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    Having a final cause does not require being designed by a... — Carmelics
    Home/Natural Theology
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    Having a final cause does not require being designed by an intentional agent

    CausationNatural Theology
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Organisms have final causes
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    • 2.Organisms did not come to have final causes through the designing activities of any intentional agent
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Final causation, as directedness-toward-an-end, is conceptually intelligible only against a background of intentional normativity that fixes what counts as the relevant end.
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    • 2.Natural processes are intrinsically indifferent to outcomes, so any attribution of a telos to them smuggles in a perspective that only intentional agents can supply.
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    • 3.Therefore, biological final causes either reduce to efficient causes (eliminating teleology) or presuppose an intentional grounding, leaving no coherent middle position.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Aquinas argued in Summa Theologiae Q.2 A.3 that things lacking cognition tend toward ends only as directed by some intelligent being, as the arrow requires an archer.
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    • 2.Aristotle's own hylomorphism cannot explain why matter reliably actualizes form-directed endpoints without invoking a nous or divine craftsman analogous to the Timaeus demiurge.
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    • 3.The causal regularity of biological teleology thus demands an intentional explanation, since undirected matter has no intrinsic mechanism for privileging one outcome as its proper end.
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    Topics

    Natural TheologyCausation

    Related

    Aquinas argued in Summa Theologiae Q.2 A.3 that things lacking cognition tend to...Aristotle's own hylomorphism cannot explain why matter reliably actualizes form-...Final causation, as directedness-toward-an-end, is conceptually intelligible onl...Natural processes are intrinsically indifferent to outcomes, so any attribution ...
    +4 moreShow less
    Organisms did not come to have final causes through the designing activities of ...Organisms have final causesThe causal regularity of biological teleology thus demands an intentional explan...Therefore, biological final causes either reduce to efficient causes (eliminatin...

    Similar

    Organisms did not come to have final causes through the designing acti...88%Axiarchism holds that final causes can function as efficient causes.78%A final cause is that for the sake of which something occurs.78%The objection from the absence of an efficient cause does not conclusi...76%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: aristotle
    View source passageHide passage
    Crucially, Aristotle denies overtly that the causes operative in nature are intention-dependent. He thinks, that is, that organisms have final causes, but that they did not come to have them by dint of the designing activities of some intentional agent or other. He thus denies that a necessary condition of x’s having a final cause is x’s being designed.
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit