Talk:Purpose
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A purpose is a kind of explanation for why something happend. It is helpful to compare three different popular types of explanations for why things happen. These explanations are chance, natural law and purpose.
Some events are thought to occur by chance. For example, when we flip a coin we say the coin landed on heads by chance or that chance caused the coin to land on heads. Over time the outcome of a series of chance events tends to be proportional to the possible outcomes. For example over time the proportion of times a fliped coin lands on heads tends to be equal to the proportion of heads on a coin which is 1/2.
Some events are thought to occur because of some natural cause as, for example, when lightening starts a forest fire. Most folks would not say that the ligtening intended to cause the fire but that the fire was simply the natural result of the heat from the lightening being transfered to the wood of the trees. Natural causes are general are generally thought to precede the event that they cause.
Some events are thought to have occured because someone or something caused them to happen intentionally (on purpose)in order to accomplish some goal or purpose. For example, going to a store (an event)can be explained as being done (or caused) for a purpose (to buy something). In some sense natural causes seem to push events ahead whereas purposes seem to pull events behind them. Of course, all causes must precede the events that they cause. So, for purposes to serve as antecedent causes of events, the person or thing that actually caused the event to happen must have been able to anticipate the accomplishment of the purpose. Anticipating the results of ones actions is sometimes described as having a purpose, goal or end in mind. Maybe.