Is Aristotle right to claim that explanation of the natural world requires final and formal causation?
In this essay I will show why Aristotle’s argument for the necessity of formal and final causation in the explanation of the natural world is flawed, as well as identifying an alternative explanation. I shall first reject the notion of the final cause, followed by explaining why the formal cause is required.
Aristotle thinks that formal and final causes are required because an explanation of the natural world with just material and efficient causes would be incomplete (Hulatt, 2016). Formal causation is required as all objects are composites of matter and form, therefore form must feature in an explanation of objects (Hulatt, 2016). Taking a wooden table as an example, having four legs and a flat top is what it is to be a table, this is its form (Cohen, 2008). The final cause shows that changes are teleological, meaning they happen in order to satisfy a given telos (Falcon, 2015). Returning to the example of the table, the purpose of it is for eating and writing on. Aristotle thinks that the natural world is a collection of objects which have purposes, hence is full of final causes (Cohen, 2008). He believes that purposiveness and mindedness do not necessarily come together as purposiveness in not only found in minds. Objects without minds, such as a natural substance, possess a goal to instantiate its form (Hulatt, 2016). We cannot reduce the explanation of the world to a set of physical laws conducted with no final purpose as this removes the nature of objects. The world is full of regularity, hence there must be a final cause to explain this (Hulatt, 2016).
The teleological view which Aristotle adopts is stretched too far when applied to natural objects such as plants. For them to have a purpose is unjustifiable. One may argue that natural objects have an intrinsic goal to instantiate their form (Hulatt, 2016). The proposition that natural objects have intrinsic final causes is unfalsifiable; a devaluing attribute for a philosophical explanation. It feels like a cheap way to cling onto the notion of the final cause. One cannot reliably say that a daisy has an intrinsic purpose to bloom.
According to Aristotle, without a final cause everything would be down to chance (Hulatt, 2016). In addition, he states that “it is absurd to suppose that purpose is not present because we do not observe the agent deliberating” (Aristotle, n.d.). I disagree with this line of argument as it is illogical to suppose that purpose is present without any evidence to back that. Surely for an explanation of something the premise should have some degree of evidence to prove that it is valid. In x years there may be scientific advancements proving that some things do not have a purpose and occur completely by chance. So long as this doubt exists, one cannot accept the final cause to be valid. Also, there are many other reasons as to why one would reject the final cause which I shall address later on in this essay. He leaves us with an ultimatum of choosing between things occurring due to blind chance or there being a governing final cause (Hulatt, 2016). But the efficient cause tackles this as it provides a more scientific argument as to how and why natural object do what they do hence disproving Aristotle and supporting the idea that the final cause is not required in the explanation of the natural world.
Another point which Aristotle makes to defend his idea of formal and final causes is that the removal of these would take away the nature of objects (Hulatt, 2016). To fully understand this we must first identify Aristotle’s interpretation of the word ‘nature’. He sees the nature of objects as being a pre-determined process which allows the characteristic behaviours of objects to be demonstrated (Bostock, 2006). Taking the example of an acorn, if there is no nature then there is nothing intrinsic within the acorn to guide it to become an oak. The acorn will just be a collection of matter which is acted upon by efficient causes which may or may not lead to the growth of an oak (Hulatt, 2016). Removing natures means we cannot explain the regularity which we observe in the world (Aristotle, n.d.).
This account of nature is overly simplistic as in reality nature is a complex web of interactions. Aristotle labels these interactions as interference which leads to characteristic behaviours not being displayed (Hulatt, 2016), but surely then we would not be able to witness true nature at all as nothing is ever not interfered with. One would not be able to truly know what the ‘intrinsic guiding influence’ of natural objects are, so we cannot convincingly say that the nature of objects is being interfered with. In addition, Aristotle argues that nature leads to regularity and without it the world would be a collection of random material and efficient causes (Hulatt, 2016). However, objects do not need a purpose or goal in order to substantiate their form. The laws of science would not fail to exist if things had no purpose, therefore if there was no final cause, the world would be no different. It does not matter whether Aristotle thinks that the world would be a collection of random material and efficient causes so long as the world is no different, hence the final cause is redundant.
It can be argued that there can be several final causes for something. If an event has not occurred, we cannot know what the purpose of something is indefinitely. For example, if a person is walking towards a shoe shop but is indifferent between buying a pair of shoes and not buying a pair, the final cause is that they are walking in order to go to the shop and decide to either purchase shoes or not purchase shoes. This gives the impression that the final cause is more of a prediction rather than fact and does not help us in our explanation of the natural world.
Moving on to focus more on the formal cause, it is required in order to explain the organisation of the parts of objects. The material and efficient causes explain an object in terms of the behaviour of its matter, whereas the formal cause explains it in terms of its form. Formal cause is contained intrinsically within a natural substance (Hulatt, 2016) which is understandable because the explanation of the natural world requires some sort of acknowledgement of the form of things. For the rest of this essay, I shall further explain why the formal cause is required in the explanation of the natural world.
Aristotle suggests formal and final causes are one in the same when it comes to natural objects as the goal (final cause) of a natural object is its substantial form (Hulatt, 2016). This indirectly suggests the redundancy of one of these causes as it is not actually required in the explanation of natural objects. The final cause of a natural object is the form and the form of a natural object is the definition of the final cause. For an artefact, the sculptor is the efficient cause and the intention of the sculptor is implicit within the efficient cause (Hulatt, 2016). This means the final cause is not required as the efficient cause tells us the agent responsible for the change in the artefact and the reasoning for the creation of the artefact may be known to the sculptor or might not exist at all. The formal cause is located within the sculptor as they design and create the artefact (Hulatt, 2016). It is necessary because it describes how the object will be shaped, hence aiding our explanation of the natural world.
All things being considered, the explanation of the natural world requires the material and efficient causes as these bring us to our normal linear interpretation of cause. We must also accept the formal cause as an aid to explaining the natural world as it identifies the form of objects which would otherwise just be a collection of matter. Aristotle is wrong to claim the requirement of the final cause as it undermines science by incorrectly claiming that everything would be down to chance without it. Also, the argument that the final cause is a requirement for nature of objects to be expressed is false. Furthermore, the possibility of several final causes harms its claim to be an explanation of the natural world as opposed to a prediction.
So to conclude, I have outlined Aristotle’s argument for the requirement of final and formal causation in the explanation of the natural world, and shown why the final cause is not required in the explanation. I then proposed a sounder explanation of the natural world which includes the efficient, material and formal causes.