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Teleology revisited

For those who might be interested, here is a (somewhat lengthy, sorry) follow-up to my earlier post on the Robert Wright/Jerry Coyne/Jim Manzi debate over evolution and teleology.

Comments (26)

Well, I read most of it. And speaking as a die-hard modern, it seems to me a little...odd to move from the trivial and obvious

A: Ice causes its surroundings to get cold

to

B: Coldness is the final cause of ice in a distinctively Aristotelian sense.

And I haven't even _gotten_ to what you attribute to Thomas, namely something like,

C: Coldness must exist in an intellect outside of nature.

Do you really think that B just follows necessarily from A? It seems as though this is a kind of extreme co-opting of every ordinary, garden-variety concept of or instance of causality, despite all the detailed and purely mechanistic explanations that can be given for ice's causing coldness, so that if anyone recognizes causality at any level whatsoever, he's really an Aristotelian, or borrowing or stealing Aristotelian ideas or something like that, whether he admits it or not. Doesn't this seem a little implausible? Can you at least see why someone might find it somewhat implausible?

Hello Lydia,

First of all, we need to be clear about what you mean by "the detailed and purely mechanistic explanations that can be given for ice's causing coldness." If you mean by this to pit modern physics against the Aristotelian-Thomistic view, as if to accept the latter entailed rejecting the former, then you're mistaken. No Aristotelian or Thomist that I know of rejects the story modern physics tells us about coldness and the like. The claim is rather that what this story gives us is the efficient-causal side of an account which, to be complete, must bring in the notion of final causality as well. Otherwise the efficient-causal story becomes just a set of "loose and separate" brute facts and Humean puzzles about causality rear their head.

Second, perhaps the move from A to B sounds odd to you because you've left out of A something to the effect of "Unless impeded, ice always causes its surroundings to get cold." When we put it that way, and we keep in mind that the final cause talk in B just means that the ice "points to" or is "directed at" the generation of coldness specifically -- and that's all it means in this context -- then, I submit, the move from A to B is hardly implausible or odd, whether or not one wants to make it.

Third, sure, when you use talk like "stealing Aristotelian ideas" the claim can be made to sound silly. So don't call them Aristotelian if you don't want to. When Armstrong, Molnar, and other contemporary philosophers who in their various ways want to revive talk of inherent powers and dispositions and postulate something analogous to intentionality in the inorganic natural world, they often don't see themselves as reviving distinctively Aristotelian ideas. (Note that these people too would hardly deny the modern empirical story about coldness and the like -- indeed, their point, like mine, is that that story can only be made full sense of in a metaphysical context that incorporates the ideas in question.) And no defender of Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics thinks that Aristotle and Thomas, alone among philosophers, somehow had the truth dropped into their laps. That's a silly caricature. The view is rather that there is a long classical tradition extending from some of the Pre-Socratics through Plato and Aristotle down to the later Scholastics, of whom Aristotle and Aquinas are simply the best representatives because they tied things together -- including things many of these other writers also said -- in a more satisfactory and complete way than the others.

The thing is, in modern times it has been Aristotelians and Thomists more visibly than anyone else who have defended the ideas in question and criticized a purely "mechanical" conception of nature -- and who have been the targets of caricatures and misunderstandings. So, when contemporary philosophers defend views like the ones Armstrong, Molnar, and others I've cited in previous posts have defended, it is certainly reasonable to point out that, when the caricatures are put aside, this work can be seen as a revival and vindication of ideas associated with Aristotelian Scholasticism. No?

I suppose I'd be more inclined to say, "All else being equal, ice causes its surroundings to get cold." I think that may make a difference, though I'm unsure about that and don't know if you would agree. For example, if the surroundings are constantly being heated by some independent source, the ice won't cause the surroundings to get cold, and so forth. Now, I know you would agree with that, but it seems to me that it can loosen up a bit this notion of a "propensity" in ice to make its surroundings cold, as though the ice has this tendency within it in some "spooky" sense. Rather, it's just a matter of, as I explain to my girls when I'm trying to get them away from the surprisingly attractive fluid theory of heat, slower-moving molecules encountering faster-moving molecules--average thermal energy of the matter involved. Ice is simply water at a particular average temperature, blah, blah.

I did try a bit, though perhaps too briefly, to bring in what you've said in older posts. As near as I can figure, you believe that something in some important sense non-modern and Aristotelian is the only alternative to Humean skepticism about causation. I've never been able to see that at all. It makes it sound like Adam understood balls rolling downhill in an Aristotelian sense of final causality as long as he wasn't a Humean about them.

The problem with "All else being equal, ice causes its surroundings to get cold" -- though true enough, as far as it goes -- is that it does not capture the idea that an effect derives from its cause. That's why I said "unless impeded" -- to indicate that the effect will "flow from" the cause, as it were, unless blocked (e.g. by the presence of heat in the immediate environment). Your way of putting it leaves it open that there is no such derivative relationship, that the effect simply happens to follow upon the cause in a law-like but nevertheless contingent way. And that, I submit, opens the door to Humeanism.

The "spooky" stuff, if you'll pardon my saying so, seems like nothing more than rhetoric of the sort you'd rightly reject in other contexts (e.g. when atheists dismiss the very idea of an immaterial designing mind as "spooky" and thus unworthy of serious consideration). Merely calling something "spooky" does no work; one needs to show that it doesn't in fact do what it is claimed to do, is unnecessary, etc.

Re: Adam, the claim isn't that his spontaneous reaction would be to start using Aristotelian or Scholastic jargon. The claim is rather that he would naturally tend to interpret effects as flowing from their causes and their causes as pointing to their effects. That this is indeed our natural reaction is evidenced by the fact that critics of the Scholastics and of pre-modern philosophers in general often complain that their conception of causation is too "animistic," sticks too closely to our naive tendency to impute purpose to natural processes, etc. Hence common sense tends to say things like "Water seeks the lowest point," "The fan blade wants to keep turning but the stick is blocking it" etc. The moderns claim that this is all just illusion; Aristotelians say that it is indeed often crude and unsophisticated, but nevertheless points to something real which needs to be stated more carefully and precisely. And that's where technical terms like "final cause," "potency," "substantial form" etc. enter the picture. So, if you want to say that the moderns' dismissal of all this was correct, that's one thing; but to insinuate that the moderns are more or even equally in line with common sense (if that's what you're doing) is a bit much!

The balls rolling downhill example is not in any case a good one, because there is nothing in what I've been saying that implies that one must accept Aristotle's mistaken physics. That's one of the problems with discussion of these issues: people tend to mix together general metaphysical principles with specific empirical claims often used, in older discussions, to illustrate the principles, but which turned out to be false. The general concepts of act and potency, final cause, substantial forms, etc. do not stand or fall with specific faulty illustrations given by Aristotelians of the past.

that the effect simply happens to follow upon the cause in a law-like but nevertheless contingent way.

I'm not sure exactly what that means. I would say that the existence and continued operation of the laws we have is in some sense contingent. That is, we could have had different physical laws to begin with, and it is also possible in a universe that is not a causally closed physical system for non-physical beings to have causal efficacy which interrupts the seamless operation of physical law upon initial conditions. So in a couple of different senses, that effects follow causes _is_ contingent. But that does not mean that there are no physical laws nor, perhaps even more importantly, that there are no kinds of things--quarks, tables and chairs--that have significantly similar properties among themselves. It's my understanding that one of the goals of modern science is discovering the fundamental types of things there are in the world--fundamental particles and laws--such that they are the kinds of things in terms of whose properties other types of things can be explained and of which other things are built up. But this seems to me both a non-Humean and also a quintessentially modern project.

I would say myself that attributing intention to things--"The air tries to get out of the bag," or whatever--is less fundamental to common sense discourse than just this notion that things can be usefully classified in terms of their causally significant similarities and differences, that these similarities and differences explain physical events. I think that most people are not real animists and realize that "the air tries" is just a manner of speaking.

When I speak of "spookiness" w.r.t. the ice, perhaps a better word would be "irreducibility." That is to say, the ice does not "have a propensity to make its surroundings cold" in any sense that is not reducible to something other than ice, even radically other than ice. That is because ice is not even close to being a fundamental type of physical entity, and its causal activities are all entirely reducible to non-ice entities, laws, etc. I think that's probably what a materialist means by "spooky," too--irreducible. But in that case, I cheerfully admit that my notion of the mind is "spooky" in the sense that it is irreducible. The causal properties of ice, however, are not.

Let me clarify that I'm not trying to say that Adam was a modern in science nor even that modernist ideas in science are more common-sensical than Aristotelian ones. What I'm saying instead is that A, above, and other kinds of examples that I've seen you use in discussing Aristotelian teleology, _are_ just garden-variety common-sense statements that anyone could make and are thus _compatible_ with a modernist view. They do not in any sense entail or require an Aristotelian view. Hence my dubiousness about the move from A to B.

Dr. Feser,
After reading the post, I got the distinct impression that you are saying that God is analogous to time, treating the development of potential future states as being actualized by the divine intellect. It seems more accurate to say that potential future states are a range of multiple teleos and the particular conditions influence which probability is reached. There seems to be an Aristotelian inclination to assume a simple singular context which I find troublesome. As Lydia has hopefully made clear, nobody disputes that ice causes things around it to be cold in normal conditions, but it is more accurate to talk about heat transfers which are true independent of subject matter.

A couple of excellent examples which I owe to someone more knowledgeable science than I: Ice makes it surroundings warmer if the surroundings are colder than the ice. As Step2 says--heat transfers independent of subject matter.

Another one, slightly more arcane, but still I think relevant: If you put ice onto a fire started with an accelerant such as airplane fuel, it will make the fire hotter, because it will explode.

Lydia wrote:

I would say that the existence and continued operation of the laws we have is in some sense contingent. That is, we could have had different physical laws to begin with...

Well, yes and no. From an A-T point of view, talk of "laws" is just shorthand for talk of the ways things tend to behave given their natures. So, the things that actually exist could not possibly have operated according to different laws, because if they did they'd have to have different natures and thus (absurdly) would not be the things they actually are. But of course, there could have been a different universe with different objects having different natures, maybe even objects similar to (but having different natures, still different from) the things that in fact exist. In that sense (though only in that sense) there could have been different laws. Anyway, I think we discussed this (and its relevance for what miracles are etc.) in an earlier combox exchange.

That is to say, the ice does not "have a propensity to make its surroundings cold" in any sense that is not reducible to something other than ice, even radically other than ice. That is because ice is not even close to being a fundamental type of physical entity, and its causal activities are all entirely reducible to non-ice entities, laws, etc.

Fine. That may or may not be so -- ice is just an example for purposes of illustration, and nothing stands or falls with it specifically. The bottom line, though, is that wherever you decide to stop your reduction, there you are inevitably going to find irreducible powers, final causes, etc. These concepts are like Austin's frog at the bottom of the beer mug that's going to be staring up at you just when you thought you'd gotten rid of it. Where exactly you're going to find it is less to the present point than the fact that you're going to find it.

Hence we find that some "new essentialist" philosophers of science (who have no A-T ax to grind, but are arriving at similar results independently) think that irreducible powers exist only at the level of basic physics, while others think that chemistry too has its own irreducible levels. Most of them would stop there and deny that you'll find any such irreducibility in biology. Yet even here some non- A-T folks (like J. Scott Turner and Andre Ariew) think that something like Aristotelian teleology may be required in order to make sense of developmental processes. And then you have explicitly A-T oriented metaphysicians like Oderberg even defending something like the traditional A-T view that there is an irreducible metaphysical distinction between animal life and plant life. So, people sympathetic with the idea of irreducible causal powers, final causality or "physical intentionality" etc. can and do disagree about how many levels it exists at. But they agree that it exists at at least some level, and that is the only claim I'm defending here. (For the record, my own inclination is to think there are many irreducible levels, and that the "successes" of reductionism are vastly oversold. But again, that's a separate issue.)

Ice makes it surroundings warmer if the surroundings are colder than the ice... If you put ice onto a fire started with an accelerant such as airplane fuel, it will make the fire hotter, because it will explode.

Again, yes, fine and dandy, but that's not to the point. I am well aware that the ice example as I presented it was simplistic. That's because I wasn't writing a post about the physics of ice, but about the metaphysics of causation in general. What matters is that ice does in fact have a specific range of effects, even though it is one that -- of course -- must, when writing physics textbooks, be specified with greater detail than merely saying "When unimpeded ice will generate coldness." And no one denies that it has such a specific range. No one denies e.g. that icebergs will not turn lakes into Coca Cola, will not melt into gasoline, etc.

Hence, I should perhaps add, the point has nothing to do with armchair physics because (contrary to yet another tiresome caricature) A-T does not believe that the natures of things can be determined a priori, through simple observations, or in any other armchair way. Of course a great deal of empirical research is required, which is exactly what physics, chemistry, etc. are about. That's not what's at issue here. What's at issue is the claim that whatever the specific empirical facts turn out to be, whatever the specific nature and inherent powers of ice or anything else turn out to be, there are and must be, at at least some levels, some natures, inherent powers, final causes, etc. or other.

First, this has been a fascinating exchange, and very illuminating of the A-T view of causation and substance.

Second, a question for Dr. Feser: at first you wrote, "Ice causes its surroundings to get cold". Later, Lydia pointed out that ice can cause a fire to get hotter, you replied that it wasn't the physical properties of ice you were interested in, but the metaphysics of causation. But I just want to ask, in a non-Columbo sense, one more question about ice: how do you specify the final cause of ice? If it's not to make things colder, just what is it? Above you mentioned that A-Ters disagree among themselves about reduction. Some would attribute final causes only to the smallest elements of reality (call these reductionistic A-Ters); others would attribute final causes not only to those elements, but to higher elements as well (call these pluralistic A-Ters). Finally, you indicated that you're one of the people who isn't sympathetic to reductionism (based on reading TLS, this is what I would have suspected). So, let me divide my original question into two questions: what would a reductionistic A-Ter says is ice's final cause? Second, what would a pluralistic A-Ter like yourself say ice's final cause is?

Hi Bobcat,

First off, as you probably realize, not all the people I was alluding to would think of themselves as "A-Ters"; I assume you mean that as a kind of shorthand for the family of views I was describing.

I suppose I don't have a settled view on the metaphysics of ice (!) specifically; again, I was just using it as an illustration. But suppose for the sake of argument that it turns out that there are aspects of the causal powers of ice that cannot be reduced to the causal powers of its constituents. Then I'd say that the final cause of ice is just to produce whatever range of effects the ice experts tell us ice tends to have under its various states and circumstances, including all the stuff Lydia was alluding to. And a "reductionistic A-Ter" might say instead that it is not the ice strictly speaking which has a final cause but rather the irreducible constituents which do (at whatrver level the constituents become irreducible).

Remember, in the context in question, "final cause" means only the effect or range of effects toward which a cause tends to point or be directed toward. If we start thinking -- in line with the usual caricatures -- "Is the A-T claim, then, that ice functions to cool the earth, or provide places for penguins to sit, or something along those lines?" etc. then we've deeply misunderstood it. I realize you are probably aware of this, since I made it all clear in the original post linked to (as well as in TLS), but I am sure there are some readers who, when coming across questions like "What is ice's final cause?" will immediately roll their ice and assume that that is the sort of thing that is meant. So, it's important to re-emphasize that that is not at all the sort of thing we're talking about. "Functions" of the biological, quasi-biological, and mechanical sort are only one, more complex example of final causality. Most final causality is not like that.

Anyway, that something has a final cause is (largely) a question of metaphysics; but what its final cause happens to be is (largely) a question of empirical science. (Not that the two can be completely separated, because empirical claims and evidence require interpretation within a metaphysical framework; but, as I say, "largely.") It's the former sort of question, not the latter, that I've primarily been addressing here.

Thanks for your response, Dr. Feser. Would it be fair to say that the family of views you're talking about (the ones I dubbed "A-T" views) are ones that attribute powers to all substances? (That causation should be understood in terms of the powers of objects, rather than in terms of laws of nature or regularity, is one I arrived at before I encountered TLS.)

Ed, I'm struck by your statement that the A-T view is that there are no physical laws. I suppose that in that case it is understandable that the powers of the essential natures of physical entities should be so important on the A-T view as you conceive it. But this raises other questions. For example,

--Does the A-T view entail plenism, or can the causal powers of entities reach across a vacuum?

--How could such a view accommodate miracles? It would seem to require that in a miracle God temporarily changes the physical things involved into essentially different kinds of things, which is rather counter-intuitive. I would say more counterintuitive than an interruption of the seamless operation of physical law on physical entities.

Hi Lydia,

Not to speak for Ed, but I imagine he would deny plenism and be open to entities' powers reaching across vacuums; also, I should think he would accommodate miracles by God's either adding certain substances into the world (to prevent, say, fire from exercising its power on, say, Shadrach) or be adding causal powers to objects (thereby briefly transforming them).

But never mind that; I'm not Ed, and I've probably got him wrong. I have a question for you: how do you conceive of causal laws? Are they merely descriptions of regularities (in which case, is there any answer to the questions, "Why _are_ there these regularities rather than other ones? And why are there regularities at all?"), or are there actual laws that determine how objects behave, and if the causal laws were different, the same objects would behave in different ways?

Well, Bobcat, I only play a philosopher of science on alternate Tuesdays, so at the moment I'll admit that I don't know for sure. But I'm inclined to think that while some "laws" (thermodynamics, e.g.) are merely statistical, there really are fundamental laws, just as there are fundamental particles, though we may not have discovered them yet. In fact, I'm even rather attracted to the notion that quantum theory is incomplete and that in one sense determinism is true--that is, in purely physical systems. But of course, as an interactive dualist, I don't believe that we live in anything remotely like a purely physical system.

But it doesn't follow from there being "actual laws" that the laws couldn't be different. And I would think that if they were, the same objects could behave in different ways. I think, of course, that God made the laws in the first place, as well as all matter.

Bobcat: Would it be fair to say that the family of views you're talking about (the ones I dubbed "A-T" views) are ones that attribute powers to all substances?

I'm inclined to say yes, except that there is enough variation in the use of the relevant technical terms that this claim might have to be qualified with respect to some of the people alluded to.

Lydia: I'm struck by your statement that the A-T view is that there are no physical laws.

That's not quite what I said -- I said "law" talk is OK if understood as shorthand for talk of the natures, powers, etc. of things. And the view isn't "There are no laws; therefore we'd better postulate powers, etc. instead." Rather it's "Things have natures, powers, etc.; therefore whatever 'laws' are, they are derivative from these natures, powers, etc." Historically and conceptually, I would say that "law" talk is derivative. (As Nancy Cartwright argues, an emphasis on "laws of nature" is what you get when you abandon the idea of natures, powers, etc. and replace it with the demiurge-like God of Newton et al. Then, when you abandon that God as well, "laws of nature" talk becomes dubiously coherent.)

Re: plenism, I'm not sure why you think the A-T view even raises the issue in some special way.

Re: miracles, what Bobcat said is pretty much right. From an A-T POV, miracles are not "violations" of laws of nature -- given that things have natures, the "laws" governing them are necessary and there can be no such thing as a violation -- but rather "suspensions" of laws of nature. To borrow an analogy from Oderberg (in Real Essentialism), a government might allow an existing law to be breached in the sense of not enforcing it, etc., or it might temporarily revoke the law altogether, so that behavior not in accordance with what the law had been is, during the time of revocation, no longer a breach of a law. "Violating" a law of nature is like the first case, but "suspending" a law of nature -- which is what a miracle is from an A-T point if view -- is instead like the second.

I don't see why this is more "counterintuitive" than the "miracles are violations of laws of nature" view (or indeed than the very idea of a miracle itself!) It's not like we have some a priori or even common sense understanding of the metaphysics of miracles that the A-T view is somehow at odds with.

If anything, your talk of "an interruption of the seamless operation of physical law" is what seems counterintuitive. If it's "seamless," how can it be "interrupted"? This is, of course, the sort of consideration Hume tries to make hay out of. I'm not saying that Hume is right, mind you, or that you couldn't make the necessary qualifications. The point is just that it is by no means clear which view is more "intuitive."

Ed, I totally agree with you about terms like suspension of laws of nature. Those are good terms. I use "seamless" to mean "what would otherwise be seamless." It was meant not to be definitional of there being laws of nature but rather was meant only to refer counterfactually to what would have gone on had the suspension (or "interruption," the term I happened to use) not taken place. I don't usually like the term "violation," though I think really that terminology is not super-crucial here. That is to say, I think most people who talk about "violations" of laws of nature could just as easily have said "suspensions." And I don't know if you already know this or will be surprised to hear it, but there is a wonderful passage in that arch-modern, Robert Boyle, that sounds a lot like what you attribute to Oderberg.

My question concerned the mechanism you would have to use. That is, what _you_ mean by "suspension of the laws" can't be what _I_ mean, since you consider all law-talk to be reducible to talk about the natures of things. So some mechanism such as Bobcat conjectures would have to be going on, it would seem.

The plenism question arises from the fact that action at a distance is usually connected with laws. That is to say, laws govern and explain action at a distance. Reduce all talk of laws to talk about the natures of things, and one might argue that there has to be a thing with a nature everywhere so that events can take place at all. But I suppose you could try to posit things with natures that act upon one another across a vacuum.

Ed wrote: "Re: plenism, I'm not sure why you think the A-T view even raises the issue in some special way."

I didn't see the connection either, but Lydia's latest comment raised a question for me: do Thomists like yourself and Oderberg have any particular views on space and/or time? Are they sui generis, or are they substances, or are they purely relational? By the way, I don't think you're obligated to have an answer here, ever; besides idealists, I'm not sure anyone has the faintest idea of what space and time are, so I don't expect the Thomist to.

Lydia:

I suppose I'd be more inclined to say, "All else being equal, ice causes its surroundings to get cold."

It seems to me that you and Step2 are way overcomplicating what is actually a very simple, obvious observation on Ed's part.

Typically, ice causes its surroundings to become colder. Throw in your "all else being equal"s and whatever other caveats you like. Those are just distractions from the question at hand. We can still agree that, in most every day situations that we're familiar with, ice makes things colder, right?

Okay, given that we agree on that, which of the following two statements do you think is true:

1) It is just happenstance that things get colder in the ice's presence. First you put ice in your drink, then the drink gets colder, but these two events have nothing to do with each other. The drink could have just as easily gotten warmer. The correlation we have observed to date is just chance.

2) There is something about the ice that makes its surroundings colder, as opposed to some other outcome.

If you accept 2, you're on the same page with Ed. Forget such caveats as "Well, if the water is heating on a stove when you put the ice in it, or if the surroundings are even colder than the ice, it won't get colder." That's irrelevant. It's like saying "Well, maybe 2 + 2 doesn't make 4, because if you also add 3, it makes 7".

I don't really agree, Deuce, because the "something about the ice" phrase is ambiguous between saying something to the effect that ice has an irreducible "essence" that in everyday situations makes things around it get cold and saying something to the effect that ice itself has a certain average thermal energy that sometimes makes things get colder, sometimes makes things get warmer, etc. In other words, there is no essence to ice, and in particular there is no essence to ice that is, to use Ed's terminology "aimed at coldness as its final cause." The causal effects of ice are not random, but neither are they the result of an essence of ice. They are a result of the properties of ice plus physical law, which will have different effects in different contexts.

Lydica:

I don't really agree, Deuce, because the "something about the ice" phrase is ambiguous between saying something to the effect that ice has an irreducible "essence" that in everyday situations makes things around it get cold and saying something to the effect that ice itself has a certain average thermal energy that sometimes makes things get colder, sometimes makes things get warmer, etc.

I didn't see anywhere in Ed's post where he said anything about an "irreducible essence" or something of the sort. Again, it seems like you're trying to see something vague and grandiose where only an obvious observation is being made. Yes, sometimes ice makes things warmer, usually it makes them colder. In either case, it's something about the ice, and about its surroundings, that causes the result, correct? The details of what that something consists of can be (and largely have been) filled in by science, but we're agreed up to that point, right?

They are a result of the properties of ice plus physical law, which will have different effects in different contexts.
That seems kind of confused to me. Physical laws are abstractions that we have formulated. They don't do anything or cause any results. They are simply descriptions of what physical objects do. The ice and its surroundings cause the result. Physical laws describe, and can be used to predict, the way in which they act.
They are a result of the properties of ice plus physical law, which will have different effects in different contexts.
Also, to nitpick a bit, it seems to me technically incorrect to talk about the properties of objects causing things. The ice's coldness doesn't cool down its surroundings. That would be like saying that a baseball bat's hardness and speed knock the baseball out of the park, rather than the baseball bat itself.

Rather, the ice itself cools down its surroundings, by virtue of its coldness (or lack of average kinetic energy, if you prefer), much as the baseball bat hits the baseball out of the park by virtue of its hardness and speed.

They don't do anything or cause any results. They are simply descriptions of what physical objects do.

Actually, my understanding is that's a very controversial question in philosophy of science.

In any event, to the extent that Ed's statement about the ice is _merely_ ordinary common sense, see my very first comment in the thread. I would then contend that it is wholly compatible with a "modernist" as opposed to an A-T understanding. If we just want to back it up to the purely common sense, we-all-know-what-we-mean, level, you can't get any traction out of it between modern and Aristotelian understandings of science and teleology.

Actually, my understanding is that's a very controversial question in philosophy of science.
It is? I remember in physics class, we'd have problems where we'd calculate the gravitational effects of several masses in space on each other, and try to figure out, say, where each object would be at some particular point in the future. In all of these sorts of problems, we'd sketch out the various physical objects in space, and calculate their gravitational pull on each other and so forth, but we never sketched out the Law of Gravity itself, as if it were an actual acting agent. Rather, the physical objects "obey" or act in a way that can be described by the Law of Gravity. I've never heard anyone suggest otherwise.

The debate, as I understand it, is whether physical objects really act according to actual laws that exist independently of us, or whether laws are merely approximations of objects' behavior that we invented. I've never heard a suggestion, however, that laws are actual causal agents.

I would then contend that it is wholly compatible with a "modernist" as opposed to an A-T understanding.
What's the problem here? If I'm reading Ed correctly (and I think I am), that's precisely his point, that this stuff is common sense, self-evident even, and fully compatible with modern physics. He's not saying that it's incompatible with the "modernist" approach, but rather that it's an unexamined premise of it.

This shouldn't come as a surprise to you. As I'm sure you'd agree in other areas, materialists make use of several unexamined premises that actually contradict many of the conclusions they try to draw.

As an addendum to my last post, I think that "unacknowledged premise" is a better term for what I meant than "unexamined premise".

Well, the problem as I see it is that it's supposed to (I think Ed would say) undermine or contradict modernism (as opposed to Aristotelian-Thomism) in the understanding of science and causality. Now, I don't agree that it does. I'm still a scientific modern, I believe that ice usually or often causes its surroundings to get colder, and I see no problem, no contradiction.

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