The Teleological Argument

Much like with the cosmological argument, modern evidentialism has reasoned in a different way than the classical argument. Although, in my judgment, this should not be viewed as a departure, but as an addition. We need not pit the classical teleology of Aristotle and Thomas against the evidential starting points of Paley and the later Intelligent Design school. We need only to recognize the difference in form between the two and use their rationale accordingly in diverse settings. 

For whatever it is worth, Kant rated the design argument (along with the moral) higher than the others; but clearly even this he meant in an entirely subjective way: “Two things fill me with ever-increasing awe and wonder: the starry skies above me and the moral law within me.” But the argument from design, no less than the argument from an objective right and wrong, is precisely an objective appeal. It is not simply that Nature has this capacity to “inspire” one to think transcendent thoughts (whatever that might mean from one person to the next), but rather that all of the perfectly real objects of nature exhibit all of the qualities of being produced by the Ultimate Mind, or (in the Thomistic mold) being formed with the objective tendency to be, according to natures that require a cause sufficient to intend the whole. 

Natural Directedness—Thomas’ “Cause of Causes”

The first thing we must get our minds around is the notion of end (telos), or final cause. Feser sets us on the right path by saying,

For Aristotelians, our conscious thought processes are only a special case of the more general phenomenon of goal-directedness or final causality, which exists in the natural world in a way that is mostly divorced from any conscious mind or intelligence. To ‘intend an end’ in the sense Aquinas has in mind [in his Fifth Way] is not necessarily to make a conscious decision to pursue some goal, but rather just ‘to have a natural inclination toward something’” [1].

There are two extreme errors in thinking about final cause. The first is to assume that teleological thinking means believing that each efficient cause has a mind and therefore an end in its action. That is obviously nonsense. The second is to assume, therefore, that (since most efficient causes do not have minds) there must be two kinds of things: those tending toward some end, driven by intelligence, and then perfectly “natural” things which clearly are not. Such a simplistic division was imposed by modern thinkers upon ancient and medieval thinkers and thus teleology was banished from modern science. In this same way, the corresponding argument for God’s existence was misconstrued. 

What then is a natural tendency? In what sense does it apply to everything that moves? And how does this function in Thomas’ fifth way? Simply stated, the natural tendency of every single thing is the perfection of the thing in virtue of what it is, plus the sum of all that brought its potency into act. Stated in this way, all of a sudden, it would seem that every single thing that is both act and potency must have a tendency. For example, there is reason why one-hundred times out of a hundred, if I throw a rock against a window pane, it never once becomes a bouquet of flowers at or before impact. 

Even in late Scholasticism, Scotists and Suarezians objected to Thomists that “the limitations of a thing’s actuality can be accounted for by reference to the thing’s cause” [2]. In other words, look no further than the efficient cause of a thing and we have all that we need to discern the finished product. Now the Thomist does not deny the extrinsic principle, but insists that the act “is possible only if there is an intrinsic principle — something in the limited thing itself by virtue of which its cause is able to limit its actuality — and this can only be potency” [3]. Now that was a metaphysical mouthful, but let me summarize by saying that the end of a thing (what you see “on the shelf of the world,” moment by moment) is the real nature of the thing actualized. And that means that its form was informed by another. I will not go too fast and say, “Its tendency was in-tended by another,” although, loosely speaking, one can already say this much. The tendency must be caused because the tendency is an effect. And nothing which is intended can set its own tendency. 

With those basics in mind, let us consider Thomas’ fifth way with new eyes:

1. We see that natural bodies work toward some goal, and do not do so by chance.

2. Most natural things lack knowledge.  

3. But as an arrow reaches its target because it is directed by an archer, what lacks intelligence achieves goals by being directed by something intelligence.

∴ Some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.

Note the “as” in premise 3. It seems obvious to attack the argument here. Is this not a part to whole fallacy? In other words, must we conclude that all non-intelligent tendencies obtain their directedness in the same way as the arrow does from the archer? We will return to this. 

We call the final cause “the cause of causes” because efficient causes can only be of two kinds, as already proven: one that has its cause in another (being actualized potency) or one that is uncaused (being pure act). Now as we will go on to demonstrate, the First Cause, in addition to being in pure act, must also be simple, impassible, one in essence and decree, and thus it will follow that such a Being’s only possible goal in bringing about all diverse tendencies will be all the He is in himself.

But before we go too fast, we should note that we can already understand this of individual actors who are finite. All parties would agree that, of things in the world, there are two kinds of efficient causes: intelligent and non-intelligent. Of intelligent causes that admit design and intention, all parties would acknowledge that there are two kinds of actions: voluntary and involuntary; and even of those involuntary, most would allow that there is a complex of prior causation that admits of intelligence, manifest now in the subconscious and habitual and so forth. Finally, of those voluntary, by definition, there is the action and the reason for action. Whatever means employed, there is an end; yet without the end, there are no means. Thus without the reason, there is no action. Consequently the reason for action, or end, is a necessary condition and cause for the act. It is the rational cause of the external cause. In finite agents (lest we improperly press the analogy) the internal reason and the external act are divisible. Nonetheless, the principle holds. 

Now if there is no ultimate end of motion, then there could be no penultimate end of that same motion. If no end motions were ultimate, then none subordinate. In other words, what we saw about the impossibility of infinite regress with respect to first causes must also follow with respect to final causes. Even an atheist like Ayn Rand saw this when it came to the motion of an individual rational agent: 

An ultimate value is that final goal or end to which all lesser goals are the means—and it sets the standard by which all lesser goals are evaluated. An organism’s life is its standard of value: that which furthers its life is the good, that which threatens it is the evil. Without an ultimate goal or end, there can be no lesser goals or means: a series of means going off into an infinite progression toward a nonexistent end is a metaphysical and epistemological impossibility [4].

To this extent, anyway, she was following the Aristotelian way. Where her egoism falls short will have to wait for a biblical treatment of the doctrine of man. We can even begin to see a sense in which Thomas’ teleology and the reasoning of Jonathan Edwards, in The End for Which God Created the World, comes together as one. Unless there was a Final Cause that sets in motion all that is an effect, then there could be no series of inclinations—no tendencies in-tended—setting these lesser movements in their procession. But this ultimate Final Cause could not be for some greater end other than itself, as that which causes all else in its series of means to that end, would have none greater to pursue. And such must be a Person and not a non-rational, non-volitional being, else his inclination to this ultimate end would be effected by that which is not utterly self-inclined, which is what we rightly call “preference” or simply choice.

Intelligent Design—Paley’s Watchmaker

Paley’s basic argument is as simple as it is famous:

In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there, I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to shew the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be enquired how the watch happened to be in that place, I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given … Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch, as well as for the stone? … For this reason, and for no other, viz. that, when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e.g. that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that, if the several parts had been differently shaped than what they are, of a different size than what they are, or places after any other manner, or in any other order, than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use, that is now served by it [5].

Embedded in this explanation are two pillars of later Intelligent Design theory: namely irreducible complexity and specified complexity. The former is a difficulty and the latter a definition. At any rate, the simplest form of the design argument can be made almost as succinct as the others:

1. In the universe we see design.

2. Design implies an intelligence (designer).

3. The universe as a whole evidences design.

∴ This design in the universe as a whole implies an Intelligent Designer.

It is clear that this cannot be compressed to two premises and a conclusion, since an obvious objection will arise: Since premise 1 only begins with particular instances of design, even if one accepted the second premise, it would commit a part to whole fallacy to infer from particular instances of design to what we ought to conclude about the universe as a whole. The third premise must be inserted and be argued for on entirely new, even if analogous, grounds.

Now contrary to popular belief, Paley’s analogy does not stop at the watch. He moves from there to consider a second watch found, one that we discover was produced by the first. What then? Is the necessity for an organization principle any different if there is an infinite series of such a reproductive principle? In fact, Paley fields eight such objections right away, each of them anticipating various elements of naturalistic explanation. They are summarized as follows:

Objection 1. None witnessed the process of design.

Objection 2. Occasional failure and constant imperfections.

Objection 3. Many parts not yet revealing how they contribute to function.

Objection 4. The same form might just as well function in innumerable other structures; many in fact do.

Objection 5. The principle of order is inherent to the structure’s reproductive capacities.

Objection 6. Mechanism is no evidence, but only “motive” to think it so.

Objection 7. Some law caused it to be so: such law is prescriptive, not merely descriptive.

Objection 8. “You lack the scientific expertise!” [6]

In applying his own argument, Paley employs an analogy, combined with a greater to lesser argument, the upshot of which could be summarized as a simple modus ponens argument: (1) If contrivance, therefore design; (2) Contrivance is observed; (3) Therefore design is established. Now the analogy chosen is between the eye and the telescope. Answering the predictable charge of false analogy, Paley says, “The perception arising from the image may be laid out of the question: for the production of the image, these instruments are of the same kind. The end is the same; the means are the same. The purpose in both is alike; the contrivance for accomplishing that purpose is in both alike” [7]. From there he argues, moreover, that the eye is far more complex than the telescope, and thus evidences a far greater intelligence for its maker. Darwin read Paley with great respect, and struggled mightily with the concept of the eye. 

Irreducible complexity is the great difficulty for naturalism’s attempt to explain away design. In each living system (including each micro system like a cell) each part is now understood to work in an integrated fashion. The absence of just one part would render the system as a whole worthless. Natural selection selects for functional advantage. With each trait, from corresponding mutation, there is no functional advantage to the change unless it already works together with those other parts. The problem is only multiplied at the genetic level. The proteins leading to the assembly of parts are themselves irreducibly complex. 

Specified complexity is the great definition of intelligent design as a theory. A clear definition and criterion is needed so that the hypothesis can be tested by something objective. William Dembski says that “intelligent cause is responsible for an effect if the effect is both complex and specified” [8]. Why both?

There is an inverse relationship, in any event x, between complexity of elements and probability of occurrence. The more elements required from the matrix of causes for the production of x effect, the less probable it is that x effect will arise, given the sum of all other possible combination of elements available.

What we are after is more than simply order or regularity—the Naturalist believes in law-like regularity too—though this (and its opposite: random occurrence) will be relevant if one wants to make a deeper study of it and we arrive at information theory. What we are after is such an ordering for function: what Paley called “contrivance.” Dembski points out that British Natural Theology, following Paley, did not carefully enough make this distinction and exalted “natural laws” together with contrivance as twin pillars of the theory. In time the “natural laws” dimension swallowed up the contrivance dimension [9].

Objections and Evaluations

First of all, are the two ways to frame the teleological argument so different after all? Feser would say Yes, first by distinguishing between Platonic and Aristotelian teleology. In the former, championed by Paley (also called teleological intentionalism), all movements are directed by divine intelligence. Richard Dawkins, incidentally, picks up on this same “biological essentialism” of Plato, namely, that species are patterned after certain archetypal kinds—an unfortunate part of the Western mind that we can’t seem to shake—and thus there is fixity [10]. But why is the genome of this or that population what it is? Does it have a goal toward which it is directed?

In the Aristotelian brand, the nature of the objects themselves are the source of their directedness. “But there is a middle ground … [the] Thomistic view of teleology. On this view, the proximate source of natural teleology is the nature of the things themselves, while the distal source is the divine ordering intellect” [11]. As to the Thomistic argument, once again it was Hume that leveled the most pointed charges. We have already seen why his basic argument against the necessary connection between particular effects and their causes fails. We will only mention a relevant application of this failure to teleology.

Taking our earlier analogy of the rock versus bouquet of flowers: In the Hume’s line of criticism, there is no objectively knowable reason why the rock will not turn into something different the one-hundredth time, or even the second, or perhaps why the constitution of the window pane will not change to absorb the blow. There are, in short, no necessary, natural tendencies. 

It was mentioned that Thomas’ fifth way could be charged as being a part-to-whole fallacy. It seems not to follow that just because some non-intelligent tendencies (arrow) require intelligent intentions (archer) that therefore all non-intelligent tendencies require this? But this is to misconstrue the logic involved. It is rather that each and every thing in motion, in itself, requires an intending cause. Once again we can see that there is borrowing from the cosmological argument, or at least from the parallel concepts of things reduced from potentiality to act, things composite, things contingent, and things whose essence is not to exist. Another thing all of these qualities of things have in common is that these same things are goal directed. Each has a natural tendency. Each finds a perfection in actuality, and thus each has that built in. But to have such a nature “built in” or “formed in” requires an external in-forming agent. 

On the flip side of specified complexity, one might ask what constitutes falsification of the design hypothesis. After all, by their own admission, those who follow Paley’s line, fill their premises with the data of empirical science. Hence the falsification principle really does apply here. And yet the answer is simple. If the opponent of intelligent design can demonstrate purely material compositions which can qualify, not merely in theory, but in repeated experimentation, as a sufficient producer of typographical (or digital) informing of matter, energy, or living systems, then the design inference would be refuted. 

It is often objected that, “The whole ‘order-for-function’ standard is logically backwards. The ID advocate is assuming design up front in order to infer the ‘wisdom’ of the function. But who says that this is the best function? And what about defects, wasted parts, the potential of alternative uses, and vestigial structures?” We may remember from the moral argument that the so called “problem of evil” proves too much for the skeptic. Indeed logical atheology turns out to be incoherent, whether the subject is morality or design or anything else. The reason is that whether one is engaging in “God-versus-God” atheology or “God-versus-world” atheology, God will have to exist for the terms to be compared.

In other words, if the atheist claims that certain divine attributes do not cohere with themselves (God-versus-God), then he will have to predicate to the attribute in question certain qualities that do not cohere with predicates of the other divine attribute (or the same attribute). But unfortunately, in order to do that, he will claim to be knowing what that attribute A could or would do in relation to attribute ~A.

In the case of a square-circle, we call the concept “self-contradictory” because the coherence of the square in itself and the circle in itself, enables us to conceive of how they cannot be the same as each other. Likewise with a married-bachelor. In the case of omnipotence and that “rock too heavy to lift,” or omniscience “knowing that it’s 3:33PM,” or omnibenevolence co-existing with evil, the attribute will have to exist in order to say that it doesn’t cohere with the other attribute or state of affairs. 

Now how does this incoherence come into play with design? Take the “backward” eye, the bat’s wing, the wasted space in the universe. We often hear that this or that does not evidence design because “If x was designed, it would y.” Oh? Two things should be noticed. First, there is that same fallacy of composition the skeptic charges against several of the arguments. Here the fallacy is real. In order to make the inference on a basic level, design per se must exist. Of course all parties would agree that there is such a thing as design. A computer program is designed by the programmer. Critics, from Francis Crick to Richard Dawkins, have said, in effect, yes living organisms appear designed, but they are not and here is why.”

So the first thing to notice is that there is such an object of the mind called “the appearance of design.” They know what that means and they deduce from the concept certain necessary conditions for a designed thing. When their minds then move from the case of design in a human artifact to the universe, or even to biological specimens and populations, that criteria is not met.

The reasoning has moved from part (what a human mind tends to do) to whole (what all minds tend to do). In short, some things may reasonably be expected to hold in the analogy from human intelligence to supra-cosmic intelligence; but does it follow that all things in each set must be identical? On what basis would the critic of ID say this?

And that brings us to our second thing to notice. Any alleged “failure” of the design inference really depends on objective knowledge of what a supra-cosmic intelligence could or would do. But the non-existence of supra-cosmic intelligences would seem to limit our knowledge of such qualities to zero. In this more philosophical light, it would seem that ID proponents are really understating their case when they concede that design could be falsified if and only if a sufficient natural explanation was offered for contrivance and specified complexity, etc. By the nature of the case, I would argue that such an explanation is actually logically impossible to begin with.

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1. Ed Feser, Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2009), 19.

2. Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Books, 2014), 37.

3. Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics, 37.

4. Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness (New York: Signet Books, 1964), 17.

5. William Paley, Natural Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 7.

6. Paley, Natural Theology, 8-10.

7. Paley, Natural Theology, 17.

8. William Dembski, Intelligent Design (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 47.

9. Dembski, Intelligent Design, 75.

10. Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth (New York, Free Press, 2009), 23-27.

11. Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics, 89.