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what causes explain whatever? - Eric the Green - 04-19-2022
On wikipedia is it said that only one meaning of "cause" is familiar to most English speakers. What is really the case, is that only one kind of "cause" is recognized in the kind of science most English speakers today recognize as science.
But, is what we understand and live by in today's modern world, necessarily the best or the most valid? Our idea of progress has merit, since we want to see things get better, and more people be free, and so on. But it may also blind us into thinking that progress has led in a straight and exclusive line to how things and situations are today, when in fact in some ways things may have been better yesterday, or in the past.
Such is the case with many concepts in today's most-accepted science, which we may call "materialist" or "physicalist." One of those concepts is "cause."
Many of us who study philosophy understand that what has been taught us in basic education about "cause" is too narrow, and that there are at least several kinds of causes.
But when most of us get out of school, we enter an even-more narrowly focused and brainwashed environment called "work." There we find that the meaning of "cause" is restricted in another way, not only or even mostly by physical science, but by economics. Our society is organized according to this narrow notion of "work." Here, the only worthwhile purpose in life is short-term profits or the latest values on the stock market.
So, in some countries in the modern world, although very far from all yet, progress has meant that people can vote for those who rule them, and that they can offer their individual talents on the open market instead of only those prescribed for them by family and tradition.
And yet, a society only organized for the sake of short-term profit, or for the prescribed minimal salaries or wages given to them by those who get the profit, and which may offer on the market only items produced according to the notion of physical cause (i.e. machines of various kinds), may not be an improvement over some societies that honored some higher purposes than this. Such societies may even think that because they offer these higher purposes of life, that they can dispense with the modern (or modernist) ones like democracy and free enterprise.
Those who study philosophy have a wider range of worldviews to choose from, some of which may be of greater value than modernist ones, at least in some ways.
One of these philosophers was Aristotle. He was well respected for hundreds of pre-modern years, but many have thrown over his ideas in modern times, rejecting his valuable ideas along with his more-limited and outdated ones. One of these views is his doctrine of the four causes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_causes
The only "cause" which modern English-speaking society and its prevalent kind of science recognizes among these four is the efficient cause. This notion of cause is that things can be moved or changed by other agencies that affect it. The basic model was provided by Newton who illustrated this notion of cause as a billiard ball sitting still but then being hit by a moving one, and thus setting it in motion (or having most of the previous ball's motion transferred to the second one).
This can also be called the mechanical cause, because understanding it allowed us to create machines that work according to this notion of cause. Also inherent in this notion is that causes are in the past which cause changes in the present. This notion also allows us to diagnose various conditions by finding their cause, and then cure or alter/improve the condition by removing or changing the cause.
But what if there are really three other kinds of cause in our world? Or even more?
The three other causes (quoting wikipedia):
Material
Aristotle considers the material "cause" of an object as equivalent to the nature of the raw material out of which the object is composed.
Formal
related to: Platonic realism
Aristotle considers the formal "cause" as describing the pattern or form which when present makes matter into a particular type of thing, which we recognize as being of that particular type.
Final
related to: Teleology
Aristotle defines the end, purpose, or final "cause" as that for the sake of which a thing is done.
(unquote wikipedia)
Note that the formal cause is of special use to the generations theory, since it posits that they come in four archetypes. The notion of cycle is also related to a mathematical kind of formal cause. Jungian psychology and the enneagram also make use of this cause in their explanations.
Modernism starts with Francis Bacon, in this respect:
(quote, wikipedia) In his Advancement of Learning (1605), Francis Bacon wrote that natural science "doth make inquiry, and take consideration of the same natures : but how? Only as to the material and efficient causes of them, and not as to the forms." Using the terminology of Aristotle, Bacon demands that, apart from the "laws of nature" themselves, the causes relevant to natural science are only efficient causes and material causes, or, to use the formulation which became famous later, natural phenomena require scientific explanation in terms of matter and motion.
(unquote)
But Aristotle wrote: (quoting from wikipedia) "We should approach the investigation of every kind of animal without being ashamed, since in each one of them there is something natural and something beautiful. The absence of chance and the serving of ends are found in the works of nature especially. And the end, for the sake of which a thing has been constructed or has come to be, belongs to what is beautiful."
My note: It seems to me that this approach is more useful to us in moving toward a society that has higher purposes than using things for our own narrow short-term purposes.
from wikipedia:
"According to Aristotle, once a final "cause" is in place, the material, efficient and formal "causes" follow by necessity. However, he recommends that the student of nature determine the other "causes" as well, and notes that not all phenomena have an end, e.g., chance events......
Francisco J. Ayala has claimed that teleology is indispensable to biology since the concept of adaptation is inherently teleological. In an appreciation of Charles Darwin published in Nature in 1874, Asa Gray noted "Darwin's great service to Natural Science" lies in bringing back Teleology "so that, instead of Morphology versus Teleology, we shall have Morphology wedded to Teleology." Darwin quickly responded, "What you say about Teleology pleases me especially and I do not think anyone else has ever noticed the point." "
My note: There may be other causes to consider. Plato recognized the spiritual cause, or soul as that which moves itself from within itself. This notion was also adopted by Aristotle, but not enumerated as one of the four causes, but perhaps he saw it as an over-arching one, which he called "the unmoved mover", which he found in many living things especially. Jung has recognized the cause of synchronicity, which says things tend to happen that are related to each other. This cause applies especially when we notice it, in which case it happens more often. It may be the relation of a personal experience or something in a dream with another occurrence. "Resonance" is another cause recognized by some authors.