Here is an informative little video by a guy named Steve Mould who does a lot of “science” videos on youtube. Its all (ostensibly) about how simple little processes can make “meaningful” structures from stochastic processes-and he uses magnetic shaped little parts to show this. Its a popular channeled followed by millions, and is often referenced by other famous people in the science community-and his fans love it.
And hey, it does show how meaningful structures CAN form from random processes. Right? So you can learn from this. Wink, wink. Nod, nod. And all the skeptics will know exactly what he is really saying. Cause we are all part of the clique that knows this language-the language of the skeptic propagandist. I mean, he almost hides it, the real message, it is just under the surface, and the less skeptically aware, the casualist, might even miss it. The casualist might not learn as much about Steve Mould and what he is trying to say here-but the skeptic knows. “See, atheism is true! Spread the word!” Steve has given the wink. The same wink used by DeGrasse Tyson, and Sean Carroll, Lawrence Krauss, Brian Greene, and on and on. You know the one.
And for 95% of his viewers, whether they know it or not, they got his message. I mean, look, its plain as day, right? He just showed you, that is certainly a meaningful structure that arose from random processes, isn’t it? Its defintely meaningful, its a, a, a , well, it’s shape that, we have a, a name for…that’s kind of…anyway, defintely random, I mean other than the magnets and the precut shapes, and the little ball with nothing else inside, and the shaking only until its just right then stopping kind of way…That’s random kind of right???
But there are 5% percent of his viewers that spotted his little wink and nod, and said, hold on a second. If you want us to believe that your little explanation about how simply life can form from nonsense without a plan, how blind exactly do you want us to be? 95%, they are hooked, you got them (Ryan StallardThere are so many creationist videos this obliterates. Especially 4:18.). But some likeGhryst VanGhod helpfully point out: “this is incorrect. the kinesin travels along fibres within the cell and takes the various molecules exactly where they need to be, they are not randomly “jumbling around in solution”. https://youtu.be/gbycQf1TbM0 ” and then you get to see a video that tells you just a few more of the things that are ACTUALLY happening which are even more amazing if you weren’t already skeptical (the real kind).
And if you go through some more of the comments you will notice a few more (real) skeptics, not the wink and nod kind, and you will start to notice why the wink nod propogandist skeptics everywhere you look in modern culture are a very puposefully designed cancer on knowledge and thought.
DNA_Jock,
Exactly just how stupid are you Jock? You one time heard that Sheldrake coined a term, morphic resonance, you have no idea what the concept even means, but Oh, you think you found a great gotcha moment didn’t you?
This is the level of dumb arrogance you regularly display Jock. How many times have I told you, you are not nearly as smart as you think you are, and you need to learn some humility about your own self image.
Try to keep this in mind the next time you are so convinced you are right. It will save time and embarrassment.
Phoodoo the professional projectionist nods and winks again.
phoodoo,
Reminder that personal attacks on fellow members, accusations of lack of honesty, accusations of stupidity, are discouraged.
Kantian Naturalist,
Teleology, in ANY form suggests both a plan, and a striving towards an outcome. As such, any idea that teleology can exist without any intelligence or design is nonsensical. Random, chaotic teleology? That’s illogical on its face.
And let’s be realistic, isn’t the whole endeavour of trying to claim that a teleological path exists, but trying one’s damnedest to refuse to acknowledge a creator really just desperate rationalising? Its as bad or worse than the multiple worlds theory of every thing happens because all worlds exist, escape. Its essentially choosing to believe a position that almost no one else on the face of the Earth would find convincing. At least in the all world’s exist escape theory, so that’s why crazy shit happens is believable by SOME people.
You know full well Darwinism is crap. You are now admitting as much. So it doesn’t take a genius to see that knowing this, it is in one’s interest as one who doesn’t want to believe in a creator to just make up the most outlandish rationalising possible to someone conceive of a world in which intelligence exists, but there is no cause, reason or meaning behind the intelligence. Its just Nature did it….
One can say they believe anything. Of the 7 billion people on the planet, how many others are going to believe that?
Yea, or….
Simple fact: morphogenetic has a common scientific usage.
Morphic resonance is something else.
Alan Fox,
Do you think life is teleological but also accidental Alan?
Is KN’s theory too outlandish even for you?
phoodoo,
I’ve already said that I don’t know. I reject religious explanations for the observed universe that I’m aware of as human invention but there may be others I’m unaware of. There may be one that is accurate or approximate but, in the absence of such, I’m happy to resign myself to not knowing.
What explanation appeals to you? You’ve yet to give a hint.
I read KN as saying he prefers to keep his religious views to himself which he’s perfectly entitled to do. Seems like more projection from you.
Teleology means there is striving towards an outcome, but does NOT imply a plan. Since all adaptations can be explained in terms of increasing fitness, which is a goal-oriented process, any appeal to Intelligence or Design needs to be supported and cannot just stand as the default explanation.
None of the argumentation above has anything to do with atheism.
Teleology is the most dead concept in all of science. Nothing has “ends” that aren’t completely arbitrary. You can always just switch to a different perspective and declare A is for B, or for C, or D, etc. There is no objective fact of when any particular process is supposed to start and stop. Arbitrarily picking acorn and tree as beginnings and ends of the cycle is just that, arbitrary, and no particular stage in the cycle is any more the “start” than it is the “end” of what came before it. Even death is not an “end” from the perspective of the atoms, the molecules, and the energy of the system, which all of which will go on as part of other processes and systems.
It is not teleological. The concept of things having “ends” towards which they are striving is completely arbitrary, and exists only in your mind. Teleological thinking about life is just a way to frame something, not a fact about the thing you are describing. The acorn doesn’t strive to become a tree any more than rain strives to make a puddle in some depression in the ground. But the rain will seep into the ground eventually, and/or evaporate back into the atmosphere, and so you might aswell say the rain is for making more clouds, or more rain, or wet soil, or to wash salts out of a field. Nothing about this can be said to objectively be the end towards which rain is made.
The fact that acorns some times become trees does not logically entail that they are trying to do so, nor that it was ever intended to be so by someone. The tree will some day eventually die, and it’s constituents will become part of the environment in some way, and things will continue.
Teleological thinking is also scientifically worthless. It predicts nothing and can’t be tested.
No, there is no goal to evolution. Now you’re using teleological language. The fact that some times evolving populations increase fitness doesn’t make that the goal of evolving populations.
Well if you can just blindly assert shit like this, then we can do the same.
You know full well that Darwinian evolution is a fact. It demonstrably occurs, and is a large part of the explanation for almost all attributes of life on Earth. Every one of your post reeks of the fear coming with the realization of this most obvious truth. Even children can see it.
It’s almost 8 billion by now. But anyway, eventually, essentially everyone. Most religions will either die out completely or become so vague and neutered they will no longer stand as obstacles to people accepting basic scientific facts, such as life on Earth being the product of a blind evolutionary process of descent with modification, that all life on Earth shares common ancestry, and that almost all aspects of adaptations are the product of natural selection.
Rumraket,
The problem is partly that science is geared to providing explanations for how things work. Science has not so far given explanations for why things work.
Of course, philosophy and religion don’t give us explanations either for why there is a universe, why are we here etc.
I suspect we need KN to bring some clarity to this issue, but as I understood it, we are talking about the intrinsic purpose of complex self organizing biological systems. I fully agree with you that complexity in biology does not arise because of some conscious desire to create such systems (what KN termed “extrinsic teleology”) . However, phoodoo is arguing from (and I am willing to concede that) the fact that organisms have some intrinsic teleology, some purposiveness about them. Why does the gazelle flee from the charging cheetah? Because it wants to survive. That is a goal. Why does the E. coli bacterium have chemotaxis? Because it wants to reach the food source. That is a goal. Why does the virus infect the cell? To make loads and loads of new viruses. That is a goal. I think it is a valid question to ask for an explanation of this ubiquitous behaviour in living beings.
Hammers are geared for hitting nails into walls but never provided explanations for why someone wanted to have a nail there.
Finding the meaning of the universe is not science’s job.
I don’t see what he could possibly say on the subject that would entail the conclusion that complex self-organizing biological systems have “intrinsic purpose”. I don’t think there even could be such a thing as intrinsic purpose. Purpose is a concept that, as I understand it, exists only in the minds of conscious sentient beings as a view they have about things, it literally could not possibly be intrinsic to the thing itself.
Hmm. *I’m in the forest one evening walking my dogs. Dogs flush wild boar who proceeds to chase them. Dogs run to me with boar in close pursuit. I leap behind nearest tree. Am I thinking “I want to survive”? Nope, I did it without thinking and then thought “fuck me, that was too close for comfort”.
*As recounted by neighbour, Michel.
Corneel,
Not a criticism. “Why” questions are unanswerable.
Well they do give us candidate explanations, but without observation we often just lack a compelling heuristic for sorting true from false ones.
Rumraket,
Sure. And if one candidate explanation can be supported with evidence that can be examined scientifically, sunlit uplands await.
Why does rain reach the ground? Because it wants to. What have you really said here that can’t also be described purely in mechanistic terms? Alternatively, the gravitational force of attraction between objects of mass force them together. Teleological descriptions of such processes or events are just that, descriptions you can put on something. They are no more valid than the mechanistic ones, and in any case you often have to be just as completely arbitrary about where you pick the start and end of the history you decide to frame in teleological language.
Sure, you might be content with describing a gazelle* running for its life in purely mechanistic terms and you may call my choice to frame that behaviour in terms of survival and fitness arbitrary. But I believe that some additional insight is gained by pointing out that the fleeing of a gazelle, bacterial chemotaxis and viral infectivity all further the goal of transmitting their genetic information to the next generation. Teleological language can be useful, as long as we agree that it does not imply orthogenesis.
*Or Alan’s neighbour, LOL.
You could just say that the fleeing of a gazelle, bacterial chemotaxis, and viral infectivity all increase the likelihood of transmitting their genetic information to the next generation. What additional insight is provided by framing the transmission of genetic information to the next generation as a goal?
Look phoodoo! That’s how reasonable people with different viewpoints have a discussion! Try it sometime!
Good point. I suppose that in the absence of any creationists, it facilitates thinking and talking about it. Remember: we jumped from fleeing gazelles to genetics because we both are familiar with the mechanism behind evolution by natural selection. Not everybody connects those things that readily. Humans have a tendency to think in terms of purpose: the purpose of a heart is to pump blood, etc. Thinking of adaptations in different species as different means to a universal goal may help understanding.
I know this has been an often stated reason for speaking in those terms, but I’m really not convinced there’s any good evidence that it facilitates any greater understanding. For a contrary perspective just look at how far that kind of thinking has misled people like CharlieM and phoodoo who seem completely unable to snap out of that mode of thinking for even a moment. phoodoo in particular seems to work himself into ranting and caricatures at even the idea of occurring without being for some explicit purpose and goal.
That was a shortened version. Michel was walking his dogs off the lead along one of the tracks through the forest getting towards dusk. The dogs picked up scent and ran into the woods barking excitedly before re-emerging with an adult boar in pursuit. Michel had been told that the best way to discourage a boar is to extend arms, wave and shout so he stepped in between dogs and boar. The shouts and waves worked temporarily and the boar ran back up the path from the direction it came. Then it paused for a moment, looked back at Michel, and charged directly at him. He then recalled the advice on what to do if waving and shouting doesn’t work (get over a fence or wall or climb a tree) but the nearest tree offered no easy way up. Luckily, the boar did not sustain the attack and Michel was left with a very clean cut on the back of his hand where the boar’s tusk grazed him. I asked him if the boar was male or female and he said he was concentrating on what the front end of the boar was doing.
We did have a conversation regarding purpose. What was the dogs’ plan? By running towards Michel, were they expecting him to sort the problem? He wryly notes the dogs ran off straight home when his scaring tactic failed. But what was the boar’s purpose? The result was the local hunt had a very successful result in targeting that area on their next outing, so maybe not such a good survival strategy for the boar.
KN,
Now do you see how difficult you are making it for atheists?
Why should this time be the end product? Why not the mid point, or any other point, maybe the end of the beginning?
What makes a trilobite more inefficient than you or me? I think you are confusing life with human designs. The machines we invent tend to progress towards higher efficiencies. Up until now life on earth has been 100% efficient in maintaining its ongoing presence.
OMagain: Human designers strive for simplicity and re-usability. Demeters principle suggests disconnected systems should have minimal knowledge of each others inner workings.
There are no independent systems in life.
And this extreme interconnectedness of life is what makes it so worthy of our admiration. Tinkering with one small specific area can ripple through the wider systems in so many different ways yet life continues to thrive by controlling all these changes made by the one thread.
Whereas they should be pointing to human design and saying “a poor imitation of living designs”.
Crippling for what? Consciousness carries on evolving.
Rather then answer any of the innumerable questions posed phoodoo drops by to try generate dissent.
Are you taking lessons from your government paymasters or are they taking lessons from you?
Angry much that people seem to be able to use words in a way which is denied to you?
What is this difficulty?
As usual all he can do is troll and mock.
I wonder if you’ve given phoodoo’s positions the same deliberation you want him to give yours. Put yourself in his position: you KNOW the truth. There is no possibility of doubt. Facts and evidence are not relevant; they apply where appropriate, and do NOT apply even a little to religious faith. The ramifications of your faith are ubiquitous, visible and obvious everywhere and in everything. Those who deny them, or change the subject to twaddle about logic and evidence, are willfully blind. To attempt to deal with the twaddlers on their own turf, using their own language, isn’t just to sink to their level, it is to abandon the foundation of your certain knowledge. All you can do with such people is to mock and laugh — it’s not that they CAN not see, it’s that they WILL not see.
No, it doesn’t.
Perhaps you are aware of what the word teleology means?
I think you are equivocating with the meaning of efficiency. And what criteria could we apply to determine trilobite efficiency and make comparisons with humans? Calorie efficiency? Hard to do accurately with fossils. Survival efficiency? Trilobites were a widely distributed and varied clade of which no species survives today.
With humans seemingly unable to reverse the rapid climate change happening today, things don’t look good for human survival either.
Lets assume he doesn’t so you can explain to us what teleology means.
Thank you for this! And yes, intrinsic teleology doesn’t imply orthogenesis (as you noted) — nor does it imply a regress to typological thinking.
Contra phoodoo, intrinsic teleology without a plan or designer makes perfect sense. It was a view held by a few minor, obscure figures in the history of science (Aristotle, Kant, Darwin).
I would also say, in response to some nice criticisms from Rumraket, that teleology is not an explanation — it is the phenomenon that needs to be explained.
The history of the debates over teleology were primarily couched in terms of teleological explanations as opposed to mechanistic explanations. The history of philosophy of science, especially in philosophy of biology, is shaped by this conceptual framework in which teleology and mechanism are exhaustive and exclusive (which is what makes it a genuine dichotomy).
But, beginning in the early to mid 20th century, we see the emergence of a cohort of mathematicians, engineers, and neurophysiologists who question this dichotomy. For them there is no huge conceptual hurdle to the idea of teleological mechanisms. The question then becomes one of how to model circular causality — how to model it, and how to build circularly causal systems.
I think it’s a nice question as to whether recent work in theoretical biology has really showed us to ground teleology in mechanism and thereby do the very thing that the history of modern philosophy says can’t be done. (That’s the main issue in a paper that I’m currently working on.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop
Self referential systems are a big part of DH’s outlook.
It does not imply anything about planning.
oh, it’s sweet that you think that phoodoo, but back in the early 80’s I was discussing Morphic Resonance with drosophila researchers who study morphogenetic fields. I’ve followed Rupert’s “research” ever since. I had to explain to you that Pamela Smart was both Jaytee’s owner and Sheldrake’s research assistant, and that there was no “cameraman”. I tried to discuss Sheldrake’s work with you, but you disappeared.
Classic phoodoo
heh
The word comes from telos-which literally means an ultimate object or aim, a goal. The plan is to achieve that goal.
So now you want to use the word to mean trying to achieve a target or goal without planning to reach a target or goal?
Kantian Naturalist,
I predict you will not be successful in convincing even one person that you can have teleology without an intelligence purpose or plan. Design without a designer.
But believe me, I am more than happy that you are getting the atheists to paint themselves into a corner they don’t want to be in. Why do you think they are resisting the term so much?
I don’t know about Kant, but I am sure Darwin never had the idea of teleology without a God. Was Kant an atheist? I highly doubt it.
No plan is actually required. But sure, you can make up the idea that there was a plan.
Fail!
I’m a life-long atheist and have often pointed out the design element in evolution. You may remember I’ve told you about it a few times already.
The niche, phoodoo. Remember the niche.
ETA https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_niche
Designer without a designer is what you are really advocating. If design needs a designer then designers need one themselves.
Returning to sock-gnome logic. That the universe was created by some power or entity beyond our imagination or comprehension is a hypothesis that can’t be ruled out.
So, allowing for the sake of argument that such a power or entity – let’s call it the Creator – exists, what can we say about it? How does one get from the Creator to, say, the set of moral guidelines, beliefs etc of the Catholic version of God?
My suggestion is human imagination. Diversity of imagination leads to diversity of religious belief.
I think this is what phoodoo fails to understand. We look around at the variety of different claims for different religions and gods and note that they can’t all be true and most contradict others. It’s not that we’re scared to ‘admit’ there might be a god, it just does not seem like one exists, not one as humans have imagined anyway.
I’d like to understand how phoodoo goes from his particular set of beliefs in a particular set of god(s) to advocating putting people in concentration camps. That might clarify things a little.
What set of moral guidelines is that then?
Suppose we found that you are right and everybody else is wrong and the word teleology really should only be used when there is some preconceived plan, then all atheists will be converted to christianity. Nah, just kidding: we will simply adjust by saying there is no teleology in nature, in the sense that you were using the term.
Words do not dictate reality or our ideas about them, so I don’t understand why you do not just accept that other people understand the term differently. That might help the discussion.