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u3a-farnham -> Philosophy 2 -> More material for the teleology discussion in Ch.16 of Essential Midgley - which we were discussing on Oct 2, 2013
Post Info TOPIC: More material for the teleology discussion in Ch.16 of Essential Midgley - which we were discussing on Oct 2, 2013
Richard Myers


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More material for the teleology discussion in Ch.16 of Essential Midgley - which we were discussing on Oct 2, 2013
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The discussion in Midgley about the part that reasoning from purpose plays in our thinking I found fascinating but sketchy. It turns out, as perhaps we guessed, that a lot of material has been cut out by the editor. I have copied the missing material in below,including also as first and last para.s the text we do have. I haven't fully decided what I think of it, but it is certainly clearer, for example, in the passage about analysing a crystal. I got the material from the website of the Gifford Lectures which I came across by googling a specific phrase from Chapter 16. Obviously, would be happy to know what others make of it. I also think reading abridged versions of complex arguments is not good for less experienced philosophers.

 

"Questions about Teleology

 

This is not just a cheap jibe at Hawking. The point is central to our theme. Teleology—reasoning from purpose—is, I believe, a much more pervasive, much less dispensable element in human thought than has usually been noticed. I will suggest that it is doubtful, in fact, whether our imaginations can work at all without it. General attacks on it have often indeed exposed misuses of it—pieces of bad and ill-controlled teleology. But the idea of dropping it altogether may not be much more practical than that of stopping breathing. Purpose-centred thinking is woven into all our serious attempts to understand anything, and above all into those of science.

MISSING MATERIAL STARTS BELOW

What this large and perhaps alarming suggestion means will, I hope, gradually become clear. Briefly, however: Understanding anything is finding order in it, and, for human thought, the idea of order seems necessarily to carry a background context of planning, of intention. Obviously, this is primarily a remark about what our minds demand—about the ways of thinking possible to us—rather than directly about the universe. But then our minds are what we have to use, and we need to be aware of their workings.

 

The connexion between order and planning comes out in the range of words we use to describe order. Order itself and direction both also mean command. Design, system, arrangement, construction, structure, formation, plan, scheme, law, rule, program, mechanism and organization all mean some kind of intentional composition. Pattern turns out (rather surprisingly) to be the same word as patron, meaning source or authority.

 

And so on. The recent adoption of information-language is just one more very striking step in that bold process of assuming the penetration of mind through matter that has made Western science possible. The Greek word cosmos (akin to cosmetic) simply meant arrangement or adornment. The Judaeo-Christian concept of purposive organization by a single Creator reinforced this confident approach, which was reformulated in the seventeenth-century use of Plato's idea that God was the Great Geometer. When we carry this policy still further today, we only differ from our predecessors in being curiously unwilling to notice what we are doing.

 

The vocabulary just mentioned is not (I am suggesting) some irrelevant superstitious survival. These words are indeed metaphors. But they are not optional, disposable metaphors. They cannot be replaced at will by literal and ‘objective’ language. Like many metaphors, these form part of the thought. As with the physical terms that we use to describe mental processes—seeing, grasping, missing, clarifying, obscuring—these are the most direct words available.9 Because we consider order as something readable by our minds, we have to think of it as a communication, as meaningful. But meaning unavoidably strikes us as an expression of mind, not as something alien to it.

 

Teleology and Time

 

Using this mental category does not have to involve the means-end pattern through time which, for some reason, people tend to think is the whole of teleology. It need not involve planning done at a certain time to produce a result expected later. That ‘consequentialist’ or jam-tomorrow pattern is in fact quite a limited part of it. Aristotle, who first analysed the different sorts of functional reasoning, strongly noted its inadequacy for describing human purposes. The best and most central human activities are (he said) actions done for their own sake, done because they have value in themselves. Means-to-end calculations are subsidiary, they are plans devised to make these self-rewarding activities possible.10

 

For instance, neither thinking nor singing nor talking to one's friends need be done as a means to something later. Again, the first notes of a song are not a means to its cadence, nor the first ten years of a friendship a means to its final end. The essential teleological question is not ‘what later thing is this leading to?’ It is, more widely, ‘what is this for? what is the point of it? what part does it play in a wider whole?’ Acts like singing are intentional—they are done ‘on purpose’—but not for the sake of producing consequences.11 The essential relation involved is not that of earlier to later time. It is that of part to whole.

 

This point about the broad scope of teleological reasoning needs noting at once. It affects our theme in two ways. Morally, it is relevant because the startling plans for human immortality that we shall shortly be considering are an extreme example of consequentialism—a profound shifting of moral attention away from present problems to incalculably distant future jam. And in physical science, the working of this timeless yet functional thinking helps to explain the relation of teleology to our thoughts about inanimate things.

 

Understanding the pattern in a crystal or a river system is not discovering what somebody once designed it to produce. It is simply putting it into the class of things meaningful—noting how its parts relate to it as a whole, and how it itself relates to the larger scene around it. It is reading it. But that—for us—does involve understanding it in the way we understand a communication. The responses we make to it, the faculties by which we deal with it, are unavoidably those by which we would take in social messages. It falls into the department of mind.

 

What's in a Name?

 

A brief word may be needed here about the term teleonomy. This was invented by nervous biologists to replace the word teleology by describing functional behaviour in organisms without (as they hoped) implying the presence of a designer.12 This move, however, quite underestimates both the traditional scope of the word and the underlying problems. ‘Teleological’ is the name of a kind of explanation, namely, one that works by mentioning a function—not, for instance, by mentioning a cause. (A most troublesome traditional mistranslation of Aristotle is at work here, producing the idea that he thought of purposes as a kind of causes—‘final causes’. In fact, what are called his ‘four causes’ are four sorts of explanation, and this is simply the one that answers the question ‘what for?’)13 All talk of function is therefore in any case teleological. It is about design. What relation this fact may have to the possible presence of a designer is a separate question. People hoping to settle the whole issue by using the word teleonomy commonly take this further question to be finally settled by naming either Darwinian natural selection or (better still) blind chance as the quasi-designer. We will discuss these solutions later.

MISSING MATERIAL ENDS ABOVE

How Much does Meaning Mean?

 

The idea that we need to think teleologically is not fashionable today, and may be dismissed as extravagant. I will suggest that that dismissal grows less plausible once you notice the extravagance and implausibility of the views that are supposed to displace it—the bugs now infesting the idea of radically mindless matter. The suspicious reader can perhaps put off worrying about my suggestions for curing these infestations until we have had a good look at them."


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Harit Trivedi


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Hmm ... The unexpurgated text certainly makes for a more compelling argument, as Richard notes.

Perhaps it would not be out of place to describe a relevant example from profession life. In physics, many phenomena are/can be explained and understood by framing them in words like "A ... acts in such a way as to make B stationary". This puts the mathematical machinery of optimisation at the physicist's disposal. And very useful it proves to be too. A specific example:

Refraction – the bending of light entering one medium (e.g. glass) from another (e.g. air). The relationship between the angles of the incoming (unbent) and the outgoing (bent) light rays (the "sine law") provides a complete functional description of refraction. The mental picture remains at the level of an experimentally observed diktat of nature ("that's just the way it is").

Now consider this; Choose any point X on an incoming ray and any other point Y on the outgoing ray. Naturally, X is in air and Y is in glass. Then "light takes the quickest path from X to Y” is an equivalent description of the above diktat. (Admittedly, it takes some maths to show this.) But it does not sound like a diktat any more. Instead, light’s behaviour is now purposive – to minimise the travel time. It also seems to explain better “why this path and no other”.

I personally find the latter description more appealing. It gives me a better (richer) understanding or mental model for what’s happening during refraction.

Teleology or psychology? I don’t know.



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Andrew


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This is partly to confirm that I can access the discussion forum!

Thank you for this extra material. I find this an example of what I find rather good about Mary M - that she looks at things from a completely different angle from my (rather narrow) scientific viewpoint, and comes up with ideas that are completely new to me. I find it takes some time to assimilate them! I think I see, dimly, what she is getting at - most interesting. Thank you.



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Harit Trivedi


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Midgley's assertion (in the course of developing her theme) that the word pattern derives from old French Patron sounded so astounding to me that I looked it up in more than one etymological sources. And she's right, as I should have admittedly expected. One never ceases to learn!

That aside, I find the linguistics-backed evidence which Midgley has mustered quite compelling. Agreed, such arguments are not proofs. But they do persuade.



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simon


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Thanks Richard, for uncovering this.  I agree with what he says about the dangers of extracts. 

And I agree with Midgley that it is often useful to talk in terms of purpose.  Dennett describes what he calls the "Intentional Stance" to describe this, and uses the example of a thermostat.  It is extremely difficult to describe the workings of a thermostat, he says, without referring to its "purpose" in controlling temperature.  This shouldn't, of course, be taken to mean that it has purposeful intentions as to temperature!

But while Midgley makes a good case for analogies between analysing patterns and ascribing purpose, no physicist would be happy to accept that Harit's description of refraction as light wanting to take the quickest path is a full description of the phenomenon! The physicist will want to  show how the behaviour arises from known and testable properties of light.  It might be useful to distinguish "purpose" from "function".  The function of the heart is pumping blood.  "Purpose" to me implies a purposer or designer, so it is legitimate for a thermostat to have a purpose, but not the heart (unless you believe in a Designer - but that is extra-scientific). 

In science discussion of purpose can only be metaphorical!  And Midgley elsewhere complains about metaphorical uses of terms such as "selfish" being used sloppily and causing confusion as a result.  So maybe it's safer, by her own lights, to avoid talking about "purpose" in science!

 

 



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Ian Lang


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Unless you believe in intelligent design or a creator I think it is misleading to talk about purpose or intent in science. And even if you do believe, it is not part of science. As Simon points out, Midgley (page 209) has cautioned about extending concepts beyond their original meaning (eg evolution into morality). Perhaps Midgley thinks there is a purpose in the universe with a designer somewhere and that is why she says "Purpose-centred thinking is woven into all our serious attempts to understand anything, and above all into those of science."

Personally I don't think there is any purpose in "Life" except your own personal objectives in your own life. And I don't think there is an purpose in the material world or in existence itself. I think it is a sloppy but understandable extension of our thinking about human made objects (what's this for?) to naturally occurring objects.

However I agree with Simon (and Dennett) that it is often aids explanation to talk about the purpose or function of a non-man designed object (eg the heart) but we should recognise it is a metaphor and not get carried away.

She says understanding implies order implies intention. No it doesn't. She later admits that the purpose based reason is only one of Aristotle's four types of explanation (material -what; formal -how; efficient - who; and final - why). Understanding can be based on any of these and in science it is generally the what and the how.

She concludes by saying "The idea that we need to think teleologically is not fashionable today, and may be dismissed as extravagant. I will suggest that that dismissal grows less plausible once you notice the extravagance and implausibility of the views that are supposed to displace it—the bugs now infesting the idea of radically mindless matter." But she doesn't explain what she means by that.

I find her unconvincing.




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Richard Myers


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The way the overall argument is developed is crudely like this, I think:
1 - People used a long time ago to think of science in the widest sense as answering questions about purpose [as well as other kinds of questions]
2 - Descartes made a division between mind and matter which left matter meaningless [Descartes is not I think mentioned until the chapter after the one the extract above comes from, but there are references to mindless matter.. She has made similar comments about Descartes before.]
3 - But in fact buried in the very language we use in science, there is still a recognition of purpose, and this is not just a vestigial remainder but is a necessary part of the way we have to think. But we refuse to recognise this officially because of Descartes.
4 - We have to think in this way because, where we see order, we somehow cannot refrain from seeing it as 'akin to mind',akin to meaning, akin to purpose. [This is a subtle argument, possibly too subtle: it is not quite saying that order implies purpose, more like we unconsciously put order into a category where the idea of purpose is somehow floating around in the background.]
5 - So the idea of purpose in science is not crazy in principle, but there are a lot of crazy examples of it around which have been created by scientists, and one reason they are so crazy is that purpose is not officially admitted - as we have already said - so it creeps in unofficially 'through the drains and the central heating'.
6 - She then goes into examples of crazy purposes in the following chapters; these are what she has called "the bugs now infesting the idea of radically mindless matter."


Please see also the separate topic about what we read next.

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Harit Trivedi


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Simon and Ian

What I had in mind in describing a light-ray's behaviour under refraction is the action principle, which in this simple case (constant velocity in each medium) reduces to shortest time. See Feynman's expositon of this in his volume (I or II, cannot remember which), or even in his short popular booklet "QED". What that explains is why the ray takes this unique path, and none other nearby. Of course, nobody (not even I!) believes or even suggests that a light-ray actually acts like a living being scratching its head and thinking "which path should I optimally take?" or anything of the sort. It is just a convenient point of view to adopt - one among many- in thinking about it. (I have not had the time to track the postings and hence this much delayed defence/clarification. Sorry.)

I must also confess that I was unaware that teleology referred to the ultimate purpose. Glibly, I had believed that it implied any old one - including the "as if" ones. So I will keep the physics and withdraw the teleology.



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Harit Trivedi


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Richard

You have described it carefully and wonderfully, specially point 4. Purpose and intent are intimately connected IMHO but one can analyse order as if there were a purpose - whether or not in fact anyone intended it.

That's my tuppence worth.



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