[Serious] The Good

[Angrboda]

The part you added later:

Acorns in space didn't evolve that way.

I'll get back to you another time, as you have replied immediately after me, but a couple notes. Acorns evolving and thus not existing in space is a contingent fact. If final causes are simply a contingent fact, then the entire first paragraph you quoted about the end result not being "mere coincidence" is completely destroyed, because it is nothing more than mere coincidence that acorns exist in the one way other than the other. Final causes serve no explanatory role over and above efficient causes. Note specifically that in the first paragraph you quote, Aristotle asks why teeth "regularly" grow one way rather than the other. Thus Aristotles conception of final causes, according to this author, rests on confusing statistical norms with other kinds of norms. In a different universe, the teeth would not "regularly" grow in that fashion. If the "cause" of one result occurring rather than the other is the result of existing in one set of circumstances rather than the other, then final causes aren't doing any explanation at all, as they don't in fact explain anything that isn't explained by efficient causes and the contingent facts. And indeed, when those explanations ignore efficient causes and contingent facts, the explanation derived turns out to be wrong, as in the case of the acorn and the heart. Anything which results in incorrect explanations for things is, at the very least, not an objective feature of the universe.

As to the second point, which rests primarily upon Aristotle's conception of being and existence as in itself good, in that, Aristotle is simply wrong. There is no objective reason to prefer existence to non-existence, only subjective ones. Therefore Aristotle's entire framework collapses due to a false assumption.

I think you'd do well to stop quoting others and try to do some of your own thinking, as the answers to the objections you quoted in reply to my prior post were contained in the post you replied to with them. If you're just making an argument from authority, then this is going to get old very fast. If you're not going to actually respond to what I've said and engage the points that I've made, this is likely going to lose my interest.