Hacker News Reader

In this model, the final cause of an elephant is to live the life of a happy, well-adjusted elephant

If that's the case, why do these animals have (non-human) predators? In fact, unlike humans, some animals actually need to eat meat to live. Doesn't that demonstrate that some animals are meant to be food?

View on HN

"Final cause" doesn't imply a designer; it's just the way the species happens to exist. (Aristotle was a deist, roughly speaking.) There's no guarantee that a species' final cause doesn't involve messing with other species'.

There's also no guarantee that a species' final cause isn't self-defeating. Introduce a pair of rabbits to an island with no natural predators of rabbits, and in about ten years the rabbits will eat all the vegetation of the island and then starve to death...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com