RE: The absurd need for logical proofs for God
December 3, 2020 at 7:33 am
(This post was last modified: December 3, 2020 at 8:05 am by The Grand Nudger.)
There it is, it's not teleology that people are objecting to, but a mind.
For clarity, teleology is an explanation for a thing by it's purpose - not an ad hoc reference to a mind. It's not clear that there has to be a mind at play for a thing to have purpose, and it's not clear what sort of fundamental difference exists between purpose from minds and purpose not-from them. The terms we use to distinguish between the two, conceptually.... extrinsic and intrinsic, only make reference to that difference, and no other.
Ironically if evolutionary biology were a meaningfully intentional agent - a mind (and assuming that our minds are meaningfully intentional agents so that it's a valid concern and difference), we'd have to concede that the purpose it confers or imposes is extrinsic, like ours..but it isn't..and that doesn't make the purpose non-purpose, it merely sets it aside as intrinsic purpose. The question of a natural teleology is not whether evolution has a mind, but whether or not a things existence can be explained by it's purpose. I agree with you that we tend to talk about evolutionary biology in human terms...maybe that's because it does something like what we do (though I'd put that the other way around, myself). There's more than one way to skin a cat, right..but what we're wondering when we consider teleology is whether there's a skinned cat - not whether any particular agent or kind of agent skinned it.
Incidentally, that's why the notion that design or teleology in life implies a god fails. It implies an agent of purpose, and there's no shortage of those in the natural world, every single example of which is a product of evolutionary biology or very literally -is- evolutionary biology. Even if the only purpose we could all see and agree to were the maintenance and spread of life, that's still a purpose, and it's very natural. A natural teleology. If we assert that evolutionary biology purpose and mindful purpose are different..we're only adding even more teleology - not taking away from the smaller set conferred by a less competent agent.
For clarity, teleology is an explanation for a thing by it's purpose - not an ad hoc reference to a mind. It's not clear that there has to be a mind at play for a thing to have purpose, and it's not clear what sort of fundamental difference exists between purpose from minds and purpose not-from them. The terms we use to distinguish between the two, conceptually.... extrinsic and intrinsic, only make reference to that difference, and no other.
Ironically if evolutionary biology were a meaningfully intentional agent - a mind (and assuming that our minds are meaningfully intentional agents so that it's a valid concern and difference), we'd have to concede that the purpose it confers or imposes is extrinsic, like ours..but it isn't..and that doesn't make the purpose non-purpose, it merely sets it aside as intrinsic purpose. The question of a natural teleology is not whether evolution has a mind, but whether or not a things existence can be explained by it's purpose. I agree with you that we tend to talk about evolutionary biology in human terms...maybe that's because it does something like what we do (though I'd put that the other way around, myself). There's more than one way to skin a cat, right..but what we're wondering when we consider teleology is whether there's a skinned cat - not whether any particular agent or kind of agent skinned it.
Incidentally, that's why the notion that design or teleology in life implies a god fails. It implies an agent of purpose, and there's no shortage of those in the natural world, every single example of which is a product of evolutionary biology or very literally -is- evolutionary biology. Even if the only purpose we could all see and agree to were the maintenance and spread of life, that's still a purpose, and it's very natural. A natural teleology. If we assert that evolutionary biology purpose and mindful purpose are different..we're only adding even more teleology - not taking away from the smaller set conferred by a less competent agent.
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