There are a few reasons this OP could be a flop.
1. It links to an article by Ed Feser.
2. It raises issues of teleology and teleonomy (again).
In any event, for those interested in the subject I think Feser’s article is worth a read.
Feser:
…there are at least five approaches one could take to the question of whether teleology is (or is not) real, and at least five levels in nature at which one might (or might not) identify a distinct sort of teleology.
Fourth, teleology might be claimed to exist in inorganic phenomena in a way that does not involve the flourishing of a whole substance (as in living things) but still involves complex causal processes. David Oderberg proposes the rock cycle and the water cycle as examples. Fifth, teleology might exist at the simplest level in the form of an efficient cause’s mere “directedness” toward its characteristic effect or range of effects. Contemporary philosopher Paul Hoffman has called this last kind the “stripped-down core notion” of teleology, and it is essentially what contemporary metaphysicians like John Heil, George Molnar, and U.T. Place have in mind when they attribute “physical intentionality” or “natural intentionality” to causal powers.
I hold to teleology at all levels, including the “stripped-down core notion” of teleology.
In other words, it’s a belief that you’ve no evidence for. It’s just an article of faith.
How tedious.
What I don’t understand about the “it’s all teleology all of the time” crowd is why, if the signs of teleology are all around us those signs have to be to so, well, vague.
If god wanted us to know that it made the universe I’m sure it could have arranged something unambiguous. Even an apology for the state of things (a la HHGTTG) would clarify things somewhat.
You just want to have your cake and eat it Mung. The universe is obviously designed and teleological, but not too obviously or what use would faith be? Why not make it so obvious that the doubters are also convinced? After all, once you’ve started to make it obvious why stop before everyone is convinced?
At least this clarifies that Mung is not an ID supporter of the “Aliens could have done it” stripe. It’s nice when the pretense drops, even unintentionally. ID for Mung is IDC for everyone else.
I’m not sure if there’s much of a point to this thread.
I disagree with Pigliucci’s distinction between “teleology” and “teleonomy”.
The trouble with “teleology” is that it comes with a lot of baggage. You can see some of that baggage in Feser’s post. I take the use of “teleonomy” to be an attempt to have teleology with the unnecessary baggage stripped away.
But the opposite of teleology comes with untestable claims. For example no one knows how to test the claim that ATP synthase arose via stochastic processes such as natural selection, drift and/ or neutral construction. That means the concept is outside of science.
I think that Pigliucci and Feser are talking completely past each other.
Pigliucci is interested in an epistemological problem: what is the explanatory role of teleological language? Feser is concerned with a metaphysical question: what are the different kinds of teleological causation?
Moreover, Pigliucci is interested in the fact (and I agree with him on this) that teleological language is indispensable in generating testable hypotheses in biology, whereas it plays no role in generating testable hypotheses in physics. (Feser actually admits as much when he qualifies inorganic teleology with “arguably”.)
Feser’s “objection” is actually a switch in conversation. His concern is with the metaphysical underpinnings of physics. Whether or not we should agree with what “contemporary metaphysicians like John Heil, George Molnar, and U.T. Place have in mind when they attribute ‘physical intentionality’ or ‘natural intentionality’ to causal powers”, that’s quite different from what physicists are doing. By contrast, Pigliucci’s concern is precisely with the epistemological difference between what physicists are doing and what biologists are doing.
First, not everything is teleological. Second, those things that are teleological are hardly vague.
I think you should have linked to Pigliucci’s article in you OP.
To say I am not a fan of Feser, his misogyny or his politics is a bit of an understatement. I think KN’s assessment is about right. Feser is unable to comprehend what Pigliucci is talking about. His critique is a similar sort of snow job that he tried to pull when attacking Jerry Coyne. Feser can be safely ignored unless he begins to gain some influence outside the very tight circle of conservative Catholicism.
But fruitless to argue about. One either has a religious view on the world or one doesn’t.
Probably. But the link is right there at the top of Feser’s article.
And regardless of whether Feser is talking past Pigliucci (and I don’t grant that he is) I think Feser’s article is worth reading on it’s own. That’s how I was approaching it anyways.
What does that have to do with teleology?
KN accepts a limited teleology. So, apparently, does Pigliucci. Is that because of their religious view of the world?
If you have a religious view, it may offer some kind of “ground-of-being” or “first cause” that some can accept as “why there is a universe”. If that isn’t teleology perhaps you can correct my misunderstanding.
Good for you, Mung. Glad to see you yet again heralding the output of the odious far-right paranoid fantasists as “worth reading”.
Oh? I thought you held to teleology at all levels? What’s an example of something that’s not teleological then?
I think that teleology is true of life: each and every individual living organism, whether single-celled or multi-celled, is a goal-directed unity. Since that includes even the simplest bacterium, it turns out to not be a terribly interesting feature. But it is what distinguishes cells from crystals and clouds. In Feser’s terms, I accept “Aristotelian teleological realism” about “immanent causation”, although my own thinking about teleology is primarily indebted to Francisco Varela and Mark Okrent.
At the end of his essay, Pigliucci says,
to which Feser responds:
I think that both Pigliucci and Feser are mistaken.
Pigliucci’s mistake is to conflate consciousness with intentionality. It might be true that consciousness and intentionality are inseparable, and even (as some philosophers have held) inconceivably inseparable, but they are still distinct concepts. Intentionality is the directedness or aboutness of thought and action; consciousness is the awareness or “how-it-feels-ness” of experience. It is intentionality that needs a Darwin, not consciousness.
I take that to mean that cognitive science needs to naturalize intentionality: to show how intentionality is causally realized in a certain class of suitably organized thermodynamical systems. There are several competing approaches to this, but it is an active line of empirically informed philosophical research (or philosophically informed scientific research, if you prefer). My own approach follows the lines sketched out by Okrent (in Rational Animals) and Rouse (in Articulating the World) but reinforced with the kind of neurobiological mechanisms explored by Alva Noe and Andy Clark.
I’m not saying that we have a completely satisfactory naturalistic theory of intentionality, but I think that Pigliucci’s conflation of consciousness and intentionality obscures how promising our best current approaches really are. Conversely, Feser is almost openly dismissive of naturalizing intentionality, but I do not believe he is actually familiar with the relevant literature. There’s a lot of really good work out there that isn’t captured by the stale contrast between Rosenberg’s Atheist’s Guide to Reality and Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos. But to appreciate it one would have to look at the intellectual world beyond the blogosphere.
Feser is almost correct when he says that “Darwin accounts for adaptation is precisely by arguing that it is not really teleological at all but merely teleonomic”. What Darwin showed is that speciation is not itself a teleological process: there is no goal to the process of speciation itself, and hence no need to posit a Designer to account for that process (if one holds a Platonic theory of teleology). But I think Feser badly exaggerates the conceptual distance between Aristotle and Darwin. Okrent offers a more accurate assessment:
Feser’s Scholastic teleological realism, combined with the Epicurean interpretation of Darwin promoted by Jacques Monod and Richard Dawkins, prevents him from seeing how closely Aristotle — the real Aristotle, and not the Christianized Aristotle of Thomism — aligns with the real Darwin.
Feser’s misunderstanding of Darwinism continues here:
The so-called “anti-teleological trend of modern scientific theorizing” is a trend with regard to physics and chemistry. It is not a trend with regard to biology, and certainly not with regard to Darwinian, neo-Darwinian, or neo-neo-Darwinian explanations in biology.
What does seem right in Feser’s remarks is simply this: distinctively human kinds of intentionality/consciousness (“sapient intentionality”) evolved from the kinds of intentionality/consciousness that we find in other animals (“sentient intentionality”), and both should be understood in terms of immanent teleology distinctive of individual living things.
As for what teleology itself is, my current best guess — based on work by Stuart Kauffman and Francisco Varela — is that teleology is just what one gets when an autocatalytic network of molecules is surrounded by a semi-permeable membrane. That instantiates the kind of organizational closure and thermodynamic openness that characterizes the organism-environment transaction.
In other words, the goal directedness of a living organism is just its temporary evasion of entropy. But this is teleology and not ‘teleonomy’ because this is a real feature of the organism; it is not an anthropomorphic projection.
LoL! @ Acartia- YOU can’t do it, Acartia. Peer-review is devoid of such a test which means your scientists can’t even do it.
But I am sure that you will ignore all of that and prattle on.
Instead of attacking me and ID perhaps you should focus on all of the shortcomings of your position. The way to kill ID is by demonstrating natural selection, drift and neutral construction are up to the tasks at hand. Too bad you and yours can’t do so. And I understand why that upsets you.
Must be a slow day in the toaster repair business.
Thank you for proving my point, Acartia.
How will this kill ID? Even if I was able to take a clonal strain of E. coli that could not eat citrate, ran a multi-year experiment, and the clone developed the ability to eat citrate as the result of several random mutations (hmmm, where have I read that before?), you would simply say that the ability to do this was the result of front-loaded design. Although, any rational being without a completely unsupported religions belief would consider this to be compelling evidence for the development of new function through random mutation, natural selection and/or drift.
I spy guano-worthy comments. There is noyau for that sort of thing. Please respect the site rules from now on.
Gee whiz, one of ID’s main claims is that natural selection, drift and neutral construction are not capable of producing the diversity of biology we observe. And that includes biological systems and subsystems.
And no one can show that happenstance change was at the root of Lenski’s E. coli gaining the ability to utilize citrate under aerobic conditions. And that was taking an existing gene and putting them under the control of a different promoter. No new proteins were formed and no new systems were formed.
Lenski has shown us the severe limitations of evolutionary processes.
No, Lenski has shown us the severe limitations of the ability of some (like Joe Gallien) who are mentally incapable of rational thought.
By the way. This is not guano as I have only insulted someone who we all know is a moron, and who is definitely not Frankie.
Acartia’s projection is duly noted
The biggest thing that Lenski has to offer is citrate being utilized in an aerobic scenario. The E. coli could already utilize citrate in an anaerobic scenario. No new proteins, no new systems and no new functions. Just an existing function that now works in the presence of O2. Everything to utilize citrate already existed, including the transport protein.
Only a true-believer would see that as some sort of help for unguided evolution.
Using citrate aerobically is not a new function? Try sticking your head under water and try to respire. They both involve the transport of oxygen across a liquid media. Let me know how it works for you. But don’t just give up after a minute. Try it for at least ten.
It is an existing function used in a new environment. All of the parts were already present.
How sad is Acartia?
LoL! The E. coli could always pass O2, it just couldn’t pass citrate in the presence of O2. The change had nothing to do with respiration. The change allowed citrate to be transported because the gene allowing for the protein to transport it was duplicated and put under the control of a promoter that was turned on in the presence of O2.
Holy cow, Acartia, that was a totally blown post. Nice own goal, champ
Fish could always breathe, they just did it in water. No new functions here. Only microfunctionism. Move along.
And Richie strikes out with its usual “short, repetitive, unresponsive and unsupported soundbites”.
I asked the following question of both Joe and Virgil. I wonder if Frankie can provide an answer that is less moronically stupid.
How does ID explain the evolution of nylonase?
Nylonase- built-in response to an environmental cues. See Spetner 1997, 2014
How does evolutionism explain it? “It just happened, man.”
OK, you obviously have nothing more to say than those mental midgets, Joe and Virgil. And I had such high hopes for you.
How do you have a “built in response” to a purely man-made chemical without invoking an omniscient God?
So man made carbon? Is that your argument, Acartia?
The molecule is artificial but all of the atoms and bonds are natural.
And tell me, did the CSI after this change:
A) Stay the same
B) Decrease
C) Increase
And was that change a built in response then?
If so, care to explain why only one lineage was blessed with that change and not all the rest? If it was in fact built in, as you suggest, I’d expect all lines to change in the same way.
The evidence demonstrates it was not a built in change, but I guess actual evidence is not that important when belief is concerned.
Thank you for confirming what I, and everyone here, suspected would be the answer to my bolded question.
How does evolutionism explain nylonase? “It just happened, man.”
Enough said…
And it isn’t my fault that you guys cannot look up my reference to see the explanation in full.
No OM, all lines would not change the same way as variety is the key. Also the change as not essential as other line survived just fine without it. It isn’t as if I haven’t been over and over all of your questions many times already. Perhaps you need some new and relevant questions. Or better yet just step up and support the claims of your position. Attacking ID doesn’t help you.
Do all students get the same answers on all tests?
Over at Alan Fox’s blog our favorite toaster repairman Joe Gallien confidently claimed not all life is designed. Apparently viruses like Ebola and Zika evolved because of genetic entropy. Evolved from what Joe couldn’t say. I wonder what Frankie thinks? 🙂
Wrong again Adapa.
How does evolutionism explain viruses? “They just happen, man.”
All science so far!
So you think Joe Gallien is wrong? The Ebola and Zika viruses are designed? For what purpose?
Wrong again, Adapa. Keep fishing.
I don’t blame you Frankie for not wanting to defend Joe’s stupidity. Joe Gallien is one of the dumbest YECs to ever post on the net.
Don’t underestimate our buddy Joe. He is definitely THE DUMBEST YEC to ever post on the net. But why did you limit this to YECs? He is obviously one of the dumbest people, regardless of faith, to post on the net.
Some context- Definition of “YEC”, as used by the “A” holes – someone who can properly assess the evidence and come to a rational inference.
I say that because Joe Gallien isn’t a young earth creationist. He doesn’t even care about the Bible. Go to his blog and ask him. Or sit around like gossipy old hags and make shit up to make yourself feel better.
Frankie, why do you get defensive when we talk about Joe? I have commented on Joe’s blog occasionally but I usually try to avoid blogs that keep all commenters in moderation. It speaks to an insecure need to control the conversation.
Then in what sense is it a “pre-programmed” response?
Yeah, just a creationist. I know!
Of course he is. Joe’s always telling people how all the evidence supports Baraminology. That’s the YEC “science” of Biblical kinds from the Garden of Eden.
Science tells us the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. How old do you think the Earth is Frankie?
Huh, what do you know, us dumb ID’sist have been fooled all along with all this talk of biology simply being the physics of the world we live in. But nope, KN and Pigliucci are here to tell you they are two very different phenomenon. Get it, simple right?
Oh wait, maybe you thought you got it, because then there is this:
So its just what you get! Just happens, shit just happens, because of, you know, physics, and what not (please don’t ask what is the what not-its not physics ok?).
But hey, I certainly agree with Pigliucci, it is very useful to have language which sounds like teleology, but isn’t teleology, when speaking of evolution, because without that, evolutionists look like they are bat shit crazy when they say what they really mean.
“It all just happened by accident. Its just what physics does. I know I know, it all looks like it was planned, in fact it looks so dam planned that if we keep calling it an accident of physics people are going to laugh at us and think we are nuts. I got it, I got, telenomics! If we use that word we don’t have to say accidents, then they might not notice? Shit happens. Telenomics!”
In other words from now on, every time a biology paper says that a feature was designed for a certain purpose in animals, like an Octopus changing its body shape and color to look like its surrounding immediately, what they really are saying is that it LOOKS like it was designed for that purpose, so please allow us to say it was designed for that purpose, but we don’t really mean it, wink wink…telenomics!
Telenomics. Definition-Accidents that don’t look like accidents.