Teleology and Thomas Nagel (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, April 21, 2016, 13:58 (2919 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: As I see teleology everywhere, this is an excellent review of Nagel's book, Mind and cosmos, but also an attempted takedown of teleology as a driving philosophic argument:-https://aeon.co/essays/what-s-it-all-for-is-a-question-that-belongs-in-the-past?utm_sou...-The fact that something functions in a certain way can only be described in terms of purpose if one assumes that the function corresponds to an intention. Intention implies some sort of conscious mind. That leaves us with a god or a form of panpsychism, as mentioned in the essay (and I would include my “autonomous inventive mechanism" in that category, while acknowledging the possibility of a god designing it). If there is no intention, we are left only with function and can forget teleology and forget god and panpsychism. It's therefore all chance until we get to the arrival of awareness (not to be confused with human or divine self-consciousness), after which we can have intentionality and purpose (such as to survive and improve). So it all comes down to when and how awareness first arose. And nobody knows.