Friday, September 15, 2006

Purpose and Order in Nature

According to conventional wisdom, the dawn of modern science dispelled the gloom of moth-bitten superstition, and banished purposes from nature. But such Enlightenment propaganda leaves out the tradition the modern world inherited from its predecessors. At the heart of the modern scientific conception of the world is the idea that nature is a knowable order. Without this belief, Galileo would never have troubled himself to roll balls down inclined planes. Exploring chemical reactions would be pointless. Geneticists would have no reason to take pains sequencing nucleic acid base pairs. What modern scientists take for granted was established by reason in the ancient world—by philosophy. In Book II of the Physics, Aristotle argues that nature’s obvious regularities—its tendency to act in a given way under given circumstances—reveal an ordering to specific ends:

For teeth and all other natural things either invariably or normally come about in a given way; but of not one of the results of chance or spontaneity is this true. We do not ascribe to chance or mere coincidence the frequency of rain in winter, but frequent rain in summer we do; nor heat in the dog-days, but only if we have it in winter. If then, it is agreed that things are either the result of coincidence or for an end, and these cannot be the result of coincidence or spontaneity, it follows that they must be for an end; and that such things are all due to nature even the champions of the theory which is before us would agree. Therefore action for an end is present in things which come to be and are by nature.1

In other words, although “chance” events often obtain, the natural world is inherently teleological. Scientific laws, modern and ancient, physical, chemical, and biological, disclose nature’s regularities and testify to teleology. That baking soda and vinegar react expansively, and that confetti is almost always attracted to the static electric charge on a balloon show the order and purpose of nature. Far from being opposed to modern science, teleology is its sine qua non.

The ascendance of the Darwinian narrative leaves the situation unchanged. Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection encompasses two pieces, chance variation and natural selection: (1) genetic novelty originates in chance, and (2) novel forms less suited to existence tend to fail in passing their genes to posterity. While the latter point may well be a valuable contribution to the scientific understanding of the world, the former point simply puts a name (and a deceptive one) on an unknown. As Aristotle’s classic definition observes, chance is the intersection of two otherwise unrelated lines of causality. Chance itself is not a cause; to invoke chance is not to explain, but to label an unknown. To the extent that any theory relies on chance, that theory is not science, but rather ignorance.2

The champions of chance argue that teleology is an intellectual opiate and kills the quest for the acatual mechanism of change. On the contrary, teleology does not eliminate the need for an efficient causal explanation: just because one appreciates the sublime order of the parts of a horse does not negate the molecular forces that maintain its form. Teleology compliments other modes of explanation.

The source of the many prejudices people hold against teleology is that an order in nature apparently points to

  1. an Orderer, and
  2. a natural moral law (order).

And these are both true. The source of people's fear is the misconception that God somehow imposes the moral order on the world from the outside. Nothing could be further from the truth. Whom would you most trust to write the instruction manual for your lawnmower? Obviously the person who designed and built it. My take is that in the same fashion, revealed moral laws (i.e., the Ten Commandments) are simply God giving us certainty about how to find happiness through the regularities we observe in nature on our own.

The natural moral law is inscribed within creation—it is an integral part of its workings. The "law" we learn simply makes note of regularities in human existence (and in the universe at large) and enjoins us to work with them for our ultimate happiness.

Forget about crime. Forget about sin. Forget about "right and wrong." Disobeying the moral law is worse than a crime: it's a mistake.3 In the same way as one knows better than to spit into the wind, a healthy society doesn't (in my view) encourage certain practices, for example, the taking of any innocent human life, rape, extramarital sexual relations, divorce, contraception, and so many other things that have become accepted in our society. The West is dying because we won't listen to God—yes—but also because we are too full of ourselves and seeking our immediate gratification even to hear nature.

No matter what one thinks about the content of the natural moral law, anyone who values science in the least has to agree that there are regularities in nature. We can argue about what these regularities indicate, but there should be no disagreement that learning these regularities and working with them is the way to find happiness in this world.


Notes

1. Physics, Book II, chapter 2, 198b34–199, Hardie and Gaye translation.

2. See also: Providence and Chance and Intelligence Transcends Science.

3. A variation on Talleyrand. "Stupid" might be more accurate.


Classes began last week, so I've been busy laying a solid foundation for the semester. This piece is partially something I've been working on for something else.

9 comments:

Mahndisa S. Rigmaiden said...

09 17 06

Good post LG thanks for sharing your thoughts on these matters. I think you are one of the few physicists that delves more into the philosophy and correlates that to Good and Evil in some sense. Interesting:)

Doctor Logic said...

What are the assumptions implicit in rational thought? Logical consistency is one. The axiomatic nature of our own experience is another. And trust in the regularity of at least some experiences is the third (even the rules of logic are a discoverable regularity).

Therefore, every rational person already accepts the assumption that there are discoverable regularities. This is not something that can be rationally proven. It is axiomatic.

The rest of your commentary is an extension of an old fallacy. You claim that the collection of all fundamental regularities {L1, L2,...LN} is caused by the will of God. If there is such a fundamental rule of implication here, then this rule this is actually another law, L, which should have been included the original set. If there is no such fundamental rule of implication, then you have no reason to regard it as explanatory. In other words, you can never explain the set of all laws without invoking another law. Explanations must preferentially predict our observations, and if they don't, then we truly are just restating the observations (that which we already know).

In response, you might suggest that intelligent agents can will things without reasons for doing so, but that would make their wills random chance. And we know how you feel about chance.

If teleology really means anything, then it has some observable signature and it is material in the broadest sense of the term. It is a natural law. This is true whether or not the intelligent agent can be scientifically reduced to atoms. (Materialism has no formal requirement that everything be reducible to one kind of thing - things that don't reduce are fundamental, inexplicable laws. The materialist simply holds that, by definition, there are no non-predictive explanations.)

Lawrence Gage said...

Dear Master Logician,

Actually one point of the post is that invoking God often obscures the objectivity of the natural law; it frightens non-theists like yourself from admitting their regularity. (If you're hankerin' for a tussel over the existence of God, don't look here.) One result of this fear is "existentialist" philosophy.

If teleology really means anything, then it has some observable signature and it is material in the broadest sense of the term.... there are no non-predictive explanations.

I agree. To be real teleology has to have some observable manifestation in the sensible world. And we seem to agree that it does, and that teleology is in fact axiomatic (known through induction) to rational thinking.

It sounds like you too are an "essentialist." Am I correct?

Mahndisa, thanks for your compliments! I appreciate your continued interest in this forum.

Cheers,

LG

Doctor Logic said...

LG,

Actually one point of the post is that invoking God often obscures the objectivity of the natural law; it frightens non-theists like yourself from admitting their regularity.

I don't follow. It sounds like you're saying that invoking God frightens atheists from admitting that there are natural laws. I suspect you mean something else.

One result of this fear is "existentialist" philosophy.

I'm no existentialist in the philosophical sense. Maybe you mean that, if one denies that the way things are serves as example of the way things should be, then it is up to the individual's subjective taste to establish morality. In that sense, I might call my self an existentialist, but moral relativist would be a better term.

To be real teleology has to have some observable manifestation in the sensible world. And we seem to agree that it does, and that teleology is in fact axiomatic (known through induction) to rational thinking.

Hmmm. Is teleology axiomatic to rational thinking?

I define teleology as primarily concerned with choices, not purely with inferences. Teleology involves some simulation of the results of a decision, followed by a selection (on whatever grounds) of an appropriate action. A lack of simulation means a lack of teleology.

Neglecting conditioned conclusions that we reach habitually (e.g., reaching for a towel when we step out of the shower), rational thought does appear to simulate the outcomes of our choices.

However, the fact that the world is intelligible to a rational mind doesn't mean that teleology is out in the world rather than part of the process we use to comprehend it. You say:

Scientific laws, modern and ancient, physical, chemical, and biological, disclose nature’s regularities and testify to teleology.

...in our heads, maybe. Teleology is not evident in the chemicals themselves. We have no reason to believe that Hydrogen atoms simulate their environments and, on that basis, choose to bond with Oxygen atoms and not with Argon atoms. (Of course, a sufficiently complex arrangement of non-rational elements could effect a simulation and a choice on that basis. Computers like us do it all the time.)

As for whether Nature shows evidence of teleological design (which is what you probably meant in the first place)... You would need to show that there is some entity that simulated the outcomes of possible choices for Nature before making them, rather than simply executing choices randomly or by conditioning. That's a tall order, and no such evidence has ever been found.

It sounds like you too are an "essentialist." Am I correct?

No, not really. My philosophy is a variant of logical positivism, with the Principle of Verifiability being a definition of meaning that is applicable to all experience, not simply to the traditionally empirical. In other words, the meaningful content of a proposition is found in the experiences that are implied or denied by the proposition's truth.

Practically speaking, it involves an analysis of language, and the elimination of claims (or parts of claims) that have no bearing on experience. For example, after elimination of the meaningless parts, "every event has a cause" becomes "some events have discoverable causes." I don't think essentialism survives this sort of analysis. It would say things like "we can categorize some things according to certain attributes." I agree with this statement, but it's rather trivial.

No matter what one thinks about the content of the natural moral law, anyone who values science in the least has to agree that there are regularities in nature. We can argue about what these regularities indicate, but there should be no disagreement that learning these regularities and working with them is the way to find happiness in this world.

Basically, I agree with this. One should make use of observed regularities to identify the actions one ought to take to get what one wants. I think the main difference between us is that you assume everyone ultimately wants the same thing, and I think that our desires are subjective. We often have desires in common, thanks to shared cultural and evolutionary history, but there is no necessity that they be the same. Teleological rationality has to operate on some facts about what we want, and we generally want different things. So there's no unique, rational answer to the question "what ought I do?"

Lawrence Gage said...

Dear Ma'gician,

Yes, you understood me correctly: I mean that the close association of God and natural law frightens non-theists from admitting there is a natural law.

A big obstacle to many folks (including yourself) is a conception of teleology as somehow imposed from outside created things. This seems to be what you mean when you define teleology as involving some sort of simulation and choice.

Let's call your definition "teleology-1." I'm defining teleology differently--let's call this "teleology-2." To qualify as teleology-2, a system merely has to tend to follow the same pattern or rule. As you observe, hydrogen atoms certainly don't "choose" in the volitional sense and certainly not based on some sort of "simulation," so they don't qualify for teleology-1. They do however tend to bond with oxygen atoms in the same way under the same conditions, so they qualify for teleology-2.

For example, that it's warm and sunny in summer and cold in winter is a manifestation of teleology-2, and it is the reason we plant crops in spring and not in fall.

One should make use of observed regularities to identify the actions one ought to take to get what one wants. I think the main difference between us is that you assume everyone ultimately wants the same thing, and I think that our desires are subjective.

Well said. But I distinguish between our desires and what truly fulfills us. For example, an alcoholic wants liquor, or a drug addict wants his drug, but fulfilling these desires makes these folks not happy, but merely digs them deeper into their addictions. As you say, our desires are subjective. Our needs, on the other hand, are objective and inscribed into our beings.

We often have desires in common, thanks to shared cultural and evolutionary history, but there is no necessity that they be the same.

Right, but I'd say further that our culture allows our desires to be manifestly aligned with our needs, our needs having been shaped by our evolutionary history (or whatever you wish to say made us what we are). All human beings are indisputably much, much more similar to each other biologically than we are different, which is why we all have the same fundamental needs: food, shelter, society, etc.

For example, the need for food is a manifestation of teleology-2: if you don't eat, you die. An anorexic intensely desires gratifying himself (generic masculine) by eating food and then vomitting it out, but at the end of the day, this does not fulfill him as a human being. The purpose of food is nourishment and by separating the pleasure from the purpose of food, this poor person is quite literally killing himself, not satisfying his human need.

LG

Doctor Logic said...

LG,

What is the difference (if any) between your teleology-2 and natural law?

As you say, our desires are subjective. Our needs, on the other hand, are objective and inscribed into our beings.

I disagree.

What of the artist who is fulfilled by his work, but achieves his work at the expense of healthy eating? Or a man who kills himself (or sacrifices his life) to meet a desire?

It seems that it is our desires that motivate our needs, not the other way around. We ought only stay alive because most desires require we be alive for their fulfillment. Given certain desires, it may be objectively true that certain things are needed for fulfillment, but the needs themselves are contingent.

An anorexic intensely desires gratifying himself (generic masculine) by eating food and then vomitting it out, but at the end of the day, this does not fulfill him as a human being. The purpose of food is nourishment and by separating the pleasure from the purpose of food, this poor person is quite literally killing himself, not satisfying his human need.

Anorexia might be a desire that's impossible to fulfill, and which generally results in suffering for the afflicted.

However, you seem to be jumping to conclusions about the "purpose of food" and such. The purpose of antelopes is not to be human food. We merely find antelopes useful as food as we seek to fulfill our desires.

How would you reconcile your statements with the lifestyle of, say, a humanitarian aid worker? Such people often put their bodies through torment, and risk their lives to fulfill their desires.

It seems to me that there are no "needs" without an implicit purpose, and "need" is in the eye of the beholder.

Lawrence Gage said...

Dear Ma'gician,

Subjectively you may be completely sincere in proposing your counterexamples, but objectively speaking they are so ridiculous and question-begging that I can't justify spending the time replying.

If you are sincerely seeking the truth, you need something more radical than intellectual argument to find it. I suggest you do some volunteer work, say, in a soup kitchen or a hospital. Then you will confront objective human need.

But if you aren't seeking, if you don't believe in a truth independent of your mind (as previous conversations would seem to betray), then please don't waste my time.

LG

Doctor Logic said...

I think that if you had obvious, objective counters to my arguments, you would have stated them. Instead, you're just claiming that what I'm saying sounds counter-intuitive. So what?

Look, if intuition is going to be the arbiter of truth, why all the pretense to reason?

If you cannot follow reason when it demands that you abandon intuition, then it is you who is not seeking.

Intuition can point us to distinctions that should be investigated with reason, but it cannot settle objective questions (except objective questions about what we intuit, i.e., questions about personal subjectivities).

FYI, I believe in objective truths. I just don't see how you can objectively establish that there are needs sans goals.

Lawrence Gage said...

The counter-examples are in my response... whether or not you choose to see them.

LG