Aquinas's Fifth Way

[The Grand Nudger]

Scientific inquiries are about what the types of knowledge follow from that observation. Asking why the observation holds is a philosophical inquiry about what precedes the observation.

-and yet science seems to be able to make observations about causality..and even when causality doesn't seem to hold as we might expect, and even -why- causality holds when we do. I'm afraid you're not going to be able to claim this ground so easily. It's an observation, and it's part of the larger collection of observations that we call science - up to and including, in any specific case...-why- we observe it and -why- it holds.

Yes, plants have a kind of have a kind of intelligence derived from their nature as hylomorphic substance (a compound of essence and existience). The nature of a supreme or overarching intelligent is reserved for subsequent arguments. For now it is only necessary to acknowledge a fundamental intentionality responsible for making reality intelligible.

Am I to assume that you are comfortable using the effects ancillary to and parcel to plants as an example of a specific cause? What with the doubling of quote tags and your response?

I like that you're willing to give plants the nod (though this "essence" business smells like fabrication from the outset..and I'll get to the hylomorphic bit in a moment). That said- if they do possess intelligence, it isn't intelligence that causes them to track the sun. Auxin is photophobic, it breaks down in the presence of sunlight, and it's a growth hormone that collects and causes tissue to to build up on the dark side of a plant. The effect of this is that a plant grows "toward" the light - because it's essentially building a light negative structure on the opposite side. No intelligence is required (even if plants possess it) because it's just machinery. Auxin can't behave any other way, and subsequently the effect we see in the stem of a plant is regular. If you'd like to discuss why auxin is photophobic we can have that discussion as well - we won't find any intelligence in it. As another poster has pointed out, it's chemistry.

Similarly, in the case of diurnal phototropism light sensitive cells cause a motor assembly to fire releasing potassium ions into nearby tissue which increases the pressure in the area of the plant associated. Makes it stand up, as it were. Again, chemistry. They fire whenever light hits them, they can't do anything else, and the result is thusly regular.

Here we have one cause (light) for two regular effects, and nothing in the intermediate situation requires any sort of intelligence whatsoever. So while we might say "they have intelligence" it doesn't seem to be required for the effects we observe - the change- to either occur, or occur with regularity. Maybe they wonder how all of this machinery works themselves, as they laze in the sun - but I doubt it.

Now on to this "hylomorphic" bit. Good luck separating a plants body from it's "soul". Every effect that we perceive and associate with life in a plant is firmly mechanical, and firmly a property of it's body- so whatever a soul might do in a plant, it doesn't seem to be doing anything that we can observe - just like it's intelligence.

As I said, this intelligence bit doesn't seem to be required, and if it's present it definitely doesn't seem to be anything impressive. If all of this can be achieved without intelligence.....by a thing that possesses an intelligence so marginal that it's non-existence and existence are entirely impossible to distinguish.....makes one wonder what sort of god we might be arguing for based upon observations of intelligence in cause, and the regularity of effects. None of this would have been available to Aristotle (for example)...so I can't blame him - but it is available to you....and of course the supposition that there is no bodily organ to think probably also sent him in the wrong direction...but ultimately, even though there demonstrably -is- a bodily organ to think..it doesn't seem to be required for effects similar to those associated with organisms that -do- have an organ to think. In other words...there is demonstrably no such necessity of intelligence as the one you have been invoking..even if it may be present.