In the ‘Moderation’ thread, William J Murray tried to make a case for ideological bias among evolutionary scientists by referencing a 2006 Gil Dodgen post, in which numerous authors emphasise the lack of teleology within the evolutionary process. I thought this might merit its own OP.
I disagree that authors are showing a metaphysical bias by arguing against teleology. I wrote
Evolutionary processes, conventionally defined (ie, variations and their changes in frequency due to differential survival and reproduction), do not have goals. If there IS an entity with goals that is also directing, that’s as may be, but the processes of evolution carry on regardless when it isn’t. It is important to erase the notion of teleology from a student’s mind in respect of evolutionary mechanisms of adaptation, and most of those quotes appear to have that aim. Organisms don’t, on the best evidence available, direct their own evolution.
To which WJM made the somewhat surprising rejoinder: “how do you know this”? Of course the simple answer is that I qualified my statement ‘on the best evidence available’ – I didn’t claim to know it. But there is a broader question. Is there any sense in which evolutionary processes could, even in principle, be teleological? I’d say not. You have a disparate collection of competing entities. Regardless whether there is a supervening entity doing some directing, the process of differential survival/reproduction/migration cannot itself have goals.
An example of evolution in action: the Chemostat.
The operator of a chemostat has a goal – often, to create a pure cell line. The process by which this is achieved is by simultaneous addition and removal of medium, which causes purification by random sampling, which is evolution (a form of genetic drift). How can that process have a goal? There is no collusion between the cells in the original medium to vote one to be the sole ancestor of all survivors. How do I know this? That would be a pretty daft question. I think it would be incumbent on the proponent to rule it in, rather than for me to rule it out.
Then you haven’t read a lick of the fields called ‘evolutionary economics,’ ‘evolutionary psychology’ or ‘socio-cultural evolution.’ Teleology simply cannot be avoided in those fields wrt change-over-time and ‘selection’.
When you speak of ‘THE evolutionary process’ in the singular, do you mean (intentionally or unintentionally) not to include those fields?
If not, then perhaps you are simply not aware of the views of the so-called “greatest evolutionist since Charles Darwin” (Ruse 2006), Theodosius Dobzhansky:
If you are aware of Dobzhansky’s, J. Huxley’s, E.O. Wilson’s M. Harris’, D.T. Campbell’s, S. Sanderson’s, G. Hodgson’s, et al. views about ‘evolutionism’, or even the notion of ‘generalized Darwinism’, is there some kind of ‘science bias’ thing going in what Allan Miller suggests re: teleology where only ‘natural sciences’ count as ‘sciences,’ i.e. ideologically naturalistic science is the only possible kind of science worth discussing (or as some people would prefer, the only kind of science even possible to discuss)?
p.s. in no way am I defending the IDist, quasi-theist quack that the OP refers to; that imo has nothing to do with a credible or scholarly position regarding teleology
First, I think that there’s no difference that makes a difference between “I know that P” and “on the best evidence, one is entitled to assert that P”. Thinking that there’s a difference here suggests that “knowledge = certainty”, and that way lies total skepticism according to which no one knows anything.
Second, there’s a lively debate among philosophers of biology as to how much teleological language we need to get biological explanations off the ground. (Dennett has a new book coming out about teleology and biology. He’s not a realist about teleology, but he’s not a realist about much of anything.) My own view is that something like Weber and Varela’s “Life After Kant” (paywall, but the PDF is available free on-line if you search for it) and Okrent’s Rational Animals show us a really nice way forward to seeing how to make sense of teleology. (And then there’s “What makes biological organisation teleological?” and many similar articles, the hypothesis of facilitated variation
In short, there are lots of ways in which teleology is indispensable to biology without rejecting the basic Darwinian insight that the sources of variation cannot predict how the environment will change and hence cannot predict what traits will and won’t be adaptive.
It depends on what one means by words such as “teleology” and “purpose”. There’s a lot of disagreement over that.
I attempted to give an account of purpose and teleology in a series of blog posts. If I use that as a guide, then I am inclined to say that the evolution of a population is teleological, where the underlying purpose is survival of the population in the face of environmental change. But that’s a very broad notion of purpose. I don’t see any basis for the kind of narrow purpose that religions typically argue for.
It seems to be the last gasp of the IDC who is trying to engage on a level playing field. They grant us everything but add on the end “but you don’t know if random is really random” and take it all back again.
If WJM and his ilk think that is some sort of victory, I’m happy to grant that to them.
Gregory, I assume you are aware that Darwin attributed the idea of natura selection to Adam Smith’s invisible hand (although not naming Smith). Smith was rather clear that the hand of selection operated without regard to the best laid plans of mice and men.
The shape of the future is always a surprise to those who arrive.
Chalk KN up to another one who likely hasn’t read a lick of ‘evolutionary’ thought in those ‘other’ fields. For KN, as for many others, this is mainly, if not only, a conversation about biology. Cut off anything else that doesn’t ‘count’ for that PoV.
These may involve change over time, but they are not evolutionary processes in the same way that biological evolution is. Yes, teleology may be involved in the study of the subjects that you list, but I don’t see where it comes into play, or is of any value, in evolutionary biology.
It doesn’t really matter if mutations are random. We know from Lensky et al that vastly more mutations occur than are fixed.
Same in economic activity and in culture. Vastly more ideas are produced than take root. Humans do imagine futures and try to bring them about, but evolution is smarter than humans. And it’s possible that in the long run — millennia — that humans will vanish.
Acartia: biology is constrained by chemistry. There are other evolutionary substrates, including computational ones. One feature they all have in common is that the selecting environment is too complex to model completely. Which constrains any attempt to seek goals.
Gregory,
Yes and no. I can agree to some extent with that nice quote from Dobzhansky you provided:
But when “evolutionism” influences the social as well as physical sciences, the result is going to be much closer to Dewey and to Nietzsche.
Dewey’s emphasis on experimentalism and pragmatism (some of you might be interested in Dewey’s “The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy“). (There’s also a very good book, Evolution’s First Philosopher: John Dewey and the Continuity of Nature.)
While Nietzsche’s relation to Darwinism is much more complicated, some scholars (e.g. Ansell-Pearson) have argued that his own views are much closer to contemporary evolutionary theory than Nietzsche himself was able to recognize. I myself suspect that genealogy, in Nietzsche and in Foucault, developed as an extension of the anti-teleological orientation of Darwinism to our understanding of history. that’s a conjecture on my part — I haven’t tracked down all the sources necessary to make my case.
It’s not that I’m not interested in the human sciences — I am a philosopher, after all! — and trying to do justice to the uniqueness of human rationality while at the same time situating rationality within the natural world is precisely what I’m doing. That’s why I was talking about animal inference, animal concepts, and so on — because I think we can better understand what makes us unique when we understand what we do share with other animals.
For example, yesterday I discovered this interesting bit of research:
I think this confirms nicely other research by Sterelny on cooperative foraging as an ecological niche unique to hominids and by Tomasello on forms of shared intentionality unique to humans beings (among living primates). Right now I’m interested in the deep conceptual relation between inference and intentionality, with the hope of showing that shared intentionality results in shared inferences, and that shared (or shareable) inferences is describable as rationality.
If cooperative foraging drove the evolution of shared intentionality, and shared intentionality involves shared inferences, and shared inferences are essential to what Sellars and Brandom call “the game of giving and asking for reasons”, then — just maybe! — we can say that uniquely human forms of reasoning evolved as a result of the need for improved social cooperation in light of the ecological pressures on Pleistocene hominids. (It’s a thought that would bring a smile to Dewey’s face.)
All of this requires — bringing us back to our main topic here — recognizing that biological teleology is a real thing, and is the evolutionary and developmental precursor of real intentionality.
KN: the phrase “evolved as a result of need” violates some basic assumptions about evolution. Everything that is alive is already adapted and has survived for geological time. When need arises, the most likely outcome is extinction.
I responded to Allan Miller in the other thread:
It seems to me that evolutionary processes and phenomena are often more practically served by utilizing teleological and design terminology and interpretive constructs. It also seems to me that many scientists insist that such characterizations are not “real”, but are metaphors and analogies, while simultaneously insisting that materialist characterizations are not metaphors and analogies. Like when they insist there is no evolutionary teleology, or that evolution proceeds blindly or without purpose
Insisting on either as the factual, real state of certain processes is a metaphysical bias.
Gregory,
I was quite clear that I was referring to the biological processes of variation and differential survival/reproduction. Unnecessary equivocation or a pointless ‘gotcha’ – let the reader decide.
Said as somebody who has no interest in science per se.
Citation please.
Or, more accurately, they insist there is no evidence for such. But accuracy is not particularly a concern for one who does not think evidence matters.
Yes, a bias towards reality. As you do not have this bias (reality is whatever WJM says it is) it’s understandable this confuses you.
Why can’t the answer you gave for dice be applicable here? Evolution certainly seems to proceed blindly or without purpose, you accept a die as being random enough for the game what’s different about evolution?
Then “the (biological) evolutionary process” would have sufficed. Likewise, “Is there any sense in which (biological) evolutionary processes could, even in principle, be teleological? I’d say not.”
Do you deny that people theorize ‘other’ than strictly ‘biological’ processes as evolutionary, Allan? No, you don’t. So, be clear then.
If you simply aren’t aware of those other fields in which ‘evolutionary’ processes are regularly discussed that are considered ‘teleological’, then why not just say so? It’s better for people to know that clearly than for you to pretend (by absence of clarification) to have knowledge that you actually don’t have. Equivocation or laziness on your part, the communicative result is the same.
Gregory, I looked back at the OP and found it devoted entirely to biological populations. You have simply tried to hijack a biology thread. And I’m afraid I fell for it.
So, petrushka, you actually ‘believe’ that *all* evolution is biological evolution? Iow, there is no ‘evolution’ that is not ‘biological evolution’?
Obviously, to even question “ideological bias” among “evolutionary scientists” is highly myopic if it only deals with ONE field in the academy among 100s.
If Allan wants to say “ONLY evolutionary biology” then let him directly say it. That there are many so-called (self-labelled) ‘evolutionary scientists’ & ‘evolutionists’ who imply or directly impute teleology that are not biologists needn’t then impact his myopic claim any longer.
Allan Miller said:
You are once again mistaking your own a priori ontological premise which characterizes the process as “not having teleology or purpose” as being the de facto state of reality, and instead of being tasked with supporting your own characterization, insist on shifting the burden onto those who are not even proposing a competing metaphysical perspective. In other words, you’re claiming your metaphysical bias is the correct bias because you can’t imagine how things could possibly be any different.
That is how deeply embedded in your metaphysical assumptions you apparently are; you think that anyone who questions your materialist metaphysical characterizations are “daft”. A lot of great science was done under an entirely different ontological premise, Allan. For much of the history of science, the ontological premise was that science was discovering the mind and works of god, and that god infused all of creation with purpose and teleology.
I’m not suggesting we go back to that ontology – I’m suggesting we quit formalizing any particular ontology in the name of science and stick to figuring out what actually works. We don’t need the NCSE running around policing terms and phrasings used by scientists because they injure some faction’s ontological perspective.
Who is this “we” you speak of?
Yes, you are right. The sequence of numbers generated by throwing a die has teleology and purpose.
One can only imagine the complete lack of philosophical and scientific progress if the ranks of historical philosophers were filled with William.
It’s easy to criticize, somewhat harder to be constructive. Some people never manage it.
Kantian Naturalist,
That’s not really the point. By “how do you know this?” WJM was evidently hinting that there is a possiblility that an actual state-of-affairs exists in which evolutionary processes themselves have goals, and we simply suffer from incomplete information. But one could equally well say the wind has purpose, or a sausage possesses a goal. If one says “they don’t”, and the rejoinder is “how do you know?”, we can only say “on the best evidence available”. In such a situation, it really is incumbent on the proponent of an unknown mechanism to provide some evidence for it.
Teleological language is perfectly acceptable. A tree ‘tries’ to grow towards the light, genes ‘try’ to lever themselves into the next generation. But equally, it is important to emphasise to students that they are not ‘really’ trying. If a student tried to claim that the giraffe’s neck stretched because of a succession of attempts to reach higher leaves over the generations, that student would be displaying a poor grasp of the evolutionary process. And that was the point of my objection to Murray – he has mistaken attempts to accurately portray known evolutionary processes (variation, migration, allele frequency change) with attempts to indoctrinate students against possible other evolutionary factors (Designers, etc).
Gregory,
Since
1) I defined the evolutionary process as variation with differential survival and reproduction,
2) the linked article was entirely devoted to quotes from biological evolutionary textbooks, and
3) Murray’s beef was about ideological bias in the role of teleology in non-human settings
… I felt my meaning to be perfectly clear.
But I am happy to provide this further clarification if I was in error.
William J. Murray,
If it is materialistically biased to consider it the case that the cells in a chemostat have no purpose of their own in promoting one of their lineages to purity, then I guess I am so biased.
What extra insight does your unfettered mind gain on the process of bacterial purification, from the perspective of the entities themselves? What would be the fundamental difference between a chemostat and (say) chromatography, in terms of a non-materialist teleology?
Don’t you think it would be ‘daft’ to say that different molecules really do want to travel at different speeds through a medium? Why is a chemostat different?
William J. Murray,
This ‘burden shift’ plaint is a classic.
I make many assumptions. We all do. For example, I assume that carrots cannot talk. If someone wishes to persuade me to not be so ideologically biased, a great way to do that would be to enlist the aid of a talking carrot.
Oh, yeah, it was pretty clear right from the beginning based on your unqualified loose language. 😉
So, basically, you’re only interested in a very small fraction of the total ‘evolutionary science’ supposedly out there. And when you say “the lack of teleology within the evolutionary process,” you don’t actually mean *all* so-called ‘evolutionary’ processes.
Of course not! How could you? You really only mean a very small fraction of those processes.
And when you inquire if “evolutionary processes could, even in principle, be teleological?” you actually only mean a very small fraction of those supposed ‘evolutionary processes.’ Very clear, very expected (and very myopic), Allan.
There really couldn’t be such a thing as a teleological evolutionary process because you have defined biology itself as a non-teleological field. So evolution, as a strictly biological scientific theory, simply couldn’t possibly ever be interpreted by anyone as teleological. Very clear and cute, Allan!
Now that that’s clear, why not go and have another dance with the IDist ‘scholar’ William J. Murray, who never runs out of words or time to spare here? That’s the kind of ‘thinker’, after all, that TSZers are best with as partners for discussion.
For what it’s worth, Shapiro seems to think some mutations are purposeful. To be fair, he does say they cannot actually “see” the outcome of a particular change, but he does think mutations are a lopsided die, loaded to produce mutations with a greater than chance level of usefulness. I’m pretty sure he thinks this evolvability could have evolved.
Gpuccio has asserted that mutations — at least some of them — are the result of magic intervention. (my term)
“variation with differential survival and reproduction” = right (field)
“blind variation and selective retention” = wrong (field)
“variation, selection and retention” = wrong (field)
Allan Miller said:
Where there is no known or observable material intermediary, a mind unfettered by materialist (or any other ‘ist”) preconceptions can look at the evidence, such as a consistent, apparently causal correspondence of washing hands and decreased infection/mortality rates, and not require that it fit in with what one thinks are the limitations of the possible. Instead of dismissing/ignoring the idea and costing who knows how many lives just because medical science at the time couldn’t understand how such a practice would possibly work to reduce infections, the data could have been used right then to implement a hand-washing protocol while more data was collected.
Ontological preconceptions of any sort often impede science. It’s okay to have an ontological perspective, but when you and other scientists insist that their ontology should inform scientific epistemology, then we have a problem.
William J. Murray,
Please show us how to have a methodology without “Ontological preconceptions”. Feel free to rehash previous fruitless fails.
I don’t think what he says is seriously wrong. But the way he says it tends to leave a false impression.
As for gpuccio and magic intervention — I suppose he is entitled to believe that. But he isn’t going to be persuasive until he comes up with actual evidence.
I agree with Murray here: I think he’s quite right that it’s a dogmatic metaphysical bias on the part of scientists when they insist that our use of teleological language in descriptions of biological phenomena is merely metaphorical or “as if” language.
Exhibit A: Monod’s Chance and Necessity, where the distinction between “teleology” and “teleonomy” is drawn for one reason only: to reconcile the appearance of purposiveness in living things with what Monod calls “the postulate of objectivity”. A close reading of the text (beginning with the title!) indicates that what Monod calls “the postulate of objectivity” is the supposition of Epicurean metaphysics.
On the one hand, I disagree with Murray’s claim that materialistic metaphysics has actually hindered scientific progress. But on the other hand, I do think that materialistic metaphysics has interfered with public understanding of science, and it has created enemies of science where none were before. I think that the acceptance of materialistic metaphysics on the part of a few well-known popularizers of evolutionary theory — chiefly Monod and Dawkins — has increased resistance to evolutionary theory in some sectors of the population.
Creationists love quoting Dawkins (and very recently Alex Rosenberg) because the two positions are perfect mirrors of each other. The best thing that ever happened to Dawkins’ career was that Stephen Jay Gould died of cancer, and Dawkins is the best thing to happen to American creationism and the ID movement. Every political movement needs a good enemy.
Do you have a reading comprehension problem? The OP is about biological evolution. That is very clear. Petrushka pointed this out to you; again, very clearly.
See if you can colour within the lines.
The trollish ‘reading comprehension’ accusation again at TSZ? Such a scholar, Acartia is that s/he can’t think any bigger than ‘biology’?
That’s what the OP is about, except for the fact that it reaches bigger than that with its generalisations. You do know what a ‘generalisation’ is, don’t you? I’ve made two of those generalisations (read: more than just naturalistic claims) clear already in Allan Miller’s typed communication.
He can of course answer when he’s ready to the very small fraction of relevance of mere ‘biological’ evolution in contrast with the many other academic disciplines. Does Alan Miller really know nothing about the ‘teleological’ approaches to evolution in ‘other’ fields? Can anyone answer that? KN answers pro-teleology in biology, but why not stop staying so small like that?
And if he wants, just maybe, Allan might eventually elevate above the sickly desperate level of competence by the quack-IDist-theosophist W.J. Murray here, to perhaps hold an actual dialogue. Murray wouldn’t last minutes at a credible site, but TSZers entertain him as ‘so welcome quasi-IDist’.
Perhaps in addition to the Whine Cellar we need a Hobby Horse.
I’m quite interested in non biological evolution, but biology is not constrained by the limitations of social processes, nor does teleology in human endeavors inform biological evolution.
KN said:
I gave examples of this in another thread:
It is the materialist narrative, born from the materialist ontological perspective, that has generated certain scientific narratives resistant to empirical data. Theistic narratives, born from theistic ontological perspectives, have also impeded science. Which is why ontological commitments should be called out and kept out of science, as much as possible.
Most folks probably don’t even know what teleology means, or it’s history, beyond “I thought science did away with that.”.
The rejection of teleology is the rejection of final causes. The rejection of final causes is the rejection of efficient causes. The rejection of efficient causes is the rejection of science.
Any process is, by definition, teleological. If that’s a problem, we could, of course, drop the language of “evolutionary process.”
Well that’s exciting. I’d like to see that unpacked.
Mung,
Well, already the language of ‘design process’ is dropped from IDism by fiat. Why? Because once a person can actually study ‘design processes’, then they can study (lowercase) ‘designers.’
But Mung, in his distorted uppercase IDT double-talk cynicism, simply won’t respond to such charges against the IDism that he personally defends because he is much more of a coward than stcordova.
The DI’s ‘teleology’ sob-pity (protestant charity) story is so full of holes that a guy like Mung likes to think it’s holy ‘science’, too tied together with his personal theology to EVER let go.
William J. Murray,
Those are interesting cases, and I appreciate that you brought them to our attention. But I’m not sure they work the way you want them to. One might draw the lesson that these so-called “crack-pots” were ignored because they discovered correlations and laws that could not understood on the basis of the physical explanations available at the time (the germ theory of disease for Semmelweiss; quantum mechanics for Ohm).
On the one hand, the ignored (and subsequently redeemed) “crack-pots” of science are a flimsy basis for any inference that we should be looking for non-physical explanations (though I don’t know if you were suggesting otherwise). On the other hand, it should, of course, incline us to be skeptical of the assumption that we currently possess all of the physical theories necessary for building an empirically verifiable model of what we can observe and posit.
That said, the main reason I support teleological realism in biology is because autopoeisis theory gives us a pretty good handle on how to understand what makes organisms ontologically distinct. And autopoeisis theory can itself be considered a limiting case of dynamical systems theory or complexity theory. That’s why the most interesting debate isn’t between design theory and evolutionary theory, but between design theory and complexity theory. It’s complexity theory, not evolutionary theory, which eliminates the need to posit a Demiurge* to get us across the gulf from physics to biology.
[* I finished reading David Hart’s The Experience of God. One of the three or four good ideas in the book is his distinction between the Demiurge, as a sort of watchmaker or craftsperson, and a genuinely transcendent Creator as the ground of being. Complexity theory, even more than evolutionary theory, eliminates the need for a Demiurge with regard to causal processes within this universe. But it doesn’t eliminate the possibility of a Demiurge with regard to the origins of the universe as a whole, and it certainly has nothing to do with the existence of a Creator as conceptualized by Western and Eastern mystical traditions.]
No, I don’t think that’s right, KN. The “best evidence available” might be no or almost no evidence. And in any case the “one who is entitled to” might not be the person speaking. So it surely is not the case that those two are equivalent.
I’m gonna remember the talking-carrot example for the next time this exact same problem comes up. Not here, though, I plan to use it somewhere else where it will make me sound more clever than I am. 🙂 Okay? Thanks!
And I always thought that it was the rejection of purpose in explaining something. Are you telling me that Wiki is wrong?
I will not stand by and allow people to badmouth the United States of America.
Which Wiki?
Hey Allan, good choice for an OP. Teleology is always likely to attract attention. Kudos for taking it out of the Moderation thread.
Did you verify that none of those quotes in the UD OP were quote-mined? 😉
I recently donated all my old biology text books so I’m not going to be much use there.
But The OP is pretty wide ranging, perhaps intentionally so.
Did you want to discuss whether there is a bias against teleology or is that a given? If it’s a given, do you simply disagree over why the bias exists? What justifies the bias?
So for example when one text states:
What “view of the world” are they talking about?
Or did you want to discuss how anyone could believe in teleology in this day and age?
Or just teleology in biology?
Or just whether evolutionary processes are teleological?
Or only whether “the biological evolutionary process” is teleological?
KN said:
My point wasn’t that we should go looking for “non-physical” explanations (whatever that means — is gravity a non-physical “explanation”? It’s not an “explanation” at all – it’s a description. It’s a good thing Newton didn’t ignore “non-physical explanations”!).
What we should be looking for are good, practically useful descriptions of the phenomena we observe, whether we can locate a causal medium (did Darwin have a causal medium? Did Newton?) or not. IOW, the description may not amount to much more than what appears to be magic or a superstition (like washing your hands before you deliver babies or medically treat people with no known causally adequate observable agent/medium), but if it produces results, so what? You can continue the investigation, but even if you never find the causal agency, once again, so what? Not being able to locate the causal medium or agency shouldn’t mean that empirical results simply get ignored because it doesn’t conform to the metaphysical narrative.
WJM
This is exactly what scientists do, but over the last 400 years they’ve traced cause-and-effect deep enough to reasonably conclude that there is no evidence to infer a goal.
WJM (earlier)
Again I think that science has the least biased position on this, but of course one always infers bias relative to ones own position…so Noam Chomsky thinks the US media have an extreme right-wing bias.
I think if both a theist and an atheist saw a rock rolling down hill, neither would describe the rock as having the goal of reaching the bottom. To an animist this would betray a blatant metaphysical bias.