Do Final Causes Prove God? Aquinas Fifth Way Explained
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ก.ค. 2024
- In this video I explain Thomas Aquinas' fifth argument for the existence of God, the Argument from Final Causality.
0:00 Intro
0:16 Paley vs. Aquinas
1:10 The Four Causes
2:28 Argument for Final Causality from Regularity
3:40 From Final Causality to God
Link to my videos on Aquinas' other arguments:
The First Way: • Aristotle's Argument f...
The Second Way: • Aquinas' Argument For ...
The Third Way: • Does God Exist?: Aquin...
The Fourth Way: • Does God Exist?: Aquin...
This video is part of a larger series on the arguments for the existence of God. Click the subscribe button to stay informed about when future videos come out on this channel!
Got questions? I can be reached at thomascahillquestions@gmail.com.
My video editing is now done by Mauricio Chuman. If you want to learn more about the work he does, he can be reached at chuman.mauricio.editing@gmail.com.
1:20 to have a complete explanation of something, would a per accidens efficient cause sometimes suffice, along with the other three causes instead of a per se efficient cause? or is per se cause more like an efficient cause of a formal cause?
will you ever do tom's de ente? i like this one
I lumped the De Ente in with the Second Way, here's my video on that - th-cam.com/video/QW3JTLEKeks/w-d-xo.html.
@@Thomas-Cahill thank you
4:43 maybe i am getting the wrong notion of 'idea' in this context, but aren't abstract things such as 'ideas' usually said to be causally inert?
5:27 why does it have to be a mind? you seem to have given an example of a mind guiding something towards its telos, but this doesnt say that all teloses of these kind are guided by a mind. for example, i can observe a slow driving car that is blue, but i cannot say all slow driving cars are hence blue. there could be a slow driving red car. to apply this, could there not be an unintelligent thing (the acorn) being directed to its telos (the oak tree) just by natural processes and the environment around it?
5:50 to me, this doesnt seem sufficient to say a human mind isnt causing the oak trees. even then, what is a human mind? or what is a mind that isnt human?
also, you intially said that an idea can be a final cause (telos), but not a mind. im probably misunderstanding but how are you getting from an idea being the final cause to the mind being the final cause? for example, you initially talked about an oak tree, so a mind could have an idea of an oak tree which acts as a final cause. the idea itself is the final cause, this doesnt speak to how the idea came about in a particular mind, nor if it would have to be in a mind.
to pose a weird option, maybe all acorns partake in the form (idea) of acorn, which leads them--by their nature/essence--to grown into oak trees. but because they exist in a changing and material world, their growth is limited (not in the sense that they do not grown the talest, but rather that they do not grow into the perfect oak tree), so they do not become the same as the form of the oak tree. you could give arguments to reject this form theory, however i feel it is another possible explanation for what you have said. this is because all you have is an idea being a final cause, the idea wouldnt have to exist in a mind--it could exist in a platonic realm for example.
6:18 maybe it could have a telos, just not one relevant to oak trees. this is similar to thomas' first way, where we have independent per se chains of change, however not all chains have to be terminated by one being. to put this into context, maybe this mind is the ultimate final cause for oak trees, however it has its own final cause in another, irrelevant respect. we could also say that birch trees are directed towards their telos by a completely separate mind who has no telos, so we would get two distinct minds guiding two distinct sets of things to their distinct teloses, for example.
6:27 maybe there could be an infinite regress of final causes, as a final cause is sort of inbetween a per accidens cause which is instantaneous and a per se cause which necessarily happens for the whole duration of the effect.
6:41 im not sure about this, as the idea i get of final cause is a sort of objective telos or purpose, however could this being not change in a non-objective way or change in its accidental features?
6:47 im not sure as if we image a plant, from my perspective its 'telos' can be fully explained by the laws of nature, which simply leads the laws of nature to be explained. but it doesnt seem that the laws of nature would be explained in terms of final cause/telos, so maybe not?
7:01 cant change or doesnt change?
7:05 why does matter have to change? what exactly is matter? im not a philosopher so there's probably a very good definition of matter, nor i am a physicist but i feel that matter cannot be properly defined to make such a claim that matter always changes.
7:11 im not sure. a necessarily evil thing lacks goodness, from your definition of 'evil' as a lack of good. but this thing in principle could not gain goodness, as it is necessarily evil, even though it lacks goodness.
7:17 do you mean eternal? if so then yes this makes sense.
7:26 im not sure how you arrived at this 'goodness is synonymous with being'.
7:30 all knowledge or all possible propositional knowledge?
by power, do you mean causal power? if so, i have an interesting question which probably has an easy answer yet i am still curious. how can a non-physical mind interact with the physical? even if you cite the mind's power, you must still show that non-physical interacting with the physical is logically possible, which doesnt seem intuitive to me at least.
The answers to your first three questions are related. Yes, ideas are usually causal inert. The only times when they aren’t is when they’re in an acting mind. That means that the only way an abstract idea (like a non-existing tree) can be a cause is if it’s an idea in a mind. And if ideas can only have causal power if they’re in a mind, then the Platonic Forms must be in a divine mind in order for them to have causal power.
To your fourth point, if this mind itself has an external final cause, then we get, as you rightly pointed out, a per se causal series. But since these kinds of instantaneous causal serieses must have a first member, and only a mind without an external final cause can be a first member in this kind of series, there must exist a mind without an external final cause - and any mind which does not have an external final cause would have to have the divine attributes.
That's all I have time to reply to right now, but I'm planning to incorporate some of the questions you brought up into later videos. Thanks for you comment, and I hope you keep following the channel!
@@Thomas-Cahill i know you dont have much time to reply but i cannot help myself😂
why do ideas only have causal power when they're in a mind; what is it for an idea to cause something? would that be like an idea causing another idea, i.e., i look a the cover of a book which produces the idea (sense experience) of the book cover in my mind which then causes my mind to think of ideas related to that book?
i might reject the idea that chains of final causes are purely per se, to me they seem to be an in-between. maybe this would go against the idea that a chain of final causation necessarily terminates. why would it have to be a mind rather than some minds?
Lol 90 comments
All of the 5 ways are fallacies of composition
How is that possible? None of the Five Ways make any claims about the universe as a whole.
why
What happened to your views?
I told them to take the day off.
@@Thomas-Cahill Fine
You should make some videos touching on epistemology. "Scientism" is very popular among online atheists and so it would be good to dunk on such silly concepts.
I have seen a guy explicitely deny the laws of logic to dismiss the five ways, atheists will believe in literally anything but God.
Good suggestion. I'm looking for ways to branch out after I finish summarizing the arguments for God, I'll keep that idea in mind.
All 5 of the ways are fallacies of composition
@@drsatan3231 I already answered you on that one and you failed to refute me in any way. The 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th don't even need to claim anything about the whole universe.
@@Testimony_Of_JTF perhaps you weren't notified but I most definitely did refute what you said in the other thread and you haven't replied to what I said
Go check it out
@@Testimony_Of_JTF If the first way doesn't apply to the whole universe, then it's just saying that something started motion in the universe, which is obviously the laws of physics