Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 53: Natural Teleology: Arguments For and Against Final Causality

Transcript
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Okay, they have all kinds of different ones, right? But one is designed like this, kind of concentric circles around what? A center that has spokes radiating out, right? Okay, now when they study this, they find out with one of the spiders that the circular ones all have a sticky substance on them. But the spokes running across those circles don't have anything sticky in them. Now let's say, ah, when a fly lands, let's say here, it gets stuck, and the spider, let's say, is down here, kind of looking conspicuous, right? What's important is to get over quickly to that fly, and it's struggling to get free, right? And before it does, get over there so quickly and start to, what? The lasso, so to speak, around it, right? And secure it in not having a delicious source of food here, right? Okay? And what's important, therefore, is to get over there quickly, right? Now, if it puts sticky stuff on all of these things, it couldn't get over there quickly. But as it is, right, it can go quickly down here and over here and then be close enough, right? Now, the spider does this something that if it gets caught, it can release itself, right? But still, it would be impeded with this stickiness, huh? See? It's not intelligent, right? So, you can see, did you figure that out? Does that have a mind, right? See what I mean? Okay. Another example, one that, let's say, Bob would give us, huh? This one insect would find another kind of insect, and it would go over it, and it would squeeze the head of the insect. And it would squeeze the head of the insect enough to paralyze the other insect, put it in a cobalt, we'd say, if it was us, but not enough to, like, kill it. Then it would go and dig a hole. And we'd keep on running back and forth in the hole to the paralyzed victim until the hole was big enough for the victim. And then go over and grab the victim by the antenna and pull it over to the hole and drop it down into the hole. And then would deposit its eggs on top of the victim. And then would cover it over, right? Now, the little ones hatched, right? Mmm. A ready-made supply of food there for their infancy, right? Now, if it had squeezed the head so much as to kill it, the animal would have died and corrupted and been unsuitable food for the young, right? If it hadn't squeezed it enough, it would just get up and walk off. Okay? So, just the right amount to paralyze it. Isn't that intelligent, huh? See? Doesn't have a mind to do this, right? See, you might wonder, right? See? You see the importance of what? Squeezing it just the right amount. And Faber tried to imitate that one and see if he could squeeze the victim just the right amount. And either he didn't squeeze it enough or too much. He'd always give it up. In other words, like he had a doctor's hands, you know. So, just the right amount to crush it enough to make it paralyze, see? So, you might wonder, right? See? But so much this action for an Indian to appear there, right? A reason why it squeezes the head, right? And squeezes it just the right amount and so on, right? So, it should be food for the young, see? Now, I might mention it as kind of a footnote. It's not important for this argument, but does it have a mind, right? You see? You know? Well, in observing it, Faber noticed that it always pulled the victim by the antenna, right? So, one time when it was digging the hole over there, he decided to take his little tippers off and cut off the antenna of the victim, right? So, back comes the thing, and it's already the hole now, right? And reaching for the non-existent antenna, right? And finally, the frustration went back, and it filled the hole, and that was it. Now, there's a million and one other places you could drag the, what? Victim by, right? And surely, if it had a mind to figure out that you didn't want to kill the victim, but just paralyze it, and this is the amount of pressure you have to use to do it. If you could figure all that out, sure, you could figure out that some other part of the body could drag the victim by, right? I say, even our Stone Age, you know, the man with a crack in the early head, could drag her by the hair, right? I'm sure if the hair came out, he could figure out if he could drag her by the leg or something else, right? It doesn't take much brain, you know? You see? So, you might eventually conclude, right, that that insect doesn't have a mind, right? It doesn't have this infinite thing that the great Anaxagoras said is the first characteristic of the mind, right? No, Sarasdow is not reasoning from the insect having a mind, or not having a mind, right? But from the fact that what it's doing is obviously for the sake of something. And whether that's by its own mind or by a greater mind, that's something that you wouldn't even ask until you first saw, you see? The fact that it's clearly doing something for an end, right? Now, to take a third example, right? They have a beehive here. In the morning, the bees go off in all different directions, right? As if out foraging for nice things. Now, this bee goes out here, and it finds some nice flowers here. And then he knows the bee would come back to the hive, right? And do something they didn't know. Kind of a, they call it a dance, right? They do some kind of a motion, right? In front of that bee hive. And all of a sudden, a bunch of bees would come out, and we'll fly right after that. Think, right? So, obviously, this bee that found a nice thing has come back and made known this to the other bees, and even the, what, direction to go, right? See? Very intelligent, right? Okay? Now, how do they get the right direction, right? Well, the scientists begin to suspect that they might be using the angle from the, what, sun, yeah. The angle of the line drawn from the, let's say the sun is up here, the angle of the line, imaginary line from the sun to the bee hive, and from the bee hive to the flower, right? And, therefore, by this angle, they are directed to it, right? And, of course, you've got to check your hypotheses, right? So, one way they decided to check it was, immediately after the dance, and before the bees started off, they would cover up this thing with some kind of a cloth, right? Mm-hmm. And, for, like, two hours, and then they took it off, the bees would shoot off, but in the wrong direction. Huh. See? Well, in two hours, the sun had come down here, right? So, they were, in fact, they could calculate, they were using it at the same angle as before, but, because the sun is lower in the sky, they had the wrong angle, right? Mm-hmm. See? I know, to direct somebody by angle seems something intelligent, like we would do, right? Direct people, you know, the army does that, you know, they've got the megan out there. Um, but if they could figure out angles and how to direct, you know, each other by angles and so on, surely they could be intelligent enough to realize the sun, and, of course, the time changes its thing, right? So, you might conclude that the bee doesn't have a mind, right? What's important to see here is that Aristotle is neither reasoning from the bee having a mind, right, or from the bee not having a mind, but being a product of some greater mind, right? He's not reasoning either one of those, see? He wouldn't even ask, right? Does the bee have a mind, right? Or is it a product of mind, eventually? Unless you first saw that what it does seems to be obviously the sickle of something. So, you're constantly struck, huh? As you're entering into the details of this, but you have to enter into a lot of details like the ones that I'm touching upon here in a spiritual way, right? So, I say to the students, you can't really do justice to this argument, right? In a class, you have to really go out and observe these things, right? And if you don't do that, at least get a book by someone like Faber or somebody who's observed these things in some detail and get struck by it in their purpose again and again, huh? And notice, in regard to the inductive argument, again, too, it's interesting that we call a living body a, what, organic body, right? You see that phrase there. But people have forgotten what the word organon comes from. It comes from the Greek word organon, right? Which is the common word in Greek for, what, tool. That's why they call Aristotle's logical works, the organon, right? Because they're the tool of philosophy, huh? So what you're saying, really, is that a living body is a body composed of what? Tools, huh? And what is more obviously for the sake of something than a tool? Right? So we have spontaneously, in a way, spoken of the living body as an organic body, a body composed of tools. See, why in a stone or something like that you don't see, you know, a body composed of tools. Right? So my teeth are tools for biting and chewing, and my eyes are a tool for seeing, and my heart is a tool for pumping blood, and so on, right? My legs are tools for walking, and so on, huh? My cat's claw is a tool for grabbing his victim, and so on, right? Okay? So inductively, they're right, you know? Induction means, like, for many individuals, we see that the living body is a body composed of tools. How can we speak of the living body without therefore thinking of end or purpose, right? Now, the last argument of Aristotle, this fifth argument, but our sixth argument, goes back to what we saw when we were studying matter and lack of form and form, right? We saw there that matter is for the sake of form, just as, in general, ability is for the sake of act. So, form is the end of matter, right? And sometimes, when Aristotle is presenting that tool, he'll make an analogy to the three arts that you have in every industry. The art that prepares the matter, the art that forms the product, and the art that, what, uses the product. And, of course, clearly, the art that uses the product commands the art that forms the product, because the form product is for the sake of the use. But the art that forms the product commands the art that prepares the matter. So, in my father's company, where they made farm machining and things of that sort, sometimes the engineer would say, you know, we've got a new idea, we're going to see if it's any good, right? We're going to make something, and they're going to test it out on the farm, right? So, the use of it will reveal the defect, just like Detroit might discover a defect in an automobile, right? When they call it and answer them. Okay, so they redesign it, right? So, the one who uses the product demands the one who forms it. But my father's company being the one that forms the product, they would tell the steel company, or whoever it is, what size steel they want, or what breadth they want it, and what thickness, and so on, right? You see? So, just as the, what, formed product is for the sake of the use, so the raw materials are for the sake of the formed product. So, matter is for the sake of form, right? It's ability is for the sake of acting. But nature's operation is such as to, what, form matter, right? And you might say, wasn't there an exception to that? When I eat by food, aren't I breaking the food down and taking away the form? Yeah, but if you look at the whole picture, I'm breaking it down to reform it into muscles and bone and flesh and so on, right? So, ultimately, nature is trying to form matter, right? And if there's some truth that, you know, we have more formed animals, huh? In the course of time, right? Then even in the course of time, there's more and more form. Okay? If you had simpler forms of life, as we'd say, right? Which are like, almost like one-celled animals, huh? And then more form as time goes on. So, that's the last argument, right? It's a little more abstract, you might say, the argument, right? But, I mean, it's applicable even to the non-living world, right? Correctly, huh? So, these are Aristotle's arguments for saying that end or purpose, the good, is in fact the cause in the natural world. That nature is making things for an end or purpose, huh? You know, it's kind of funny, in a way, to be denying that, you know, it's like, at the end of it, by saying, you know, that, well, my eyes aren't for the sake of seeing. It's true that I use my eyes to see, but they're not for the sake of seeing. They weren't made for me to see. It's something that was, yeah? Kind of strange, huh? Yes. Yeah. And the cat, you know, the claws there, I mean, it's true, the cat catches the mouse with the claws, but, I mean, they're not for the sake of catching mice. You know? Kind of unreasonable to think that, isn't it? You know? Now. So, what do you say for this? It's really self-evident, these arguments are just... Well, if you think about what you sense, right, and your own experience of your own body, right, and the body of the cat and so on, pretty hard to deny, right? Yeah. Okay. Let's look at the arguments on the other side, anyway, huh? Okay. Now, the first two arguments are saying that either that nature cannot be acting for an end, or that, in fact, it's not acting for an end, right? Okay? The third argument would be at a different time, huh? Now, you could argue in this way. Action for an end requires a mind, huh? Okay. And that's certainly highly reasonable, huh? Because the end is a kind of strange cause, huh? How can sitting be a cause of what the carpenter is doing now? Because the sitting doesn't take place until after the chair is made, right? So, how can something that doesn't exist be a cause of what does exist, right? It sounds crazy. I mean, the cause is responsible for the existence, right? Or coming to existence of another. So, how can something that doesn't exist be responsible for something that now exists, right? Well, it seems it's got to involve a mind, right? It's because the carpenter has in mind, sitting, right, that he's making the chair the way he's making it, right? Okay? And you can see in the history of Greek philosophy, it's Socrates who started to look for an end in the natural world after he read Anxagoras that there was a greater mind, right? Okay? So, it's certainly highly probable that action for an end requires a mind. But nature doesn't have a mind. Even the insect says in those examples I was giving, I've done it. Okay? If the insect had a mind to figure out, that if you'd squeeze the head enough to paralyze, but not to kill a shunik, it forgot to have no place to pull a pie besides the antenna. Okay? In any fortiori, who would think that the tweers out there, you know, saying, well, I can't move around with a plant, I'm going to get my seeds. Well, I'll put my seeds in something that the wind will catch and go around. Or I'll put my seeds in something that will stick to Purpose's pants and, you know, brush it off at some distance. Or I'll put my seeds in an apple there that he will take and spread the seeds around, you know? Nobody thinks that, do they, huh? Okay? So, if action for him requires a mind, and he does not have a mind, well, then how can nature possibly be back to the end? That's a very common argument, right? Mm-hmm. Okay? It's anthropomorphic, you know? You know, like the ants there, is it? In C.S. Lewis, is it? The trees? Tolkien, yeah. The ants, yeah. They're reading into the trees' minds, and so on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. ...and take Aristotle's premises from him, right? The end and the good are the same, huh? But nature makes defective babies. Nature, what, kills people with tornadoes and earthquakes and all these things, right? But nature produces bad things. So this argument is different from the first one I gave you. This argument is saying that nature, in fact, is not acting for an end because the end and the good are the same thing, and nature is making something bad, like an earthquake or, you know, disease or defective baby, you know? What's the purpose of this, you know? Isn't it? Okay? Now, the third argument, which is perhaps in some ways most common, is not saying it's impossible directly that nature act for an end, or in fact, it isn't, because of what it does, but we don't need this fourth kind of cause, right? The first three kinds of causes are enough, by mathematical chance, right? To explain the good, huh? And therefore, we can invoke the principle of fewness, right? Fewer causes are better if they are, what, enough, right? Okay? Okay? Now, how do they try to show that matter, form, and mover, by mathematical chance, are sufficient to explain the good? Well, apparently this began with the pedophies, right? Where this mindless love kept on bringing together, right? Birth, air, fire, and water. And most of the time, it made these crazy combinations, right? But it does so over and over again, millions or billions of times. So eventually, it happens to bring them together in a good combination, right? Well, all those crazy combinations are going to, what, perish, right? The mermaid perishes because you can't live in the ocean, because she has lungs, right? You can't breathe in the water. But you can't survive on land, you don't have any legs, right? So the mermaid disappeared, right? In Fort Siori, you increase your combinations in the mermaid, right? Okay, the unicorn, you know. That's stuck in the tree, you know. It was an easy prey for its enemies, right? Okay. So that's a very common one, right? I was teaching at St. Mary's College. First to do a full-time job there. We had a very top biologist for a year, you know, and he was in space biology. He got tired of working for the government, so he wanted to, you know, do research. So, but he just needed a job, you know, quickly. So we were able to have him for about a year, you know. Then afterwards, he got his own research project with about, I don't know how many assistants, and he could do anything he wanted to. He's supposed to be a top biologist, right? So I talk to him about this sometimes. He could never quite say why he was opposed to his saying yes, right? He couldn't quite support me in his argument, right? So finally, one day I said, Occam's razor, isn't it? You know, that's kind of a phrase, you know, where you might have heard, you know, Occam, you know, said one should multiply beings without necessity, right? Clauses. So it's basically this third argument, right? That matter, form, and mover are enough, right? They think. Explain them good. By mathematical chance in some way, right? That there's so many, what, tries, you might say. I shouldn't say even try, because that may imply right before the end. But nature keeps on producing things until it hits upon something good, and all the other ones, what, perish, right? Okay. And of course, there is some evidence, without hypothesizing, there is some evidence that nature, at least in some cases, does produce the good by mathematical chance. The most obvious example of that is the production of a huge number of seeds, right? They say of all the mushroom seeds we produce, the whole world is covered with mushrooms. Let's see. But there's so many seeds thrown up, you know, blown here and there by the wind, right? That some of them land on good ground, right? And then that kind of plant survives, right? Okay. And that's because they're being directed to the good land, but just so many of them, right? Okay. Some are bound to get where they can do it. That's why it's hard to, you know, eradicate dandelions, right? You know, when dandelions send all these things out and they're in a room, right? They know it's there, right? Or some neighbor doesn't get his deadlines out, so, you know, the rest of us get repopulated. I'm one of the trespassers, obviously, because I don't get all my deadlines out, so I keep it. The neighbor's in supply, so they don't, you see? Okay. Now, it's a little different from the first two, right? This, in a sense, is saying, well, it's impossible for nature to back in frame. It doesn't have a mind, right? It doesn't have a mind to have a frame, right? This is saying, well, in fact, it is not acting for an end because the end of the good are the same, but it's producing something bad, right? Okay? The third argument is not saying, in fact, it can't be doing so, but we don't need this fourth kind of cause, it's saying, right? You see? And this kind of, as Einstein says, the underlying idea of natural science and the Greeks all be down to us, you know? Fewer causes are better, if they are not, and it's all Aristotle himself using that, right? Okay. But do they have fewer causes or just replace the fourth with mathematical chances? Isn't that a fourth cause? No, no, you're just talking about, that's an aspect of the, what, third cause, right? You keep on producing over and over again, right? So eventually one of them hits the lucky number. Now, as the fourth argument consists is, are in fact the first three causes through mathematical chance enough to really explain the good of nature, right? Because if they're not enough, then you can't invoke the principle of fewness, right? Yeah. Okay? Now, maybe we should leave for next time to reply to these arguments, right? Okay. It's almost five o'clock, huh? What time is you stopping it? So, weigh these arguments, right? As I say, six is more than three, but you have to weigh the quality of the arguments. You know? I think those three are the main arguments that I've heard in one form or another, right? But the third one, you know, as I say, goes back in form to Empedocles, huh? When Aristotle discusses Empedocles there in the second book, he gives us the full thinking of Empedocles, right? That we see a little bit of in those fragments, huh? And Warren Murray, my friend, I was explaining it to some modern biologist. Well, that's my theory. What is it? It may be in a more sophisticated form, but it's basically, you know, the theory, right? And so, like, when they see now in the seeds in nature, but they see sometimes, you know, random mutations, right? And maybe, you know, nine out of the ten random mutations result in something that's even worse, right? But that one that resulted in something, you know, it survives, huh? Of course, they see that all the time with fighting these bugs and germs, right? They get a medicine that kills, you know, nine, nine, or nine, nine, nine, nine out of a thousand. And so all the bugs they cut off, except for the one that is resistant, or happens to be resistant to that medicine, and then all of a sudden that, what, multiplies, right? Now you've got... That's a real problem now, you know? That's why they say they shouldn't be giving this medication all the time when it's not really necessary, right? Because that speeds up the, what, elimination of the majority of them, but, you know, results in the remainders, you know? Being able to multiply and come back, and you're back in the same mess you were to begin with. So there seems to be something, you know, like achieving the good, right? Through mathematical chance, right? So there seems to be, you know, a little probability, right? You see? That maybe you could explain the good by mathematical chance with mindless causes, right? And if you can, well then, we shouldn't add a fourth kind of cause, huh? Now it's interesting, aren't you? Aristotle, in one argument there that we saw used twice, in comparison of Empedocles and Anaxagoras as to their explanation of things coming to be forever, right? He actually praises Empedocles, right, in comparison to Anaxagoras, that he can explain how things keep on coming to be using a limited multitude of causes. If I take Anaxagoras, an unlimited one. So now does Aristotle see the principle of fewness, right? But even, you know, interesting enough, is praising Empedocles, right? In one matter, in fact, in the matter of matter, over Anaxagoras, right? But when it comes to following or not following Empedocles as to the sufficiency of matter, form, and move, Aristotle doesn't, right? And that itself is interesting, right? It shows Aristotle doesn't have a closed mind on the fact, the principle of fewness, right? In fact, he's one of the first thinkers, if not the first thinker, to state it clearly, right? And to even use it, and to use it for the man who he's going to disagree with, right? But he doesn't see that as being sufficient, so I have to examine if they are sufficient, right? Okay? You weigh those two, and you have these sleepless nights, they tell the students, you know, now, I mean, I'm not going to, they come back to class, you know, after a few days, they know you've had a bad time, you know, weighing these arguments, because your whole life depends upon it, doesn't it? You know? Oh. I don't know whether they're pulling their leg or not, but the whole life does depend on the way, upon the answer to this question, right? I mean, they might be consistent in their thinking, but, I mean, that's not particularly good, right? To have, eventually, you know, these things work out, right? You know? And they start doing things. Mm-hmm. You know? I mean, abortion leads to euthanasia, you know? Not even voluntary euthanasia. Mm-hmm. You know, so you have in Houghton and so on. But the government admits, I mean, they're killing people without even asking them. I mean, it's logical from the principle, right? Okay? How was the president's speech? Did you hear it? Good speech. Good speech, yeah. Actually, I put a lights thing in there, but I don't know if anybody caught it. Did he ever speak to the marchers? Yeah, that was a different thing, but not in the speech here, you know? Yeah, right, right. He spoke about protecting all life, you know? He didn't deduce the consequence of that, but... My wife and I are listening to it, you pick it up right away, you know? But music, right, you see? And, but I mean, if people, you know, are following the plot mainly, that's their main, you know, like they're reading a drama, they won't appreciate the opera, right? See? So you can say that the dramatic thing has been subordinated to the, what? Musical element, right? Mm-hmm. You see? It's kind of a, kind of a, everything being changed in something musical in the opera. Now you get to the, to the ballet, right? See, you know, the ballet is, is a fusion of what? The dance with music, right? They go very well together. But in, in ballet is the, which is, which is predominant in ballet. Is someone dancing the stage there so you can hear the music better? So they ever follow the music better? No. The music is there for the sake of the dance, huh? See? Okay? Mm-hmm. So the higher art has been, what? It's subordinated to the lower, right? So Tchaikovsky's music there, you know, the ballet, it's very good ballet music, right, huh? But it's not the best music in the world, huh? Mm-hmm. Of course, you know, I think it's interesting, you know, that the representation, the emotions by the dance cannot be as, what, deep or as subtle as in music, right? So the tendency, you know, of the higher, was joined with the lower, to be brought down to that level, right? It's like an adult, like with a kid, right? Well, the kid, the adults were apt to, you know, play the kid's game, than the kid played the adult's game, right? Mm-hmm. You see? I see that all the time with men and women, too, you know, where women are more socially inclined than men, right? You see? And sometimes the men will be engaged in a philosophical conversation, right? You know, kind of ignoring the society in which they're moving, right? You know, where the woman's going to be always kind of taking the man down to the more, what, social aspect of things, right, huh? I can remember when my brother, of course, was a philosopher, and my cousin, Dan, was a philosopher, right? Same age, they went to school together, and we'd be at Thanksgiving, you know, the big family thing with the, you know, the cousin and everybody, you know, and my brother Richard and my cousin, and I'd want to get into a philosophical conversation, and Aunt Margaret would say, no philosophy today, you know? And of course, you know, there was a tie, you know? And of course, and even when I was in graduate school, you know, sometimes, you know, I'd have these certain social functions, right? Like, of all, there'd be what they'd call the van-von-air, you know, kind of a social thing. And my brother Mark used to kind of joke about it, because all these philosophers staying around, and they'd really rather be talking philosophy than making small talk, but they're trying to, you know, they figure it's not the time for everything, right? And it's not the time to be trying to philosophize, you know? And they're people who obviously would rather be engaged in this kind of conversation, right? And of course, I remember Monsi Dion coming to one of them and being there, and some of the social function. And of course, Monsi Dion just couldn't make that kind of small talk, see? So he happens to be in somebody's wife, and she's trying to talk to him, you know? Monsi Dion, you're actually getting better in the face of his ears, right? And I kind of saw it, it's like, come here, can I ask you questions here? Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Bye. And he had them for a year. Then he got into his own project. He had, I don't know how many, you know, four or five assistants at least, or scientists working with, and they would work, you know, on their own, just whatever they wanted to do. For about two weeks and they'd come together and talk about what they did and then go back. So he must have been, you know, given that kind of freedom, you know. But I noticed that, you know, when Einstein or people like that, when they talk about the natural world just out of wonder, they want to call it natural philosophy rather than science, because science has been turned into this technical thing, huh? And it's interesting, you know, we have the address there of Max Born. He went to England and he had to flee Germany because he was Jewish, I guess, you know. And, of course, in Scotland, they still have the old way, you know, natural, science is still called natural philosophy. And he makes the point, you know, remarking upon that, right? And he said, nothing great can be accomplished in science without the elementary wonder of the philosopher. But he's kind of remarking upon, you know, the older use of the word, huh? Philosophy, I'm still at that kind of a tendency of something a little more, for its own sake, you know, in natural science. And he was kind of emphasizing that, right? So he was noticing the appropriateness of his emphasizing this aspect of science, right? You know, in a place where they still use the old term. Did that go as long as what you were? I mean, start having Newton. Newton's used to call it the mathematical principles of natural philosophy, not natural science, right? But eventually, you know, science didn't seem as elevated a word as philosophy, and so it became more of the technical aspect of it, right? But I'll say Einstein is somebody who used that. They're just talking about the natural word for its own sake, though. It's called natural philosophy. So you have this, well, a bit of original meaning there, right? It's still attached to the words. You were saying the liberal arts degree, and that's what they say now, you know. What can you do with it? Yeah, yeah. You can't get a job with it, you know? Well, I told you my, yeah. I told you the thing about my father's engineer, right? He was kind of an educated man. We'd be there, you know, in my brother's company, right? The engineer from New York, Minnesota. He'd be interested in making money and so on. But anyway, he talked to my brother Mark and myself and Richard, my brother Richard, you know, because, you know, they'd get people around there, right? And so, you know, finally we're all doing philosophy. He was always curious as to why we're doing philosophy, right? And my brother Richard Mark would tell me, for its own sake, right? Well, it just couldn't, it couldn't possibly be so, right? I mean, and so on. And he'd come back and we'd still say, no, it's for its own sake. It's just, you know, to make any sense of all of you, right? And finally he figured out what it was all about, right? He came to us and he says, I forgot what it is, finally, he says. It's brain food, isn't it? You know, you take it and get your, you know, your mind built up and then you go on and do something with it, right? That's what I mean? Ah. You know, this guy could judge you, right? He just couldn't, that couldn't possibly be what we were doing it for, right? Having something practical, I mean, you know, in the long run, if not in the short run, right? But first in the long run, it's for its own sake, not in the short run. It can be used in that way, though. It's brain food to be used in a lot of areas, right? Yeah, yeah. So, you know, Thaddeus is supposed to according to market, right? The story about Thaddeus, you know, according to market, you know, on oil prices or something, right? And making a fortune. Saying, no, it's easy to do this. You want him to, you know, but we're interested in making money, really. I mean, some people would say, you know, the foster doesn't, you know, he says he's interested in money because he doesn't know how to make it. Dr. Neumann would sometimes complain, he said that Thomas Aquinas in the advertising, he said they always have a tendency to emphasize, try to find it practical, you know, why. Well, parents are concerned about that, yeah, if not students, yeah. Mm, yeah. I remember, you know, when, you know, Christmas time back home, you know, and my brother Mark and I were out looking for some little thing from my mother, you know, for Christmas, right? And we used to go to this one little shop that was kind of a nice little shop written by a Chinese lady, you know? And you're very friendly, you know, and she liked to talk to us. We were college kids and so on, you know? And when she, you know, asked what our major was, you know, because we taught her philosophy. She said, it's so funny, you know, you know, when we're doing this, right? How's he had no purpose what we're doing, right? I mean, she wasn't nasty about it, I mean, she was just kind of genuine, you know, amusement. It weren't pretty, you know, even anything, you know, I mean, because I mean, it's like practically not even anything, right? It seems to them, right? But, I mean, you'll find people will have the idea, you know, that if something is good, it's got to be good for something other than itself, right? In which case, nothing really is good. You know, but I mean, they don't see that. The consequence of what they're saying, right? But it's got to be good for something other than itself, otherwise it's not good, right? That's kind of like a, you know, kind of like a first principle. So, you see that even in the church sometimes, you know, some vicious may think in contemplative orders, you know, or something like that, or kind of, you know. Oh, yeah. You know, that's, that's, that's, you know. I always give an example there, you know, of Moses up in the mountain praying, you know, when they're fighting down the thing, and when his arms go down, then the battle starts to go against them, you know, so, but, I heard that all the time before, you know, what do you do? I was looking at, you know, I get that same thing that, seeing news there, you know, and the term of the hermits there, right, you know. I think people who read that, the average practical American, right? I think there's a hard range, you know. So, you've been weighing the arguments for and against whether end is a cause in the natural world. And which side seems to you to outweigh the other side? I kind of think that it's an end. Okay. But now, if you think it's stronger, the arguments in favor of saying that end is a cause in the natural world, that some things at least are for the sake of something, right? That what nature does at least sometimes is directed towards an end or a good, right? Then you have to come back and answer the arguments on the other side. Let's go back then to the three arguments against saying that nature makes things for the sake of something. Now, the three arguments against each is a little different. And the first argument is saying it's impossible that nature acts for an end because action for an end requires a mind. But nature doesn't have a mind. Therefore, huh? Okay. Now, it seems reasonable that action for an end requires a mind because the end is a strange kind of cause. That the sitting, for example, which is the end of the chair, and that for the sake of which the chair is made so you can sit on it, the sitting doesn't take place until after the chair has been made. Now, it seems rather strange that what doesn't exist can be responsible, right, for the existence or the coming into existence of something else, huh? When that other thing comes into existence without the end, the so-called cause, existing at all, right? Okay. Well, it seems that sitting can be a cause of the chair coming into existence. It can be a cause of what the carpenter does, right? And even a cause, therefore, of the wood becoming a chair only because the carpenter has it in mind. And he can see the order of what he's doing to that achieving of that end, right? And the side of this is that the... philosophers like Socrates and Plato didn't start talking about end as a cause in the natural world until after Anaxagoras had introduced mind as a cause. Now, again that nature doesn't have a mind. If you go back to our understanding of the mind as something unlimited, as we learned from Anaxagoras, as we can see from examining our own mind, does anybody think that the tree has a mind? Or that even those insects, right? That do something apparently intelligent, but if you take them out of their accustomed way, they seem to be lost, huh? Like the insect I was describing that squeezes the head of its victim, right? And then drags it by the antenna, you know? Well, if it had a mind to figure out the importance of paralyzing rather than killing its victim, soon you could figure out, after Fabra, the etymologist, has cut off the antenna, that there's a million and one other places on the body to drag your victim by. After all, I mean, you know, a little child, you know, I mean, they'll drag their toy by, what, the foot or the arm or by the hair or anything, right? I mean, there are many places to draw it by, huh? Okay. So, is there a weakness in this argument, right? Well, I think that both premises are good, but the first premise you ought to distinguish more carefully, huh? And you could say that action for an end does require a mind either in what is acting for an end or in its, what, cause, right? Okay? So, the stock example here for years is that of a thermostat, right? Does a thermostat do what it does for the sake of something? Yes. The thermostat is there for the sake of, what, keeping the temperature at a certain level, right? And maybe if it gets too cold, the thermostat will turn on the furnace, right? And when it gets up to a certain height, maybe it'll turn off the furnace, right? So, you could say that the thermostat does what it does for some purpose. But the thermostat itself doesn't have a mind, huh? But it's a, what, product of mind, huh? Okay? So, in regard to the major premise there, right, action for an end requires a mind, I'd say yes, right? But either a mind in the thing that is immediately acting for an end, right, in the thing that is immediately doing something for the sake of something, or in its, what, cause, right? Or in its, what, mover, right? So, you know, when you're shooting at the enemy or aiming the arrow at the target, the arrow or the bullet is directed toward something, even though, what, the bullet or even the gun doesn't have a mind, right? But because it's being moved, right, by something that does have a mind, huh? You see how I'm trying to solve that, right? Okay? I noticed when Aristotle, in his inductive argument, when he pointed to all these things that the insects do, and it seems to be for some purpose, huh? It seems to be for some purpose that the spider makes some of the threads sticky and some not sticky, he didn't ask, he didn't try to say that the insects had a mind, huh? He says, so much does action for an end strike us in these that some people wonder whether they have a mind, right? But he leaves up in the open whether they do or do not have a mind, right, huh? But the fact that they wonder whether they have a mind is a sign that they see action for an end. And action for an end suggests there must be some kind of a mind here. But as far as seeing that nature is doing what it does for the sake of something, one doesn't have to know yet whether nature itself has a mind or whether it's in some way a product of mind. In fact, you wouldn't even ask, does it have a mind or is it a product of mind until you first saw that what it was doing was in fact ordered to a, what, end, right? It clearly was the sake of something. Do you see that? Okay. Now, take another example, a little different than the thermostat, huh? In some ways, maybe closer to nature. One time in the summer, I was driving to a concert, huh? With my brother Marcus and another friend. We're driving down my hometown there, a street in my hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota. And all of a sudden, a little boy ran in front of the car. Okay? And I jammed on the brakes and... I don't know who was more scared than the little boy or me. But I was glad I wasn't, you know, distracted or something, right? Okay, so I didn't hear it. Okay? Now, would you say that I put on the brakes for the sake of something? Yeah. But do you think at that time, I was thinking about it. Was I thinking, you know, a little boy is running from the car. If this car hurts, hits him, it will hurt him badly, right? Now, how do you stop a car, huh? When you put the brakes... If I had been thinking, he would have been hit, right? Okay? So I didn't act out of mind there. I acted out of... You might say, what? Have it, yeah. Have it, yeah. See? Now, the first thing you do when you teach somebody about a car, right, huh, is how to stop the thing, huh? It might sound illogical to teach them how to stop the thing before you teach them how to make it go, but I assure you that's the right order. My mother-in-law, huh? Like my own mother, never learned how to drive, huh? Okay? In this older generation, there are mothers who never learned how to drive. So my mother-in-law was entirely dependent upon my father-in-law for, you know, being given any distance. One day, they're jumping into the car to go to the store or something, and she's sitting in there, and suddenly you realize he's forgotten something in the house, right? So he jumps out of the car and runs back into the house, and he didn't quite put it into... Ah, yeah. Well, the car takes off, and my mother-in-law, and she didn't know how to stop it, and it goes right across the street and into a little brick wall, and there's a fight with the neighbors after that. So, as I said, the first thing you teach somebody is how to stop the thing, right? And maybe everybody should know that. They don't know how to drive, but... Okay. So notice, I acted for an end not out of mind, but out of habit, right? Now, sometimes, we call habit a second what? Nature. Yeah, yeah. So if I can act out as second nature without thinking, right? Then nature can act for an end, right? Without thinking, huh? Now, maybe, that habit I have of putting the brakes on when something comes in front of the car, that habit is a result of what? Some mind, right? The person who first taught me how to drive and so on, right? And so, that habit is a product of mind, huh? A mind saw the importance of being able to stop the car and so on. So I acquired that habit, right? By mind, huh? It's not by own, by the mind of my teacher, right? But when I actually stopped the car, I wasn't using my mind then. I was acting out of what? Habit, right? So that's a clear example, but it's very close to nature because we call it second nature, don't we? We have all kinds of habits where we do things without what? Thinking, huh?