Is purpose necessary to acquire any apparently purposeful effects?

For purposes of this discussion.

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Chance = non-teleological causes that happen to result in particular effects via regularities referred to as “lawful” and stochastic in nature.

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Purpose = teleological causes that are intended to result in particular effects; the organization of causes towards a pre-defined future goal.

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My question is: can chance causes generate all of the effects normally associated with purpose,but without purpose? IOW, is purpose necessary to produce all, most, or some apparently purposeful effects, or is purpose, in effect, only an associated sensation by-product or side-effect that isn’t necessary to the generation of any particular effect normally associated with it?

210 thoughts on “Is purpose necessary to acquire any apparently purposeful effects?

  1. madbat089: Side note: I remember you stating in an earlier discussion that you think only a tiny fraction of all humans have what you call libertarian free will. So it is extremely odd that you now think that “generally speaking” engineers and spiders are purposeful, if being purposeful requires free will…

    It’s just obfuscation that can be thrown in when things get a little too clear cut. Apparently a spider can choose to go “free will” or not when it’s programming allows it, and if it has free will it has purpose then. Or something.

    What a load of fucking bollocks.

  2. Simply suggest a better way that also produces identifiably superior results then William. It’s easy.

    I have no idea what you are talking about.

    I’m talking about two different metaphysical first principles (chance and purpose). The only “results” they produce are logical epistemological inferences and conclusions about what “knowldge” is and how it is developed. Inevitably, “chancism” necessitates that whatever is considered knowledge, is considered knowledge by chance; whatever any particular organism identifies as “knowledge” is the necessary definition of what “knowledge” is for that organism.

    Therefore, if I feel like I know god exists, and whatever produces that feeling of “knowledge” is ultimately what produces all feelings/thoughts/definitions/interpretations of what is “knowledge”, then it is a fact that I know god exists by the only valid description of “knowledge” and “fact” under the “chance” first principle.

    Whatever chance causes happen to produce in any case is as valid as whatever chance happens to produce in any other case. If in one case chance causes produce the knowledge that god exists, and in another case chance causes produce the opposite, there is nothing but chance causes to judge either claim by, so both claims are necessarily valid.

    You telling me that what I “know” isn’t “knowledge’, under the chance principle, is like an oak leaf telling a maple leaf that they aren’t the right shape for a leaf.

    I doubt many who advocate chance as first principle really understand the consequences of such a position, but then, chance causes don’t necessarily produce coherent beliefs; in fact, I imagine they rarely do.

  3. William J. Murray: Only, I didn’t ask that question, just as I didn’t ask (and wouldn’t ask) if a pekingese and a labrador were identical.

    I answered “So, inheriting knowledge is not acquiring it?” Nothing to do with dog breeds! Good grief, William; you can be obtuse!

  4. But no religious movement or philosophical viewpoint has shed any light on aspects of reality.

    That would mean that you know what all religious movements and philosophical viewpoints have said about reality, and that you know what reality is, and are able to compare the two. Is that really your position?

  5. William J. Murray: That would mean that you know what all religious movements and philosophical viewpoints have said about reality, and that you know what reality is, and are able to compare the two. Is that really your position?

    Show me a black swan, William. Until you can do that, I do indeed claim no religious movement or philosophical viewpoint has shed any light on aspects of reality.

  6. You said:

    “But human engineers learn their trade. Knowledge and skills are accumulated, shared and passed on. Spiders don’t go to web school, they can build webs without being shown. In fact, their ability to build webs declines with age.”

    I said:

    “Both the spider and the engineer acquired their knowledge of how to engineer things from the same kind of ultimate cause – purposeless atoms and chemicals interacting according to regularities of behavior and stochastic outcomes. That the engineer may feel cognizant of and purposeful in the acquisition and application of such knowledge, and supposedly the spider doesn’t, is irrelevant. I’m sure the spider experiences all sorts of things the engineer doesn’t experience as well; so?”

    You said:

    “But the spider (at least according to the literature I have glanced at) does not acquire knowledge about web construction. It is a heritable trait.

    I asked,

    “So, inheriting knowledge is not acquiring it?”

    You answered:

    “I don’t see the process of adaptation of heritable behavioural traits in a population as identical to learned behaviour in an individual organism, especially with regard to humans and shared recorded experience.”

    I didn’t ask if inheriting knowledge through heritable behavioral traits was identical with learned behavior in an individual organism; I asked if both were not forms of acquiring knowledge., and as such under the chancism paradigm, both ultimately chance forms of acquiring knowledge.

    Whether or not they are “identical” with each other is entirely irrelevant, just as whether or not a pekingese is identical to a labrador is irrelevant when I ask if they are not both dogs.

  7. William J. Murray: That would mean that you know what all religious movements and philosophical viewpoints have said about reality, and that you know what reality is, and are able to compare the two. Is that really your position?

    So now, the argument is that excellent is no better than lousy, on the grounds that neither of them is perfect?

  8. Show me a black swan, William. Until you can do that, I do indeed claim no religious movement or philosophical viewpoint has shed any light on aspects of reality.

    You can make whatever insupportable claims you want. It’s not my job to try and disprove them. However, I was just wondering … you do realize, don’t you, that science began as a philosophical branch of epistemology (and is still considered such, except maybe by dedicated materialists), and is arbited by logic, which is a branch of philosophy, and employs several philosophical principles, such as the principle of parsimony?

    Just wondering.

  9. William J. Murray: I didn’t ask if inheriting knowledge through heritable behavioral traits was identical with learned behavior in an individual organism; I asked if both were not forms of acquiring knowledge., and as such under the chancism paradigm, both ultimately chance forms of acquiring knowledge.

    I’ll answer you more simply, then. No.

  10. Alan Fox: I’ll answer you more simply, then. No.

    Then what is the ultimate (not proximate) cause of the engineer learning, if not chance (as described in the O.P.).

  11. William J. Murray: However, I was just wondering … you do realize, don’t you, that science began as a philosophical branch of epistemology (and is still considered such, except maybe by dedicated materialists), and is arbited by logic, which is a branch of philosophy, and employs several philosophical principles, such as the principle of parsimony?

    Well; science as a pursuit is unaffected, or at least the verifiable, repeatable results of scientific endeavour are unaffected, by the religious or philosophical beliefs of the practitioner.

  12. William J. Murray: William J. Murray on May 2, 2012 at 5:57 pm said:
    Alan Fox: I’ll answer you more simply, then. No.

    Then what is the ultimate (not proximate) cause of the engineer learning, if not chance (as described in the O.P.)

    I don’t know and neither do you. We are all capable of making stuff up, however.

  13. I find the concepts of “will” and “purpose” to be meaningless.

    If I am free to choose, what is it in me that chooses? Is there no cause to my motives? If there is, then the cause of my motives is the cause of my choosing.
    This is another infinite regression.
    It is simpler and more useful to ascribe motives to evolution. Those individuals that choose wisely pass on their genes. It doesn’t solve any ultimate mysteries, but then neither does anything in philosophy or theology.
    The concept of learning doesn’t tell us how the first learner arose, but it does help in analyzing ho learning happens and how it evolves.

  14. William, you are using the word cause in a way that makes no sense.

    In learning systems — and biology is a learning system — the closest thing to an ultimate cause is the functional landscape. that is the bottom of the pond to which the contour of water conforms.

    The process by which the individual molecules of water find their resting place could be described as stochastic, but the conformation is not.

  15. William J. Murray: Therefore, if I feel like I know god exists, and whatever produces that feeling of “knowledge” is ultimately what produces all feelings/thoughts/definitions/interpretations of what is “knowledge”, then it is a fact that I know god exists by the only valid description of “knowledge” and “fact” under the “chance” first principle.

    You are still interpreting what everybody else says inside a projecting of your worldview on everybody else. Just because you can’t imagine to work off of anything else than *first principles* does not mean that everybody else does or needs to, also.

  16. All this is predicated on an obsolete billiard-ball metaphor for causation. It’s an obsolete metaphor, and nothing useful can come of invoking it.

  17. WJM,

    Essentially your question is about First Cause. Can we agree that Science is agnostic on this? If so, then all we have left is opinion. You know that I see things from a TE perspective, others hold a strictly materialist view, and you represent the ID side. What else needs to be said?

    WJM,

    If the purpose of this thread was to explain your views, then you have done that well enough. But if the purpose was to convince skeptics the necessity of God as First Cause, then you ought to know better. You can not convince someone with evidence a question that is ultimately answered by faith.

  18. Why do I always get the impression everyone is trying to guess which shell William has hidden the goalposts under?

    By now, it’s clear that by “chance” William means “everything his god isn’t responsible for”, and in his opinion this is the null set. Of course, nobody else thinks of chance in those terms, but playing games with words is an ID speciality. So we get to play heads I win, tails you lose, and I get to decide how the coin came up AFTER you flip it.

    By now, we’re all going around in the same circle, over and over.

  19. rhampton7: You can not convince someone with evidence a question that is ultimately answered by faith.

    Are you suggesting there is evidence that the ultimate cause of everything is God? If that were so, we would not need faith.

  20. William J. Murray: You can make whatever insupportable claims you want. It’s not my job to try and disprove them. However, I was just wondering … you do realize, don’t you, that science began as a philosophical branch of epistemology (and is still considered such, except maybe by dedicated materialists), and is arbited by logic, which is a branch of philosophy, and employs several philosophical principles, such as the principle of parsimony?Just wondering.

    And you do realise that this philosophy is performed by minds that are made of physical material that obeys the laws of nature?

    Just wondering.

  21. I don’t know and neither do you.

    I never claimed to know, and “knowing” what it factually is is irrelevant to the issue. The question I asked was whether or not “chance” causes, as defined in the O.P., were the ultimate causation of effects we normally refer to as being caused by purpose.

    You have, apparently, answered that question in the negative – that chance (as defined in the O.P.) is not the ultimate cause of all effects (such as: human engineers learning how to engineer something, and then engineering it). I infer from your statements that you consider how spiders come by instinctual traits to be a “by chance” process (distal/ultimate cause), abut how engineers come by their learned knowledge to be some other kind of process.

    However, my definitions of “chance” and “purpose” are fully dichotomous; one is X (purposeful, teleological manipulation of materials and forces towards a goal), and the other is not-X (non-teleological, non-purposeful interactions of materials and forces under all law-like and stochastic processes).

    So, it seems to me, that rather than admit that by excluding not-X, you are necessarily implying X, you have instead chosen to simply stop the interchange with “I don’t know, and neither do you.” That seems to me to be an irrational, a priori bias on display against any “purpose” conclusion, even after you have ruled out non-purpose.

    This is the “bitter pill” of Chancism. If there is no fundamental causation by purpose that is not ultimately caused by chance, then how human engineers make a thing, and how a spider makes a thing, and yes, even how gravity or a rock makes a thing, is the same categorical process with the same ultimate cause driving all effects – chance (as defined in the O.P.,).

  22. And you do realise that this philosophy is performed by minds that are made of physical material that obeys the laws of nature?

    Just wondering.

    You do realize that the idea that their are physical laws, and “minds that are made of physical matter”, are conceptual constructs that depend upon both epistemological and ontological principles, right?

    Just wondering.

  23. William J. Murray: You do realize that the idea that their are physical laws, and “minds that are made of physical matter”, are conceptual constructs that depend upon both epistemological and ontological principles, right?

    Just wondering.

    Wow. A navel with no bottom!

  24. Are you suggesting there is evidence that the ultimate cause of everything is God? If that were so, we would not need faith.

    Evidence is facts interpreted by faith. Faith (fundamental epistemological and ontological principles) always come first. Such as, your faith that there is a physical world exterior to your senses, your faith that you are not experiencing a delusion, and your faith in your free will capacity to purposefully discern fact from fiction without relying on chance, even though you argue the contrary.

    There is no such thing as “evidence” without a heuristic installed to interpret experience through.

  25. Everything is a metaphor, including your principles. Once you accept that it will become easier to talk.

  26. Well, to clarify. Between “evidence” and “faith”, faith always comes first.

  27. Everything is a metaphor, including your principles.

    What is that a metaphor for?

  28. William J. Murray,

    William, it’s been a slow day for me or wouldn’t have got drawn in to the thread. I am with Perushka in not really being interested in “chance” and “purpose” and I don’t think (as you have defined them) they are very coherent concepts. I think answers to life, the universe and everything are not to be found in philosophical musings. Maybe there are no ultimate answers but we can only be certain not to find them if we don’t look.

    Thanks for your comments and I’ll leave it there.

  29. Alan Fox,

    No. There is no physical evidence (left) for God the First Cause.

    But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.

    And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you. Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing. And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God. Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

    Sure would make things easy if God revealed himself to every doubting Thomas and provided physical proof of his existence. But then what would be the value of faith?

    And that’s the problem facing WJM. He earnestly wants to convince you with a evidence-based argument but can not command God to present himself.

  30. rhampton7,

    But then what would be the value of faith?

    I am not sure if there is value in faith in general, though I grant that faith in specific instances may be useful. I have faith that my wife will have supper ready when I get home but later it may or may not be confirmed by evidence.

    He earnestly wants to convince you with a evidence-based argument but can not command God to present himself.

    But his comments don’t indicate that at all. I interpret them as “evidence schmevidence”.

  31. But his comments don’t indicate that at all. I interpret them as “evidence schmevidence”.

    So, you don’t have the time or inclination to involve yourself any further with the actual topic under discussion, but you do have the time and inclination to post remarks characterizing me in a negative light?

  32. Oh please, William. Your very own comments don’t advance the subject or bring clarity, and they paint a negative picture of you.

  33. William J. Murray: You do realize that the idea that their are physical laws, and “minds that are made of physical matter”, are conceptual constructs that depend upon both epistemological and ontological principles, right?Just wondering.

    Which exist in or are emergent from physical substrates, right?

    Just wondering.

  34. William J. Murray: So, you don’t have the time or inclination to involve yourself any further with the actual topic under discussion, but you do have the time and inclination to post remarks characterizing me in a negative light?

    You have earned this, in spades. I’m with Alan. This discussion is less rewarding than talking to the wall. At least the wall isn’t suffering from ineducable delusions, and isn’t expected to listen anyway.

    Anyway, why not go pray at something? For you, the wall is fine, since it’s whatever you want to believe it is. Or you might consider trading your god in on some different ones,. Who knows, they might make more sense.

  35. Rich,

    Well said. Especially since WJM carefully avoids, as usual, answering most requests for clarification of his statements and positions.

  36. Alan Fox,

    I think in his zeal to convince skeptics, he’s lost sight of the necessary limitations imposed by evidentiary-based arguments. Stephen Meyer is the prime example of how this religious impulse to spread the gospel turned into a concerted effort to redefine Science and Evidence.

    The Origin of Life and the Death of Materialism (1996)

    Alfred North Whitehead once said that “when we consider what religion is for mankind and what science is, it is no exaggeration to say that the future course of history depends upon the decision of this generation as to the relations between them.” Whitehead spoke early in this century at a time when most elite intellectuals believed that science contradicted classical theism with its traditional belief in a divine creation, the uniqueness of man and the immortality of the human soul. For many intellectuals a scientifically-informed world view was a materialistic world view in which the mere mention of entities such as God, free will, mind, soul or purpose seemed inherently disreputable. Materialism denied evidence of any intelligent design in nature and any ultimate purpose to human existence. As Whitehead’s contemporary Bertrand Russell put it, “man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving” and which predestine him “to extinction in the vast death of the solar system.”

    The better tactic – and the honest one – is to call out metaphysical claims made by scientists for what they are. It’s one thing to believe that there is no God or higher purpose, but another thing entirely to say that it is a factual certainty.

  37. Which exist in or are emergent from physical substrates, right?

    Exist? What does exist mean? Emergent? What does that mean? What are physical substrates and how are they identified and contextualized? Who and what are you talking to? What do you assume about them?

    All you’ve done in your question is employ several philosophical concepts, Rich. To make your point, try making a comment about the nature of existence or knowledge without using, implicating, or necessarily drawing from a philosophical (epistemology, ontology, logic, ethics) principles or concepts, and also make it in a way that doesn’t imply that your posts are mutually observable and discernible (consensual empiricism) and that you and I exist as something that can successfully and deliberately arbit the meaning of those posts (entities with free will).

    The problem is, you cannot even think cogently about anything without arranging concepts into philosophical constructs and assuming they are valid.

  38. This discussion is less rewarding than talking to the wall.

    And yet, here you are.

  39. William – there’s a bigger point I was hoping you’d get to on your own. But I can see you need some hand holding. ‘Knowing’ is hard. And yet we must get on with things, so some things that we are very confident in, we accept because they allow us to live our life coherently. Now I’m not so much talking about ‘god loves me’, which you may find personally comforting but more about ‘I can’t levitate off this building, I can’t drink gasoline, I can’t run through walls’. Even if this stuff isn’t ‘real’ through the lens of sophist wankery, we ALL live our lives like it is.

    the problem with your guff is that it never intersects with reality, or only does if you want it to. Reality is inscrutable for you. And philosophy is induced from observations about the physical world, and is contingent. Oh noes!!!! YOU CANT KNOW!!!!11111one

  40. William J. Murray: All you’ve done in your question is employ several philosophical concepts, Rich

    Could these concepts exist without a physical substrate, William?

  41. So, something to note; it appears that as the conversation reached the point where the inevitable (and apparently disagreeable) consequence of Chancism was brought out, advocates of chancism bailed on the topic,and instead chose to start talking about god, science, my motivations and character, etc., seemingly to avoid the point at hand.

    If there is nothing, ultimately, but chance causes at work, then nothing anyone can say, or think, or believe, or hold as knowledge is anything other than a chance result.

    This makes “knowledge” nothing more, essentially, than dots on dice. Roll the dice, and that is what you “know”, whether it has any correlation to the physical world, or any reality, or not. The idea that something “correlates to the physical world” is just another set if dots on the die; the idea that “correlating to the physical world” is important or meaningful is just another set of dots on the die. Belief in empiricism as arbiter of reality, or of knowledge, is just another sequence of die rolls. The sensation that one’s methodology has been “proven” is just another outcome generated by a sequence of die rolls.

    And so, all “knowledge” has been necessarily equivocated to chance thoughts and feelings. Everything anyone “experiences” or “feels” is knowledge, is knowledge with no overseer or arbiter to say otherwise; because all arbiters and all overseers are themselves slaves of chance.

    The “self” cannot arbit the correspondence of chance outcomes to reality, because all the “self” is, under chancism, is yet another chance outcome. How about logic? Nope, just another structure compiled by chance.

    Unless one has a referrant other than, ultimately, chance, then all roads and outcomes are produced by chance, and the term “knowledge” becomes a deceptive euphemism for “whatever chance causes biomechanically generated in my brain as something I feel I “know”, which would be the same categorical case for the scientist, the fundamentalist, and the guy locked up in the looney bin.

  42. William J. Murray: The problem is, you cannot even think cogently about anything without arranging concepts into philosophical constructs and assuming they are valid.

    What an absurd notion.
    May I ask whether in your opinion animals think?

    If yes, do they then also “arrange concepts into philosophical constructs and assume that they are valid”?

    If no, how do you suggest that they accomplish solving cognitive problems (they have been shown to do so)?

  43. Could these concepts exist without a physical substrate, William?

    I don’t know. I do know that you and I cannot even identify, much less talk about, such concepts without employing philosophical principles.

  44. William J. Murray: This makes “knowledge” nothing more, essentially, than dots on dice.

    I thought this thread was about the effects of purposeful actions. Nothing in this little rant has anything to do with purpose or chance as causes for human designing and building activities.

  45. William J. Murray: I don’t know. I do know that you and I cannot even identify, much less talk about, such concepts without employing philosophical principles.

    Okay – so you don’t know for the first part and if we’re being honest you don’t know the second part: You’re inducing based on your experience of philosophy and we both know that that experience itself may not be real.

    So just posts “I don’t know” from now on. It’s more honest and has a greater information density.

  46. William, you say above

    “If there is nothing, ultimately, but chance causes at work, then nothing anyone can say, or think, or believe, or hold as knowledge is anything other than a chance result.”

    This, I think, is wrong.

    I think it most likely that the brain I possess evolved by any or all of the mechanisms thought or shown to be involved in evolution; and yes, chance events played a very large part in that process

    That brain acquired the ability to house a mind, which in concert with the body, and the knowledge and experience of its own and of others it can communicate with, can form and execute purpose.

    But to say that such a purpose is the result of chance events is wrong. Sure, it is colourable to say that the ABILITY to form and execute purpose looks like the end result of that series of chance events (conditioned as the are by the constraints and opportunities imposed and offered from time to time by the environment) which is evolution.
    Concomitant with that ability is the ability concurrently to have foresight, and to communicate with others in search of relevant information – which i turn add up to having the ability to reduce, even eliminate the effects of chance on the decisions we make to help achieve our purpose
    Purpose is formed by intelligent mind. The intelligent mind may well be the result of chance processes and selections. That is not ground for saying that purpose itself is such a result

    In fact, I think you are conflating “function” qith “purpose”

  47. Allan : I have not seen anyone claim that Artificial Selection is a subset of NS sensu Darwin.

    WJM: Then it’s a good thing I didn’t claim that anyone else claimed that AS was a subset of NS sensu Darwin. Whatever that means.

    “Another common usage is to follow sensu by a person’s name. Thus “sensu Smith” means “in the sense intended by or used by Smith”.

    I quote:

    WJM:And yet, many here believe that “artificial” selection is a subset of “natural” selection.

    So, that is you NOT cheerfully claiming that others make the claim that AS is a subset of NS is it? Of course, you did not add “sensu Darwin”. I felt it necessary to add that qualifier because most on the ‘evo’ side mean NS in Darwin’s sense, and I thought that a point worth emphasising for clarity. So yes, you did not use those exact words. And you said “believe”, rather than “claim”. So you didn’t say exactly that, in exactly those words, and therefore … what?

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