Sculptor1 wrote: ↑September 9th, 2021, 3:18 pmWhen clowns like Pinker and Dawkins make huge slip ups and seem to attibute intentions and purposes where naturally selected traits express function they can't expect god botherers not to persist in their god delusion.Well, what does it mean to attribute intentions or purpose in the first place? What rules or facts are there out there which tell us when we’re doing it correctly or when it is inappropriate? Certainly it isn’t a matter of taking a measurement or pointing a device at something.
So if having intentions and purpose isn’t like having a mass or charge, it looks as if it is going to be something like satisfying some sort of consensual norm.
Sculptor1 wrote: ↑September 9th, 2021, 3:18 pmPeople who love to think that everything happens for a reason, or that "nature" TRIES to balance things, or mother nature is behind it all can find such careless talk as encouraging, despite strict Darwinist principles.What we should conclude from this is that there is a spectrum of usefulness and applicability to intentional or teleological language, not that it is always bad. Thinking of genes as “selfish” in the way Dawkins intended is very different from thinking nature consciously “tries” to do things.
If even the metaphor of “selfish genes” is too much for you, why not pursue this line of thinking to its logical conclusion and go with John Searle, who denies that organs have functions. There are biologists who would agree!
I just think that going down that route robs you of useful language tools, and that you’d find yourself helplessly slipping into using them occasionally anyway.
Sculptor1 wrote: ↑September 9th, 2021, 3:18 pmBecasue the idea that nature has a pattern or intention of any kind is a childish delusion. So there is no need for a useful tool to forge a distinction that cannot and does not exist.There are in fact patterns in nature which intentional or teleological language highlights and focusses our thinking on, which is why this way of talking is never, ever going to go away. Nor should it.