Dawkins' Atheist Bus

[Mr. Tea]

Also, nomad, I feel I have to take issue with your statement that "we have a great model for understanding human agency/sentience/intelligence" in the shape of the field of neurology...now correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that we're about a gazillion lightyears away from understanding the relationship between, on the one hand, the physico-chemical functions of neurons and, on the other, the functions of the mind in terms of thoughts, emotions, self-awareness etc. - at least to anything like the degree to which our understanding of the semiconductor electronics of a computer can be correlated to the functions of a computer program.

Though I should say that in this matter, I am in the end on your side because I don't think there's anything in principle stopping us from understanding it one day. I just think we're a lot further off from it than you think we are.

 

[nomadthethird]

Also, nomad, I feel I have to take issue with your statement that "we have a great model for understanding human agency/sentience/intelligence" in the shape of the field of neurology...now correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that we're about a gazillion lightyears away from understanding the relationship between, on the one hand, the physico-chemical functions of neurons and, on the other, the functions of the mind in terms of thoughts, emotions, self-awareness etc. - at least to anything like the degree to which our understanding of the semiconductor electronics of a computer can be correlated to the functions of a computer program.

Though I should say that in this matter, I am in the end on your side because I don't think there's anything in principle stopping us from understanding it one day. I just think we're a lot further off from it than you think we are.

Neurologists can, with great accuracy and high success rates, perform all sorts of operations on people to minimize damage due to tumors, aneurysm, etc. The functions of the brain can to a certain degree be mapped onto locales within the brain--we already know for certain which areas of the brain are associated with certain functions, some of them higher order. There's tons we don't know, and there's no sort of "meta" map yet.

But the idea that human agency is such that we'll never understand it outside of some kind of teleology is to me patently absurd.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Sod this, I'm going to watch history being made (TM).

 

[poetix]

So simply stating that natural processes operate according to an "X in order that Y" logical relation makes it so? Or do you have some sort of proof that this is, in fact, the underlying relation or force behind how natural processes happen?

I don't, and I don't need one, because:

i) I'm only talking about some natural processes,
ii) I'm only trying to identify a common feature of those processes, not posit an "underlying relation or force". Some natural processes take a particular form, one which can meaningfully (in my view) be described as (minimally) purposive. I do not believe in an "underlying" purposefulness driving natural processes; quite the opposite. On the other hand, I don't believe that matter is thoroughly purposeless, to the extent that nothing ever happens to any purpose. It appears that some of what happens - for example, my putting the kettle on to make a cup of tea - happens to some limited purpose. I don't find that spooky, and neither do I think it's an illusion.

 

[poetix]

Got a better argument than "there are seemingly self-directed processes that govern the universe, therefore evolution is far from a blind and accidental process"?

Yes, it's the argument I'm actually making.

 

[waffle]

So simply stating that natural processes operate according to an "X in order that Y" logical relation makes it so? Or do you have some sort of proof that this is, in fact, the underlying relation or force behind how natural processes happen?

I don't, and I don't need one, because:

i) I'm only talking about some natural processes,

Only some (And what processes are there other than strictly 'natural' ones)? Aren't you applying it to all replicant processes?

ii) I'm only trying to identify a common feature of those processes, not posit an "underlying relation or force". Some natural processes take a particular form, one which can meaningfully (in my view) be described as (minimally) purposive. I do not believe in an "underlying" purposefulness driving natural processes; quite the opposite. On the other hand, I don't believe that matter is thoroughly purposeless, to the extent that nothing ever happens to any purpose. It appears that some of what happens - for example, my putting the kettle on to make a cup of tea - happens to some limited purpose. I don't find that spooky, and neither do I think it's an illusion.

I don't really have any difficulty with this (and I don't believe anyone else posting here does either), except, that is, for your fondness for using a word ('purpose') that is generally associated with teleology, rather than, for example, 'function', especially given your use of logic axioms.

Just one other issue: your positing of the logical relation "X in order that Y" suggests a unidirectional linear and temporal causality which does not acknowledge cybernetic feedback and simultaneity. Not wishing to be a Zizekian contrarian, but it is equally possiible to envisage a "Y in order that X", moving from "Eggs must be broken in order than an omelet can be made" to "Omelets are made in order that eggs might be broken" (or alternatively "You can't break eggs without making an omelet" ie referring to the necessary heat of revolutionary violence).

Got a better argument than "there are seemingly self-directed processes that govern the universe, therefore evolution is far from a blind and accidental process"?

Yes, it's the argument I'm actually making.

Again, the terminology. Self-directed? Why not 'auto-directed'? Processes don't have a 'self'. Additionally, aren't you implying from the above that it is not just evolution, but the entire universe that is "far from a blind and accidental process"? Isn't this just the same as saying that the universe, despite all the randomness and mutation, has structure, has a (ultimately unknowable unless your God) comprehensive set of 'natural laws', an elaborate abstract 'classification system' or map that governs the material universe?

And perhaps your use of 'govern' here is analogous to that of Badiou in Logiques des mondes, where he adopts the concept of ‘transcendentals’ and their function, the latter function or 'purpose' being to govern the order of appearance of multiplicities within a world?

 

[poetix]

Only some (And what processes are there other than strictly 'natural' ones)? Aren't you applying it to all replicant processes?

Well, that still leaves a lot of processes I'm not applying it to. Replicants are pretty rare. Most of the matter that there is, isn't involved in processes of that kind.

I don't really have any difficulty with this (and I don't believe anyone else posting here does either), except, that is, for your fondness for using a word ('purpose') that is generally associated with teleology, rather than, for example, 'function', especially given your use of logic axioms.

There's a reason why I used, fairly consistently, the word "purposive" (which sounds slightly strange to English-speaking ears) instead of the word "purposeful". I don't wish to imply that there is a transcendent prior purpose operating "behind" physical processes, welling up within them and exercising a supernatural counter-causal power. But I also don't agree that use of the term "purpose" implies a teleological conceptual scheme. We use it all the time about perfectly banal actions and occurrences.

Just one other issue: your positing of the logical relation "X in order that Y" suggests a unidirectional linear and temporal causality which does not acknowledge cybernetic feedback and simultaneity. Not wishing to be a Zizekian contrarian, but it is equally possiible to envisage a "Y in order that X", moving from "Eggs must be broken in order than an omelet can be made" to "Omelets are made in order that eggs might be broken" (or alternatively "You can't break eggs without making an omelet" ie referring to the necessary heat of revolutionary violence).

Well, it makes sense to me to start with some reasonably primitive case and build up from there. Certainly all sorts of strange loops are capable of forming.

Again, the terminology. Self-directed? Why not 'auto-directed'?

Same thing. "Self-" can function grammatically in English the same way as "auto-". It's just a bit less Greek.

Additionally, aren't you implying from the above that it is not just evolution, but the entire universe that is "far from a blind and accidental process"?

It's really not very far from a blind and accidental process (the distance is quite minimal, as I've said repeatedly). It's a blind and accidental process that happens to throw up purposive sub-processes from time to time, that's all. And these, by virtue of the traction they gain over their own future states, sometimes manage to stick around for a while. But it will all end up in extinction sooner or later, and to no particular purpose moreover.

Isn't this just the same as saying that the universe, despite all the randomness and mutation, has structure, has a (ultimately unknowable unless you're God) comprehensive set of 'natural laws', an elaborate abstract 'classification system' or map that governs the material universe?

I find Dennett's crane/skyhook distinction useful here. Randomness can have among its mostly incoherent outcomes entities which slightly reduce the randomness within and around them. Structuration builds up from there; except when it doesn't, which is most of the time. In very stupendously rare cases you get something like an ecosystem. Which is where we happen to find ourselves, having failed at not being born.

And perhaps your use of 'govern' here is analogous to that of Badiou in Logiques des mondes, where he adopts the concept of ‘transcendentals’ and their function, the latter function or 'purpose' being to govern the order of appearance of multiplicities within a world?

Probably not: I don't think a transcendental governs a world as a process, but rather secures the consistency of its localisations. It's more like the symbolic law than the metaphorical hand on the tiller.

 

[nomadthethird]

Only some (And what processes are there other than strictly 'natural' ones)? Aren't you applying it to all replicant processes?



I don't really have any difficulty with this (and I don't believe anyone else posting here does either), except, that is, for your fondness for using a word ('purpose') that is generally associated with teleology, rather than, for example, 'function', especially given your use of logic axioms.

Just one other issue: your positing of the logical relation "X in order that Y" suggests a unidirectional linear and temporal causality which does not acknowledge cybernetic feedback and simultaneity. Not wishing to be a Zizekian contrarian, but it is equally possiible to envisage a "Y in order that X", moving from "Eggs must be broken in order than an omelet can be made" to "Omelets are made in order that eggs might be broken" (or alternatively "You can't break eggs without making an omelet" ie referring to the necessary heat of revolutionary violence).



Again, the terminology. Self-directed? Why not 'auto-directed'? Processes don't have a 'self'. Additionally, aren't you implying from the above that it is not just evolution, but the entire universe that is "far from a blind and accidental process"? Isn't this just the same as saying that the universe, despite all the randomness and mutation, has structure, has a (ultimately unknowable unless your God) comprehensive set of 'natural laws', an elaborate abstract 'classification system' or map that governs the material universe?

And perhaps your use of 'govern' here is analogous to that of Badiou in Logiques des mondes, where he adopts the concept of ‘transcendentals’ and their function, the latter function or 'purpose' being to govern the order of appearance of multiplicities within a world?

Great post, Waffles.

 

[nomadthethird]

It appears that some of what happens - for example, my putting the kettle on to make a cup of tea - happens to some limited purpose. I don't find that spooky, and neither do I think it's an illusion.

No one ever said that people don't perceive that they do things for a purpose, nor did anyone say that people doing things for a "purpose" was spooky. It's arguable whether human "purposes" are illusory, or whether it's a fact that intentions are somehow exempt from contigency on material processes.

What's at issue here is whether natural processes happen the way they do because there is some sort of purpose guiding them. A self-directed one, a supernaturally directed one, etc.

I happen to think there is no teleological basis for natural processes. You are trying to construct an argument for the notion that the fact that these processes happen at all seems to suggest a sort of self-directed "purposiveness" or auto-directionality to them.

I disagree and think there is insufficient evidence for this idea.

 

[nomadthethird]

Why not 'auto-directed'?

I like this term a little better than self-directed, I suppose because "auto" has slightly different connotations if not a different denotation than "self"...

 

[Agent]

The psychical and the physical become interdependent features of the motor-intentional body. That is, intentionality of consciousness means, in part, that it is consciousness of something, such that to perceive is to perceive something, to will is to will something, and so on. Since, for Merleau-Ponty, consciousness is a body-consciousness and the lived-body is an active, mobile body, intentionality becomes a motor-intentionality. My body is then for me a "‘postural,’ or ‘corporeal schema’" (PPOE 117),1 a system of motor powers in which the knowing-body’s spontaneity presents itself as an "I can," as an "I am able to." This power to exist, the "project towards the world that we are" (PP 405), constitutes my most immediate awareness of myself as a "tacit cogito" which is brought to expression and explicit awareness through language.

William S. Hamrick. "Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty: Some Moral Implications" Process Studies, pp. 235-251, Vol. 4, Number 4, Winter, 1974. http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2376

on the ogasmotron note: vagus nerve stimulation "is an adjunctive treatment for certain types of intractable epilepsy and major depression. VNS uses an implanted stimulator that sends electric impulses to the left vagus nerve in the neck via a lead wire implanted under the skin." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagus_nerve_stimulation

 

[3 Body No Problem]

Sorry 3bnp, I'm not sure that'll wash, even if youcan point to a technical definition of the word 'purpose' that specifically rules out any idea of intentionality, the fact is that it is still there in the language, that's what is interesting.

Well, that's what I'm saying: (1) we can have non-intentional definitions of "purpose" or "goal", but they will be very complicated. (2) The world is full of things like genes, computers or humans whose behaviour can be very tersely described using teleological languages.

So language's having teleological terms is a reaction to the ubiquity of teleological behaviour.

As for common definitions of 'purpose', it's quite clear overall [...]

I'm afraid these definitions are seriously ambigous.

 

[3 Body No Problem]

Still, we can have a go at finessing it a bit. Consider a fully deterministic, billiard-balls-in-space model of "the universe", the kind Dennett calls "Laplacean". This model at time T contains all the information needed to predict what the state of the model will be at any future time T' or T''. The final state of the system, at time T-omega is "contained" in the initial state, at time T-alpha (plus, externally to the system's "contents", whatever laws govern the transitions between its states). There is no gap, in this model, between one system state's "containing a representation of" some future state and entirely causally determining it; consequently, it doesn't seem particularly meaningful to talk about the system as being "purposeful" in any sense.

Thanks for such an interesting reply!

Yes you are asking a very good question. I'm not sure I have a fully convincing answer, but here are two proposals that I think might be promising.

• The reason for using teleological language is simplification (reduction of complexity). But describing the 'goal' T-omega in terms of T-alpha does not lead to a simplification, instead, we have to invest significant (computational) ressources to obtain T-omega from T-alpha. (Just like we usually not tell by looking at a program what result that program will evaluate to (cf the undecidability of the halting problem)). This is different in teleological behaviour:
  • By looking at a genom, we can abstract from its evolution towards its goal, we can ignore it, because we know what it's gonna look like: it'll be a copy of itself.
    
  • If we look at a recursion combinator (lambda x.f(xx))(lambda x.f(xx)) we know what it will evolve to.
    
  • If a political party has the telos "win elections in 2012" we have a pretty good idea what the (relevant part of the) world would be like if the telos were achieved, regardless of the trajectory towards that telos.
  Goals are self-applicable things: we can ask what is the telos of teleological descriptions? Answer: information hiding! We can ignore the trajectory (of course the entity that carries out goal-directed behaviour cannot).
  
• Secondly, teleological descriptions generally assume some discrete point in time were we an observer can say whether the goal has been reached or not. But that's a weaker argument.
  
• GoL can be seen as a boundary case, exposing the ambiguity of the concept of teleology. Teleology probably isn't a concept with sharp boundaries. A reason why I'd be reluctant to call your very nice Game-of-Life example purposeful behaviour, is that the lack of uncertainty. GoL is totally deterministic. Purposeful behaviour requires -- as far as I'm concerned -- an uncertain environment, so the teleological entity can react to perturbations from its environment. Moreover, there's not a strong distinction between the intentional entity and its environment.

The "image" must be "causally active" without simply being determining: it must govern the behaviour of other parts of the entity such that they produce the future state it to which it maps (crucially, there must be a correspondence between the image and the
future state, such that changes in the one correlate - ceteris paribus - with changes in the other).

We probably mean the same thing, but I would answer that the "image" is causally determining, but the environment delivers disturbances to which the causality in the "image" reacts.

But yes, the analogy with the "govenor" is good.

For me the most interesting question is how this split/correlation schema arises: how, in matter, does this arrangement come about whereby one material thing "images" another?

It took evolution a long time. Cells have actively maintained boundaries which split the world in inside/outside. That seems to be a feature in many self-replicating systems.

 

[3 Body No Problem]

Also, the meaning of teleology is not up for grabs. It has a very specific meaning in philosophy.

Philosophy is not the police(wo)man of meaning. And these words certainly don't have a very specific meaning. To quote an expert on the matter "It should be noted that the semantics of "teleology" is extremely unfocussed because of its long tradition".

Moreover, and importantly, the world has changed since Aristotle, and much important research on the natur of purpose and teleology has been done which has shifted the meaning of the term. I'm thinking of influential works such as:

• Walter Cannon, The Wisdom of the Body, 1932. Developed the concept of Homeostasis, which was very influential on Wiener and Talcott Parsons.
  
• Wiener, Cybernetics, or Control and COmmunication in the Animal and the Machine, 1948.
  
• Rosenblueth, Wiener, Bigelow: Behaviour, Purpose, and Teleology (Philosophy of Science, 10, 1943).
  
• Rosenblueth, Wiener, Purposeful and Nonpurposeful Behaviour (Philosphy of Science, 17, 1950).
  
• Nagel, Teleological Explanation and Teleological Systems, in: Ratner, Vision and Action, 1953.
  

These works have generated a huge research tradition is the social sciences as well.

Telos and logos are the roots, they are both Greek words that have very precise meanings. There is a hundreds of years old tradition of using the term and it's not very difficult to understand what it means. Maybe looking it up would help some of the people here who don't seem to understand what it means.

That paragraph should be: Telos and logos are the roots, they are both Greek words that no longer have very precise meanings. There is a hundreds of years old tradition of using the term and it's very difficult to understand what it means. Maybe defining one's usage of the term would help to avoid much misunderstanding.

Let's look at your attempt below.

Teleology does not mean that things have a "purpose" in the simplest sense. Telos in Greek means "end" in the sense of goal, teleology is a term that describes anything that operates with specific ends in mind, with an ultimate goal. In my opinion this sort of process, a teleological one, would have to have consciousness, at least on a nominal level.

Why do you use the qualification "in my opinion" here, when you claimed above that the terms had unambigous meaning? Your choice of words suggests to me that you are aware of the ambiguities of the terms.

Anyway, if you associate telos with consciousness, as is perfectly legitimate -- and a classical way of defining the term -- then Dawkins does not claim that evolution is teleological in that sense, and I am not claiming that machines or genes or organisations are teleological entities in that sense. We are using the term in a different shade of meaning. It would all be a trivial semantic misunderstanding.

 

[3 Body No Problem]

Essentially the problem with Intelligent Design is that it begins with the assumption that intelligence is magic: that it's exceptional (rather than merely rare) with regard to matter in general, and that it can only exist as a result of the action of some pre-existing intelligence.

In fairness, we don't know to this day how intelligence and consciousness really works. For me a bigger problem is that ID makes too powerful an assumption which they then cannot explain: they assume gods whose intelligence and causal powers far exceed anything human, or natural. But then they don't anser the question how that intelligence comes to be. It's like proving 4 = 5 from the assumption that all numbers equal 5.

Another question: what work might the word "higher" be doing in the expression "higher purpose"?

I think "higher" here might have two main shades of meaning: (1) is the hope that life will be better, that all the suffering I/we go through will diappear in the future, and (2) it means "simple". In the end it will all be reavealed, we/I will suddenly understand. Like in a Hollywood movie, in the end it will all be revealed and everyting makes sense.

 

[3 Body No Problem]

What about "intelligence" (high order neurological cum-electrochemical processes) is especially resistant to the mechanistic determinism of the material world?

Nothing.

I'm sorry but we currently have no neuroscientific account of higher intelligence or consciousness at all. We are not anywhere near even fully understanding individual neurons. It is perfectly possible, that these phenomena are not derivable from the current laws of physics, and may rely on as yet unrecognised physical phenomena.

The "I am", the ego, is an illusion produced by the psychological order of experience, which itself owes a lot to memory formation.

There is no current neuroscientific explanation of consciousness, hence your claim is a conjecture and it might be helpful to flag it as such.

 

[nomadthethird]

I'm sorry but we currently have no neuroscientific account of higher intelligence or consciousness at all. We are not anywhere near even fully understanding individual neurons. It is perfectly possible, that these phenomena are not derivable from the current laws of physics, and may rely on as yet unrecognised physical phenomena.



There is no current neuroscientific explanation of consciousness, hence your claim is a conjecture and it might be helpful to flag it as such.

Everyone in this thread is conjecturing. Your claims above and in previous posts are also conjectural.

If you don't believe "consciousness" is anything other than neurons firing, then, as a matter of fact, there IS an explanation for them.

If you believe consciousness is a "higher" function, and can't be explained by way of physical phenomena, then there isn't one (yet).

The use of the word teleology is not all that ambiguous. What it properly describes, depending upon whom you ask, is somewhat ambiguous.

All this "ambiguity" is awfully convenient for your opinion, rather than being a real impasse.

 

[nomadthethird]

And yes, the fact that the world has changed since Aristotle was my entire point--we know much more about how things work, we can describe many more processes. Teleological language is useless unless you want to posit some sort of "higher" or meta-level to functioning, or bend the meaning of teleology beyond all recognition.

Philosophy is not the "police" of all language, but certain terms are TORN directly out of philosophy. "Teleology" is philosophical jargon. It's not a common-use term by any stretch of the imagination. Go ahead and revise what teleology means to make it fit into your computational analysis of natural processes. Good for you. I happen to think that this is not helpful in understanding these processes.

Also, I think contemporary physics has many good answers when it comes to how material things cohere. They can't provide a complete picture yet, but it's better than what we used to go by.

 

[nomadthethird]

Why do you use the qualification "in my opinion" here, when you claimed above that the terms had unambigous meaning? Your choice of words suggests to me that you are aware of the ambiguities of the terms.

Anyway, if you associate telos with consciousness, as is perfectly legitimate -- and a classical way of defining the term -- then Dawkins does not claim that evolution is teleological in that sense, and I am not claiming that machines or genes or organisations are teleological entities in that sense. We are using the term in a different shade of meaning. It would all be a trivial semantic misunderstanding.

Read it again. I used the term "in my opinion" not to qualify the definition of teleology (I stated that plainly) but to qualify my opinion concerning what "teleology" has to mean w/r/t natural processes. All we have are our opinions about this so far, given what we know about the world.

Why is your analysis so focused on semantics and pedantics? I find that off-putting. I'd prefer to study physics anyday.

 

[poetix]

I spy an opportunity for disambiguation:

In 1958, C.S. Pittendrigh applied the term (teleonomy) to biology:

"Biologists for a while were prepared to say a turtle came ashore and laid its eggs. These verbal scruples were intended as a rejection of teleology but were based on the mistaken view that the efficiency of final causes is necessarily implied by the simple description of an end-directed mechanism. … The biologists long-standing confusion would be removed if all end-directed systems were described by some other term, e.g., ‘teleonomic,’ in order to emphasize that recognition and description of end-directedness does not carry a commitment to Aristotelian teleology as an efficient causal principle."

That might help settle people's scruples. Or it might not, depending on how much they enjoy entertaining them.