Often we find ourselves confronted with the assumption that everything exists for something else. The bees are here to pollinate the plants, the plants are here to feed the animals, the plants and animals are here to feed the humans. Everything is given a purpose. However, this does either result in nothing or in a purpose-based understanding of God, who provides the ultimate purpose with his will.
Above beliefe is originated in an observation of human actions, which we often carry out with an intention. Human activity often serves a purpose, even if it is just to get money. This principle we carry over to the rest of the world, and we search for the purpose behind all phenomena and events. Doing so, we build a long chain of what serves what. But this chain either never ends or it ends in speculation. We can only directly observe our own intentions, can only see the purpose of our own actions. What a possible creator might have intended when creating the world is nothing we can perceive within our field of view.
Nature creates in excess. Whether a seed grows into a plant, becomes food or rots on the ground, nature appears to be indifferent about it. At least we cannot observe an intend to let every single seed grow. We can imagine that it would not work, there are too many. Although a seed has the potential to become a plant, nature seems indifferent about this potential to be used for every single seed. A seed can take many paths which we would call useful, even if they are way below its potential. Most people on the other hand wish that the things they created are used for the intended purpose. Otherwise we call it wasteful, and we have reason to do that.
In nature rules the law of cause and effect. We investigate this with our natural sciences. There is always a cause that results in a following effect. This effect can on itself be the cause for further effects later on. This chain of events does not need a purpose, it simply unfolds.
So why do humans search for a purpose in everything? Why don’t we accept that the world is a long chain of cause an effect, that simply unfolds as the laws of nature force it to do? That everything is the result of a previous cause, a necessary and predefined continuation of events until all differences are equaled out and entropy has come to its maximum? That belief would only be consistent for people maintaining a materialistic-atheistic worldview.
When we look at ourselves, we can observe that the concept of purpose is fully justified for mankind. Certainly we do some actions as a direct reaction to a perceived input. And there are those who claim that all human action ist triggered by a cause, as is the movement of a stone in a forest. But when we look closer, we will see that there is more than that driving us to do certain actions. We can have intentions with our actions and then act purposefully.
How can we do that and how do we get to our intentions? Might it be that our intentions are only reactions to external influences? To pursue an intention and act purposefully it is necessary to be able to create a Vorstellung. Every human being can do that. We have seen that our houseplant has its leaves hanging, and we have understood that this is caused by the dry soil in the pot. So we water the plant with the intention to keep it alive. Without our Vorstellung, without our individual concept of a dried-out plant, we would not come up with the idea of watering it for a certain purpose. Likewise, when we become tired of caring heavy sacks, we can drive to the hardware store and buy a wheelbarrow. We do this because we have a Vorstellung of how easy we can transport the sacks to their destination with this wheelbarrow. The Vorstellung of a future activity, or a future condition, becomes the cause of our present trip to the hardware store. Our Vorstellung enables us to make the future the cause of our present actions. This capability makes us able to act purposefully.
Whether we act free or just react depends on how we come up with our Vorstellung. The concept of Vorstellung has already been the topic of a few articles, but we are still far from grasping the full idea of it. There will be more articles explaining more about Vorstellung from other perspectives, because Vorstellung is essential for our intentions and our freedom. Important is that purposefulness is based on imagination, on our ability to have a Vorstellung, and is a peculiarity of human actions.