39 - Form and Function: Aristotle's Four Causes
Posted on 26 June 2011
Aristotle's Physics presents four types of cause: formal, material, final and efficient. Peter looks at all four, and asks whether evolutionary theory undermines final causes in nature.
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Further Reading:
• J. Annas, “Aristotle on Inefficient Causes,” Philosophical Quarterly 32 (1982), reprinted in T. Irwin (ed.), Aristotle: Metaphysics, Epistemology, Natural Philosophy (New York: 1995).
• D. Charles, “Aristotle on Hypothetical Necessity and Irreducibility,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 69 (1988).
• C.A. Freeland, “Accidental Causes and Real Explanations,” and J.M. Moravcsik, “What Makes Reality Intelligible? Reflections on Aristotle’s Theory of Aitia,” in L. Judson (ed.), Aristotle’s Physics: a Collection of Essays (Oxford: 1991).
• S.S. Meyer, “Aristotle, Teleology and Reduction,” Philosophical Review 101 (1992).
• D. Sedley, “Is Aristotle’s Teleology Anthropocentric?” Phronesis 36 (1991).
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Final Cause, Once Again
Peter, about this claim, which I take to characterize your position (in your words) "I think [Aristotle] just believed that nature itself is characterized by purposiveness, without any conscious agent having imposed the purposes or designed the animals, plants, etc." If what you mean by "characterized by purposeness" is that biologists must think in terms of purposeness for the sake of knowledge in their science (in your words again "it is hard to imagine that biologists could get around saying things like 'the giraffe's neck is for the purpose of reaching leaves.'") - I think this is wrong. If final causes are reducible to efficient in biology, the biologist is simply using shorthand by saying 'the giraffe's neck is for the purpose of reaching leaves'. The full claim, and the claim that is deposited as knowledge in the bank of biology, reads 'the giraffe has a long neck as a result of natural selection where this trait proved itself advantageous in survival over its absence.'
A second point Peter, an echo from the Phaedo. Socrates speaks about muscle, tendons, locomotive force, etc. as able to provide a very complete and powerfully explanative picture about why he is in prison. But unfortunately the wrong picture. The right picture cannot be given without reference to the idea of the good that he Socrates followed to arrive at his difficulty. I am saying that the judgment between the two pictures may not come down to how much each is able to explain.
Purposiveness
Thanks for the comment! On the Phaedo point first, maybe I'm missing your point but I think you have Socrates' idea backwards. What he says in that passage is exactly what you are saying: he insists that we cannot explain his sitting in prison only by referring to muscles, tendons, etc, rather we need to invoke his conception of the good.
The Aristotle point is trickier. I think your remark relates to what I was saying about deflationary accounts of teleology in Aristotle. So the idea here is that Aristotle could be made closer to modern biology if we said that for him, final causes are necessary for explanation, but not necessarily "causes" in some fuller ontological sense. I guess you want to go even further and say that biologists now don't even need to invoke purposiveness in providing explanations: rather you can do everything with efficient causes. The question here is whether, as it were, the "finished perfect biology" would still have purposive language in it. I think your rephrasing about the giraffe does manage to avoid this, but only by leaving out a crucial part of the explanation. Why, we might want to know, is the neck "advantageous in survival"? Because the neck helps the giraffe reach leaves; that is the "purpose" of the long neck, albeit not a purpose imposed deliberately by anything. So the idea here is to say that the long necks emerged due to natural selection, but also that there is something the long neck is good for. Similarly with, say, bright feathers: they are "in order to attract a mate" or "good for frightening predators" or whatever. So what I was suggesting is that biologists will find it hard or impossible to fill out evolutionary accounts without using purposive descriptions in this minimal way. I'm not necessarily claiming this is right, by the way, it is a tricky issue which would take us into philosophy of biology, but I do think it's plausible.
Peter
I'm interested in the
I'm interested in the antiquated final cause in the biological sciences. While you say that an animal's final cause is now nothing more than survival pressures and genetic inheritance, couldn't these very ideas be translated into Aristotelian causes? Genetic make-up looks a lot like the formal cause of each trait and "survival pressure" is more or less a negative statement equivalent to "for the sake of survival." I just don't see a real reason to reject final cause due to Darwinism.
also, the podcast is wonderful.
Final cause
Glad you enjoy the podcast. I think I agree with you -- I mean the idea that "in order to survive/reproduce" could be in some sense a final cause. The only thing is that this suggests a deflationary understanding of final causes. What I mean is that speaking of a final cause in this sense could be reduced, and hence eliminated, with a story about which ancestors survived -- effectively translating the final cause into a long story about efficient causes. Now, some people would be pretty happy with this kind of deflationary interpretation of Aristotle. That is, they would say that for Aristotle any causal account that invokes final causes can also be translated into a causal account about efficient causes. But I find this implausible; I think he wants to have a more "realist" account of final causes, where such causes cannot be eliminated from the best scientific explanation. Does that make sense?
Peter
final cause
Thanks for the quick reply. I guess a Darwinian final cause would become equivalent to the efficient cause, because the animal's purpose in survival is to become an efficient cause? But wouldn't that still provide slightly different knowledge, because it is not becoming its own efficient cause, but that of another? I certainly don't want to deflate the meaning of Aristotle's causes. Would his "realist" account of final cause translate into something that's of meaning to another thing (the designer or efficient causer?) as in the case of man made things which are designed for a purpose with specific reference to the intelligent being/ designer? I believe in Plato's Symposium Diotima claims that the final cause (final desire) of all mortal creatures is to become immortal. Is this along the lines of Aristotle's "realist" account of final cause? This of course suggests nothing about the benefit it provides to intelligence, unless intelligence is immortal.
more on final cause
That's not quite what I meant about final causes. What I meant is that the Darwinian story might be taken to say: "ok, it looks like these animals have teleological features, like sharp claws, long necks, etc. But we can explain away the apppearance of final causes by appealing solely to efficient causes: namely the mutation of genes, the killing of less survival fit members of species, and reproduction. This is how we get apparent purposiveness out of a random process." This would be sort of like other reductionist moves in philosophy, e.g. it seems that there is some real thing that is mental consciousness, but it can be explained away as merely the product of physical processes in the brain (not saying that's true, just that it's a similar move).
I don't think either that Aristotle needs to say (nor does he say) that purposiveness has to be the result of deliberate, conscious design, e.g. by God. Rather I think he just believed that nature itself is characterized by purposiveness, without any conscious agent having imposed the purposes or designed the animals, plants, etc.
Ok thanks, that helped to
Ok thanks, that helped to clarify things quite a bit.
I'm still not entirely comfortable with such a reduction of the final cause, but I see how it is achieved, more or less.
Okay, tell me if I got this right...
The formal cause of the History of Philosophy podcast is Peter Adamson's voice, the material causes are sound waves and data files, the efficient cause is Peter Adamson, and the final cause is the entertainment and education of strangers?
I love these podcasts Peter, thanks so much for lending them your lucidity, hysterical wittiness, and attractive voice. Without these podcasts my summer would be far more dull than it currently is. An enormous kudos and the most sincere approbation from me and all your listeners across the pond.
Aristotle's Final Cause
Peter,
Your podcasts, lately discovered, are, dare I say, a godsend: well written, well spoken, with just the right dash of levity. Having received but a B.A. in Philosophy more than 30 years ago, I am enjoying this review from a great enough distance to accept the premise that there are no apparent gaps. That is until Lesson 39.
I am somewhat dismayed by your dismissal of Aristotle's final cause. You offer Darwin's theory and genetics as sufficient evidence of the randomness of nature to dispatch the notion of any purpose to life. Your suggestion that design in nature is but apparent begs the question.
Today, many philosophers and scientists seem to reflexively disregard the issue of intelligent design to the point where they become impatient with anyone who questions this self evident truth. Their ability to apprehend this "universal negative" is laudable but I am frustrated that I am not able to comprehend the non-intelligibility of existence and our consequent purposelessness.
Peter, if anything, you have proved yourself patient, both in the preparation of this series and in your careful response to those who offer comments. Can you explain how it is that existence has no final cause or purpose?
While you may say the burden of proof is with me to prove that there are final causes, I would refer to Aristotle's observation of nature. His argument is inductive. I would suggest that it is also demonstrable.
I accept that, from a philosophical, i.e. rational perspective, we cannot determine what the final cause or purpose of a giraffe is. But it does not follow that there is then no final cause or purpose to a giraffe. Again, even though we do not know WHAT that purpose is, there seems to be evidence in its design THAT there is a purpose. I believe that this was the observant Aristotle's main point about final cause.
The further details admitted by later scientific observations do not disprove this point. To argue against Aristotle, it seems that one must either describe the evidence absurdly as "nonintelligent design" or as "intelligent non design." In describing it in your lecture as "apparent design" you seem to be leaning towards the latter position.
I would think that philosophers would be the first to defend the notion of purpose. For if there is no purpose to existence then philosophy is the most meaningless of all intellectual pursuits. All philosophy, including Plato, would be but a footnote to the more practical sciences.
Purpose in nature
Thanks for this thoughtful post. Maybe I should listen back to what I said in this episode but I think all that I was trying to say is that Aristotle's insistence that regularity cannot be explained through a chance process seems unfounded: Darwinian theories of evolution seem to do precisely that. However, this is a fairly narrow issue about his argument in Physics II.7. More broadly, I think there is good reason to say that we cannot avoid invoking purpose in talking about nature. Leaving aside the debate about intelligent design, it is hard to imagine that biologists could get around saying things like "the giraffe's neck is for the purpose of reaching leaves." If this is right then purposiveness plays an explanatory role in our accounts of nature, but this leaves open the question of how things got to have these purposes (evolution, intelligent design, whatever).
It's perhaps worth noting that Aristotle was not a believer in intelligent design. He did believe in God but his God is not a designer -- that would be Plato's view (albeit that Plato talks of "younger gods" who help the divine craftsman to design lesser entities, for instance the human body). The Aristotelian God is invoked to explain the regular and eternal motion of the heavens, and we are never given even a suggestion that this God put thought into how animals should be structured, or anything like that.
This just goes to show that the question of purposiveness in nature needs to be kept distinct from the question of intelligent design. Darwinian biology and Aristotelian biology can (and do) make free use of "purpose" vocabulary, without either kind of biology ever invoking a superhuman intelligent designer. Thus if we do want to argue for such a designer we need to do more than just point out that nature sometimes seems purposive; further argument is needed, and of course further arguments have been given! (Stay tuned for medieval philosophy...)
Purpose and design
Thank you Peter for both distinguishing and seperating the issues of purposiveness and intelligent design. I do wonder how this seperation would hold up under the rigourous scrutiny of the scholastics. So I will indeed stay tuned and, like Achilles chasing the hare, expect to be on your heels by the time you get to Medieval Philosophy. Then, following at the more leisurly pace of a peripatetic, I hope to find more purpose in your well-designed pods.
evolution of purpose
For a lecture on this very topic by my favorite philosopher of science, Daniel Dennett, try:youtube.com/watch?v=3L7uNyQL0H0
(You can skip the first two minutes of introduction,which is dry as dust.) I hope I am not giving away too much by quoting an early critic of Darwin (1868)who claimed his theory was a strange inversion of reasoning: IN ORDER TO MAKE A BEAUTIFUL AND PERFECT MACHINE IT IS NOT REQUISITE TO KNOW HOW TO MAKE IT (caps in the original). I realize that the whole video is over an hour long, but it is well woth watching.
Dennett's Darwinian Design
Thank you for the link to Prof. Dennett's lecture. While I found his distinction between "What for?" and "How come?" interesting, his anecdotal presentation about the evolution of the question "Why?" did not prove his main point that our "intentional stance" is but "a good trick" we play on ourselves.
The professor is indeed following a strange inversion of reasoning in that he seems to mistake a branch of the evolutionary tree for its root. For though the artificer need not know how to make a beautiful and perfect machine in order to produce it, there must at least be someone with a notion of beauty and order to declare it "beautiful and perfect."
Further, by denying any distinction between replication (by external, cyclic forces) and reproduction (by internal self-organizing individuals) Prof. Dennett ignores rather than disproves the argument for purpose. This reduction of the question of final cause to one of efficient cause is itself a pretty neat trick. Dare we suppose it was intentional?
Finally, merely explaining how our interest in the question "Why" might have evolved still leaves the question unanswered. His lecture, while entertaining, in the end appears to lack any true philosophical purpose.
Aristotle and the causes
Your recording was really helpful! I have an exam on Tuesday and this has really helped me understand :)
Exam on Tuesday
Great, I'm glad -- please spread the word! And good luck on the exam.
Darwin and the facts
I must say, Professor, I am astonished at your absence of knowledge of the failure of evolution theory. I simply suggest to you this book by Robert Geis, "On the Existence of God" (published by Rowman and Littlefield). It contains two chapters on evolution which decimate any pretensions that evolution theory has to being anything but a point of view backed neither by science nor the laws of probability. If Philosophy instructors are of your calibre only, God help the students of the future who have not been schooled in the riigors of reasoning and mathematics. Your acceptance of Darwinism or evolution theory shows a fatal ability to reason either correctly or persuasively.
Evolution
Well, I'd rather this website didn't become a forum for people to argue about evolution -- I believe the internet has no shortage of places to do that. As far as its relevance to Aristotle is concerned the point of raising it in the episode was that he believes in the eternity of the species and in a teleological account of nature. Presumably the vast majority of listeners do in fact believe in evolution and so would have an immediate objection to Aristotle's view. Also it is interesting to see that Empedocles has a view that is akin, if not identical, to modern evolutionary theory. So I wanted to talk about how strong Aristotle's position was given the dialectical situation at the time.
If you happen not to believe in evolution (and believe in a creationist theory instead) then you would however have a different problem with Aristotle, in that his god is not a creator but simply causes the eternal motion of the cosmos, which indirectly (and permanently) gives rise to animal species. As we'll be seeing when we get to medieval philosophy there were many attempts to try to harmonize Aristotle's views with a more creationist metaphysical/theological system.
Peter