Earlier perceptions of causality seem to assume causality as a one-off trajectory of change rather than a recurring process. This is rooted in a substantial ontology that gives primacy to substance over relations and becoming (Renault, 2016, pp. 20-21), despite the fact that Aristotle did not seem to consider substances as static or devoid of internal becoming (Eslick, 1958).
One problematic use of terminology happens when the human purpose is confused or conflated with the final cause. A final cause (or purpose) for Aristotle is a teleological one that would only make sense when this kind of causality is seen as a recurring (evolutionary) process. The final cause of a house is ‘for which’ it is made/does exist, i.e., the function that it practically plays as a shelter or protection.
To be a cause, the final cause of something cannot be reduced to the reason for that thing. It should not then be equated with the purpose as is in the intentions of those who build the house. Surely those who purpose the house aim to achieve the expected end result, that is, all the major functionalities of the house qua house; they may not, or may partly, achieve the goals. The purpose of building a house is the subjective aspect of the final cause that drives agency and thus directs the efficient cause. The plan of the house as it moves from mere thoughts to the full realization of its structure (formal cause) as well as the selection of the most appropriate matters with suitable qualities (material cause) all convey the final cause from the onset to the end. But building a house is not an isolated line of action/causation.
For the final cause to have causal power, it needs to be retroactively present through the other three types of causes and to be present from the onset, and itself must be the product of earlier cycles of house-building activities. Houses can be seen as ‘actual occasions of experience’ (using a rather Whiteheadian terminology) that through the process of concrescence inherit (‘prehend’, ‘feel’) the data from the past objectified occasions, mediated by human agency, and the potentialities for alterity from the eternal objects (pure potentials), necessary for their reorganization.
Processual ontology (which does not need to be based on a substance-less cosmology since substances can be seen as emergent properties or moments ontologically present and eternally evolving – via substantial motions and/or motus) can be helpful here since, as per this approach, full reality should be given to becoming and to relations, and thus causation should be seen as a process in which substantial and relational properties are (Hegelian) moments in the process (Renault, 2016).
Renault, E. (2016) Critical Theory and Processual Social Ontology, Journal of Social Ontology, 2(1), 17-32. https://doi.org/10.1515/jso-2015-0013.
Eslick, L. J. (1958) Substance, Change, and Causality in Whitehead, Philosophy and phenomenological research, 18(4), 503-13.
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