The Alpha and the Omega

For a long time I have thought that the identification of God as the Alpha and the Omega in the Book of Revelation is very Aristotelian: God is the efficient and final cause of all. Indeed, Revelation 22:13 explicitly glosses as he arche kai ho telos. This may initially seem an over-metaphysicalization of Scripture, but I think it is a very Scriptural idea that particular aspects of God’s involvement in the world—us being comforted (in a way) that God is the arche and the telos of the upheavals in the Book of Revelation—are mirrors of God’s innate nature.

Two ways to pursue y for the sake of z

The phrase

1. x pursues y as a means to z

is ambiguous between two readings:

2. x pursues y-as-a-means-to-z

and:

3. x’s pursuit of y is a means to z.

Case (2) is the standard case of means-end relationships: Alice goes on the exercise bike to keep her healthy.

But (3) can be a different beast. Bob’s psychologist has told him that it would be good for him to secrete more adrenaline; maybe striving to win at tennis is the most efficient of the safe methods for secreting adrenaline available to Bob; so, Bob relentlessly pursues victory in tennis. It is not the victory, however, that releases the adrenaline in my hypothetical story: it is the pursuit of that victory. In that case, it is Bob’s pursuit of victory that is a means to (mental) health. Moreover, it could be the case that what secretes adrenaline most effectively is the non-instrumental pursuit of victory:

It looks to me like in all these cases what we have are instances of final causation, where y’s endhood is caused by z’s endhood. In case (2), it is y’s instrumental endhood that is caused by z’s endhood, while in some cases of (3), like Bob’s adrenaline-releasing pursuit of victory, it is y’s non-instrumental endhood that is caused by z’s endhood.

There can also be cases where y’s instrumental endhood is caused by z’s endhood, but y is not a means to z. For instance, we could imagine that Bob’s psychologist told him that given his peculiar motivational structure, the most efficient way for him to release adrenaline would be to strive to gain money by winning at tennis. In that case, Bob pursues winning at tennis instrumentally for the sake of gaining money, but this pursuit is finally caused by his pursuit of adrenaline. So, the victory’s instrumental endhood is finally caused by adrenaline’s endhood, but the victory is instrumental to money, not adrenaline.

Note, also, that normally a case of (2) is also a case of (3): when x pursues y-as-a-means-to-z, then x’s pursuit of y is also a means to z. But there are pathological cases where this is not so.

Instances fo (3) that are not instance of (2) look like cases of higher order reasons. But they need not be cases of reasons at all. For case (3) can be subdivided into at least two subcases:

1. x voluntarily chooses to pursue y in order that z might be achieved by the pursuit

2. The unchosen teleological structure of x (e.g., the nature of x) is such that x’s pursuit of y is ordered to z.

In type (a) cases, indeed z can provide a higher order reason. But in type (b) cases, there need be no reasons involved. Lion cubs pursue play in order that they might grow strong, let’s say. But growing strong doesn’t provide lion cubs with a reason to pursue play, because lion cubs are not (let us suppose) the sorts of beings that can be responsive to higher order reasons. Nonetheless, there is final causation: the end of strength causes play to be an end.

Final and efficient causation

It is sometimes said that:

1. One can have p explain q and q explain p when the types of explanation are different.

I think (1) is mistaken, but in this post I want to focus not on arguing against (1), but simply on arguing against one particular and fairly common form of argument for (1):

2. In cases of Aristotelian final causation, it typically happens that y is a final cause of its own efficient cause.

3. If y is a final cause of x, then that y occurred finally explains that x occurred.

4. If x is an efficient cause of y, then that x occurred efficiently explains that y occurred.

5. So, it’s possible to have p explain q and q explain p when the types of explanation are final and efficient, respectively.

I want to argue that this argument fails (bracketing the interpretive question whether Aristotle or Aquinas accepts its premises).

First, explanation is factive: if p explains q, then both p and q are true. This is because explanations provide correct answers to why questions, and a false answer isn’t correct. But final explanations are not factive. I can offer an argument in order to convince you and yet fail to convince you. (Indeed, perhaps this post is an example.) Therefore, (3) is not always true. That doesn’t show that (3) is false in the case that the argument needs. But it is plausible that an action that fails for extrinsic reasons has exactly the same explanation as a successful action. The failed action cannot be explained by its achieving its goal, since it doesn’t achieve its goal. Therefore, the successful action cannot be explained in terms of its achieving its goal, either.

Second, efficient causation is a relation between tokens. If I turn on the lights in order to alert the burglars, then my token turning-on-the-lights is the efficient cause of the token alerting-the-burglars. But final causation is not a relation between tokens. For suppose that I fail to alert the burglars, say because the burglars are blindfolded (they were challenged to rob me blind, and parsed that phrase wrong) and don’t see the lights. Then there are infinitely many possible tokens of the alerting-the-burglars type any one of which would pretty much equally well serve my goals. For instance, I could alert the burglars at 10:44:22.001, at 10:44:22.002, etc. In the case of action failure, no one of these tokens can be distinguished as “the final cause”, the token I am aiming at. Indeed, if one particular possible token a₀ were the final cause, then if I happened to produce another token, say a₇, my action would have been a failure—which is absurd. Thus, either all the infinitely many possible tokens serve as the final causes of the action or none of them do. It seems wrong to say that there are infinitely many final causes of the action, so none of the tokens is.

Given that explanation of the failed action is the same as of the successful action, it follows that even in the successful case, none of the tokens provides the final cause.

Therefore, we should see final causation as a relation between a type, say alerting the burglars at some time or other near 10:44:22, and a token, say my particular turning on of the lights. But if so, then (2) is false, for it is false that in the successful case the same things are related by final and efficient causation: the final causation relates the outcome type with a productive token and efficient causation relates the productive token with the outcome token.

As I said, this doesn’t show that (1) is false, but it does show that efficient and final explanation do not provide a case of (1).

Acknowledgments: I am grateful to Tim Pawl for discussion of these questions.

Final causation

A standard picture of final causation is this. A has a teleological directedness to engaging in activity F for the sake of producing B. Then B explains A's engaging in F by final causation. This picture is mistaken for one or two reasons. First, suppose that an interfering cause prevents B from arising from activity F. The existence of an interfering cause at this point does nothing to make it less explicable why F occurred. But it destroys the explanation in terms of B, since there is no B. Second, and more speculatively, it is tokens of things and events that enter into explanations, but teleology typically involves types not tokens. Thus, if B enters into the explanation of F, it will be a token, but then A's engagement in F won't be directed at B, but at something of such-and-such a type. In other words, we shouldn't take the "for the sake of" in statements like "A engaged in F for the sake of ___" to be an explanation. For if it's to be an explanation, the blank will need to be filled out with a particular token, say "B", but true "for the sake of" claims (at least in paradigmatic cases) have the right hand side filled in with an instance of a type, say "a G".

I think there is something in the vicinity of final causation, but it's not a weird backwards causation. Rather, in some cases A engagement in F produces B in a way that is a fulfillment of a teleological directedness in A. In that case the engagement in F to produce B in fulfillment of a teleology in A is explained by that teleology. In less successful cases--say, ones where an interfering cause is present--we can at least say that A's engagement in F is explained by that teleology. In these less successful cases, there is in one way less to be explained--success is absent and hence does not need to be explained--but there is still a teleological explanation (and there will also be an explanation of lack of success, due to interfering causes). But in any case, there is no backwards-looking causation.