Natural Teleology: More Thomas Nagel (The limitations of science)

by dhw, Thursday, February 07, 2013, 17:09 (4089 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Even more about Nagel from James Barham, atheist philosopher:-http://www.thebestschools.org/bestschoolsblog/2012/11/12/nagel-dembski-life-mind/-It may be unwise to comment on a review of a book I haven't read, but a review should itself be coherent, and for me the ideas criticized make more sense than the criticism itself. Since the ideas link up so closely with my own tentative theorizing, I need to quote the relevant section of the review:-"Nagel himself admits that value is logically connected, not with consciousness, but rather with life as such:-. . . with the appearance of life even in its earliest forms, there come into existence entities that have a good, and for which things can go well or badly. Even a bacterium has a good in this sense, in virtue of its proper functioning, whereas a rock does not.[117] [NB This is a quote from Nagel]-He does not suggest—and he is right not to suggest—that we must therefore imagine bacteria as conscious beings.
Maybe they are, and maybe they aren't. We have no way of knowing. But, in any case, that question is not the most important one for Nagel's project.
What is crucial for Nagel's project is the realization that bacteria don't have to be conscious for things to be able to go well or badly for them. Therefore, flourishing, needing, valuing, and a host of other normative properties are essential features, not of consciousness, but of life as such.
This point relates to another important problem with Nagel's whole discussion. Nowhere does he make it clear that he is aware of the crucial distinction between local and global teleology.
At most points in his text, the "teleological principles" he has in mind seem to be global, or cosmic, in nature."
 
Since Nagel himself has used bacteria as an illustration of his thesis, I can only assume that he is extrapolating the global principles from the local, so how many local points does he have to make before he moves onto his global ones? It seems to me that he is in fact making exactly the point I have been trying to make myself by drawing a parallel between cells which act "intelligently" (see my quote from the Oxford description of panpsychism) ... but which are not, we assume, self-aware ... and the evolution of the cosmos, in which matter with varying degrees of (indefinable) "intelligence" forms functioning systems. I see little difference between "teleological principles" and "intelligence" in the sense I have indicated, since the latter is required to engender and fulfil purpose (e.g. why and how did single cells combine in the first place?). The confusing nature of Barham's critique becomes apparent in the following:-"The bottom line is that local teleological principles at least have some prospect of being anchored in real science, and—if confirmed—they would go a good part of the way towards closing the yawning chasm between the inanimate world and the domain of life and mind."-How can local teleological principles possibly close the yawning chasm between the inanimate world and living matter without being applied to the global, and isn't that precisely what Nagel is trying to do? -I need to end by stressing yet again that I am not championing this theory. I am only offering it as an alternative which I find no less reasonable, or no more unreasonable, than those theories involving chance and the many different versions of God.