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.
Well, as I think I’ve said before, my four-year old (who was obsessed with tornadoes at the time) once asked: “how do tornadoes see where to suck?”
I thought it was a really interesting question, actually, and we had a good discussion about intentional vs unintentional behaviour.
Lizzie,
Was this comment of yours intended for the Teleology thread?
I have a similar story from about the same age (4 or 5). I don’t remember this, but my aunt swears that one day she found me jumping off the back steps of her house over and over. She asked me what I was doing, and I told her that if I kept jumping, gravity would eventually forget to pull me down. I guess I figured it would get tired or distracted.
Just goes to show how natural teleological thinking is, especially for young kids.
William J. Murray,
Yes, of course he did.
Gregory,
You want to talk about other evolutionary processes, start an OP. This one’s about evolutionary biology. If you read it otherwise, I see that as a failure of comprehension on your part rather than a lack of clarity on mine. YMMV (AOD).
The failure here, Allan, was with your generalisation because it was simply too broad. What I requested of you was clarity, which you have now given. I’ll accept that as stepping back from your wildly exaggerated claim in the OP re: “evolutionary processes” b/c you really only meant a very small fraction of such so-called processes. This of course allows you to avoid the trap of evolutionary philosophy and of evolutionism generally, which is convenient, but of course very harmful to your apparent desire to search for an “ideological bias among evolutionary scientists.”
Let me give you a hint: your search is too narrow.
Now you have clarified: ONLY BIOLOGY is your interest when it comes to ‘evolution’ and its relation to teleology. Then have fun with KN. This is not new either: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/teleology-biology/
It seems that you’ve concluded there cannot possibly be any “teleological evolutionary principles” not based on science, but rather based on your own personal philosophy (as superficial as it seems) and worldview.
p.s. what’s the fixation with WJM’s ‘thinking’, about teleology or anything else? Is it simply because he is here with words to spare? WJM to me represents a whacky quasi-theist of one, rather than a coherent philosophy and worldview. He is one of the worst of the ‘IDists’ – maybe that makes him fun to play with.
William J. Murray,
So you claim the germ theory of disease for your approach? It wasn’t discovered by someone with any kind of ‘material bias’? Yeah, OK, if you say so.
I’d also be interested to know how many lives are lost due to mumbo-jumbo and superstition arising from your side of the divide. Mangoes cure cancer, don’t you know. It’s only those money-grubbing materialists that suppress this fact.
Gregory,
The first sentence, unaltered, contains all the information you need. I am not stepping back from anything. :
In which journal do non-biology “evolutionary scientists” publish their findings?
Anyway, I’m not looking for ideological bias, I am rejecting the argument that cautioning students against misuse of teleological depictions of the process itself amounts to ideological indoctrination.
In a wide range of journals, published in several languages across many countries. Do you really know nothing about this at all? A simple internet search will bring you at least some information about those journals, many of which you can read with open access.
You might want to look into those ‘evolutionists’ who are actually interested in and studying teleology, rather than only reading those who dismiss it as impossible & excluded. It seems obvious that you’re promoting an anti-teleology agenda, Allan. Making this clear up front and explaining your motivation for it would surely help communicatively.
In contrast, someone like myself and my colleagues who see (and experience) teleology in the vast majority of things we study, can simply be concerned about anti-teleologists as indeed, anti-intellectual and more profoundly (if one chooses to go there), disenchanting folks. You may or may not acknowledge that concern, but the consequences of anti-teleological thinking for a person’s philosophy and worldview can be significant.
You appear to want ‘life’ (as studied in the field of biology) to have no aim, purpose or goal, to be ‘undirected’, Allan because you fear and oppose ‘religion’ (or at least that RW, under-educated fundamentalist religion that is easily visible in the USA). But from a merely ‘methodological’ standpoint of studying nature scientifically using the best tools and theories available, one simply needn’t conclude that.
Evolutionism as an ideology persuades some people to believe they are not actively involved even in ‘directing’ their own lives! That’s when the anti-teleology ‘movement’ or anti-teleological thinking gets scary. No responsibility, no accountability, no free will, determinism, fatalism, etc.
Well, imo you should be looking for ideological bias b/c evolutionism hits like a hammer of hurt. I’m for cautioning against “misuse of teleological depictions”, but also for promoting “proper use of teleological depictions.” Where in your argument do you address proper usage of teleology?
Yes! Where on earth did I leave it?
OK, found it and put it in the right thread!
My own view is that the concept of intention is key to “teleology”, so the important question we need to ask, when considering whether a process is “teleological” is whether it involves intention.
And I would define intention as the capacity to select actions in order to bring about some modelled goal.
So to provide evidence for intention, we could look for evidence of that modelled goal, and for its effect on current actions, i.e. for anticipatory action-selection.
Well, it’s not only about the process, but also the origins and the outcome, the result(s). What’s the point of the intention and the action that (originally) proceeds from it?
Technology or architecture, then, according to Lizzie’s definition, is arrived at (i.e. the result) by teleological processes of ‘change’ that include invention, adaptation, innovation, manufacture, etc. all of which are predominantly undertaken with a purpose or purposes, i.e. goals in mind/body/spirit.
Focussing only on ‘intention’ when it comes to ‘teleology’ may suit a cognitive studies researcher such as Lizzie. But that’s just one way of looking at teleology (which sounds rather ‘naturalistic’ as opposed to ‘humanistic’). Other ways, commonly used in the social sciences and humanities are to study people (individuals & groups) and their choices, aims, goals, etc. at a more personal, reflexive level.
Lizzie, the other day, my wife and I had this conversation about something one of our daughters had written in a screenplay of hers. My wife took it as a personal affront:
Me: “What she did there was definitely unintentional.”
Her: “Well, it was unconscious, anyhow.”
Me: “Wait. Her remark could have been intentional but unconscious?”
Her: “Yes”
Me: “Hmmm”
I mention this here because you suggest above that telos requires intentional actions. I’m not sure myself that an action can be both intentional and unconscious, so I wonder if your definition might be too narrow.
I don’t think consciousness is required for intention. When I drive I am not thinking about every action. People do things all the time without thinking. But there is a level at which the brain is acting for an expected outcome.
Gregory,
Such as? A Google of “evolutionary scientist journal” yields nothing but hits on biological evolution.
Yeah, humans have goals. Not disputed.
You seem very well up on what my motivation is. It barely seems worth the effort of using words to persuade you otherwise since, like WJM, you appear already to know everything about people from a brief sketch.
My basic premise is that a process which involves the concentration and dilution of variant entities in a population cannot actually be teleological itself. A teleological entity may supervene and direct the operation of the process (by becoming a selective agent), or use it for a goal (such as chemostat purification or identification of the strongest strain) but the totality of the process, which involves mutation, recombination, migration, sampling and environmentally-conditioned differential reproductive success, cannot be teleological itself. Or, if it can, simply show me how – for example how lineages that go extinct are persuaded to do so, for the collective good of the lineages that remain, or alternatively how a particular recombinational result is achieved, requiring as it does a specific mating, the specific siting of a crossover, the avoidance of the polar body fate and the subsequent promotion by something other than mere ‘undirected’ differential reproductive success to fixation.
Biological evolution is about the net behaviour of unlinked collections of entities. To say that those collections have the goal of changing is akin to saying that a river has the goal of following its course.
That appearance would be incorrect. I don’t think life gains meaning from inappropriate use of teleological language. I neither fear nor oppose religion (though I don’t see religion as having much to do with the OP, to be honest. If a God exists and has goals that’s one thing – He is the operator of the chemostat in my example. But the surviving lineage of cells does not (apparently) have the goal of being purified – of evolving).
Fear not. I draw no life lessons from the evolutionary behaviour of collections of DNA-based life forms.
This is all tied up with learning.
Learning is modifying oneself as a result of feedback. Biological evolution is about populations being modified. Perhaps the process of evolution exhibits intention without any individual having consciousness or intention.
I agree, Petrushka. In fact we can intentionally learn to act automatically. “Battle hardening” is a grim example – deliberately learning (and teaching others) to fire before thinking. A nicer example is acquiring good sightreading skill on an instrument – learning to play the notes “automatically” without conscious attention to the mechanics, leaving the “conscious” (or at least “executive”) mind free to attend to phrasing etc.
And of course driving.
But that opens up the question of what we mean by “conscious” e.g – Dennett’s “Stalinesque” vs “Orwellian” concepts of memory recall (both, in his view, being misguided):
Multiple Drafts Model
It’s a little off topic, but relevant to it, I think.
This exchange started with a discussion of the metaphysical assumptions of science. But isn’t it better to talk about scientific methodology and leave any metaphysics to philosophy?
I think the type of examples WJM quotes are examples of methodological constraints in action. For example (not sure if this one is at WJM’s linked site): the rejection of Wegener’s continental drift by the scientific community was due to the lack of mechanisms for that drift; the discovery of such mechanisms led to its acceptance. For example: the rejection of Darwinian evolution by physicists like Kelvin was because physics said the sun could not be old enough for evolution to have worked, and physics as the global science takes priority.
The two methodological principles at play are (1) the need for mechanism and (2) the need to stay consistent with more general constraints from physics. I’m not saying these two are metaphysical necessities, only that they are pragmatic guidelines that have been seen to help make science successful at prediction and manipulation.
I’d be interested in more details on why you say that. I understand DST/complexity as modelling a system by coupled differential equations, studying the evolution of the modeled system in phase space, and using that behavior, eg attractors, to predict emergent properties of the modeled system. But such modelling for living systems usually requires some chemistry/biology mechanisms to be in place, eg the HH model of cell via electrical model of cell and its ion channels.
I understand autopoeisis as defining life as a dissipative system that maintains its own organization and structure by exchanges of energy and matter with the environment. I can see how DST/complexity could model that, but it seems that some chemical/biological mechanisms must be in place to create that model.
Are you referring to the gulf related to the original of life, or the gulf relating to “irreducible” complexity, or something else?
Absolutely. Teleology aside, evolution is a learning process, by almost any definition of learning. That’s what finally got me booted from UD by DaveScot IIRC.
🙂
I can’t speak for Allan, but it seems really unlikely to me that this would be true. Evolution needn’t be “directed” for God to be true. God could just have been clever enough to see that the universe s/he created would eventually, without further direction, result in intelligent, humane, life.
(and I mean “humane” not “human”)
Why do you think a process requires a “final purpose”? A process can be defined as a series of linked causes-effects, where the effect of one cause is the cause of the next effect.
The challenge with some definitions of teleology is that scientific methodology rejects effects preceding causes or effects creating their own causes.
However, whether or not effects creating their own causes includes structures being responsible for their own ongoing existence is a point of contention. Is this unscientific teleology?
The paper “What makes biological organisation teleological? ” that KN references says it is not. It argues that this can be called teleology in the sense of an organism having self determination and that such a definition and realization of teleology does not violate methodological naturalism.
As context the paper provides a nice discussion in it of the various approaches to naturalizing teleology in biological systems.
petrushka,
Hard to see how that could work, I have to say, given the mechanisms of mutation, the changeability of environments, and the fact of selective interference. I’d be interested to see this possibility actually demonstrated in a simulation. If it’s possible, it ought to be capable of passing that test at the very least.
That actually seems more plausible! But the intervention cannot stop at the generation of the mutation, for most realistic s values.
In his book, Shapiro gives a few mechanisms, but mostly for unicellular organisms. One mechanisms for multicellular organisms is that when there is environmental stress, and a population reduces in number, there are increased levels of hybridisation and this increases the number of novel mutations, thus enriching the gene pool with potential variants (hopeful monsters?)
Which I think is pretty thin.
At the bacterial level, he is sounder, I think, and makes (or uses) the potentially useful view that bacterial colonies can be thought of as a kind of multicellular organism, in which certain genetic changes are precipitated by certain environmental signals, including signals from other bacteria.
But I could be mangling that a bit. I do think that Shapiro’s hat is bigger than his trousers (or do I mean cattle?)
Mung,
Really? Not without redefining ‘process’ to make it true. Is the process of star formation teleological ‘by definition’? Or is it not a process?
Note what is appearing to not be noted, that I draw a distinction between
a) the possibility that organisms serve a purpose,
b) the fact that they often have purposes,
c) the ability of a disparate collection of entities to change purposively.
For the latter, we need a distinction between the passive and the active. A Designer could change a collection – the purpose of the new collection would be to serve some requirement of the designer. But that’s not what the textbook authors are arguing against. They are arguing against loose terminology such as giraffes trying to evolve longer necks. It’s a pedagological distinction, not an ideological one.
Elizabeth,
He would be more persuasive with simulations of his various models!
Allan Miller said:
To repeat the tired statement, Allan, no, that’s not what I said. I said that materialist ontology generates certain narratives that has in the past impeded scientific and technological progress. So too do certain theistic narratives, such as the narrative that the earth was the center of the universe, or that god wouldn’t employ “imperfect” orbital pathways.
Whether or not specific, individual materialism- or theism-perspective scientists finally “figured it out” is irrelevant; the problem was that a conceptual narrative informed by an ideological bias caused empirical evidence to be ignored for a time. Why? Because the scientific community at the time couldn’t see how what the evidence showed was possible given their narrative framework at the time.
It’s like you can’t see it when I include theism in the post as part of the ontological problem. Or do you just ignore it? And what on earth are you talking about as far as “mumbo-jumbo” is concerned? Something either tests out has appearing to have a causative effect in repeated research, or it doesn’t. How is recognizing and utilizing an apparent effect, even if one has no idea how the apparent cause generates the effect, “mumbo jumbo”? It’s just an admission that there is an inexplicable but empirically replicable effect that may be useful.
Do we know specifically how the placebo effect works? Not knowing exactly what causes it doesn’t mean it’s not useful as a treatment or cannot be further examined in scientific research. The placebo effect is certainly not “mumbo jumbo”.
Yes, we get it. You have a better way to do science then anyone else has managed to think of up till now.
But I don’t see how saying “the cause of this result may be demonic influence” adds anything useful. No, we should not lock the door against a divine foot, but neither should we hold it open forever just in case.
RodW said:
I’d really like to see you support that claim.
Omagain said:
I can think of many ways it might be useful. Especially if it turns out “demonic influence” is a real thing.
Lizzie, petrushka, I agree with what you’ve posted above regarding unconscious activites. There’s’s a great old book by Samuel Butler that is largely devoted to ‘the process of forgetting’ called ‘Life and Habit.’ (IIRC, Butler talks a lot about learning to play the piano, which is much like petrushka’s driving on automatic pilot example.).
But in spite of my agreement with you two (and Butler and Freud) on this issue, I still think there’s something strange about the locution ‘She did it unconsciously, but on purpose (intentionally). This suggests to me that we might need a couple of additional English words to express ourselves clearly/unconfusingly on this issue. Probably some have already been coined.
Yeah, the trouble with that is that’s just armchair musing. Don’t just think of a way it could be useful, put it to use! If you don’t then you might as well line up behind the timecube guy.
What do you mean? If you believe it’s a real thing, it is a real thing. If you don’t believe it’s a real thing, it’s not a real thing.
So there is no “it turns out” for you, it’s just what you happen to believe at any given moment.
So, WJM, do you currently believe that “demonic influence” is a real thing?
I think what is needed is a better conception of what “consciously” means.
the well-known phenomenon where one drives a hundred miles down a motorway, only to realise that the intersection one intended to turn off at is 50 miles back is a case in point.
Clearly the driver (yes, it’s been me….) wasn’t “unconscious” at the wheel, or she’d have had a major smash. So what was happening? (I have some ideas…)
Walto: driving on autopilot or reading music frees your consciousness to ponder things that are not automatic. Phrasing In music and pedestrians while driving. In the ordinary conduct of life we expect people to pay attention to exceptions. Driving over a jaywalker is considered intentional because we have a responsibility to override the autopilot.
Well put. I think you’re right that here, as elsewhere, philosophers and psychologists have something to learn from jurists.
William J. Murray,
Why are you laying this charge at the door of ‘materialist ontologies’? Scientific progress on the germ theory of disease was not made by rejecting ‘materialist ontology’. It is simply a fact of the history of science that old ideas die hard. Look at Creationism.
Mumbo-jumbo would be the many things that have not been subject to repeated research, where the causative effect is anecdotal or imaginary.
Ultimately, to do science one needs a phenomenon. You got one of those, you are up and running. One does not need a mechanism up front, although the absence of a mechanism can be a barrier to acceptance.
The placebo effect is perfectly legitimate – it is a well-characterised phenomenon, with no mechanism yet. Cancer-curing foodstuffs aren’t. Where is the phenomenon? “I ate a mango and my cancer regressed” is insufficient.
An excellent point.
As I understand it, your position is that a naturalistic bias has impeded scientific progress: researchers should employ Methodological Pragmatism rather than the bias-laden Methodological Naturalism. Leaving aside, for the moment, the observation that researchers actually employ MP, rather than MN, let’s apply MP to your data.
You appear to be claiming that the assumption that an explanation must be naturalistic slowed discovery, for instance in the cases of hand-washing and plate tectonics. But for these examples, the explanation finally arrived at was naturalistic. So the assumption was not in error. Researchers may have been looking under the wrong lamppost, that`s all. Speaking pragmatically, to even start to have a case, you need some examples where the naturalistic assumption was, in fact, false.
Spoon-bending? Remote viewing?
As Allan noted:
i.e. researchers actually employ MP
and there`s a perfectly good, pragmatic (Bayesian) reason for this.
petrushka,
I’m not so sure about that.
We’re held responsible for running over jaywalkers, and we can be prosecuted for our negligence if it happens, but that does not mean that we are regarded as having done so intentionally.
The very definition (and the name) of involuntary manslaughter precludes intent:
DNA_Jock said:
No, I don’t. I only need examples where what I actually said (the naturalist/materialist/theistic ontology-driven narrative at the time) impeded the progress of science or useful application according to repeatable empirical evidence. It doesn’t matter if it was later adopted because a causal path/agency/medium was discovered, nor by whom, regardless of their metaphysics.
I’ve provided those examples. They make the point.
DNA_Jock,
William is playing both sides of the coin. He’s now simply saying that things that impede scientific progress are bad, m’kay.
It’s funny really how his position has changed to this, I guess it’s because he could not find any examples of how materialism is actually holding back science.
That’s interesting. Thanks.
Again, I think there is much to be learned by philosophers and cognitive scientists from the statutory and case law relative to intention, freedom, etc. The determinations there are often very careful because they actually affect people’s lives.
It would help to have some actual examples.
No, you haven’t. At most you have provided examples where you believe that ontological assumptions impeded the progress of science. But that’s merely your believe. You have not made a convincing case that your belief is correct.
They only make the point that you are willing to jump to conclusions that happen to fit your confirmation bias.
The most we can learn from Murray’s cases is that some important discoveries were ignored (and the discoverers mocked) due to the lack of a testable explanation. But we need more than mere descriptions of what we observe; an explanation tells us why empirical regularities obtain, to the extent that they do. And of course every explanation will involve its own ontological commitments. To abstain from all ontological commitments is to abstain from explanation as such. Doing so would yield phenomenology, not science.
Yes really.
Check a dictionary. Here’s one.
process:
1. a systematic series of actions directed to some end
No redefinition needed. Perhaps you need to redefine teleology instead. 🙂
It is a process. It is teleological.
You’ve chosen a good example to demonstrate exactly what I was pointing out.
Given that a star exists where none existed before and given that it came about by the process of star formation, it is blazingly obvious that the existence of a star is the telos (end). How could you hope to intelligibly discuss the causes that bring about the formation of a star without that telos there to make it coherent?
The process of star formation does not result in cherry trees or cathedrals. It results in stars.
And notice the star does not cause it’s own existence by reaching back into the past, that’s just a silly notion of teleology.
KN, oddly enough, appears to be agreeing with William while trying to make it appear as if he is disagreeing with William.
If ontological commitments are necessary then why doesn’t ontology come before epistemology?
I disagree that all one needs to do science is a phenomenon. But hey, that’s not what this thread is about.
BruceS,
I’m hesitant to draw any strict lines between science and metaphysics in either direction — just as good metaphysics should acknowledge the contributions of empirical science, lest it end up in the sterile debates of purely a priori speculation, so too good science should acknowledge how and where it relies on metaphysical presuppositions. I think that it’s part of the methodology of pragmatism itself to put metaphysics and science into productive conversation, rather than enforce a divide between them (as logical positivism tried — and failed — to do).
In referring to life as an “ontological surprise,” I was alluding to Hans Jonas in his The Phenomenon of Life — to this day a very fine phenomenology of life. The point he makes there is that one could not, from the laws of physics alone, predict that life would come about.
Now, he might be wrong about that if the laws of physics are more like what Prigogine and Kaufman think they are, and not what Newton or Laplace thought they were. I tend to think that the physics of dynamical systems, even more than quantum mechanics, shows how Epicurean metaphysics of early modern physics has been undermined or overcome through the evolution of empirical/mathematical physics itself.
Be that as it may, it’s surely right that the physics of dissipative systems will constrain what an autopoietic system can and cannot do. But I’d be astonished if Varela or Evan Thompson would deny that!
I don’t think I said that a process requires a “final purpose.” I said a process is, by definition, teleological. See my response to Allan.
One could define a process the way you have described, but what unifies the chain of cause and effect? If there is nothing that unifies the chain of cause and effect why should it be called a process? What distinguishes it from pure accident?