RE: Book reports
October 24, 2019 at 10:16 pm
(This post was last modified: October 24, 2019 at 10:24 pm by GrandizerII.)
Just finished the section (in Feser's book) related to the Aristotelian notion of causality (efficient, formal, material, final) along with the author's address of the Humean thinking with regards to causality.
This section (despite the title of the book) was a bit of a tough read for me. Some of the stuff I would have loved more elaboration on, and I am left not completely understanding what he really means by such words as "end" or "goal". For me, final causality is a very iffy thing. I get that final causality does not require the agent to be conscious in order to be directed to a certain effect, but something about directedness nevertheless does appear to imply some ultimate "goalmaker". I am not sure how a heart pumping blood into the circulatory system would imply that there's an end towards which the heart does what it does, unless there is an intelligent ultimate designer of this world who allowed for the eventual formation of the heart so that it would be able to do so for the sake of keeping the human body alive and well. Under the worldview in which such a designer does not exist, and/or evolution is purely a blind process (before the emergence of human beings at least), I'm not confident in saying that the heart has evolved in order to keep the human body alive and well.
Additionally, I don't think Feser made a good case against Humean causality in this section. It may be very convenient to speak of causality (even in the Aristotelian sense) in our everyday languages and at the level of our everyday experiences, and it's fair to say that causality makes a lot of sense according to our intuitions. But we should take more care when we then try to apply our causality intuitions to the more sophisticated language(s) we use when we start to do philosophy and talk about the fundamentals of this world/reality.
Given what we know/observe about this world in terms of structure, and in light of the fact that there are things that occur in this world that are not completely predictable (even if we had access to all knowledge pertaining to this world), I'm personally inclined to generally agree with Hume here. Even at the point of a violently-thrown brick striking the glass of a window, because of the apparent randomness of the particles that constitute both the brick and the window, the window could potentially break in more than one specific way and could also potentially not break at all (unless there is something about the forces of nature that prevent this from happening). In other words, because of what we've been able to observe at the quantum level, I can't say that bricks and glass windows could ever be used as part of an analogy that adequately explains what causality is ultimately. We speak of the brick causing a break in the window glass, but really what is happening is that a bunch of particles interacted with one another in an apparently random way so that a specific state in spacetime occurs and that this specific state could instead have been a slightly different or even perhaps a radically different state in that same "spacetime zone".
This is how I see it for now at least. Anyhow, one good thing from reading this section was there was quite a bit to learn that I didn't know before ... even if I didn't end up agreeing with some of the stuff being said. Furthermore, despite my skepticism of causality, I still want to carry on assuming Aristotelian metaphysics as I continue to read through the book just to see how strong the eventually-stated arguments for God made by Aquinas/Feser hold under these assumptions.
This section (despite the title of the book) was a bit of a tough read for me. Some of the stuff I would have loved more elaboration on, and I am left not completely understanding what he really means by such words as "end" or "goal". For me, final causality is a very iffy thing. I get that final causality does not require the agent to be conscious in order to be directed to a certain effect, but something about directedness nevertheless does appear to imply some ultimate "goalmaker". I am not sure how a heart pumping blood into the circulatory system would imply that there's an end towards which the heart does what it does, unless there is an intelligent ultimate designer of this world who allowed for the eventual formation of the heart so that it would be able to do so for the sake of keeping the human body alive and well. Under the worldview in which such a designer does not exist, and/or evolution is purely a blind process (before the emergence of human beings at least), I'm not confident in saying that the heart has evolved in order to keep the human body alive and well.
Additionally, I don't think Feser made a good case against Humean causality in this section. It may be very convenient to speak of causality (even in the Aristotelian sense) in our everyday languages and at the level of our everyday experiences, and it's fair to say that causality makes a lot of sense according to our intuitions. But we should take more care when we then try to apply our causality intuitions to the more sophisticated language(s) we use when we start to do philosophy and talk about the fundamentals of this world/reality.
Given what we know/observe about this world in terms of structure, and in light of the fact that there are things that occur in this world that are not completely predictable (even if we had access to all knowledge pertaining to this world), I'm personally inclined to generally agree with Hume here. Even at the point of a violently-thrown brick striking the glass of a window, because of the apparent randomness of the particles that constitute both the brick and the window, the window could potentially break in more than one specific way and could also potentially not break at all (unless there is something about the forces of nature that prevent this from happening). In other words, because of what we've been able to observe at the quantum level, I can't say that bricks and glass windows could ever be used as part of an analogy that adequately explains what causality is ultimately. We speak of the brick causing a break in the window glass, but really what is happening is that a bunch of particles interacted with one another in an apparently random way so that a specific state in spacetime occurs and that this specific state could instead have been a slightly different or even perhaps a radically different state in that same "spacetime zone".
This is how I see it for now at least. Anyhow, one good thing from reading this section was there was quite a bit to learn that I didn't know before ... even if I didn't end up agreeing with some of the stuff being said. Furthermore, despite my skepticism of causality, I still want to carry on assuming Aristotelian metaphysics as I continue to read through the book just to see how strong the eventually-stated arguments for God made by Aquinas/Feser hold under these assumptions.
