Nature Acts for an End: Replies to the Objections and the Infinity of Mind

Orientation #

He opens by asking which side “seems to you to outweigh the other” after last time’s weighing of the arguments for and against end as a cause in nature; the three counter-arguments are now to be answered, and he refers back to “the five arguments that we saw” of Aristotle and to “the fragments of Empedocles” and Fabre’s insect “I was describing” (prev. lecture). The previous class set up the arguments for teleology and the three counter-arguments, promising the replies for this session. Verified sources place the handout “Pride as a Cause of Error”, p. 22, and DHB Vol III p. 1023 in this episode’s audio, probably at the opening remarks on Max Born.

The class, in order #

1. Pre-class: philosophy “for its own sake” (“natural philosophy rather than science”) #

Point: the word “philosophy” still carries the sense of knowing for its own sake, which practical people cannot credit.

• Max Born, fled Germany, in Scotland where natural science “is still called natural philosophy”: “nothing great can be accomplished in science without the elementary wonder of the philosopher.” Newton’s book is Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Einstein, talking of nature “just out of wonder,” tends to say natural philosophy, since “science” became the technical thing.
• His father’s engineer, puzzled why the Berquist brothers do philosophy, finally decides: “It’s brain food, isn’t it?” — shows the assumption that a good must be for something else. His reply: “in the long run it’s for its own sake, not in the short run.”
• Thales and the oil presses (according to Aristotle): making money is easy “but we’re not interested.” Dr. Numair’s complaint that Thomas Aquinas [College] advertising stresses the practical; parents ask, not students.
• The Chinese shop lady amused that two philosophy majors are “not aiming at anything.”
• The principle behind it: “if something is good, it’s got to be good for something other than itself — in which case nothing really is good”; they don’t see the consequence. Same with bishops and contemplative orders; Moses praying on the mountain while the battle turns on his arms; “the average practical American” reading about hermits.

2. Which side outweighs? First objection restated (“action for an end requires a mind”) #

Point: if the arguments for final causality are stronger, one must answer the three against; each is “a little different.”

• First argument (impossibility): action for an end requires a mind; nature has no mind; therefore nature cannot act for an end.
• Why the major seems reasonable: the end is “a strange kind of cause” — the sitting, for the sake of which the chair is made, does not exist until after the chair; what does not exist can cause the chair only because the carpenter has it in mind. Sign: Socrates and Plato did not speak of end as a cause in nature until Anaxagoras had introduced mind.
• Why the minor seems reasonable: mind, as we learned from Anaxagoras, is something unlimited; nobody thinks the tree has a mind; the insect that squeezes the head and drags by the antenna is lost when Fabre cuts the antenna off, though “there’s a million and one other places on the body to drag your victim by” (a child drags its toy by foot, arm, hair).

3. Reply: mind in the agent or in its cause (“either in what is acting for an end”) #

Point: both premises are good, but the major must be distinguished.

1. Action for an end requires a mind — yes, but either in what is immediately acting, or in its cause or mover.
2. Thermostat: it acts for the sake of keeping the temperature at a level, turning the furnace on and off, without a mind, being “a product of mind.” Arrow or bullet directed at the target, moved by something with a mind.
3. Aristotle’s inductive argument: the spider’s sticky and non-sticky threads; he says only that action for an end so strikes people that “some wonder whether they have a mind,” leaving open whether they do. Their wondering is a sign they see the action for an end; one would not even ask “has it a mind, or is it a product of mind?” until one saw the action was ordered to an end.

• Second example, “closer to nature”: driving in St. Paul, a little boy ran in front of the car; he braked. He acted for an end, but not by thinking — “if I had been thinking, he would have been hit” — but by habit, which we call second nature. The habit was acquired by mind (his teacher’s), but in the act he was not using mind. So if I can act for an end out of second nature without thinking, nature can act for an end without thinking. People drive to work making all the right turns while thinking of something else.
• Conclusion of the reply: the weakness is not in “nature has no mind” (maybe true) nor in “action for an end requires a mind,” but in requiring it in what immediately acts.
• Aside: the first thing to teach about a car is how to stop it; his mother-in-law, who never learned to drive, when the car rolled off drove it across the street into a brick wall.

4. Rephrasing the question more cautiously (“for the sake of something”) #

Point: “acting for an end” may be too strong a phrase, seeming to imply the agent has the end in mind; better to ask “whether what nature does is for the sake of something.”

• The brake-warning light on his dashboard, his computer’s messages: for the sake of something without anyone acting. A knife or ballpoint pen is for the sake of writing even apart from my using it, though one would not say the pen “acts for an end.”
• Organon, Greek, means tool; an organic body is a body of tools: eye for seeing, ear for hearing. How we came to have such parts is a further question, asked only after one sees they are for the sake of something.
• Caveman’s rock vs. the eyes: the rock he finds and happens to use for bashing or cracking nuts was not made for that; the eyes “clearly seem to have been made for the sake of seeing.” Who designed them is “another question.”
• Student: monkeys crack nuts with rocks so they can eat — acting for an end? Answer: “much closer to it,” they know in some way, but do not fully understand what an end is; a mind could do many other ends. Aside: the chimpanzee trained to ride the bus with a newspaper who then crumples it into a ball.
• A third phrasing: “whether the operation of nature is directed towards some end,” leaving open whether it directs itself or is directed by another. Aristotle leaves this open in “the five arguments that we saw” [ed.: last time he numbered them as six]: nature’s producing the good almost always, and by an ordered number of steps from a definite seed, shows it is directed to the good, not that it directs itself. Fabre’s experiments would indicate insects lack that unlimited thing, so they are a product of, or directed by, mind.

5. Second objection: nature produces the bad (“the end and the good are the same”) #

Point: this argument claims nature in fact does not act for an end, since end and good are the same (Aristotle grants this; means are good because they lead to the end) yet nature produces bad: the defective baby, earthquake, tidal wave, hurricane. Reply:

1. The bad is rare: most babies are not defective; a string of bad babies means interference (thalidomide); even in the defective baby most organs are not defective, and if the bad one is remedied the child survives.
2. Go back to what is more known: art acts for an end, yet the cook sometimes burns the meat or over-seasons (his own over-peppered soup, expensive restaurants); the pianist hits a wrong note. Nobody concludes the cook is not aiming at a good.
3. A fortiori for nature: the cook has a mind to allow for a stronger oven despite the “fifteen or twenty minutes per pound” on the package; nature, having no mind (granted in argument one), cannot compensate for the mother taking thalidomide or drugs.
4. Failure is a sign of acting for an end, “just the reverse” of the argument: failure means not achieving what one was trying to achieve. “Did I fail to teach you German? No” — he was not trying to; he might have failed to teach philosophy. Heart failure, a child born without an arm: “failure” presupposes an end.

6. Third objection: matter, form and mover are enough (“principle of fewness”) #

Point: this argument says the fourth cause is unnecessary; if the first three suffice, the principle of fewness (or simplicity) applies.

• The principle is, as Einstein rightly said, fundamental in natural science from the Greeks on; fundamental for Newton’s rules, Galileo, Kepler, Heisenberg; used by Aristotle in several places in our readings.
• Empedocles’ account (fuller in Aristotle than in the fragments): mindless love and hate as movers; love brings things together in crazy combinations again and again until “eventually it happens” to produce a good one — one in a million, a billion billion — not directed but happening.
• Modern sophisticated form: nature “trying all kinds of things”; evidence that mathematical chance has something to do with the good: (a) the huge number of seeds blown at random, some landing where they grow (why you never get rid of dandelions or poison ivy); (b) random mutations, most not better adapted, one perhaps so — hence drug-resistant strains of germs multiplying after the rest are killed (“the second state of man is worse”), and the caution against over-prescribing.

7. Chance as means vs. pure mathematical chance (“mathematical chance can be a means”) #

Point: the real question is whether mathematical chance is enough; first distinguish chance as a means used to achieve an end from pure, wholly undirected chance.

• Chance as means, from art: the hunter’s fifteen pellets give a spread so one or two hit the bird (he does not want fifteen hits, or dental problems eating it); spraying the moving bush hiding a Japanese sniper; peppering the wooded area suspected of concealing the ammunition dump. All aimed, and all with bullets that will do the job if they hit — “not pure mathematical chance.”
• Applied to nature: the seeds show at most chance used as a means; “not pure chance because the tree is not just throwing up any kind of things” but seeds almost all of which reproduce the plant.
• So the denier must mean pure mathematical chance, wholly undirected, as the chief cause, not a means — otherwise he admits what he denies.
• Distinction on “chance”: Aristotle’s chance is an accidental cause of what happens rarely as a result of action for an end; mathematical chance is a ratio — heads one to two, a six one to six.

8. The odds under pure chance (“almost one to infinity”) #

Point: under pure chance the ratio of bad to good is infinity to one, so pure chance cannot explain the good “almost all the time.”

• Two numbers’ sum: one right answer, infinitely many wrong. The broken chair leg cut at random: one right length, and since the continuous is divisible forever, an infinity of wrong ones — and that is simple compared with an eye, where everything must be exactly right.
• Even hitting the one, “you still face the future” with the odds against survival.
• The physicist himself, on pure chance in the second law of thermodynamics, has energy go from organized to disorganized: the desk getting messier over a semester, the library sign “don’t return the books” because randomly shelved books go from order to disorder.
• An army firing “360 degrees,” or a plane dropping a bomb every minute wherever it is, would more likely eliminate itself than the enemy.
• Therefore the principle of fewness cannot be invoked: it says fewer causes are better if they are enough, not “period.” Aristotle praised Empedocles over Anaxagoras for a limited multitude of causes against Anaxagoras’ infinity, yet did not grant the sufficiency of the three.
• A second, “kind of amusing” point, not the main objection: the original reason for the principle of fewness in Aristotle and in Newton (“more are in vain when less will serve”) is that nature acts for an end; they use it to deny what it rests on. They could reply that they now accept it because it has worked.

9. Student question: chance in Aristotle’s sense? (“luck or chance really presupposes”) #

Point: when people say the good came by chance, “the eye just happened to see,” are they using Aristotle’s accidental sense?

• Answer: one must see what the man has in mind; strictly, luck and chance are defined by end — an accidental cause of what happens rarely as a result of an action done for an end. By man: luck or fortune (also chance); by nature: chance. Stock example: the mother cat chasing her dinner happens to run past her lost cubs. So luck or chance presuppose something acting for an end; if one denies any end in nature at all — [recording ends mid-sentence].

His words #

• natural philosophy: the older name for natural science, still with the sense of knowing for its own sake.
• brain food: the engineer’s reduction of philosophy to a means.
• unlimited: what mind is, “as we learned from Anaxagoras.”
• second nature: habit; acting for an end without thinking.
• for the sake of something: his more cautious phrasing of the question, not implying a mind in the agent.
• organon: Greek, tool; an organic body is a body composed of tools.
• principle of fewness: fewer causes are better if they are enough [ed.: also called simplicity, Ockham’s razor].
• mathematical chance: a ratio (one to two, one to six), distinct from chance as accidental cause.
• pure mathematical chance: wholly undirected, chance as chief cause rather than means.
• luck / chance: an accidental cause of what happens rarely as a result of an action done for an end; by man, luck or fortune; by nature, chance.

Texts #

Read in class

• Handout “Pride as a Cause of Error”, p. 22 (verified source; probably the Max Born address he refers to, “we have the address there of Max Born”).
• DHB Vol III, The School of Aristotle, p. 1023 (verified source). Mentioned
• Aristotle, Physics, Book II: the arguments for nature acting for an end and the three counter-arguments; the inductive argument on insects; the definition of chance (inferred locus).
• Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; his rules, “more are in vain when less will serve.”
• Empedocles, fragments on love and hate.
• Aristotle’s story of Thales and the oil presses.
• Fabre, entomological experiments.
• Scripture: Moses on the mountain; “the second state of man is worse.”

His questions #

• Which side seems to you to outweigh the other? A student: end is a cause; so the counter-arguments must be answered.
• Does anybody think that the tree has a mind, or those insects? No; the insect is lost when the antenna is cut off.
• Is there a weakness in this argument? Both premises good, but the major needs distinguishing: mind in the agent or in its cause.
• Does the thermostat do what it does for the sake of something? Yes, without a mind, being a product of mind.
• Would you say I put on the brakes for the sake of something? Was I thinking about it? Yes; no — he acted out of habit, second nature.
• Does the cook ever burn the meat? Yes; failing sometimes does not mean he is not aiming at a good.
• Did I fail to teach you German? No — failure means not achieving what one was trying to achieve.
• Is mathematical chance enough to explain the good in nature? As a means, perhaps; as pure chance, no — the odds are one to infinity.
• Under pure mathematical chance, what are the chances for good and for bad? Almost one to infinity.
• Aren’t they also thinking of Aristotle’s accidental chance? Chance in that sense presupposes action for an end; left open at the cut.