Friday, August 1, 2014

Finality and Intelligence. Is the Universe Designed? Leszek Figurski ISBN-10: 3639890639 ISBN-13: 978-3639890631 Wydawnictwo Bez Kresy Wiedzy 2014 see: www. Amazon.com






F i n a l i t y  a n d  I n t e l l i g e n c e.  Is the Universe Designed?
              By Leszek Figurski





The end of philosophy is not that we may know what
              Men have thought but what the
                    TRUTH of thing is.

                                          Thomas Aquinas



                        If all mankind minus one were of one opinion,
                             And only one person were of the contrary opinion,
                                  And only one person were of the contrary opinion,
                                        Mankind would be no more justified in silencing that
                                            Person, than he, if he had the power, would be
                                               justified in  silencing mankind.
                                                                                   
                                                                                          John Stuart Mill





F i n a l i t y a n d I n t e l l i g e n c e

Table of contents
Acknowledgments......................................................................................................
Introductory................................................................................................................
Preface .....................................................................................................................
Chapter One – A Historical Note On the Idea of Final Causality Before Saint
Thomas Aquinas.......................................................................................................
Anaxagoras...............................................................................................................
Plato..........................................................................................................................
The Good as Ground of Purposiveness in Plato ..........................................................
The Demiurge, the Ideas and the Phenomenal World .................................................
References.................................................................................................................

Chapter Two – Aristotle ....................................................................................................39
The Explanation of Change Through the Employment of the Idea of Act and
Potency.............................................................................................................................
Change as Natural Tendency to Self-Realization ................................................................
Chance and Finality...........................................................................................................
The Prime Unmoved Mover..............................................................................................
References.......................................................................................................................

Chapter Three – Final Cause in St. Thomas Aquinas..........................................................
Building up the Principle of Finality: “Every Agent Acts for an End.” ..................................
Series of Ends: Need of an Ultimate End ...........................................................................
End as Good .....................................................................................................................
Finality in God ..................................................................................................................
The Analogical Mode of Finalistic Intentionality..................................................................
References.........................................................................................................................

Chapter Four – The Relation of Finality to Intelligence in St. Thomas Aquinas
The Need for Intelligence as the Ground of Finality ............................................................79
The Relation of the Different Modes of Finality to Intelligence ............................................
Finality as Participation in an Idea......................................................................................
Finality and Evolution........................................................................................................
References.......................................................................................................................

Chapter Five – The Reduction of All Finality to One Infinite Intelligence ............................115
Intelligence as a Participated Perfection ............................................................................
The same idea is developed by St. Thomas in the following words:...................................
Efficient Cause and Finality................................................................................................
The Ascent of All Beings Upward......................................................................................
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................
References........................................................................................................................129


Chapter Six – Arguments For the Existence of God from Final Causality in the
Two Summas.....................................................................................................................133
The Five Ways .................................................................................................................
The Fifth Way ...................................................................................................................
The Argument ...................................................................................................................
Argument for World Order in the Contra Gentiles...............................................................
References.........................................................................................................................156

Chapter Seven – Summary and Conclusions........................................................................159

Conclusion..........................................................................................................................174


F i n a l i t y a n d I n t e l l i g e n c e

Bibliography..................................................................................................................175
Primary Sources.............................................................................................................175
Secondary Sources........................................................................................................176
Anaxagoras...................................................................................................................176
Plato..............................................................................................................................176
Aristotle.........................................................................................................................177
St. Thomas Aquinas.......................................................................................................177
Related Literature ..........................................................................................................179
Recommended Readings For This Edition ......................................................................182


F i n a l i t y a n d I n t e l l i g e n c e

Acknowledgments

I take this opportunity to express many thanks to all those who with their effort
time and valuable assistance to make this edition a reality and completing it for this new 
publishing. First of all I am thankful to my friend for many years Irene T.
Saunder an enthusiastic helper for correcting and adjusting the original manuscript to
modernized standard edition. My thanks also go to Adrian Sookchan, the computer
engineer, without whose help this edition would not see the light of day. The
demanding work of final adjustment of the book was done by Mr. Krzysztof
Bukowski of www.pressto.ltd.uk whose expertise and readiness to help was almost
amazing. My gratefulness also goes to Ms. Marta Morawska, Acquisition Editor for
her invaluable directions.
Author



Introductory

              The second edition of the book “Finality and Intelligence” belongs to the
elucidation of the problem and analysis of existence of God. The fact of writing on
God’s existence in our times maybe surprising to a number of people who are under
the spell of the existential confusion in philosophy, literature and art of our times.
Frankly speaking, very many people, some of them known scientists in different
branches of modern science consider such a topic simply very much out of date. One
can hear from many sources statements to the effect of complete lack of interest in
such questions. Did not science settle this problem once and for all. Did not even
some existential theologians after Nietzsche, Albert Camus, Jean Paul Sartre, Arthur
Schopenhauer acknowledge the death of God? Is not the matter settled for good? We
also have to mention here the very aggressive group of scientists who openly stress
the fact that they are scientists but draw conclusions which are metaphysical in
nature. And of course the conclusion whether God exists or not is metaphysical.
Metaphysics is also the generally accepted way of analysis of the Universe and God’s
existence until the very Modern Times. Philosophy whether for the Ancients or as a
matter of fact any attempt to answer the fundamental origin of existence is
metaphysical in nature. On this level the mind moves from existence to another
existence as the necessary condition explaining the present observation of the
universe and it’s intrinsic structure. There are some phenomena immediately
experienced, which can only be explained in terms of existence of God. To such
belong (1) the rationality implicit in our experience of the world. Human rationality
discovers the possibility of knowledge because of the presence of rationality in the
structure of the universe. When it comes to higher levels of phenomena we would
have to mention (2) life, (3) consciousness, (4) conceptual thought, the power to
articulate and understand symbols and meaning of language, and finally
 (5) the   human self. Some atheists claim the existence and necessity of so called scientific
reductionism, the evolution of the cosmos, the evolution of life including humans as
“arguments “ against existence of God.
On the contrary the book is one of some other books to follow about a serious
reconsideration of the problem of God’s existence. No matter how much progress has
been made in many areas of our life and no matter how scientific investigations
modified our view of man’s position in the cosmos, the nature of the vast immensity
of billions of galaxies forming themselves in the vastness of the surrounding world,
and no matter how the human life and situation has been apparently dwarfed, the
thirst and desire for discovery of some meaning of life is not only not belittled but in
the chaos of different views and opinions intensified for the average man today. The
problem of God’s existence will be amply analyzed in the forthcoming book by
Leszek Figurski “God or no God”.
The present book is an evaluation and analysis of the last Way of the known
Five Ways leading the human mind to the existence of God elaborated by Saint

           Thomas Aquinas. The Fifth Way will be considered within general context of
Thomistic philosophy. It is not the intention to analyze all Five Ways of Thomas but
center on the ascent of the mind from the orderliness of the finite beings observed in
this world towards final infinite intelligence of the First Mover and the First Creative
Cause of the world.
The analysis is done on the metaphysical level; it acknowledges the right of the
human mind to complete intelligibility of being as such and the power of the mind to
answer the ultimate questions to which of course belongs the problem of the
existence of God.
Thomas Aquinas was not the first to elaborate the argument from finality and
its relationship to the mind, but he developed it and put it on the strictly ontological
level

             All the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas have very similar structure of
argumentation. They begin with existing facts which are directly observable and then
they attempt to discover the ultimate presuppositions of the observable phenomena.
This is why Thomas Aquinas does not use the word arguments or proofs of existence
of God, instead he prefers the word ways of reaching the ultimate presuppositions of
what is already in experience directly given to man. The Fifth Way is very important
for the whole Thomistic philosophy. It points to personal intelligence as a necessary
presupposition of the orderly activities of finite causes in the world. The fact that
observable entities are goal oriented in their activity must have some explanation.
Thomas does not mean here the teleological action of say human beings or even the
small degree of teleological behavior of lower forms of life; he is pointing to the fact
that in- animate structured beings because of their structured natures contain a
presupposition in their activity towards definite goals or ends.



         This is why the universe is telos-oriented, this is why human rationality meets
the cosmic rationality, this is why science and any kind of knowledge is possible at
all, this is why the harmonious orderly world must be finally grounded in some
cosmic intelligence. After all the world did not have to be the way it is; it could be a
forceless chaos, not in any way open to the human mind; or perhaps it could consist
only of photons and electrons. But it is not a chaos but an orderly cosmos as the
Greeks noticed and called it at the beginning of philosophical reflection.
To the objection of the evolutionists, the scientific reductionism and some  other possible objections Thomas would if he lived in our simply answer: "rethink  the problem carefully and without prejudice and you will realize that there is no other valid solution but mine." How the argument will be accepted and understood as valid and sound or not is up to the judgements of the reader.n



Irene Saunder


The first edition was published in 1978 by University Press of America, New York. The book was prepared under  the guidance of the late Father Norris Clarke , who was  a  very deep philosophical thinker and   thoroughly  knowledgeable   in philosophy in general a the system of Thomas Aquinas in particular.

Author



Thursday, July 31, 2014

The Courage to Think For Yourself, philosophy/religion: The Courage to Think For Yourself - The Search fo...

The Courage to Think For Yourself, philosophy/religion: The Courage to Think For Yourself - The Search fo...: The book is written in order to point out the indispensable duty of every human being to decide for a reflective and searching attitude i...

The Courage to Think For Yourself - The Search for Truth and the Meaning of Human Life, University Press of America: 2012 ISBN 978-0-7618-5901-7


The book is written in order to point out the indispensable duty of every human being to decide for a reflective and searching attitude in life and to concentrate the whole courage one is capable of in the search for truth about the possible meaning of one’s life.
In Part One the author stresses the absolute necessity of the effort mentioned above if one wants to find the meaning, destiny and the place in the scheme of reality. In Part Two the author gives a brief statement about the nature of man, human knowledge and possibility of superficial and erroneous thinking. The final chapter entitled: Roads leading to nowhere is a warning against skepticism and unjustified limitations of the powers of the human mind which in a way of speaking may lead to a sort of “mental                                      suicide.”

                                        REVIEWS
                  I found the book: The Courage to Think For Yourself to be extremely awakening. It shines a spotlight on the lack of thought and meaning that most people carry through their lives, including myself at times.

                   The Courage to Think for Yourself. It is important to reflect once in a while  and reevaluate our priorities. We can strengthen our minds by doing so. Often we are so set in our ways that we are like robots, forgetting  that we need to give our brains a “tune-  up.” There are endless distractions in our day to day lives, most of which are complete nonsense,  yet we dedicate our time and energy to these things. It’s important to challenge our-self  and question our existence. Reflection allows us to reinvent ourselves in our way of thinking. 
                                                                                                                – Caithlyn  H.


                  We indeed do need courage to think because as the author states in the conclusion quite simply : in order for man to realize his own destiny he or she needs the courage to think for himself. This same theme is also mentioned in the Preface of the book: “Passion for truth,  determination and courage are inevitable  duties of every honest person.” Those statements lay the framework for the reasoning  why we need the courage  to think for ourselves. The beauty of these statements is that they can be read and interpreted in different ways and different levels. One does not need to be a philosopher  to realize that we as humans need to have meaning in our lives, otherwise why should life be worth living at all? It is not until we begin to think for ourselves that we can start our journey to search for truth and fulfill our human destiny. 

                                                                                                                       –Henry G.

                     I must begin by saying that this book  is a must to read for everyone. I believe the what the author is saying and agree with the view in this book. … It gave me insight and awareness in terms that I realized that certain things in my life have philosophical solution and insight why certain people behave in their ways in life. When I was a small boy,  my aunt used to say  that my  favorite  words were  what and why always. What is this, what is that and so on. But as Aristotle said already centuries ago that every human being desires to know by nature and seeks answers.  

                                                                                                                      - Ch. Ok

                      Courage to Think for Yourself? Many questions immediately are raised  here, and as Socrates would say " an  unexamined  life is not worth living.”   In fact when you think about it you are philosophizing! One of the things  that separates humans from other animals is the ability  to ask questions like the one mentioned above.  Thinking is hard to do and as it turns out  we only use small portion of our brain capacity to think. Many people go through life adopting the  culture , believes and even religion in their immediate surroundings because it is easy and it requires little effort. Marketers know this and they sell it to us. Oppressive governments know this too and they censure  the dissemination of true information, closing off avenue to thought. This is why it is so important to be open minded and evaluate  what is being fed into us -  otherwise we are directed , manipulated and enslaved by others.  

                                                                                                                      -J.W

                      We have a mind to think for ourselves  and for our own decision making. I agree  with the book, The Courage to Think for Yourself,  by   Leszek Figurski. .A human does not have to live a life for pleasure seeking nor should we live our life on earth  for others. We are born with a mind and ability to think for ourselves and make the right choices in life. To live a meaningful and rewarding reflective life a person must develop some qualities and habits necessary in the philosophical search for meaning and truth. It also is a goal and aim towards which we should be moving during our lifetime. 

                                                                                                                    - A.S

                         Reading the book really made me think. I am a person that does not think very much for myself . I always ask someone what do you think I should do about it? Or what do you think about it. I get manipulated  in to doing things I really should not do, nor do I want really to do. I came to realize that I need to start   thinking for myself. I started meditation, and It really works. I don’t have anyone now manipulating me anymore. I think now for myself and for my own decision. 

                                                                                                                     - A.D.



                     To start with , if one does not have the courage to think for oneself one becomes  a follower instead of a leader and one gets lost in the everyday mundane existence of just going through life but not really living.  Having the courage to think for yourself  and to act on those thoughts takes commitment  on many levels. You have to take time and think ideas to the end .  Only then  you can follow your own goals and determine your own conduct in matters which are important for you. The power of independent thinking  is what makes us humans and defines humans among other species living on this planet. 

                                                                                                                     -  E. MB.



What do you think about it?  Please reply. Thanks 



About the Author


             Leszek Figurski, M.A., Th.L, Ph.D., studied theology and philosophy at Gregorian University in Rome, Italy and received his doctorate in philosophy   from Fordham University, New York. He taught philosophy and theology at Mercy College, Felician College, Seton Hall University , St. Peter's University, New Jersey. Over the years he prepared students to pass various admission tests, helping students in writing on different philosophy/theology papers.   He helps students to understand  the fundamental philosophical  concepts, logic, critical thinking, ethics.He also teaches Latin, German , English languages He teaches online worldwide or   face to face in Manhattan, New York. He is the author of many articles published online. His other books: Finality and Intelligence . Is the Universe Designed ? He is co-author with Irena Ciszewska  of the book in Polish language: Odwaga krytycznego myślenia. W poszukiwaniu sensu życia. Currently he is working on the  book: God or no God. Did Science Make Believe in God Obsolete?  

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