Word.ws English Dictionary

counter-finality

counter-finality is the alternative form of counterfinality.

Meaning of counterfinality

Noun

counterfinality (plural counterfinalities)

  1. A set of circumstances in which one phenomenon (such as a group of people) opposes or undermines another phenomenon that produces or sustains it (for example, peasants deforesting hillsides in order to expand cultivatable land, resulting in flooding and the loss of the same).
    • But at the level of technical ensembles of the activity/inertia type, contradiction is the counter-finality which develops within an ensemble, in so far as it opposes the process which produces it and in so far as it is experienced as negated exigency and as the negation of an exigency by the...1960, Jean-Paul Sartre, translated by Alan Sheridan-Smith, Critique of Dialectical Reason, Vol. 1: Theory of Practical Ensembles, Verso, published 2004, page 193
  2. The tendency to increase ones value of or commitment to something when it involves unanticipated negative side effects.

Forms of counter-finality

pluralcounter-finalities

Questions about counter-finality

What is counter-finality the alternative form of?
Counter-finality is the alternative form of counterfinality.

Words near counter-finality in the dictionary

  1. counter-ermine
  2. counter-espionage
  3. counter-evidence
  4. counter-evidences
  5. counter-finalities
  6. counter-finality
  7. counter-flory
  8. counter-genocide
  9. counter-genocides
  10. counter-gravity
  11. counter-immunoelectrophoresis

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: counter-finality (page history and authors); counterfinality (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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