Re: Howard's challenge

[John Kineman <***>]

meaning the principle of recognizing the necessity and independence of
all four of Aristotle's causes. I did a paper on that for ISSS last
year. I'll post it on my site. In that I argue that the mechanical view
attempts to compress the last to A-causes formal and final into the
first two, material and efficient. It seems almost ridiculous to suggest
that any on this list are attempting to do the same in the other
direction, compress the first into the last. Formal and final cause do
not directly address material states or the processes by which they
transform. Rosen's view does well with formal and final cause, but
defaults to mechanical theory for M&E causes, with the modification of
adding semantic influences originating from the F&F causes - which is
what the mechanical theory leaves out. In these four A-causes, there are
four implicit ontologies (I defined my usage of the term earlier). While
they do not "entail" each other, i.e., cannot be reduced to each other
(otherwise they would not be separate ontologies), they nevertheless do
influence each other. Obviously efficient causes influence the "design"
or organization of material states. Formal causes influence the design
or organization of efficient processes - i.e., they specify how to
manipulate the states through formal plans. Final cause influences the
design of formal causes, i.e., what we should want to plan and do,
giving that a "why." So the 4 A-causes are a design hierarchy. Hence my
contention that Rosennean theory is most useful in understanding design
and organization.

JJK

Howard Pattee wrote:

> Judith, Tim, John, et al.,
> Whether I am right or wrong, I left out a "not" in the first sentence of the fourth 
> paragraph. It should read:
>
> Now I don’t believe it is entirely a mischaracterization to say that Rosen and
> his followers as represented on this list are NOT following this principle.
>
> Howard

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© 2004 John J. Kineman
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