Our brains are wired for teleology (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, October 18, 2012, 15:34 (4396 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121017102451.htm-You agnostics, keep fighting it!-A quote: "To test the hypothesis that there is a natural preference for teleological explanations, the researchers asked a group of physical scientists from top-ranked American universities to judge explanations such as "Trees produce oxygen so that animals can breathe" or "The Earth has an ozone layer in order to protect it from UV light" under speeded conditions so they had little time to reflect on their answers. Another group of scientists made judgments of the same statements without any time restriction. The researchers found that, despite maintaining high accuracy on control items, scientists who were under time pressure demonstrated greater acceptance of scientifically unwarranted purpose-based explanations than their un-speeded colleagues who generally rejected them."-David, you are constantly complaining about money being lavished on useless research projects, and yet you are happy to support this gibberish. Of course I can only go by the report as given here, but if this is the best they can come up with, it suggests sheer trickery on the part of the researchers. Yes, trees produce oxygen which animals breathe, and yes, the ozone layer protects the Earth from UV light. No scientist is going to deny this, and if you put scientists (or anyone else) under time pressure (speeded), they may well focus on the facts and not on the misleading wording. Scientists are not necessarily experts in the finer arts of language manipulation. But give them time to think about it (= unspeeded) and they will reject the teleological wording. Why didn't the researchers simply ask them whether they thought Nature was controlled by a divine purpose? What do you think would have been the majority answer?