. I cannot see how the idea of formal constraints as being causally efficacious makes sense, because the idea of causal efficacy just is the idea of efficient causality, and to say that formal causality is efficient would be to dissolve the distinction between efficient and formal causality. I don't believe we even have a coherent notion of formal causation, as we at least do of efficient causation. — John
It is commonly said that modern science neglects formal causes but attends to efficient and material causes; but classically understood, efficient and material causes cannot function or even be conceived without formal causes, for it is form which informs matter, giving concrete objects their power to act on other objects. The loss of formal causality is thus in a sense the loss of efficient and material causality as well—an implication that is not quite fully realized until we see it brilliantly explored in the philosophy of David Hume. ...
In the realist framework, the intrinsic connection between causes and effects was particularly important for explaining how the mind knows the world; concepts formed by the mind, insofar as they are causally connected to things which are the foundation of those concepts, necessarily retain some intrinsic connection to those things. While we can be mistaken in particular judgments, we can be assured of the basic soundness of the mind’s power, thanks to the intrinsic connection between concept and object.
...Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.
So final cause has an identity crisis. On the one hand, it wants to be causal, to predetermine the world has one meaning rather than another, but because it deals with the infinites of logic and meaning, being any sort of causal state which changes is closed to it: it's proponents are left gesturing at a "mysterious force" without any wordly definition because the final cause is really only in their imagination. — TheWillowOfDarkness
The actual philosophical issue (as opposed to just terminological) is whether or not the Pythagorean Theorem is causally efficacious. You say it is, but others say it isn't. Instead they'd say that you used your hands to lay out a square foundation, and that the movement of your hands was causally influenced by electrical activity in the brain. The Pythagorean Theorem isn't to be equated (or so some say) with any of the physical processes that actually caused your body to move the way it did, and so isn't the cause of the building being square. — Michael
I've not begged the question, and, speaking of the article, you may note that it says "According to the most widely accepted versions of the Way of Negation: An object is abstract (if and) only if it is causally inefficacious." But, I suppose that point is moot now. Cheers. — Arkady
the Pythagorean theorem is the cause of the foundation being square — Metaphysician Undercover
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