Teleological Argument (Aquinas)

[Ostronomos]

To be a goal is to be an idea. But to label something as a goal is the issue. You claim certain processes to be goal-directed without actually establishing that there is a goal as opposed to simply an effect.

Is the *goal* of the heart to pump blood? Or is it simply what the heart does? Is the goal of natural selection to produce organisms more adapted to their environment or is that simply what happens when unfit organisms die and we call that process 'natural selection'? Is it the goal of gravity to produce stars from gas clouds or is that simply what happens when those gas clouds act on themselves via gravity?

You seem to assume that any order is goal-directed, even if known, simple, laws of physics produce that order.

As I see it, you use a more complicated 'explanation' (an intelligent agent) when a much simpler explanation (a law of physics) is available.

...and so the false dichotomy of a random accident versus an intelligent design continues.

Just because your blind to anything other than material experience does not mean it is so.

 

[Valjean]

You need to explain why it's not a "Cosmic Watchmaker" argument a bit more for me.
We have natural explanations for all "guided behaviour" in the laws of nature. The acorn grows into a tree, the snowflake forms symmetrically, the planets revolve around the sun, because of forces external to them, but those forces have no intelligence and much less do they have agency. They are totally deterministic (at least above the quantum level).
Postulating an intelligent source behind the forces is just the "Cosmic Watchmaker".

Even conscious behavior is not necessarily governed by intelligence or planning. Behavior and temperament are just as subject to natural selection as anatomy and physiology.

 

[Valjean]

...and so the false dichotomy of a random accident versus an intelligent design continues.

Just because your blind to anything other than material experience does not mean it is so.

No!
Noöne's proposing random accident. That's not what natural selection is. Natural selection selects; it cherry-picks.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Since the laws of nature are descriptive, not prescriptive, I'd say that the question is wrong-headed.

Natural laws are inferred from our observations of how things work. As long as there are "things" of some description, there will be a "how things work" of some description.

A less loaded way of asking the question would be "why do things we observe behave the way they do?"... though I'm not sure that this would do it for you, since I suspect that the loadedness of the question is the point.

That’s not a less loaded way of asking the same question, it’s a completely different question. What I am questioning is, Why are there regularities in nature for us to observe?

The statement “as long as there are things, there will be a way things work” is meaningless. It assumes that nature must of necessity be orderly, and it’s only a matter of the observer detecting that order, but what is the basis for that assumption?

You might make the case that order is always in the eye of the observer, and therefore an emergent property of consciousness, but I don’t think that’s really your view is it?

 

[Valjean]

That’s not a less loaded way of asking the same question, it’s a completely different question. What I am questioning is, Why are there regularities in nature for us to observe?

The statement “as long as there are things, there will be a way things work” is meaningless. It assumes that nature must of necessity be orderly, and it’s only a matter of the observer detecting that order, but what is the basis for that assumption?

It assumes nothing. It describes what it sees, as it sees it. There is an observed order and regularity observed in nature. There are no assumptions, just observations.

 

[Polymath257]

The simple explanation still prompts the question, Why is nature (seemingly) governed by laws?

And for that there *cannot* be an answer since those laws are the basis of causality and so cannot themselves be caused.

 

[PearlSeeker]

So, you are saying that spontaneous patterns are evidence of intent?

It sounds like this is the core and essence of your claims.

You could say so.

 

[LuisDantas]

You could say so.

To me that amounts to an appeal to aesthetics.

You want to believe that patterns can't happen out of circunstance.

That is not a stance backed up by observable facts.

 

[RestlessSoul]

And for that there *cannot* be an answer since those laws are the basis of causality and so cannot themselves be caused.

So the laws themselves are fundamental? Since the laws of physics are mostly mathematical formulae, does this mean that the physical world is governed by an ideal realm of underlying, perfect abstraction, as suggested by Plato (and Roger Penrose)?

 

[PearlSeeker]

It isn't 'directed' by any intelligence. It simply acts under the action of gravity and via the laws of physics. That 'chain' is simply the chain of cause and effect.

A chain in which every agent that serves as an efficient cause regularly produces (points to) specific effect (or range of effects) as its natural end. So the effect is the final cause of the thing that produces it.

 

[PearlSeeker]

So you didn't say this?

"This end exists as an idea in the mind (as the author above said "in the order of mental being")."

Yes, I did say this. For example when someone wants to build a house the goal exists as an idea in the intellect before it exists in reality. This way the house serves as the final cause that directs the actions of the builder. What's wrong with that?

 

[PearlSeeker]

To be a goal is to be an idea. But to label something as a goal is the issue. You claim certain processes to be goal-directed without actually establishing that there is a goal as opposed to simply an effect.

It is the regularity that points there is a goal and not just an effect. For example the moon goes around the earth in a smooth elliptical orbit rather than zigzagging erratically. "... [F]inal causality or teleology (to use a more modern expression) is evident wherever some natural object or process has a tendency to produce some particular effect or range of effects" (E. Feser, Aquinas).

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Yes, I did say this. For example when someone wants to build a house the goal exists as an idea in the intellect before it exists in reality. This way the house serves as the final cause that directs the actions of the builder. What's wrong with that?

Let's go back to how you framed this originally:

4. But an effect cannot exist in real being prior to the action of the cause, because then the effect would be prior to its cause, which is absurd

5. So the effect/end must exist in the order of mental being, as an idea, prior to the causal action

6. Hence the ends of all causal actions must exist in some Supreme Intelligence which directs those causes to their ends.

It seems that what you're saying is:

- every effect needs a cause.
- every cause has an intent behind it.
- this intent must include a concept of the thing being intended... i.e. the effect has to "exist as an idea" before it exists in reality.
- therefore, every effect has to "exist as an idea" before it happens.
- you think God is the mind where all of these effects "exist as ideas."

If I don't understand you correctly, please say so.

I see a lot wrong in this argument, but the one issue I'm focusing on right now is that things just don't "exist as ideas" or "exist in the mind."

The concept of a thing is not the thing itself. It's a mental model of the thing.

The plans for a house are not a house. They're a representation of ideas about a house. The map (the concept or plan) is not the territory (the thing in reality).

Your statement "the house serves as the final cause that directs the actions of the builder" is false because there is no house until the house is built. The plans for the house are not the house. A non-existent house isn't "directing" anything.

 

[Polymath257]

So the laws themselves are fundamental? Since the laws of physics are mostly mathematical formulae, does this mean that the physical world is governed by an ideal realm of underlying, perfect abstraction, as suggested by Plato (and Roger Penrose)?

No. The laws are simply properties that things have. Those properties produce regular behavior.

I actually think that Platonism is the biggest philosophical mistake that has been made.

 

[Polymath257]

A chain in which every agent that serves as an efficient cause regularly produces (points to) specific effect (or range of effects) as its natural end. So the effect is the final cause of the thing that produces it.

Which means that the only 'effects' happen at the very end of chains of causality, which means that we have never actually seen an effect.

I'd say that was a bad definition.

Also, the existence of chains of causality in no way implies an intelligence that sets those chains in motion.

 

[Polymath257]

It is the regularity that points there is a goal and not just an effect. For example the moon goes around the earth in a smooth elliptical orbit rather than zigzagging erratically. "... [F]inal causality or teleology (to use a more modern expression) is evident wherever some natural object or process has a tendency to produce some particular effect or range of effects" (E. Feser, Aquinas).

And the elliptical orbit is a consequence of the inverse square law for the force of gravity. No 'goal' is required: only that masses attract each other in that way.

ALL that is required is that things have properties that determine their interactions. Having properties does NOT imply the existence of an intelligence. In fact, intelligence is a *consequence* of things having properties.

Yes, I strongly disagree with Aquinas.

 

[Polymath257]

Yes, I did say this. For example when someone wants to build a house the goal exists as an idea in the intellect before it exists in reality. This way the house serves as the final cause that directs the actions of the builder. What's wrong with that?

So, for things that are designed by an intelligence, the idea of that thing exists in the mind of the intelligence before the actions are taken to make that thing.

But that says nothing at all about those things that are NOT designed by an intelligence.

The difficulty is looking at what humans do and thinking that is typical in the universe. In fact, human intellect and design is incredibly *atypical* in the universe. We only exist on one small planet orbiting one smallish star in a galaxy of hundreds of billions of stars in a universe of at least hundreds of billions of galaxies. That human made cars and watches are designed by intelligence is NOT a good basis for concluding other things in the universe, even very complicated things, are designed by some intelligence.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

It is the regularity that points there is a goal and not just an effect. For example the moon goes around the earth in a smooth elliptical orbit rather than zigzagging erratically. "... [F]inal causality or teleology (to use a more modern expression) is evident wherever some natural object or process has a tendency to produce some particular effect or range of effects" (E. Feser, Aquinas).

You realize that there's an implicit - and unintelligent - filtering effect going on here, right?

In the early days of the solar system, things did zigzag erratically. Lots of material banged together, got pulled into the Sun, or flung off into space; what we have now is what's left billions of years later. It's nearly a tautology to say that form of the Solar System billions of years after its formation will only be that which can survive for billions of years. Everything else is gone with no intelligence required to make it happen.

In fact, the solar system itself is evidence of disorder. How do you think all the planets formed? It was by chaotic movement, along with the effects of gravity, causing material to collide and accrete together.

And even then process "failed" sometimes. The asteroid belt is the remanants of material that never managed to coalesce into a planet.

And since then, it's not like the solar system is static. It's changing itself - and ultimately destroying itself - over time, just on timescales long enough for humans not to notice.

BTW: you do realize that the Moon is itself evidence of disorderly motion, right? It was formed by a catastrophic collision that blew material off of the Earth, some of which accreted to form the Moon.

 

[RestlessSoul]

No. The laws are simply properties that things have. Those properties produce regular behavior.

I actually think that Platonism is the biggest philosophical mistake that has been made.

Laws can’t be properties. Either they arise from those properties which entities exhibit when interacting with each other, or they determine the nature of those interactions.

If, as you said above, the laws of physics are the basis of causality and cannot themselves be caused, then the laws of physics are more fundamental than the physical entities whose behaviour they describe and predict. Which certainly brings us back to territory explored by Plato (and Kepler and Penrose).

 

[PearlSeeker]

You want to believe that patterns can't happen out of circunstance.

They can but I'm interested in regular inherent patterns.