What is a Final Cause? (Aristotle's Four Causes)
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- Опубликовано: 8 фев 2025
- A fast explication of Aristotle's Final Cause, some examples, and some objections to it.
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Information for this video gathered from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy and more! (#Aristotle #FourCauses)
Thank you for your series on Aristotle. Very clear and objective.
"Even disregarding empirical evidence for evolution, it seems to be a better explanation for biology than teleology."
I think that depends on your criterion for what makes a good explanation. Evolution is more parsimonious, since it only assumes material and efficient causes, but teleology produces more satisfying explanations. By 'satisfying explanation', I mean like how we use biology to explain the behaviors of organisms, even though we could use physics. There are few people anymore who would claim that biology isn't reducible to physics, but the science of biology still exists because it's a much more useful idiom. Similarly, when talking about biology, it's nigh-impossible to keep from drifting into teleological language. An example is Pizza Receptacle's comment:
"plants have evolved in such a way that they have managed to co-opt these already existent phenomenon to serve their survival needs."
Although I'm sure it wasn't intentional, this sentence presupposes that plants have survival as a telos. This presupposition is ubiquitous in talk about evolution, even though, when pressed, most people would say that they really only have a mechanistic explanation in mind. But people still talk this way because it's a much more natural way to speak and think about the world.
Interesting. The problem you highlight is what I would call the problem of underdetermination, specifically the problem of underdetermination of ampliative principles. We are underdetermined as to whether our ampliative principle should be parsimony or satisfaction. ruclips.net/video/6AvYCTRx72Q/видео.html. At the end of the day, I'm just deeply skeptical of abductive arguments ruclips.net/video/7TeM7rBhRmw/видео.html
I think for Aristotle, final causality just means that natural objects intrinsically "point to" or are "directed toward" their characteristic effect or range of effects. An acorn or seed is "directed toward" the end of becoming an oak tree or plant. Man-made objects do not have intrinsic teleology but extrinsically imposed teleology. Evolution doesn't undermine Aristotle's final causality in the slightest.
Do all objects in nature have a purpose? No. "Purpose" is a human concept which implies intent. The purpose of a leaf is not to use sunlight to convert CO2 into carbohydrates; that is the result of the evolutionary path of the plant, not the purpose. A rock is just a bunch of mineral molecules bonded together.
Aristotle disagreed, he thought that everything had a purpose, both in art and in nature. This is a precursor in many ways to the teleological argument for the existence of God. If you see a purpose in everything, you need to have someone that gave the that purpose. If you are skeptical of that purpose, you are probably skeptical of at elast that arguemtn for the existence of God.
Yup, I run into that a lot. It's why I'm here.
After reading some Edward Feser, I'm not sure this video completely hits the nail on the head when it comes to final causes. Though this is understandable because Feser is probably arguing from the basis of Aristotelian philosophy (up until present) rather than just in the words of Aristotle himself, the latter of which is your goal in this video.
Try to consider the following. Final Causes are not artifacts or man made. Water when heated evaporates instead of solidifying and it solidifies when frozen instead of evaporating. Man didn't choose that. An acorn grows into an Oak Tree instead of turning into a baby or a stone. Man didn't choose that. Final Causes are the cause of efficient causes. Why does a thing A gives an effect of B instead of C, D, E or none at all, unless the Final Cause of A is B? A wood can be used by man to hit something or to stand over, but the final cause of wood is neither of the two. The final cause of the wood is to be a specific solid thing derived from a tree upon interacting with other bodies. Evolution doesn't contradict final causes. Evolution on the other hand presuppose final causes. For, we can ask, why does life adapt instead of not adapting, unless the final cause of life is to adapt, isn't it?
wow, best explanation of final causes ever
@@amanotadequebranto, credits go to the philosopher Dr. Edward Feser. You might love reading his works. What I said here is derived from what I read in his books.
@@arvinmalabanan8321 Yes, exactly. Mostly today people assume purpose in any sense implies design or something like that.
Why would Aristotle's argument as developed particularly by Aquinas in concert with the excellent argument from change lead one to view evolution as not intrinsic to final cause? Evolution and the entire universe as Penrose shows is much more defensible as the result of final cause or purpose.. which we all spend every second of our day following.
Did Aristotle have an explanation of why so much rain falls in areas where crops can't grow (the ocean, the desert, etc)?
Great video, oh and also
0:40 Drink*
One of Aristotle's least convincing bits of argumentation. Nobody has come close to showing that forms or configurations of matter and energy (configurations that we categorise as named "things") has a purpose independent of ideas in our heads about they can be used for. The "telos" of a piece of string is anything you can do with it, or it can just be a bunch of quarks dancing around in space.
Are you trying to explain Aristotle or sell evolution
I'm a philosophical skeptic, I doubt everything, including my own existence and evolution (ruclips.net/video/fhkpE2WI7pU/видео.html). My reason for rejecting abductive arguments (ruclips.net/video/7TeM7rBhRmw/видео.html) is not that a better explanation came along, it is that comparative justification is no justification at all. Just because our current explanation is better than anything else we can come up with it does not mean that it is true or justified.
That said, evolutionary theories, even if they are wrong, provide a better explanation for biological diversity than Aristotle's teleology. I don't think that being the best explanation makes something true, but when your case is that X is the best explanation for Y, if a better explanation for Y comes along, then you don't even have your bad argument to stand on.
Aren’t all such arguments abductive? Evolutionary arguments may supersede Aristotle’s teleological arguments but one could imagine that we live in a simulation, a dream etc. and that there was a teleological cause in the macrocosm for the evolutionary cause in the microcosm. This still would remain abductive, even if we all woke up in base reality, or from the dream etc. and came to a carefully moderated consensus as to what the dream world and the base world were simply because the mystery can always go deeper still.
Btw I’m all for evolution as the best approximation to the truth and I expect our evolutionary causes to iteratively produce better approximations of that truth. I’m not making a religious argument or anything. I simply don’t like using abductive as an epithet.
Are you more skeptical of abductive arguments than inductive arguments? If so, is it because abductive arguments rely on incomplete data? Both are worthy of skepticism in my mind, but it seems to have to do with the complexity of the thing in question. Anything sufficiently complex as to be even possibly underdetermined should be classified as abductive. Inductive arguments happen in a vacuum where we know all of the variables involved. When a question about the real world in all of its confounding complexity arises, should we not expect an iteratively better understanding of the variables involved to iteratively enhance our explanations?
Or am I just getting some terminology wrong or something? What’s odd to me is that I feel as if I’m channeling the original Carnaedes, and you are searching for a foundation.
Dan Dennett has a talk about how purpose can be an outcome of an evolutionary process: ruclips.net/video/3L7uNyQL0H0/видео.html
Teleonomy could replace teleology.
Sebastian Sirvas how about technology
Teleonamy > teleology
🤔 does nothingness have a form? No. Does nothingness have potential of change? No. Does nothingness have a cause? No. Does nothingness have a purpose? No. Therefore, not everything has a potential intelligent causal
I don't think you understand your own words. Every *thing*, could have a cause, - But that's another discussion.
"nothingness" has no properties, because for a thing to have a property, it must be a thing, it must exist actually. And in the word itself, you are talking about *no thing*. Likewise Non-existence has no property because as said, it does not exist.
You can talk about a space, or a physical space, but it is not an actual thing. but a lack of potential things.
You're right about the first part but wrong about the second. Every thing, does not include, no things.
AVal 🤔 not confused 🤔 nothingness has nothing to do with space void of matter, it’s a state being depleted into non existence, nothing can exist beyond existence, into non existence including God 😮
Have we learned nothing from history? Final cause... really.