Originally Posted by boxcar
It's difficult to ascertain the best starting point in this tough chapter since one thought leads into another and that thought to another, and so on. But in this one section Feser is making a distinction between Aquinas' famous Fifth Way and all other works which pursue the evidence for God's existence in other less convincing ways. So, let's jump in. This is a heavy chapter that covers some lofty and challenging topics such as the distinctions between existence and essence, between eminently and formally caused series, between imagination and coherent conception of ideas in intellect, etc.
The universe is filled with natural regularities; this is uncontroversial. These include the regularities manifested in the biological realm - the way the heart pumps blood, thus keeping an organism alive, or the way a species is so adapted to its environment that its members reliably find sources of food, reproduce themselves, and so forth - but Aquinas is not especially interested in these over any others. Indeed, unlike Paley and "Intelligent Design" proponents, he is not, for the purpose of the Fifth Way, particularly interested in complexity per se at all. The regularity with which the moon orbits the earth, or the regularity of the way a struck match generates fire -- both very simple examples compared to eyes, hearts, species and the like -- are no less important. Indeed, they are more important for his argument. For life is a fairly rare phenomenon, confined so far as we know only to the earth. But the far simpler causal regularities I have been speaking of are completely general and pervade the physical universe, which can be thought of as a vast system of material elements interacting according to regular patterns of cause and effect.
But there is no way to make sense of these regularities apart from the notion of final causation, of things being directed toward and end or goal. For it is not just the case that a struck match regularly generates fire, heat and the like; it regularly generates fire and heat specifically, rather than ice, or the smell of lilacs, or the sound of a trumpet. It is not just the case that the moon regularly orbits the earth in a regular pattern; it orbits the earth specifically, rather than quickly swinging out to Mars and back now and again, or stopping dead for five minutes here and there, or dipping down toward the earth occasionally and then quickly popping back up. And so on for all the innumerable regularities that fill the universe at any given moment. In each case, the causes don't simply happen to result in certain effects, but are evidently and inherently directed toward certain, specific effects as a "goal". As we saw when we first looked at Aristotle's notion of final causality, this doesn't mean that they are consciously trying to reach these goals; of course they are not. The Aristotelian idea is precisely that goal-directedness can and does exist in the natural world even apart from conscious awareness (emphases author's)
Still, this is very odd that this should be the case. One of the raps against final causation is that is seems to entail that thing can produce an effect even before that thing exists. (emphasis mine). Hence to say that an oak tree is the final cause of an acorn seems to entail that the oak tree
- which doesn't yet exist - in some sense causes the acorn to go through every state it passes through as it grows into an oak, since the oak is the "goal" or natural end of the acorn. But how can this be? Well, consider those cases where goal-directedness is associated with consciousness, viz. in us. A builder builds a house; he is a cause that generates a specific kind of effect. But the reason he is able to do this is that the effect, the house, exists as an idea in his intellect before it exists in reality. That is precisely how the not-yet existent house can serve as a final cause - by means of its form or essence existing in someone's intellect , if not (yet) in reality. And that seems clearly to be the only way something not yet existent in reality can exist in any other sense at all, and thus have any effects at all; that is, if it exists in intellect.
Now go back to the vast system of causes that constitute the universe. Every one of them is directed toward a certain end or final cause . Yet, almost none of them is associated with any consciousness, thought or intellect at all; and even animals and human beings, who are conscious, are themselves comprised in whole or in part of unconscious and unintelligent material components which themselves manifest final causality. Yet, it is impossible for anything to be directed toward and end unless the end exists in an intellect which directs the thing in question toward it. And it follows, therefore, that the system of ends or final causes that make up the physical universe can only exist at all because there is a Supreme Intelligence or intellect outside that universe which directs things toward their ends. (pp 114-116, emphasis mine)
At the end of the day, Aquinas exhibited exquisite and impeccable logic because "his" logic found its ground in scripture. All truth, truly, is God's truth!
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