Consciousness, Intention, and Final Causation

Leibniz is almost unique among early modern philosophers in giving final causation a central place in his metaphysical system. All changes in created substances, according to Leibniz, have final causes, that is, occur for the sake of some end. There is, however, no consensus among commentators about the details of Leibniz's views on final causation. The least perfect types of changes that created substances undergo are especially puzzling because those changes seem radically different from paradigmatic instances of final causation. Building on my more general discussion of efficient and final causation in ‘Leibniz on Causation – Part 1,’ I will examine and assess some of the rival interpretations of Leibniz's account of final causation.

The Beagle record: By R. D. Keynes. Pp. 409. Cambridge University Press, London. 1979. £30.00

The problem of teleology is the question whether all natural processes can be adequately explained in terms of efficient causality. In contemporary philosophy and science there is a strong aversion to explanations by final causation; most approaches consider teleological processes as a special kind of mechanical processes, and try to reduce teleological explanations to explanations based solely on efficient causation.1 Typical examples of such reductionist strategies are the system theoretical and cybernetic approaches.2 Furthermore, there are the approaches of certain evolutionary biologists who maintain on the one hand that biology cannot do without teleological language, but on the other hand insist that the explanations of biological processes need to be based on nothing but efficient causation.3

In semiotics, final causation can be related to the process of determination (PAPE, 1993). From Peirce’s point of view, determination is not a causal determinism, but a delimitation of a range of possibilities. One starts from objects towards interpretants, in a process mediated by the sign, in which the dynamic object works as a force that constrains interpretants to correspond to their objects. The correspondence between object and interpretant is important because it is through a generated interpretant that the object of a sign can be known. Even though this process of determination coincides with the idea of final causation, there is a certain indeterminacy in it. For Peirce (EP 2:353, 1905), vagueness and generality are two types of indeterminacy. In the terms of the phenomenological categories, vagueness is an indeterminacy of the order of firstness, generality an indeterminacy of the order of thirdness, and both, to some extent, are opposed to that which is defined, which belongs to secondness. Each aspect of the sign may vary according to the three phenomenological categories. Consequently, degrees of imprecision are added to the semiotic process, which is a determination process. Peirce asserts that the perfect precision of thought is theoretically unattainable (SS 11, 1903). Every sign is vague or general at least to some degree. In this paper, we seek to perceive degrees of indetermination and causality from an analysis of the kinds of objects and interpretants proposed by Peirce in the system of 28 sign classes.

Though it’s often said that St. Thomas Aquinas was important to Flannery O’Connor’s theology, few have noted his relevance to her craft approach. By joining Thomas’s action theory to his psychology, O’Connor developed notions of character and plot which are at their most mature in her final novel, The Violent Bear It Away. In it, O’Connor structured her characters by dramatizing Thomas’s doctrine of final causation, a metaphysical explanation of desire, to create dramatic mystagogy. Understanding her creative process this way gives insight into her novel, making sense of opaque moments in the text. Moreover, by understanding final causation, classic criticisms of the novel are put into context. Some have claimed her characters’ actions are overdetermined by her theology. However, understanding O’Connor’s project allows her to respond, making intelligible her craft choices against this criticism. Therefore, it’s by understanding O’Connor’s adaptation of Thomas for literary ends that fresh interpretations of The Violent Bear It Away are made available.

This article describes a heuristic argument for understanding certain physical systems in terms of properties that resemble the beliefs and goals of folk psychology. The argument rests on very simple assumptions. The core of the argument is that predictions about certain events can legitimately be based on assumptions about later events, resembling Aristotelian ‘final causation’; however, more nuanced causal entities (resembling fallible beliefs) must be introduced into these types of explanation in order for them to remain consistent with a causally local Universe.

Naturalizing phenomenology – A philosophical imperative

ABSTRACT: With a view to suggesting the possible relevance of Aristotelian thought to current notions of complexity and self-organization, studies Aristotle’s notions of teleology and final causation. After a sketch of the historical process by which such notions were finally rejected in the science of Galileo and Newton, attention is drawn to some contemporary trends in philosophy of science that argue for a return to some (modified) versions of the notion of final causation (I. Prigogine, R. Thom, S. Rosen). These arguments are illustrated by the example of Bénard cells, and the theories of Schneider, Kay, and D. Sagan.

This paper considers how a classification of causal effects as comprising efficient, formal, material, and final causation can provide a useful understanding of how emergence takes place in biology and technology, with formal, material, and final causation all including cases of downward causation; they each occur in both synchronic and diachronic forms. Taken together, they underlie why all emergent levels in the hierarchy of emergence have causal powers (which is Noble's principle of biological relativity) and so why causal closure only occurs when the upwards and downwards interactions between all emergent levels are taken into account, contra to claims that some underlying physics level is by itself causality complete. A key feature is that stochasticity at the molecular level plays an important role in enabling agency to emerge, underlying the possibility of final causation occurring in these contexts.

In this article we demonstrate that and why Aristotle's four causes are essential for a scientific articulation of designerly knowledge. We show that properly understood, Aristotle's notion of a cause, including the final cause, is not in conflict with modern science. Rather, when it comes to understanding living beings as such, all of the four Aristotelian causes are still crucial. We argue that this implies that design research, too, must appeal to the four causes, because artifacts must be understood in terms of the role they play in the life of living beings.

PROVIDENCE AND SCIENCE IN A WORLD OF CONTINGENCY: Thomas Aquinas' Metaphysics of Divine Action by Ignacio Silva. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2022. 170 pages. Paperback; $52.95. ISBN: 9781032002781. *Ignacio Silva (DPhil, Oxford) is an Argentinian theologian who specializes in the dialogue between science and theology. This book is a proposal for fellow scholars and others to reconsider the contribution of Thomas Aquinas's metaphysics as a means of resolving the question of divine action in the light of science. Although Aquinas is the thirteenth century's most famous friar and Catholicism's most renowned theological authority alongside Augustine, he is often viewed today as contributing few insights as regards an allegedly "modern" argument. *Silva argues that Aquinas supplies a way of getting beyond two mistaken views held by people today: (1) on the one hand, that God needs the natural world to be fundamentally open to outside influence; and (2) on the other hand, that God causes things to exist in a way that is similar to the way other natural causes cause things to occur. *Silva's goal is to get beyond the current situation in which "many today find it necessary to search for a lack of natural causation so as to find a space for God to act" (p. 139). According to this way of thinking, God's actions are only localized occasions, hence the school of thought known as occasionalism. Conversely, another tendency is for believers to argue that God's powers are self-restricted in order to account for natural powers. The latter point of view is sometimes stipulated in terms of the biblical concept of kenosis ("Christ ... emptied himself," Phil. 2:7). *Silva's main point concerns a correct notion of causation such that we not restrict divine providence to an inadequate understanding of causation: "the idea of requiring insufficient causation for God to act depends on a deterministic notion of causation that, ultimately, renders God to act as a cause among causes" (p. 49). Silva holds that much causation is subject to chance contingencies. Thus, Silva's strategy is to think of causation in the context of potency and act. This allows a fresh and fuller way of dealing with the four parameters of divine providence: God's omnipotence, God's involvement with nature, nature's autonomy, and the success of science. The scope of the inquiry is enormous and Silva's handling of the thought of Thomas Aquinas is, unsurprisingly, difficult, yet hugely beneficial. *On the one hand, readers must be prepared for a dense tutorial in accounts of causality, powers, natures, and other metaphysical categories in order to appreciate the argument of this book. On the other hand, the argument over the relationship between God as the creating cause of the world and the secondary causes that act to create other effects in the world, is startlingly simple. It is best understood as a form of instrumental causality according to Silva. It is analogized (as so much of Aquinas's theology is) as follows: "The knife is moved by the man to cut, and to do it in such a manner. Without the man's power, the knife could not cut, but without the edge of the knife, the man could not cut in this manner ... the effect is both produced completely by God and by the natural agent ... (p. 129)." *Thus, without God, nature would not have the necessary powers to cause the effects it possesses. Without those natural efficient causes, God's power could not be effective. There is no split between divine and natural causation in any given effect; both are completely causal of any given effect. It is analogically helpful, although Silva does not discuss this idea, to invoke here the Incarnation of Jesus Christ: he is both fully divine and fully human, not half of each. *God acts in three ways: through creation itself, through natural (secondary) causes, and through three types of miracles--although, sadly, the latter do not receive much attention in this book. But the threefold action of God is intended to counter, on the one hand, the view that causality is always deterministic and, on the other hand, that God's action in the universe endangers nature's autonomy. *For some readers, the most difficult aspect of the argument will be the presentation of natural entities' powers of operation in terms of the four Aristotelian causes. The key is to think of causation in context. From Aristotle, change is a key feature of contingency. Change is organized into potency and act, essence and accident. These categories explain how causation results in real life. Moreover, theologically speaking, for Aquinas, "affirming that natural things do not operate, and that it is only God who does, diminishes the divine power" (p. 98, quoting the Summa contra Gentiles III, c 69). This is the counterintuitive power of the Thomist position. It opposes the view that attributes all natural causes to God's intervention. Holding that view would mean, in the end, that God actually does not create anything apart from God. But for God to create a world means to distinguish something apart from God and to allow contingency to exist in the spatio-temporal realm. The key point about the distinction between the eternal and the temporal realms is to ask why God creates in this way. Silva casually mentions that "God acts through natural causes because of the immensity of his goodness ..." (p. 101). So, it is not a matter of metaphysical necessity that lies behind the Thomist view, it is God's goodness that is the key. *The position that created natural things are themselves creative needs to be exactingly well laid out; otherwise this position will be perceived as a way of extracting God from the world altogether. Here, Silva stipulates that "God's causality penetrates most intimately the causality of created natural things," while God upholds the creation "in its being" (p. 99). This is uncontroversial, but the provision for miracles is bound to raise questions about why God would act in this way. What Silva could have used are some examples of why some philosophers dissent from Aquinas on miracles, with responses to those dissents. *Silva covers an enormous amount of reflection on the notion of causality, including some original and highly potent insights. He claims that final causality is the "cause of the efficient cause in terms of its causality" (p. 71). This relationship, as well as the relationship between the material and formal cause, as first demarcated by Aristotle, is laid out in dense, logical prose. The book ends with some subtle yet significant comments on the differences between Aquinas's views and those of twentieth-century thinkers such as Austin Farrer, who referred to Aquinas in proposing a double agency account of creation while resorting to fideism. Farrer refused to suggest any explanation for the causal joint between God's creation and the world's operation. This analysis is original and should have been given more prominence. There is, indeed, a great deal of difference between fulsome and evasive double agency accounts of created causality; however, Silva ignores almost completely the medieval development of the theorem of the "supernatural," which came about because of the theoretical stance taken by Philip the Chancellor (d. 1236). This lapse is not critical, but it does exemplify the lack of a historical dimension to the book's argument. *Another quandary concerns the book's form of exposition. It is largely descriptive. While its argument details Aquinas's metaphysics of causal relations and the universe's created dependency on God, it lacks a dialectical edge. Although the argument is sufficiently sound, it is in need of an engagement with the open theists and others who would contest the account of divine power that Thomas Aquinas developed. There are quite a few references to other contemporary positions on providence and causality, especially in the final chapter. The names of William Carroll, Robert Russell, and Michael Dodds appear, but there could have been a more probing engagement of these contemporary voices. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics is treated in the light of the proposed view of moderate determinism in contrast to the non-interventionist, objective (NIODA) view of divine action in Robert Russell. Here, I'm unsure whether NIODA has been properly interpreted. Although I think Silva's position is correct, is Russell's understanding of God's causality really reducible to natural causality as Silva contends? The textual citations for this allegation are not convincing. *Finally, despite what I take to be a largely satisfying account of God's creative action, the issue of evil and theodicy are not dealt with in this book. Aquinas makes contingency (and accidents in general) central for the notion of creation. Silva sees contingency as a sign of the perfection of divine providence, but this contradiction (between created contingency and the fact of natural "evil") is a real difficulty for God's involvement with evil or deficient effects in creation. Regardless, altogether this is a provocative, dense volume that could easily have been double the length if key problems had received more comprehensive treatment. *Reviewed by Paul Allen, Academic Dean, Corpus Christi College, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1J7.

This paper considers the conception of material cause according to Alexander of Aphrodisias. I defend the view that Alexander tries to conciliate two conceptions of material cause which are often confused in Aristotle: the concept of material cause as conditio sine qua non and the concept of material cause as a genuine cause (as 'because', dia ti). In his De fato and in his commentary on chapters 2 and 24 of book Delta of Aristotle's Metaphysics, Alexander analyses the three Aristotelian elements of material cause, namely (1) the ex hou (the 'out of which'), (2) the enuparchon (internal constituent) and (3) the hupokeimenon (substratum), and confirms the Aristotelian conception of material cause as the condition of becoming and existence of items. But explaining that material cause seems to be rather a conditio sine qua non, in his commentary on book Beta of Metaphysics Alexander explains also that, for this reason, it is less a cause than the other Aristotelian causes.

Among Actions, Objects, and Ideas:The Telescope in Thomas Tomkis’s Albumazar Vivian Appler (bio) “An engine to catch starres”: Thomas Tomkis and Natural Philosophy1 Albumazar is a play filled with things, from mundane household goods to lists of ancient and contemporary alchemists and magi to the eponymous astrologer’s collection of astrolabes, horoscopes, and almanacs. It is also the first play in English to feature a scene with a telescope onstage.2 However, whether many of the things in Thomas Tomkis’s (c. 1580–after 1615) science farce physically appeared onstage for its March 9, 1614 premiere at Cambridge’s Trinity Hall is uncertain. The questionable material status of Tomkis’s stage properties becomes significant when Albumazar is examined in a context of the history of science as well as the history of theatre. The original college production demonstrates the playwright’s cultural awareness of the emergent disciplinary distinction of astronomy through the incorporation of its star technology: the telescope.3 King James I (1566–1625)—witch-hunter, author of Daemonology (1597), and royal guest at Albumazar’s premiere— likely held a derogatory opinion of the telescope because of its potential use as a tool in the occult craft of astrology. The space between the textual narrative and the telescope scene as it might have been embodied by actors in 1614 reveals the delicate balance that Tomkis achieved by referring to truthful elements of astronomy while poking fun at astrology. The manner in which the telescope was performed—as a physical prop or mimed as part of a dumb show—indicates the range of Tomkis’s engagement with the tools and concepts of the “new science” in the only performance of the play recorded during his lifetime. [End Page 81] The “new science” advanced the idea of experimentation and experience as a means of exploring the natural world.4 This method prioritized embodied encounters and observations of natural phenomena (including things astronomical) over contemplation of Aristotelian causes thereof. The “new science” began to emerge with Galileo Galilei’s (1564–1642) empirical observations and was developed in England most famously by Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626), who preceded Tomkis at Trinity College, from 1573–1575.5 Staged representations of the telescope throughout the seventeenth century evidence a gradual shift in popular opinions about the “new science” and those who adhered to its philosophy. Tomkis’s use of the telescope in the play references a host of overlapping traditions of science, magic, education, and authority that were at odds with each other at the time of the play’s premiere. In 1614, astrology and astronomy were not entirely distinct disciplines and neither was completely condoned, or forbidden, by religious and scholarly authorities. Astrology had historically been taught at European universities, but the church and university considered certain aspects of astrology less offensive than others.6 Act 1 of Albumazar features a telescope (referred to throughout the play as a perspicill) and an otacousticon (a hearing aid).7 These devices situate the play at a pivotal moment in the history of science as reports of new discoveries made through the use of “Galilean” tubes spread across Europe.8 The traditional narrative of the telescope’s invention goes that in 1608, Dutch spectacle-maker Hans Lipperhey (1570–1619) was granted a patent for his telescope design from the States General in Hague, Holland, and so the chapter of the telescope was added to a global history of astronomical technologies.9 Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) announced his application of the telescope to the practice of astronomy in 1610 with the publication of Sidereus Nuncius (The Starry Messenger).10 What followed was a European battle of philosophies over the veracity of the celestial objects made visible through the telescope’s lenses waged throughout the seventeenth century.11 At the time, knowledge gained through the use of telescopes was not universally accepted because discoveries of new stars and planets, as well as the ability to trace their movements with greater accuracy, challenged a Ptolemaic (geocentric) model of the universe that was still popular within the academy and the church. Galileo’s observations made with the telescope supported a Copernican (heliocentric) model. [End Page 82] Thomas...

A good way of characterizing what is usually called the 17th-century “revolution of modern science” is to focus on Galileo Galilei’s theory of explanation. As is well known, he set aside three of the four Aristotelian causes (material, formal and final causes) in order to couch all sound scientific explanations in terms of efficient causes. In the second half of the 19th century a new scientific revolution occurred with Darwin’s theory of evolution. As has been stated repeatedly, Darwinism also has something to do with the abandoning of teleology in science, as speciation is explained without any appeal to final causes. But in the last quarter of the 19th century a third scientific revolution occurred, this time in the social sciences. Many philosophers of science fail to notice or understand this intellectual event. This third scientific revolution is usually called the “marginalist revolution.” The transformation of political economy into pure economics, and progressively, into mathematical economics had at least two distinctive features. First, this revolution broke out simultaneously but independently in three different European countries: with Carl Menger (1840–1921) in Austria, with William Stanley Jevons (1835–1882) in England, and with Leon Walras (1834–1910), who, in 1870, was the first to hold the Chair of Political Economy at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.1

This article outlines an epistemological perspective to understand the organism as a temporally changing whole. To analyze the mental faculties involved, the organism’s development and persisting existence is differentiated into four interdependent aspects: descent, future existence, persistent species, and environmentally adapted physical appearance. It is outlined that these aspects are recognized by comparative memory, concept-guided anticipation, conceptual thinking, and sensory perception, respectively. Furthermore, it is pointed out that these aspects correspond to the famous four Aristotelian “causes” or principles of explanation. The descent of an organism corresponds to Aristotle’s efficient principle (“where does it come from?”), its future existence to the final principle (“what is if for?”), its physical structure to the material principle (“out of what is it?”) and its persistent species to the formal principle (“what is it?”). Aristotle regarded the unity of the efficient, formal and final principle as the ontological cause of the organism and called it the “soul” (psyche), while the material principle can be understood to represent its “body” (soma). I suggest that Aristotle’s “soul” corresponds to three of the four mental faculties required for cognition of a self-maintaining organism. I argue that in a Kantian perspective, the Aristotelian “soul” represents the condition of the possibility of recognizing an organism at all. Therefore, the Aristotelian principle of life becomes intelligible and even empirically observable through the inner sense. In summary, I suggest that the four aspects of the organism described here can be viewed as the general, epistemological and ontological principle of the organism, the Bio-Logos.