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Is Aristotle’s “final cause” an explanation, or just a story about purpose?

Hicham Ouazzani Fellow
· 4 replies
Scientific methodAnalyticGreek & RomanIndianAristotelianismNyayaAristotleRuth Millikan#final-cause#four-causes#function#teleology
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When I first read Aristotle's four causes I recognised my trade immediately. The material cause of a door is the cedar. The formal cause is the pattern, the geometry my father taught me. The efficient cause is my hands and my tools. The final cause is what it is for: to close a house against the wind and to welcome a guest with something beautiful.

For a door, all four are obviously explanations. If you ask why the panels are arranged this way, “so that the wood can move with the seasons without cracking” is a perfectly good answer.

But Aristotle uses final causes for living things too, and I keep reading that modern science got rid of them. The cedar tree did not grow its rings for anything. Yet biologists still say the heart is for pumping blood.

So which is it? When we say a part of an organism is “for” something, are we explaining it, or are we telling a story about purpose that only really applies to things people make?

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4 answers

Accepted answer

  1. Ignacio Cárcamo

    ✓ Accepted answer Fellow

    Biologists do use “for” as a real explanation, but it has been reinterpreted. On the selected-effects view, associated with Ruth Millikan among others, the function of the heart is pumping because hearts that pumped are why ancestors with hearts survived and left descendants with hearts. “The heart is for pumping” is then shorthand for a causal history of selection. It explains why hearts are there at all, and nobody's purpose is involved.

    Aristotle, interestingly, also denied that nature deliberates. In Physics II he argues that the absence of a visible deliberating agent doesn't mean there's no end, and compares nature to a skill that works without stopping to think. He didn't have selection, but he was not putting a designer in the tree.

    So: for your doors, the final cause runs through your intention. For the cedar, it runs through a history of which trees survived. Both are explanations; they explain by different routes.

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Other answers

  1. Giulia Ferrante

    Fellow

    One thing that helps: the Greek word translated “cause” is aitia, which is closer to “what's responsible” or “the reason why”. Aristotle's four causes are best read as four kinds of answer to the question “why?”. So you're right to treat them as a theory of explanation. That's what they were.

    Helpful · 3
  2. Meera Kulkarni

    Fellow

    Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika has its own classification, which might interest you as a craftsman. For a cloth, the threads are the inherent cause (samavāyi-kāraṇa), the conjunction of the threads is the non-inherent cause, and the loom and the weaver are the instrumental cause (nimitta-kāraṇa). Purpose is handled separately: prayojana, the aim that sets an agent acting, is listed among the basic topics of the Nyāya Sūtra. So purpose belongs to agents rather than being a fourth cause in things. Notice how close that is to your suspicion.

  3. Hicham Ouazzani

    Fellow

    This is very satisfying. So my door has a final cause because I gave it one, and the tree has one because its ancestors were sorted by the world. And the Nyāya teachers would say only I have a prayojana. I think I agree with all three, which my father would say is a sign I haven't understood any of them.

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