Teleology important for science

[levinas12]

In practice not even the most inveterate atheist lives as if life is absurd, valueless, purposeless and meaningless.

… even the most hardened sceptic cannot be absolutely certain that life is “a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing”…

Heidegger invoked anxiety over death as motivating our awareness of “being” … if we didn’t realize that we “could not be here someday”, we would not be aware of “being” - and science would not have “happened” to us.

I think that teleology (which deals with ends) can only be understood against this backdrop - anxiety over death drives us to find a reason for being and beings (and foremost and primordial, a reason for “our being”).

Irony of ironies - even the anti-teleological position of modern science is driven by this. In the absence of “natural ends”, our death anxiety increases exponentially - and we become obsessed with the most elaborate technologies to ward off mortality (“Robinson Crusoe”).

 

[inocente]

Heidegger invoked anxiety over death as motivating our awareness of “being” … if we didn’t realize that we “could not be here someday”, we would not be aware of “being” - and science would not have “happened” to us.

I think that teleology (which deals with ends) can only be understood against this backdrop - anxiety over death drives us to find a reason for being and beings (and foremost and primordial, a reason for “our being”).

Irony of ironies - even the anti-teleological position of modern science is driven by this. In the absence of “natural ends”, our death anxiety increases exponentially - and we become obsessed with the most elaborate technologies to ward off mortality (“Robinson Crusoe”).

The primary goal of eating dinner for both dog and man is staving off death, that’s an intrinsic purpose. Are they engaged in teleology? Probably not, and the dog may be incapable of awareness of its purposes anyway. Do they both have intentionality? Possibly, as both may salivate when thinking of dinner, giving every appearance of minds holding intentional inexistence of dinner.

Teleology doesn’t seem a useful way of analyzing that behavior. Not anti-teleological, just not useful.

Not sure either that we’re ultimately motivated by death anxiety. Are even technologies which reduce stillbirths motivated by death anxiety? Are religions which promise everlasting life just wishful thinking motivated by death anxiety? Seems somewhat nihilistic.

 

[goout]

The primary goal of eating dinner for both dog and man is staving off death, that’s an intrinsic purpose. Are they engaged in teleology? Probably not, and the dog may be incapable of awareness of its purposes anyway. Do they both have intentionality? Possibly, as both may salivate when thinking of dinner, giving every appearance of minds holding intentional inexistence of dinner.

Teleology doesn’t seem a useful way of analyzing that behavior. Not anti-teleological, just not useful.

Not sure either that we’re ultimately motivated by death anxiety. Are even technologies which reduce stillbirths motivated by death anxiety? Are religions which promise everlasting life just wishful thinking motivated by death anxiety? Seems somewhat nihilistic.

The primary goal of eating is not staving off death.
It is to live. To live means to journey towards something. We live to flourish, not to merely keep death at bay.
A stagnant person full of death anxiety is not flourishing.
An anxious person probably overeats and likely hoards resources or commits acts of violence to satisfy his anxiety.

Life is ordered to an end, or beatitude. Avoidance of death is not beatitude.

 

[Vera_Ljuba]

It is the journey that matters, not the destination.
Win or lose… does not matter. What matters is how you play the game.

 

[goout]

It is the journey that matters, not the destination.
Win or lose… does not matter. What matters is how you play the game.

Life has a meaning, a purpose, and a destination. The journey has an end in mind.
How you play the game only has meaning to the degree it serves that end.
In other words, it’s not about you really.

It’s possible you might play the game, but play it in a disordered way, to the degree you are not ordered to the objective end of all life.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

It is the journey that matters, not the destination.
Win or lose… does not matter. What matters is how you play the game.

Tell that to the folks who visit their money in Las Vegas.

 

[Vera_Ljuba]

Tell that to the folks who visit their money in Las Vegas.

Anyone, who goes to Vegas with the intent to win is a drooling idiot (the card-counters at the blackjack table are exceptions, but they are very rare). We visit Vegas once a year, and have a predetermined 20 dollars a day per person which we risk. We only play penny-slots. On the long run we usually break even. Whether we win or lose it, it does not matter. What matters is to have fun.

The same applies to life. We shall all die at the end. The best we can hope for is to leave good memories behind.

Kenny Rogers said in the song: “The Gambler”
…Every gambler knows
That the secret to survivin’
Is knowin’ what to throw away
And knowin’ what to keep
'Cause every hand’s a winner
And every hand’s a loser
And the best that you can hope for is to die
in your sleep…
And if anyone thinks that is depressing… they are wrong. There is nothing depressing about anticipating to get wet when it rains.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Anyone, who goes to Vegas with the intent to win is a drooling idiot (the card-counters at the blackjack table are exceptions, but they are very rare). We visit Vegas once a year, and have a predetermined 20 dollars a day per person which we risk. We only play penny-slots. On the long run we usually break even. Whether we win or lose it, it does not matter. What matters is to have fun.

The same applies to life. We shall all die at the end. The best we can hope for is to leave good memories behind.

This philosophy only works for an atheist who is infallible about atheism.

The atheist who is not infallible is a gambler with nothing to win and everything to lose.

Certainly nothing much to hope for beyond penny-slots.

 

[tonyrey]

… The best we can hope for is to leave good memories behind…

Such negative dogmatism is totally unjustified because not only does it overlook the full implications of being separated for all eternity from everyone we love there is also not a jot of evidence that the sum total of our existence is confined to what we can see, hear, smell, taste and touch. Materialism is a self-destructive hypothesis for the simple reason that mindless molecules are incapable of insight into anything, let alone the nature of reality…

 

[tonyrey]

Heidegger invoked anxiety over death as motivating our awareness of “being” … if we didn’t realize that we “could not be here someday”, we would not be aware of “being” - and science would not have “happened” to us.

I think that teleology (which deals with ends) can only be understood against this backdrop - anxiety over death drives us to find a reason for being and beings (and foremost and primordial, a reason for “our being”).

Irony of ironies - even the anti-teleological position of modern science is driven by this. In the absence of “natural ends”, our death anxiety increases exponentially - and we become obsessed with the most elaborate technologies to ward off mortality (“Robinson Crusoe”).

Irrefutable! And if science itself isn’t teleological it is a purposeless activity over which we have no control and its interpretation of reality is as worthless as a fortuitous permutation of mindless molecules…

 

[inocente]

I refuted it yesterday.

The Catholic Encyclopedia says “Teleology is seldom used according to its etymological meaning to denote the branch of philosophy which deals with ends or final causes”. Which is spot on, since going by this thread teleology now means anyone doing the laundry or buying groceries, along with every dog anticipating dinner.

 

[Bradski]

I refuted it yesterday.

The Catholic Encyclopedia says “Teleology is seldom used according to its etymological meaning to denote the branch of philosophy which deals with ends or final causes”. Which is spot on, since going by this thread teleology now means anyone doing the laundry or buying groceries, along with every dog anticipating dinner.

This was pointed out within the first half a dozen posts:

I think that you are using the word incorrectly. A designed experiment is not an example of teleology. It is generally accepted, and certainly implicit in the OP, that it refers to apparent design in nature.

There doesn’t appear to be a lot of worth discussing something the definition of which not many people seem to understand.

 

[inocente]

This was pointed out within the first half a dozen posts:

There doesn’t appear to be a lot of worth discussing something the definition of which not many people seem to understand.

Irrefutable!

 

[Vera_Ljuba]

There doesn’t appear to be a lot of worth discussing something the definition of which not many people seem to understand.

And if this would be restricted to this word only. My grandfather used to say about people like these “theologians / apologists”:

“God knows everything, but these people know everything BETTER”.

 

[goout]

This was pointed out within the first half a dozen posts:

There doesn’t appear to be a lot of worth discussing something the definition of which not many people seem to understand.

In my short time here, this seems to be very true for atheists.
There is no end in sight for a discussion, no purpose to life, a journey to nowhere. Attempts at common sense ideas and words are disputed in rigidly fundamentalist way.

So in pursuit of nihilism, words must be robbed of their meaning to prove points that lead to nowhere. :whacky:

On another thread, we have a poster who has no sense of the word “evil”.
He goes on debating it’s meaning, the only purpose of which can be to rob it of it’s meaning.

 

[Bradski]

Irrefutable!

And if not, why not?

 

[Bradski]

In my short time here, this seems to be very true for atheists.
There is no end in sight for a discussion, no purpose to life, a journey to nowhere.

I hope you don’t lose your faith. If there were signs of that happening, I would keep you away from sharp objects and tall buildings.

 

[inocente]

In my short time here, this seems to be very true for atheists.
There is no end in sight for a discussion, no purpose to life, a journey to nowhere. Attempts at common sense ideas and words are disputed in rigidly fundamentalist way.

So in pursuit of nihilism, words must be robbed of their meaning to prove points that lead to nowhere. :whacky:

On another thread, we have a poster who has no sense of the word “evil”.
He goes on debating it’s meaning, the only purpose of which can be to rob it of it’s meaning.

This fallacy is known as hasty generalization, jumping to sweeping conclusions from very little evidence. It’s faulty inductive reasoning, a type of confirmation bias. We’re all prone to such mistakes unless we’re aware of the tendency.

Ironic too, as you took Brad’s correct definition of teleology, which was as per my quote from the Catholic Encyclopedia, and robbed the words of their meaning.

But your post is off-topic, and btw the stickies frown on jumping threads.

 

[tonyrey]

In my short time here, this seems to be very true for atheists.
There is no end in sight for a discussion, no purpose to life, a journey to nowhere. Attempts at common sense ideas and words are disputed in rigidly fundamentalist way.

So in pursuit of nihilism, words must be robbed of their meaning to prove points that lead to nowhere. :whacky:

On another thread, we have a poster who has no sense of the word “evil”.
He goes on debating it’s meaning, the only purpose of which can be to rob it of it’s meaning.

Indeed. If the term “evil” is meaningless so is “good”. It is worth repeating that in practice not even the most inveterate atheist lives as if life is purposeless…

Teleology is not only the foundation for science but also for a rational existence:

In ethical theory, each human action is taken to be directed towards some telos (i.e. end), and practical deliberation involves specifying the concrete steps needed to attain that telos. An agent’s life as a whole can also be understood as aimed at the attainment of the agent’s overall telos, here in the sense of their final end or summum bonum (‘highest good’), generally identified in antiquity as eudaimonia (happiness). Rival ancient ethical theories are distinguished primarily by their rival specifications of the end; the Epicurean telos is pleasure, the Stoic telos is life according to nature, and so on.
In the natural science of Aristotle, the telos of a member of a species is the complete and perfect state of that entity in which it can reproduce itself (so, insects reach their telos when they become adults). The telos of an organ or capacity is the function it plays in the organism as a whole, or what it is for the sake of; the telos of the eye is seeing. Carrying on the tradition of Anaxagoras and Plato, Aristotle centres his scientific methodology around the claim that there are ends in nature, i.e. that some natural phenomena occur for the sake of something; Galen and the Stoics enthusiastically second this; Epicurus rejects it.

rep.routledge.com/articles/telos/v-1

 

[inocente]

Indeed. If the term “evil” is meaningless so is “good”.

Indeed? Well yes, the unfounded allegation that an unnamed poster on a mystery thread didn’t know the meaning of a word may or may not have been trying to take attention away from the discussion on this thread about people who don’t know what teleology means. But it’s off-topic, and jumping threads is against forum rules.

*Teleology is not only the foundation for science but also for a rational existence:

*In the natural science of Aristotle, the telos of a member of a species is the complete and perfect state of that entity in which it can reproduce itself (so, insects reach their telos when they become adults).

rep.routledge.com/articles/telos/v-1*

The natural science of Aristotle was that he was stationary while the entire cosmos rotated around him. The natural science of Aristotle was that things fall because they contain elements which want to go to their “natural place”, beneath his feet.

Natural science moved on. Rational existence moved on. The teleological foundation was like building on sand. The floods came, the winds blew and beat against it, and it fell with a great crash.