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ter>Sam Vaknin's Psychology, Philosophy, Economics and Foreign Affairs Web Sites The word "telos" in ancient Greek meant: "goal, target, mission, completion, perfection." The Greeks seem to have associated the attaining of a goal with perfection. Modern scientific thought is much less sanguine about teleology, the belief that causes are preceded by their effects. The idea is less zany than it sounds. It was Aristotle who postulated the existence of four types of causes.
It all started with the attempt to differentiate explanatory theories from theories concerning the nature of explanation (and the nature of explanatory theories). To explain is to provoke an understanding in a listener as to why and how something is as it is. Thales, Empedocles and Anaxagoras were mostly concerned with offering explanations to natural phenomena. The very idea that there must be an explanation is revolutionary.
We are so used to it that we fail to see its extraordinary nature. Why not assume that everything is precisely as it is because this is how it should be, or because there is no better way (Leibnitz), or because someone designed it this way (religious thought)? Plato carried this revolution further by seeking not only to explain things - but also to construct a systematic, connective epistemology. His Forms and Ideas are (not so primitive) attempts to elucidate the mechanism which we employ to cope with the world of things, on the one hand, and the vessels through which the world impresses itself upon us, on the other hand. Aristotle made this distinction explicit: he said that there is a difference between the chains of causes of effects (what leads to what by way of causation) and the enquiry regarding the very nature of causation and causality. In this text, we will use the word causation in the sense of: "the action of causes that brings on their effects" and causality as: "the relation between causes and their effects." Studying this subtle distinction, Aristotle came across his "four causes." All, according to him, could be employed in explaining the world of natural phenomena.
This is his point of departure from modern science. Current science does not admit the possibility of a final cause in action. But, first things first. The formal cause is why a thing is the type of thing that it is. The material cause is the matter in which the formal reason is impressed. The efficient cause is what produces the thing that the formal and the material causes conspired to yield.
It is the final cause that remotely drives all these causes in a chain. It is that for the sake of which the thing was produced and, as a being, acts and is acted upon. It is to explain the coming to being of the thing by relating to its purpose in the world (even if the purpose is not genuine). It was Francis Bacon who set the teleological explanations apart from the scientific ones. A form there is and an observed feature or behaviour.
The two are correlated in a law. It is according to such a law, that a feature happens or is caused to happen. The more inclusive the explanation provided by the law the higher its certainty. This model, slightly transformed, is still the prevailing one in science. Events are necessitated by laws when correlated with a statement of the relevant facts.
Russel, in Humes footsteps, gave a modern dress to his constant conjunction: such laws, he wrote, should not provide the details of a causal process, rather they should yield a table of correlations between natural variables. Hume said that what we call cause and effect is a fallacy generated by our psychological propensity to find laws where there are none. A relation between two events, where one is always conjoined by the other is called by us causation. But that an event follows another invariably does not prove that one is the others cause.
Yet, if we ignore, for a minute, whether an explanation based on a final cause is at all legitimate in the absence of an agent and whether it can at all be a fundamental principle of nature the questions remains whether a teleological explanation is possible, sufficient, or necessary? It would seem that sometimes it is. From Kip Thorne's excellent tome "Black Holes and Tim Warps" (Paperback, 1994, page 417): "They (the physicists Penrose and Israel - SV) especially could not conceive of jettisoning it in favour of the absolute horizon (postulated by Hawking - SV). Why? Because the absolute horizon - paradoxically, it might seem - violates our cherished notion that an effect should not precede its cause. When matter falls into a black hole, the absolute horizon starts to grow ("effect") before the matter reaches it ("cause").
The horizon grows in anticipation that the matter will soon be swallowed and will increase the hole's gravitational pull... Penrose and Israel knew the origin of seeming paradox. The very definition of the absolute horizon depends on what will happen in the future: on whether or not signals will ultimately escape to the distant Universe. In the terminology of philosophers, it is a teleological definition (a definition that relies on "final causes"), and it forces the horizon's evolution to be teleological. Since teleological viewpoints have rarely if ever been useful in modern physics, Penrose and Israel were dubious about the merits of the absolute horizon... (page 419) Within a few months, Hawking and James Handle were able to derive, from Einstein's general relativity laws, a set of elegant equations that describe how the absolute horizon continuously and smoothly expands and changes its shape, in anticipation of swallowing installing debris or gravitational waves, or in anticipation of being pulled on by the gravity of other bodies. " The most famous teleological argument is undoubtedly the design argument in favour of the existence of God. Could the world have been created by accident?
It is ordered to such an optimal extent, that many find it hard to believe. The world to God is what a work of art is to the artist, the argument goes. Everything was created and set in motion with a purpose in (Gods) mind. The laws of nature are goal-oriented. It is a probabilistic argument: the most plausible explanation is that there is an intelligent creator and designer of the Universe who, in most likelihood, had a purpose, a goal in mind. What is it that he had in mind is what religion and philosophy (even science) are all about.
A teleological explanation is one that explains things and features while relating to their contribution to optimal situations, or to a normal mode of functioning, or to the attainment of goals by a whole or by a system to which the said things or features belong. Socrates tried to understand things in terms of what good they do or bring about. There are many cases when the contribution of a thing towards a desired result does not account for its occurrence. Snow does not fall IN ORDER to allow people to ski, for instance. But it is different where an intelligent creator is concerned and it can be convincingly shown that he designed and maintained the features of an object to allow it to realize a goal. In such a case, the very occurrence, the very existence of the object are explained by grasping its contribution to the attainment of that goal.
An intelligent agent (creator) need not necessarily be a single, sharply bounded, entity. A more fuzzy collective will qualify as long as its behaviour patterns are cohesive and identifiably goal oriented. Thus, teleological explanations could well be applied to organisms (collections of cells), communities, nations and other ensembles. To justify a teleological explanation, one needs to analyse the function of the item to be explained, on the one hand - and to provide an etiological account, on the other hand. The functional account must strive to explain what the item contributes to the main activity of the system, the object, or the organism, a part of which it constitutes - or to their proper functioning, well-being, preservation, propagation, integration (within larger systems), explanation, justification, or prediction. The reverse should also be possible.
Given knowledge regarding the functioning, integration, etc. of the whole - the function of any element within it should be identifiable with its contribution to the functioning whole. Though the practical ascription of goals (and functions) is problematic, it is, in principle, doable. But it is not sufficient.
That something is both functional and necessarily so - does not yet explain HOW it happened to have so suitably and conveniently materialized. This is where the etiological account comes in. A good etiological account explains both the mechanisms through which the article (to be explained) has transpired and what aspects of the structure of the world it was able to take advantage of in its preservation, propagation, or functioning. The most famous and obvious...
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