 Avicenna’s account of the priority of the final cause was influential in the Latin West, where it was taken by some to support the view that the scope of final causation be restricted to agents with cognitive powers (Maier 1955). This interpretation also appears in the Arabic tradition. Roughly speaking, Avicenna was taken to have shown that (i) the claim that the end is a cause of motion depends on the claim that it is prior to and a cause of the causality of the other causes and (ii) the claim that the end is prior to and a cause of the causality of the other causes is true only in cases where it exists in the mind or soul of the efficient cause.