Constructing the Metaphysics III

On Causation

PART II: CAUSATION

2.1 The four causes restored

The Enlightenment retained efficient and material and erroneously amputated formal and final. The amputation was a methodological restriction presented as a discovery. See: The Refutation of Kant.

2.2 Formal causation

The form is a real pattern borne by its instances. Moderate realism, not Platonism, not nominalism. After extinction a form remains real but is no longer operative.

2.3 Final causation: the arrow and the target

Directedness is a real present feature of the directed thing. The end need not be real. The acorn is ordered toward oak; if the squirrel eats it, the oak is never real and yet the ordering was real throughout. This keeps potentiality unreal and teleology fully operative.

2.4 Direction is not required

A final cause may be directed by an agent or may be a feature of the thing itself. Direction is possible, not necessary. This is what leaves room for chance and free will.

2.5 Scope is resolved by voliscience

Undirected final causation is limited to living things, minds, and things with will. Directed final causation can operate anywhere. The boundary is not fixed by kind but by whether direction was in fact applied, which is a matter of divine discretion rather than metaphysical category.

2.6 The priority of final causation, scoped

Efficient and final causation are both fully real in the same event. Final is prior where it operates. The case, in which a person is directed and believes he chooses, is a real case and not the universal one. Rejecting omniderigence is what scopes it.

Note: in a completed timeline the end state is as real as the initial state, so the priority of an end over what precedes it requires no special explanation. The d’Abro observation in Probability Zero is the same structure.