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New, improved meditation on teleology

I pulled out part of the previous post and edited it: [Hi Tim! If you're looking for your comment(s) and my reply, they're in the post that follows!]

Thomas Aquinas and other premoderns would be quite comfortable with the claim that a stone, if not impeded by an extrinsic force, falls to the earth. They would have described this process in teleological terms. The stone by nature inclines toward the earth and heads toward this goal unless something else, (which is also acting to achieve another goal), interferes with the trajectory of the former.

Things necessarily act for an end, but don’t necessarily achieve them.

But doesn’t every thing in nature act upon another so that the other behaves differently than it would have otherwise behaved? Does that mean that everything is frustrating whatever it interacts with? On the contrary, if any natural processes involve teleology, then the interactions involved in these processes are fullfilments rather than frustrations of purposes. But if some natural processes are fullfilments of nature, then why not all? To call some natural and other s “unnatural” as in frustrations of nature, we would have to assign value to the end products of some natural processes and disvalue to others. To do so would be an exercise of vanity. The only place where it would not be vain to make such a comparison would be in the contrast between living and non-living beings. Inasmuch as life is objectively of greater value than non-life (zoecentrism, anyone?) , it is rational to say that one thing that harms a living being act to frustrate the achievement of the natural end of another. But since there is no such comparison to be had among non-living things, there is no such objective basis for saying that an action frustrates the achievement of a goal. But that is not to deny teleology in the non-living world. Rather, it is to see teleology in holistic terms. Nature as a whole involves balances. Action reaction—stuff like that. It is as if nature as a whole were a living thing. It is only "as if," for while living things give birth to new, similar beings, nature doesn’t (multiverse octomoms, anyone?)

Comments

Unknown said…
To comment on this and your last entry...


I think teleology might also be present outside of the biological. Stars have life cycles and develop more and more complex elements every generation, which become the building blocks of life. So evolution can be extended into nonliving matter, making humanity the peak or "goal" of a cosmic evolutionary process. I guess this idea goes back to Teilhard de Chardin.
12:27 PM
Unknown said…
For the last entry...

I think you're absolutely right that viewing every natural event as a reducible instance of the laws of nature is completely anthropomorphic. Even the very phrase "law of nature" is anthropomorphic - is there a "supreme court" of nature that determines what constitutes valid laws of nature?
12:29 PM
Leo White said…
Regarding your first post: I agree that non-living things act for goal(s). But it seems to me (after having read Joe Sach's introduction to his translation of Aristotle's Physics--more on that later) that any attempt to talk of teleology at the level of one or two interacting non-living entities leads to some embarrassing conclusions.

Suppose, for example, a rock is heading toward the center of the earth but is stopped by the ground. This impedence doesn't keep the rock from attaining its goal... at least not the way warning a prey of the approach of a predator would frustrate the latter.

I'm still working this one out...I hope you keep giving feedback so I can see the issue(s) more clearly.
9:42 PM
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