What if we talked about finality?

I can already hear people grinding their teeth. Oooooooooh, the nasty finalist! To the stake, to the stake! Obscurantist! Papist! Patagonian zulus! Werewolf with buttercup grease! Dishwater corpse!¹

We're going to talk about finalism, finality, teleology and final cause. If these words give you hives, it's a sign that you can (maybe?) continue reading.

The notion of finality is introduced in a paradigm of choice: its purpose is to explain why someone does something. For many, finality is seen as the principle that guides human and conscious action; necessary for making a decision among several choices.

But the real question is not there: is the final cause, as a view of an action, present ONLY in free agents (among humans, for example)... or is it a necessary ontological property of all action, performed by any being; that is, a property of every being in action?

There lies the real metaphysical question.

One can answer negatively, and say that it's a gross anthropomorphism to add the conscious deliberation in view of a search for purpose, proper to humans, to beings inferior to humans: many philosophers have opted for this vision. We can cite William of Occam, Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, and certain empiricists (although, for the latter, it's more due to the impossibility of observing the final cause before the production of the effect... at which point the final cause has ceased.). We can also include many modern philosophers, who reject finality for an identical reason, in accordance with their methodology based exclusively on quantitative measurement.

Generally, the charge retained by the moderns is as follows: final causality requires conscious activity, which is not apparent in animals inferior to man (or at least, in non-animated beings).

To this, I will respond two things: first, gentlemen moderns, you're engaging in anthropocentrism - even, dare I say, vulgar creationism (you blundering Alpine cretins²!)! Indeed, under what order of thought are you that you imagine that man, isolated on his little planet, in a lost corner of the universe, could have something that transcends everything that exists? Let's pass over this remark, which is a consequence of the adoption of Cartesian thought, an old heritage of the body/mind, Man/Nature dualism so dear to the thought of our pseudo-Enlightenment.

The second remark is finer (and therefore, more interesting): the notion of final causality, in the strictly classical sense of metaphysics, is much less restrictive than the narrow view targeted by the moderns. Is this an old cliché maintained by the Religion vs. Science myth? The question is posed, we won't answer it (here).

As indicated, the (correct) notion of final cause is (much) broader, and extends to all animate beings; to the point that every efficient cause requires a final cause to determine its action.

The existence of final causes is obtained by analyzing the nature of efficient action itself. To understand it, we can place ourselves on the side of the cause or the effect, and obtain the same conclusion.

If we place ourselves on the side of the cause, then it's interesting to see the behavior of the being itself at the moment it is an efficient cause. If the being, at the moment of producing its action, is not entirely determined in itself or focused on the production of such an effect rather than another, there's no reason to think that it's from it that such an effect is produced rather than another. And the being in question will produce nothing at all: an undetermined action is not an action, no matter the angle from which one analyzes it; and therefore cannot produce a determined effect. But the effect as a real being must be this or that, and that in a determined way. And this determination must be explained by (or else, must contain the reason for) the cause that brought it into existence. This dynamic pre-ordination, or predetermination of the cause toward its determined effect, as contained in the cause at the moment of its action that persists until the action by virtue of its form, is precisely what we call the final cause. Or, if the word finality gives you hives, focused efficient causality; as effect-to-be produced as a result of the efficient cause during the production of the effect. The final cause resides, therefore, in the efficient cause, but as an element of focus toward which the effect is produced.

If we place ourselves on the side of the effect, we must look at the object under which the action is produced. Every effect of an efficient cause must be a determined being or mode. And it's precisely because an effect depends on its cause, as sufficient reason not only for its existence but also for its particular mode of existence, because it's a particular effect and not another. Otherwise, it would have no reason to be what it is. It follows that the agent, at the moment of its action, as well as during its complete execution, must contain within itself an inner determination or pre-ordination of its power that led to the creation of such an object rather than another. This determination of the causal agent toward the effect to be produced is, again, nothing more than what we call final cause, namely the purpose or end of the action, on the causal action itself.

Therefore, if we want to speak of efficient cause, and if we want when we mention "efficient cause" to refer to an entity really in action, we must consider that the agent itself performs at minimum an end, even immediate, finalizing, directing, focused on the effect that is obtained.

The final cause, as such, really appears as necessarily inherent in every exercise involving efficient causality, and this, without mentioning anything about conscious reflection:

1. Consciously and freely for human beings (or beings endowed with personality);
2. Consciously but not freely for animals (we speak of instinct, today);
3. Unconsciously, as a natural tendency for plants and minerals.

This is the reason (in my view, the main one) why, through ignorance of this analogical character of the final cause, extended to all animate beings, many philosophers have refused to apply it outside of man.

Attention: the final cause, as a cause, is something that contributes positively to the being of another thing. But it does not do so as an active force, contributing to the action as would be the case if it were an efficient cause. The influence of the final cause consists in specifying or determining the action of the efficient cause toward something, instead of orienting it toward something else. It's the future effect to come produced by a present action right now, contained in potency as an orientation to produce such an object rather than another.

The final cause differs from the efficient cause in that it answers a different question. The efficient cause answers the question "what object is responsible for bringing this effect into the world?". The final cause answers the question "what makes this object produce such an effect rather than another?". Indeed, in several cases, an efficient cause could produce several effects.

In the case of a non-free nature, the final cause is inscribed in the nature of the agent. In the case of a free nature, the efficient cause must choose among different final causes to produce its object. Indeed, since every existing effect must be such an effect rather than another, and not something vague and undefined, it follows that, as an effect, the determination of the efficient cause that will cause the determined effect must be contained in potency as a dynamic orientation in the efficient cause itself, either before producing its effect, or at the moment of action. And once the effect is produced in reality, the influence of the final cause ceases. As a guide of an action, the guidance stops when the action ends.

I will return³ in the future to this question, much more interesting than the caricatures made of it today. But I will end on a remark, often mocked, that is attributed to Aristotle for his supposedly simplistic physics:

It is in the nature of heavy objects to fall toward the center of the Earth.

generally followed by a magnificent

Haha, what a joke! What a simplistic view!

Don't we also deserve, today, with our disdain for the reflections of past philosophers, the same thing, when we say, proud as Artaban:

It is in the nature of electrons to orbit around a nucleus.

Really? We don't? Are you sure? What then is an electron? If you answer me "it's what orbits around the nucleus", "it's what we call what turns around the nucleus", "it's a name given to what orbits around the nucleus", "it's what we generally see orbiting around the nucleus" and their variants, you've lost.

Likewise, try to speak of efficient cause without speaking of final cause... a word to the wise!