Abstract
In this essay we argue that the notion of machine necessarily includes its being designed for a purpose. Therefore, being a mechanical system is not enough for being a machine. Since the experimental scientific method excludes any consideration of finality on methodological grounds, it is then also insufficient to fully understand what machines are. Instead in order to understand a machine it is first required to understand its purpose, along with its structure, in clear parallel with Aristotle’s final and formal causes. Obviously, purpose and structure are not machine components that can physically interact with other components; nonetheless they are essential to understanding their operation. This casts an interesting light on the relationship between mind and body: for just as an artifact’s finality and structure explain its operation, so also consciousness is the explanation—not the efficient cause—of specifically human behavior. What machines and human beings have in common is that, in order to understand them, it is necessary to appeal to the principle of finality. Yet while finality is given and extrinsic in the case of machines, we human beings are characterized by the ability to self-propose our own ends. Since the principle of finality is essential to understanding the production of machines, the traditional view in modern Western philosophy that finality lies beyond the scope of objective/scientific knowledge should be rectified to allow for a genuine science of the artificial. We think a correct understanding of final causality will overcome current resistance to this principle.
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Notes
In this paper we are concerned only with finality in human artifacts and machines. In the context of human artifacts, finality can be assimilated to voluntary purpose, i.e. the purpose that has been intentionally implemented in the artifact by its artificer. We do not necessarily subscribe to the stronger form of the principle, according to which “every agent acts for the sake of an end” [omne agens agit propter finem, as Scholastic philosophy formulated it (Maritain 1934)], especially when it is implied that having finality implies being conscious, or having been consciously designed.
Dictionary definitions [see (OED 2017) and (MWD 2017)] of the English word ‘system’ refer primarily to artifacts or living beings in which function (ordering or purpose) is clearly implied; secondarily, it is also used for groups of objects in the context of material sciences such as Geology and Astronomy, where there is no purpose, and ordering is accidental. We can assume that the same happens in any modern language that has borrowed the term from Greek, where it literally means ‘composition’. This is certainly the case in Spanish.
Properly speaking, ‘design’ is a broader term than ‘purpose’. Design encompasses purpose, but also structure, the choice of materials employed, etc.
See Ruth Millikan’s analysis of the concept of ‘proper function’, which she contrasts with other theories that attempt to elicit a function from the actual working or disposition of the component parts. Present properties or activities, which can be observed through the experimental scientific method, are not enough to determine function, precisely because they do not account for defective organs or artifacts. “Indeed, a thing that bears no resemblance to any can opener previously on earth —suppose it has been designed in accordance with a totally new principle— may still be a can opener, and may be one despite the fact that it doesn’t work. (…) My claim has been that accounts of purpose or function in terms of present disposition or structure run afoul exactly when they confront the most central issue of all, namely, the problem of what failure of purpose and defectiveness are” (Millikan 1989). The concept of ‘proper function’ is broader than voluntary purpose (see note 1), since it encompasses also the finality of bodily organs.
De Augmentis Scientiarum, III, 5: “the inquiry of final causes is a barren thing, or as a virgin consecrated to God [it gives birth to nothing]” (Bacon 1623).
Here ‘structure’ means simply a coherent disposition or arrangement of the parts of a whole (what a software engineer would call ‘architecture’); ‘finality’ means simply ‘purpose’, see note 1.
See Physics II, 3 and Metaphysics V, 2 (Aristotle d. 323 BC).
We have extensively developed this idea in a different work (Génova and Quintanilla Navarro 2018).
Note that this implies, in Kant’s conception of humanity, that we are ourselves incomprehensible as simultaneously material and rational beings. De nobis ipsis silemus (let’s keep silent about ourselves) are the words of Bacon with which Kant starts his Critique of Pure Reason.
Note that this broadening of science to encompass artificial finalities does not imply that ‘natural finalities’ can be scientifically studied, too.
In the words of Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 3: “Knowledge and human power are synonymous, since the ignorance of the cause frustrates the effect” (Scientia et potentia humana in idem coincidunt, quia ignoratio causae destituit effectum) (Bacon 1620). That is, knowing (explaining) the cause is the same as being able to produce the effect.
Aristotle, who justified the need for slavery in his time, speculated in his Politics, I, 4, that automatons might someday make possible the abolition of slavery: “for if every tool could perform its own work when ordered, or by seeing what to do in advance (…), if thus shuttles wove and quills played harps of themselves, master-craftsmen would have no need of assistants and masters no need of slaves” (Aristotle d. 323 BC).
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Génova, G., Quintanilla Navarro, I. Discovering the Principle of Finality in Computational Machines. Found Sci 23, 779–794 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-018-9552-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-018-9552-4