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Tag Archives: Chance

Chance and Absolute Chance

19 Wednesday Nov 2014

Posted by Fr. Moore in Definitions, Philosophy

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Chance, Divine Providence, Philosophical Terms

I have a sermon to write for Sunday, which prevented my posting yesterday and which leaves me no time to write anything original today. But in order to continue with our topic I am posting the definitions for ‘chance’ and ‘absolute chance’. I will have to leave any further explanation until after my sermon is written.

chance, n. and adj. 1. the unforeseen, the unintended. 2. the seeming absence of cause or design. 3. that which is said to happen without a deliberate purpose. 4. the accidental, the irregular, or the unusual in nature’s course. 5. that whose cause is indeterminable. Chance is not properly ascribed to the absence of efficient cause. Antonym – end, intention.

absolute chance, that which is not planned nor foreseen and permitted by any agent. Scholasticism denies this kind of chance occurence.

Dictionary of Scholastic Philosophy, Bernard Wuellner, S.J.

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Definition of ‘Final Cause’

17 Monday Nov 2014

Posted by Fr. Moore in Definitions, Philosophy

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Chance, Efficient Cause, Final Cause, Philosophical Terms

Today’s post is part 2 to yesterday’s post: Lewis on Chance. In that post I mentioned a second opinion by a Catholic philosopher but that will have to wait until tomorrow because there is a term that must be defined before we move on to his opinion. Although, I will be quoting him today because that is where we encounter the term in question.

We frequently use such expressions as, ‘A game of chance,’ ‘This happened by chance,’ etc., to refer to various types of situations in our experience. This seems at first glance to deny the above thesis on the need of final causality to explain all action, as we have just established.

The One and the Many, W. Norris Clarke, S.J.

The term we need to understand here is ‘final cause’. St. Thomas, in his Summa Theologiæ, said “the first of all causes is the final cause.” I know that sounds counter-intuitive and it took me a while to understand it. What helped with my understanding of this term centers on the proper understanding of how St. Thomas is using the word ‘final’. To us it sounds like he is saying that the last in a series of events (the final cause) is actually the first, which makes no sense whatsoever. But that is not how the word final is being used. Instead, final means the end or purpose for something happening. And the final cause is linked to the efficient cause, although they answer different questions. (And here we need another definition: an efficient cause is that which causes an effect.) Fr. Clarke puts it thusly,

The efficient cause answers the question: Which being is responsible for this effect’s coming to be? The final cause answers the question: Why did this efficient cause produce this effect rather than that? For in many cases the same efficient cause can produce several different possible effects. (p. 202)

I suppose you could say that the final cause gives direction to the efficient cause so that there is actually an effect that takes place. Because, if there is more than one possible effect there must be something there to choose from all the options so that this effect happens rather than that one. Therefore, without a final cause – a purpose – would there be anything that ever happened at all?

Tomorrow (maybe), we will see how this applies to Fr. Clarke’s understanding of chance, and then later compare that with what Lewis had to say on the matter.

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Lewis on Chance

16 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by Fr. Moore in C.S. Lewis, Thought for the Day

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Chance, Divine Providence, Free Will

Now as to your other story, about Isaiah 66? It doesn’t really matter whether the Bible was open at that page thru’ a miracle or through some (unobserved) natural cause. We think it matters because we tend to call the second alternative ‘chance.’ But when you come to think of it, there can be no such thing as chance from God’s point of view. Since He is omniscient His acts have no consequences which He has not foreseen and taken into account and intended. Suppose it was the draught from the window that blew your Bible open at Isaiah 66. Well, that current of air was linked up with the whole history of weather from the beginning of the world and you may be quite sure that the result it had for you at that moment (like all its other results) was intended and allowed for in the act of creation. ‘Not one sparrow,’ you know the rest [Matthew 10:29]. So of course the message was addressed to you. To suggest that your eye fell on it without this intention, is to suggest that you could take Him by surprise. Fiddle-de-dee! This is not Predestination: your will is perfectly free: but all physical events are adapted to fit in as God sees best with the free actions He knows we are going to do. There’s something about this in Screwtape.

The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume III

(An alternate opinion on ‘chance’ from a Catholic philosopher will be offered later.)

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Fr. Moore

Fr. Moore

Parochial Vicar Our Lady of the Atonement San Antonio, Texas FrMoore@truthwithboldness.com

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