In so speaking, he is not just saying in a colorful way that perhaps the final cause does not exist, but rather that it is perhaps a mere fictum, that possibly all of our appeals to final causation are merely convenient fictions, able in principle to be replaced by appeals to other kinds of cause, those with real being, like efficient causes.
In 18th-century fiction, storms or balmy days are merely convenient for the story.
But such occasions are merely convenient hooks on which to hang sophisticated exercises in composition and technique.
Moreover, in all democracies parties are merely convenient chimeras, evolved under the specific selection pressures of their respective electoral ecosystems.
We are merely convenient targets for delivering a message against Maliki by certain groups, and perhaps by Maliki when he wants us to be targeted.
Since the theory of the marketing concept emerged a quarter of a century ago, the more managerially advanced corporations have been eager to offer what customers clearly wanted rather than what was merely convenient.
But the essence of Coleman's philosophy connects it to the defining trait of philosophical thought from Socrates onward: the puncturing of shibboleths, the rational devaluation of concepts considered essential, the proof through reason that ideas and categories believed to derive from nature are merely convenient artifices and social markers and can easily be dispensed with.
The practice of taking possible worlds to be merely convenient fictions, or of treating talk about possible worlds as being useful without being literally correct, is quite common in philosophical circles.
Yet many suspect such promises were merely convenient election add-ons.
The welfarist calculus patronizes other animals and when push comes to shove, or often when it's merely convenient, the nonhumans suffer and are killed when it's determined that the benefits to humans outweigh the costs to the animals.
