Teleology & evolution: Stephen Talbott's take (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, June 07, 2016, 15:59 (3091 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: Since his whole argument is based on the intentionality of organisms,I think he means some people (like you) accept that organisms look as if they are intelligent but insist that they are not intelligent.... “In fact, Talbott himself is uncomfortable with the idea of design and his worldview doesn't seem to include a God, either. "The word [design] has its legitimate uses," he writes, but "you will not find me speaking of design." -I didn't say he preferred design, but he is discussing the difference in the two approaches and trying to sit comfortably in a neutral zone.-> DAVID: Why 'acting intelligently' only after their invention? Intelligently designed processes can certainly act intelligently before and after.
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> dhw: I'm afraid I don't understand what you are getting at. I am suggesting that the cell communities themselves act intelligently when they invent the organ, but once the organ is functioning, they will continue to do the same thing over and over again (without “thought”) until problems arise, when they will again need to do some original “thinking”. This explains what you see as the apparently “automatic” behaviour of our organs.-'Apparently automatic' behaviour of organs is not 'apparently'; it is absolutely automatic in our bodies.
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> dhw: There is no reason why an ID site should be uncomfortable with this view of evolution, as it still allows for your God to have created the autonomous inventive mechanism. Talbott is not discussing the existence of God but only the question of how evolution works. In my amateurish way, that is precisely what I have also been doing.-Me too.