-29T23:15:41.193+08:00I'm not sure why my longer initial response di...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...djrhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07752946730851928276noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126049.post-27181711244156690302011-04-29T10:02:16.815+08:002011-04-29T10:02:16.815+08:00And in case anyone is misled by Aquinas' quota...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.djrhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07752946730851928276noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126049.post-90429534979490535362011-04-24T03:54:34.448+08:002011-04-24T03:54:34.448+08:00Hi Codgitator,
Yes, I agree that if we found out...Hi Codgitator, <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />Why must we believe that it must be explained naturally?Bilbohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06231440026059820600noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126049.post-40037139404214147222011-04-23T05:26:42.509+08:002011-04-23T05:26:42.509+08:00So, even though evolutionary theory may be able to...<i>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><br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.Crudehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04178390947423928444noreply@blogger.com