From: Case (Case@iSpots.com)
Date: Sat Sep 10 2005 - 17:11:01 BST
[Case wrote]
>> I believe teleology has pretty much been disgarded as
>> wishful thinking. The very concept of "purpose" in nature
>> leads one to conclude that an event in the future "causes"
>> an event in the present. Not very satisfactory.
[Ham responded]
> Not a very satisfactory definition, either. A future event doesn't
> "cause"
> natural selection; purpose in nature is demonstrated by events in the
> present that progress toward a more perfect or complex form, as if by
> design.
[Case replies]
When you say that there is some goal, direction or purpose to nature you
are in fact saying that some future state is influencing action in the
present. If you are basing your understanding of this purpose on a
perception of the general direction things are heading then extrapolating to
what you imagine the future might be like, that is a bit different but that
does not sound like what you are talking about.
[Ham wrote]
> An argument for purpose (or what the vitalists called Teleology) can be
> found in Paley's famous watchmaker analogy: If we find a pocket watch in a
> field, we immediately infer that it was produced not by natural processes
> acting blindly but by a designing human intellect. It's the function of
> the
> fully assembled watch that implies a designer for its constituent parts.
[Case replies]
Paley's arguement has been trounced so thouroughly and so often, the only
place I ever hear reference to it any more is on Christian radio stations. I
am bit disappointed to see it raised here. Dawkins and Gould offer the most
accessable refutations but I don't believe you will find many scientists who
put much stock in it. If you find a watch in the field you might postulate a
watchmaker but in doing so you would also be postulating his parents and a
society that could support metalurgy and mathamatics. This does not enhance
your understand of the watch anymore than the Watchmaker enhances our
understanding of nature.
[Ham wrote]
> The natural world contains abundant evidence of a supernatural creator.
> The
> argument from design was the common explanation of the natural world until
> the publication of Origin of Species in 1859. In the twentieth century,
> however, biologists found holes in Darwin's theory. Science has failed to
> show any mechanism by which mutation and natural selection can lead to
> macroevolution, for example, and fossil records have failed to provide a
> common ancestor for hominids and the lower primates, leading to the
> reasonable conclusion that there is no common ancestor, and that humanity
> was a special creation.
[Case replies]
To say the the natural world contains evidence of the supernatural is a bit
absurd. If there were evidence, it would be natural. If there were none, it
would be fantasy. Darwin was mostly reporting on what he had observed and
proposing an explaination of his observations. Of course people have found
holes in Darwin's theory. That's what people do to theories. Darwin's theory
is stronger as a result. After all the Russians were still serious about
Lamarck into the 1960s. Unless you are a young earther there is no reason
to think that outside intervention was need to produce what we see in the
biosphere of this planet.
[Ham wrote]
> Whether you take the 'Creationist' position or side with the
> Evolutionists,
> it is fairly evident that natural history, contrary to thermo-dynamic
> systems, is an evolution from the simplest of organisms to the most
> complex
> by a process that can only be described as "purposeful". I believe it is
> reasonable to assume from this that man's life-experience also has a
> purpose.
[Case replies]
Evolution in no way violates anything to do with thermo-dynamics. We exist
at a point in spacetime where we receive a constant stream of energy
disipating from our sun. Life is, in many respects, the production solar
radition being reflected off our planet's surface and bouncing around a bit
before moving on. Being mystified that life begins in a simple form then
become more complicated is a bit like needing a supernatural explaination
for how a spark can become a flame. You can say that life has a direction or
treads in its development but to say there is some final purpose or goal for
it is, as I said, before: wishful thinking.
[Ham wrote]
> I don't see the relevance of "purpose" or teleology in the Behaviorist
> School of psychology, which was mainly a "conditioning" program whose
> purpose was to raise children with socially acceptable behavior patterns.
> This kind of training is a form of human engineering, the "designer" here
> being human as opposed to a deity or vital force.
[Case replies]
The early behaviorists were in some respects reacting to the
introspectionists who thought they could examine the contents of their own
minds to deduce principles of psychology. Their results were similar in many
ways to the kind of rambling I see here about essences and the interaction
of abstractions. The behaviorists pointed out that this was getting no
where. They decided to just look at what was happening, propose some
hypothesis and conduct some experiments to see what they could learn.
Although much of their work was done with rats and pigeons their findings
were strikingly effective when applied to humans. Their successes can be
observed today in everything from the classroom to advertising. They
achieved this success specifically by rejecting such unmeasurable phenomenon
as teleology, purpose and the supernatural. As I recall, Skinner's attitude
on the matter was that all of experimental psychology was just a way to pass
time until the neuroscientists could open the black box and actually tell
what was inside. We get a bit closer to that every day.
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