Recently there has been an increase in power ontologies, which is reminiscent of Aristotelian and Scholastic metaphysics, especially since powers are "internal" to things. Power (or dispositions) act like a causal web. — darthbarracuda

Things were going well until you smuggled this reductionism back in. :)

Formal and final cause are better understood as contextual properties or powers rather than intrinsic ones. Material and efficient cause are rightfully located within substantial objects. But the shaping and directing of matter is something that comes from without.

Now this is what leads to the problems of transcendental metaphysics - the idea that nature is ruled by external laws, Platonic forms, or hands of gods.

But there is also the immanent metaphysics of Aristotle where form and purpose are developmentally emergent and self-organising regularities. So the world itself must develop intelligible order. And having done so, that order is imposed locally everywhere to create substantial being.

And that fits right in with modern physics, especially quantum theory. All electrons in the universe are identical (and hence entanglable) because they all express the same symmetry-breaking structural regularity. For an electron to be, it has no choice but to have that contextually-dictated form.

Where a confusion arises is that life and mind is based on symbolism - digital codes - and so has a way to internalise formal and final cause. Biology can form memories for its shapes and goals. It can bury that kind of contextual information deep within itself as - principally - the program that gets stored in a genetic code.

So with biology, what was in physics strictly outside the shaping of substantial being, gets moved inside. Symbolism creates a new kind of internal dimension where constraints (formal and final cause) can be curled up into a tiny ball of memory, to then be exercised "at will".

So the danger here is being anthropomorphic and thinking that formal and final cause are naturally inside things as powers or properties, rather than outside them as the global context or constraints which give matter shape and direction.

Now physical objects can also have a form of memory. Rocks or rivers are complex arrangements that bear the imprint of their past and so do also seem to own the power of a shape and a direction. So on that score, the world does start to seem as if it has internalised the form and finality in a local fashion.

But again that is not the most generic view. The generic view - as taken at the quantum or particle physics level - is that every event is fundamentally contextual. Particles are just excitations in a field. Like a plucked string, they have no choice but to sound the note that is dictated by their structural context.

So formal and final cause stand for the global contextual constraints which emerge to regulate local particular material being. They are completely external as causes.

However that fundamental view then gets complicated because there is also the possibility of substances developing memories. Either just because not every process flows at the same rate (rocks are too cold to respond fluidly to the world like hot larva), or because constructing a memory became possible through the evolution of semiotic codes (membranes, genes, neurons, words, numbers), then formal and final cause could come to be something that sits "inside" a substantial being. The rules for shaping matter could be a power internaliised.

But there is also the immanent metaphysics of Aristotle where form and purpose are developmentally emergent and self-organising regularities. So the world itself must develop intelligible order. And having done so, that order is imposed locally everywhere to create substantial being. — apokrisis

Did Aristotle argue for self-generalizing habits? I thought that was Peirce's addition - after all, Aristotle did think the universe was eternal if I remember correctly, and that there were distinct natural kinds, something that would have come into conflict with evolution and general cosmological findings but Peirce managed to fill with his idea of habits.

Formal and final cause are better understood as contextual properties or powers rather than intrinsic ones. Material and efficient cause are rightfully located within substantial objects. But the shaping and directing of matter is something that comes from without. — apokrisis

Yes, I can agree to this, especially because final causation can be frustrated by external contextual properties. A mother can abort a baby, thus frustrating the telos of the fetus.

But if these powers exist outside of a substantial form, how do they exist? The mother that aborts the baby still has powers herself, namely, to abort the baby.

Did Aristotle argue for self-generalizing habits? I thought that was Peirce's addition - after all, Aristotle did think the universe was eternal if I remember correctly, and that there were distinct natural kinds, something that would have come into conflict with evolution and general cosmological findings but Peirce managed to fill with his idea of habits. — darthbarracuda

Yep. Aristotle mixes and matches a few different strands of thought and so it can't be said he spoke unambiguously for a single organic vision. But see for instance his notion of entelechy. Or the way he echoed Anaximander on the origin of the four elements.

But if these powers exist outside of a substantial form, how do they exist? The mother that aborts the baby still has powers herself, namely, to abort the baby. — darthbarracuda

Well yes. But that is exactly the kind of complex purpose that complex life/mind is capable of evolving as something internal to its system.

We have not only the clear notion of abortion, and well-developed material means, but also a strong framework of law.

So really, mothers have the power only in the sense that there is a social machinery in place. They can make a choice in that context.

In the sense that A causes B, what makes it the case that A causes B? If it is not an internal power or disposition, but rather an external contextual feature from the surrounding properties, then what causes this external context to be the way it is.

I like Heil's version: properties are dual-nature, both a quality and a disposition. This would work somewhat well into Aristotle's vision of the Soul, in which the Soul is just simply the functional aspect of a living organism. So the mind would be the dispositional aspects of the brain, perhaps taking part in a web of causal relations.

I like Heil's version: properties are dual-nature, both a quality and a disposition. — darthbarracuda

That again just reserves reality for bottom-up constructive causality. You have quality standing for material cause, disposition for efficient cause. And top-down constraint - the contexual causality of formal and final organisation - gets left out of the picture again.

So yes, there is a duality here. But of bottom-up vs top-down modes of causality. And substantial objects are what arise inbetween as the causal actors (in a relatively a-causal void).

Dispositions is talk about the way a world of objects acts (having an empty stage to act upon). But that doesn't say why those relational possibilities exist. For that you have to step back to the metaphysical view that can account for both actors and stages. What global constraints suppress general possibility in a way that produces the matching thing of particular local being? How is a cool and large vacuum created so as to leave atomistic particles standing small and sharp?

These are the kinds of questions a systems approach answers.

So yes, there is a duality here. But of bottom-up vs top-down modes of causality. And substantial objects are what arise inbetween as the causal actors (in a relatively a-causal void). — apokrisis

So there is a tension between the bottom-up causality of material and efficient causes and the top-down causality of formal and final causation.

I can see how a telos can emerge from a system - look at evolution for example. But what needs to still be explained is why the whole drama of evolution played out the way it did: why such-and-such happened and not something else, and not just by an appeal to material/efficient causation (i.e. science).

So the material cause is what you need for something to be/exist/occur, the efficient cause is the source of motion or change from history, the formal cause is what something is, which is ultimately shaped by final cause. Thus what I am seeing as final causes are not just tendencies or habits as a system evolves but as seemingly static "laws of nature" (mass attracts other mass - it's what it does, sugar dissolves in water, it's what it does); unless these are also evolving tendencies, in which case there needs to be an explanation as to how these tendencies came to be. These natural laws would then be like propositional counterfactual statements.

Which is why I don't think dynamicism can fully account for all of nature. The plant can wave in the wind but the roots keep it stuck in the ground as they are themselves static.

So there is a tension between the bottom-up causality of material and efficient causes and the top-down causality of formal and final causation. — darthbarracuda

Yes, a productive tension. Formally, they are complementary kinds of causes - free construction shaped by emergent limits.

But what needs to still be explained is why the whole drama of evolution played out the way it did: why such-and-such happened and not something else, and not just by an appeal to material/efficient causation (i.e. science). — darthbarracuda

But material/efficient causation does a very poor job of explaining why accidents happen. Whereas contraints-based thinking explains accidents as the result of systematic indifference.

If there is a global telos that cares, then that also represents a global unconcern in terms of what doesn't matter, what doesn't need to be controlled.

Thus what I am seeing as final causes are not just tendencies or habits as a system evolves but as seemingly static "laws of nature" — darthbarracuda

Where's the problem? Habits don't need to change if they continue to work. We can call them laws to show that we believe they have become that fixed. But that smacks of transcendent mechanism. And so in the end, the idea of developmental habits is a better way to show how regularity arises because it also provides its own means to keep reconstructing itself. A habit is a state of organisation that keeps perpetuating itself through its action.

Which is why I don't think dynamicism can fully account for all of nature. The plant can wave in the wind but the roots keep it stuck in the ground as they are themselves static. — darthbarracuda

But my account requires stasis as well as flux. It just says stasis emerges via a limitation on flux. Whereas you have the Parmidean puzzle of how stasis could ever allow change.

So if we wind the developmental clock back a bit beyond your rooted plants, in what sense was there solid ground during the radiation phase of the Hot Big Bang?

But my account requires stasis as well as flux. It just says stasis emerges via a limitation on flux. Whereas you have the Parmidean puzzle of how stasis could ever allow change. — apokrisis

In my view, there is static, unchanging substance (or Being), and all of flux has Being, and flux results in the particles we're talking about.

When we conceptualize flux, we imagine things like waves, wind, changing patterns, orbits, chaos, etc. But although this picture's contents are changing, the concept itself is not. What is being presented to us - the given-ness - is the same.

So when I say this substance or Being is static, I don't really mean in the temporal sense. I mean in the metaphysical sense, it is incapable of change. Similar to how Aristotle's Categories are incapable of change, or how the Four Causes cannot themselves change, or how the property-itself of red-ness is incapable of flux. It just is. That's what I've been referring to this whole time when I say it is static.

I do indeed have a puzzle of how this flux all started to begin with, as I suspect you do as well.

When we conceptualize flux, we imagine things like waves, wind, changing patterns, orbits, chaos, etc. But although this picture's contents are changing, the concept itself is not. What is being presented to us - the given-ness - is the same. — darthbarracuda

What do you mean exactly. If flux only manifests as a regularity of pattern, aren't we then talking about form rather than matter?

I prefer to reason that the only thing that never changes is that there is always change. So the regularity of pattern talks about the relative success the world has in constraining irregularity to at least a reasonable level of patterning. But beyond that, only shifting sands.