Why Why?

[emjay]

Does that always have to include a purpose though, in your view or just generally if different? Ie in terms of Aristotle's causes, does a Final Cause always mean a purpose? There are many words for it... the end of something, the good of something, maybe goal... and for a lot of things, that sort of explanation makes sense... but not everything, IMO at least, so that seems to me the most problematic of those four causes on account of that. For instance I'm no geologist, so forgive any factual errors here, but a beach for instance is IMO an effect of erosion, but not the goal of it... so in one sense in can be said to be an end, but not in the sense of a purpose.

I think of final causes as range of possible outcomes rather than a single goal. So really, it could be thought of as a disposition towards a limited set of future states. An acorn can become an oak tree in many different ways, depending on circumstances. It could also never sprout but it will never become a maple tree no matter where you plant it or how much you water it.

Fair enough... I see where you're coming from with that. I think 'outcomes' is a good word... neutral/flexible enough to sometimes mean goal sometimes not depending on the context. As I said, goal makes more sense to me in some situations than others. I have no problem with it for your seed example... as that's the same sort of example Aristotle used, and as I understand it one of his main inspirations for thinking about things in terms of potentiality and actuality in the first place. But it just felt a lot less appropriate for my example of the sand on a beach, but that being said I think I understand now how you would frame even that... in terms of a disposition like in that video you recommended (I just checked, the 5th one), which used a similar sort of example of a mountain forming.