204 ARGUMENTS: MONOTHEISTIC CONCEPTIONSThe truth of 10e1 requires the conclusion of stage three of the
Cosmological Argument, i.e., premise 10, and is exactly as secure as that
premise is.
Aquinas’s Fifth Way
The Fifth Way is one version of the argument from design. To say that
something seeks its own end is to say that it seeks its own flourishing as a
member of its kind. The following characterization of the Fifth Way reads it
as asserting that each generable body seeks its own end, not that all
generable bodies together seek some universal end or some end that
characterizes the universe as a whole (e.g., universal orderliness).^27 ,^28
1 We observe generable bodies that lack awareness typically seek their
own flourishing.
2 What happens typically does not happen accidentally. So:
3 Generable bodies typically seeking their own flourishing does not
happen accidentally. (from 1 and 2)
4 Generable bodies typically seeking their own flourishing, if it does
not happen accidentally, occurs only because they are caused to do so
by an agent that intends that this occur. So:
5 Generable bodies typically seeking their own flourishing occurs only
because they are caused to do so by an agent that intends that this
occur. (from 3 and 4)
6 If they are caused to do so by an agent that intends that this occur,
then there is an agent that intends that this occur. So:
7 There is an agent that intends that this occur. (from 5 and 6)
A different way of putting the argument invokes the distinction, but also
the similarity, between artifacts and natural objects. Artifacts are made by
humans; their parts are made and organized so as to produce some end or
other. They are made to do something, and insofar as they are well made,
they do that thing. Call the feature of having parts that were made to be
organized so as to produce specific results being operationally functional.
Then the argument goes:
1 Artifacts are operationally functional things.
2 Natural objects are operationally functional things.
3 Operational functionality in artifacts is adequately explicable only by
reference to intelligence.