Very simply: most smart folks for the last 2400 years in the west have believed in aristotle's notion of final cause...and smart folks like Feser and the super smart folks like Thomas Aquinas have grounded arguments for God in this notion of Final cause.
However...the idea of final cause as having metaphysical reality looks to me like pure in(s)anity/category error. Can any of my smart comenters explain how final cause makes sense at all?
Posts
1 comment:
It's a human universal to intuitively evaluate things to have a purpose.
(As in every case, philosophers are more ethnographers than thinkers. They're the first to write down what everyone is already thinking.*)
This means humans evolved to detect/determine/derive a purpose.
Is evolution your epistemic peer?
Moreover, a purpose can in fact be constructed for just about everything. For example, you can say planets are extremely inefficient uses of material to make living spaces. However, before you develop a technological species, it is the most efficient possibility. All that mass may not directly contribute to places to put condos, but without it nobody would have thought to make condos at all.
So:
Can you give me some examples of things you'd say do have metaphysical reality?
How would the universe have to change so that final causes could have metaphysical reality?
My end game here is to suggest ways the universe could already be that way without you having noticed. Though since I don't know what particulars you'll answer with - hence the question - the plan may change.
If you don't like that line, there's another. Aristotle can be inarticulate, just like everyone else. In fact, it's easier because there have been advances in articulation in the last couple millennia. However, even if the left-brain words are wrong, it can hit the right note for the right brain. Usually that means it can be repaired by changing the words.
There's also a third line, regarding humanism.
*(Though this is occasionally confounded by a truly influential philosopher - everyone 'instinctually' thinks it now. One must check historical belief patterns.)
Post a Comment