14 January 1985
It’s for a good causality
Causality has generally been misunderstood. The concept of a mechanical, and therefore meaningless, causality misses the “intentionality” or purpose that is inherent in causality; in other words, the correct meaning of the world “causality” contains the connotation of purpose, and any mechanical understanding of causality is simply a misapprehension borne of fuzzy thinking. When a glass falls off a table and breaks, one clear way of understanding the event, as opposed to unclear, passive, ways of understanding it, is by describing it this way: “The floor broke the glass.” The description may at first seem absurd, but it is no more absurd than “I lifted the glass to my lips” – rather than “The glass got lifted to my lips.” The supposed accidentalness of human existence, a bastard child of the evolutionary theory, stems from a similar root, namely, a misunderstanding of the nature of evolutionary causality. An illustration from a different field may help to clarify the matter. Take cooking. The usual understanding of the process of cooking is that the ingredients come into being as a result of interactions between the sun and the soil, and then they are picked up and used as food. Let us look at the matter differently. The sun and the soil give plants what these require. Plants use what they are given to improve themselves and to ripen into tasty and nutritious produce; hence, they give of themselves to animals. Animals use what they are given by plants to nourish themselves, and to grow and mature, hopefully, into good friends of the earth. In the case of human beings, then, the intention would be to give rise to a being that is capable of a relatively full appreciation of the whole process.
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9 comments:
Have you read David Hume's "A Treatise of Human Nature."? He would agree that causality is generally misunderstood, but takes off in a rather different direction. Highly recommended, and available free on google books.
I love your example of passiveness- I am trying to emulate Ghandi a bit more, and he spoke in a similar manner as you put: "the floor broke the glass"
I agree with the idea that causality doesn't rule out the existence of intention.
For something possible to become actual, you need sombody to actualise it.
So the fact that somethings follow something else (like the broken glass follows it's fall) depends, ultimately on sombody which determined it would be this way.
But it is certainly not you, nor the glass that deceided. The glass didn't choose to be made in a certain chape, and then become broken. It is not because it is possible for the glass to be broken that it can actualise that possibility by itself (like: "oh ! I wich to be broken" and then "crach !" it was broken).
Conclusion, I agree that sombody (capable of arbitrary, free choices, like us) must have deceided intentionnaly that a grass would break in certain conditions, and a carrot grow in certain other conditions.
But it is not because "we like" to think that the carrot actually "want" to be a carrot that it is actualy so.
I beleive a carrot is just a carrot, because I never saw a carrot choosing to be a non-carrot and actualy becoming a hipopotamus or a stew. I choose the carrot I like and turn it into a stew if I which... but it is my choice, not hers.
Have you ever seen for example a carrot jumping into hot water by itslef ? or have you ever seen a carrot deciding not to become a stew for this time, even though you had put it into the saucepan ?
Certainly somebody must have chosen intentionaly, that this beeing that I am would have the capacity to choose, while this other beeing that we call carrot would not.
I recomend Norman Geisler's "Christian Apologetics". He explains very well this thing that finite things cannot be acountable for their own existence, and that even an infinite chain of finite things couldn't be acountable for its own existance.
Let me add that it might open a door for you to get to know the One that brought you and your glass and your carrots into existence :-)
Interesting perspective. Keep your posts coming.
i think you might be making a mistake the fact that a word we use to discribe something actually has all of these different things wrapped up in its meaning doesn't mean that those things are allso wrapped up in the thing that it is applied too if you see what i mean.
i'll admit causality is a concept i haven't completely grasped or understood correctly. this helps to shed some light.
i really appreciated reading you The Essence of Childhood post. i'm 23 and have been wracking my brain trying to figure out why the older i get the less "cozier" life seems, how distant everything seems.
i would appreciate even more a post that talks about what we can do to form a more immediate relationship with life.
........yes.
This really got me thinking!
the first cause argument is flawed because it contradicts itself.
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