Back to the Arguments: Feser, Fodor and Function
I want to return for a moment to Feser’s argument about evolution, and the purpose for which it (the argument, that is) was developed. As we saw in the last round, Feser thinks the purpose of evolutionary theory is to get rid of final causes by showing that they can be resolved into efficient ones. But we can’t do this, says Feser, because “final causality pervades the natural world from the level of complex biological organs all the way down to the simplest causal interactions at the microscopic level.” (248)
When he introduced the idea of final causality earlier in his book, he spoke about “the always unsafe hands of modern philosophers,” (64) because, with them, causation has become a problem — remember Hume’s Problem of Induction. This is a good example of the mistake that Feser thinks took place in the historical argument — which is not, after all, an argument. In any event, we wouldn’t be in such a conceptual or logical pickle now, Feser thinks, if Hume had just read Aristotle more closely. Since he didn’t we can dismiss him as a “mere — brilliant — sophist,” and Dennett, on the other hand, because he hasn’t read Aristotle closely enough, and read Hume more closely instead, as a mere sophist. And now, in his last chapter, “Aristotle’s Revenge,” Feser has come to the point where he is going to vindicate “Aristotle’s doctrine completely”, as he promised (64). You’ll have to excuse Feser; religious people (or should I say philosopher/theologians?) just do have a tendency to talk in terms of doctrines — an occupational liability.
Now, it’s important to get quite clear what Feser has in mind in vindicating Aristotle. In order, he says, to give a complete description of a thing it is not enough to talk about causes, we must talk about ends and purposes. Now, if anything in the world seems to have to do with intentions and purposes, it seems to be mind, so that’s exactly where Feser begins, with what is called the ”eliminative materialist” theory of mind. Now, probably most of you have never heard of eliminative materialism, but it is all the rage in some philosophical/cognitive science circles. The “whole point of the theory,” as Feser says, “… is supposed to show how thought can be a purely material process.” (243)
It is worthwhile adding that so-called “eliminative materialism” is not as widely supported as Feser’s use of it suggests, and, in fact, has not made good its programme — at least not yet – so Feser is really reaching here. There’s an interesting introduction to it at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and, for my money, it doesn’t really really provide the dosh, although it does serve Feser’s function of trying to show that contemporary philosophy of consciousness/neuroscience/cognitive studies is really trying to take away our candy.
Now, here is where we need to remember Feser’s bold use of assertion. He tells us, without any shadow of hesitation, that:
No physical system can possibly count as running an “algorithm” or “program” apart from some user who assigns a certain meaning to inputs, outputs, and other states of the system. [240]
Then he purports to show why over the next few pages, but it is nowhere clear to me where he has shown this. For example, he says that only a being that is in principle capable of following a rule “can be said literally to follow an algorithm.” But does an algorithm need to be followed (mentally) ? If they must be, then of course consciousness cannot be the product of material algorithms in the brain, because these are, “supposed to be totally unconscious even in principle.” (241) Objectively, though, he says, all that is taking place in the brain is “the ongoing causal flux.” (242) Just before this, of course, he refers us to his book Philosophy of Mind, but I think I’ll stick with only one of this man’s books. The problem, though, as Feser sees it, is that whatever is happening in the brain is simply the mid-point of a number of causal chains which pass through it by means of the senses and the actions which proceed from the brain being stimulated in this particular way, chains which, as material processes, have no beginning or end, nothing to individuate them.
If we think about a specific example of perception, say, then the mind privileges certain features as representing the beginning and the end of the chain, but without this mental privileging there simply would be no beginning or end, unless there is a consciousness somewhere in the vicinity to do it. Does this show, however, that physical systems cannot run algorithms? Why not? It is one thing to say that it is incoherent, as Feser does in several different ways; it is another thing to show it. In any case, you can easily see the results of an algorithmic process whenever you walk along the beach, since the wave action on the beach carries out a sorting process, separating the larger from the smaller rocks, and finally sand or small pebbles, which are deposited at the water’s edge, the larger stones having been sorted out by the process because they are not so easily washed back down the beach with the withdrawing wave because of their weight. That, though certainly simple, is a purely physical algorithmic process.
Now think about evolution, which, as Jacques Monod says, is the result of chance and necessity. He says, in his book of the same title, that:
Even today a good many distinguished minds seem unable to accept or even to understand that from a source of noise natural selection could quite unaided have drawn all the music of the biosphere. [114]
The ”noise” is the random mutation, the selection is done by the environment. If the mutation survives it will be passed on with fidelity in the population, and if there is truly a causal relationship between it and survival, then it will be more widely circulated in the gene pool, until it becomes a more determinate characteristic of the organism. And this algorithmic process, carried out over thousands and millions and even thousands of millions of years, while it may give all the impression of design, is a purely natural, material process.
Living things look designed, and design language is used in order to describe them, but there is no logical reason for thinking that there is any incoherency involved in suggesting the process took place without any foresight or end in view, except, of course, for the coherent but tautological claim about survival. And if the algorithm is, in Feser’s language, an efficient cause, then what look like final causes have been reduced to efficient ones.
Of course that is not, pace Feser, what the theory of evolution was intending to do — although the belief that something was created with a particular end in view — and here one has to ask, For what end?, and then say how they know that that is the answer — was simply to respond to the evidence. And what if responding to the evidence is, at its source, a matter of algorithmic processes in the brain?
As I noted in my last post on this matter — and was corrected on the point, though I am not sure that Feser was trying to do a reductio at this point – Feser thinks that, given the theory of evolution, there is some logical reason why we cannot understand the function of something “until you know something of its evolutionary history.” (151) It is at this point that he quotes from Fodor. If I hadn’t made the mistake and thought of him as Searle, who makes an appearance on the same page, perhaps I would have remembered that Fodor thinks there is a fatal (logical) flaw in Darwinism, and wrote a book with Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini about it. He also wrote an argument about it back in 2007 which was published in the London Review of Books, entitled “Why Pigs Don’t Have Wings.” (You should read the letters after the article, because they are as substantial — well, more substantial – than the article itself.)
Fodor’s argument, which turns on a logical confusion (which you can read about in Ned Block and Philip Kitcher’s “Misunderstanding Darwin“), is that natural selection can’t work, because nature can’t tell the difference between, say, the white colour of a polar bear and the fact that this makes the bear blend in with its surroundings. And this is precisely the same kind of problem that Feser has, although he doesn’t know it. He keeps calling natural selection incoherent, but it’s not at all clear why he does so. If he has presented a reductio (ad absurdum), I can’t see it. But Fodor does try (and please notice that “swampman” (251) is completely irrelevant to the issue).
In trying, though, Fodor makes a simple mistake. He takes a case of artificial selection, and suggests that, since selection doesn’t work there, this shows it doesn’t work anywhere. Here’s the key passage:
But the ancillary phenotypic effects of selection for tameness seem to be perfectly arbitrary. In particular, they apparently aren’t adaptations; there isn’t any teleological explanation – any explanation in terms of fitness – as to why domesticated animals tend to have floppy ears. They just do.
So it looks like an accident. However, this is a simple mistake. When the foxes were selected by the breeder, they were selected for tameness, and the result was tame foxes with droopy ears and curly tails. If tameness and pointed ears, say, had been the selection criteria, then probably tame foxes with pointed ears would have been the result. But if you choose for one characteristic, other characteristics can come along for the ride, and they did. This happens in the wild too, but the terms of selection there are much more stringent. Mutations must provide (cause) traits that aid survival in competition with other species-mates, predators and the environment, and free-riders can’t have a negative effect on survival.
Natural selection cannot choose function on the basis of specific descriptions — like tameness or curly-tailedness – because it’s not a conscious agency, so nature cannot distinguish between white and camouflage in the case of polar bears, but since white is camouflage in the winter, especially in northern wastes of snow, there is nothing incoherent in suggesting that the function of the bear’s coat is to provide an advantage in a winter environment, and that’s why it evolved that way. And notice, before Darwin, while it might have been possible to say that the white gave the bear an edge in hunting during the winter, no one would have been able to say how it got that way. There is nothing incoherent here. A purely physical algorithmic process is carried out, and function is provided.
A wrapup before we leave this topic. It is quite clear, when Feser is suggesting that there is no way to delimit the chains of causation involved in perception, what he is suggesting. Just as mind (thought of in purely non-material terms) is necessary to bring order out of the causal flux of physical and brain events, so God is necessary, in the cosmic scheme of things, to bring order out of what would be (without it) the “blooming, buzzing confusion” (to use William James’ phrase for the sensible field or the stream of consciousness) of the universe. Without that unifying mind there would be no ordered “world” out there, without our minds the physical world would be just, as he says, a causal flux.
But there is no reason to believe that either of these is true. Just as the process of evolution brings about the variety of ordered life in the world that we are privileged not only to see, but to understand so much more fully, so the same process was performing the same ordering work before we ever came along to enjoy it. Aristotle does not get his revenge, after all.
I don’t care to spend money on Feser’s book, but does he anywhere ‘prove’ that Aristotle would have the same views about ’causes’ if Aristotle were alive today? There’s not much point in defending Aristotle’s views as they apply to modern life if those views have been ‘retired’ by now.
In other news, water still manages to find its way to the sea through algorithmic processes, and in Chesil Beach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesil_Beach) the stones/pebbles are sorted by size longitudinally.
Since there is nothing genuinely inconsistent between a material cause-and-effect description of any given event and an Aristotelian teleological description of that event, there is absolutely nothing for Aristotle to metaphorically seek or obtain revenge against. The misunderstanding of Aristotelian teleology which underlies the conflict Feser writes about in his book has a fairly substantial history, to be sure. But the misunderstanding has long since been corrected and the conflict largely resolved, except for a few minor issues that will not even remotely bear the load Feser places on the conflict. There is no excuse for Feser — who claims to be a highly qualified Aristotle scholar — not to be aware of and address the many existing arguments which either dissolve or resolve the purported conflict between ordinary material causation and Aristotelian natural teleology (one of which I provided a reference for in a prior thread). Simply declaring (over and over and over) that efficient causation and final causation are fundamentally incompatible without ever answering the many extant arguments against this incompatibility thesis is a form of intellectual dishonesty.
I would say that Feser is confused about a great many matters, but the evidence suggests otherwise. Feser is not simply confused, but is willfully sowing confusion about a great many matters in order to rationalize his faith-based convictions that were never the result of any reasoned, evidence-supported argument in the first place. This is the fundamental deception of all theology: Cherry-picking, reason-distorting rationalizations of preconceived convictions masquerade as genuine argumentation towards independent conclusions.
PhilosophicalPrimate
That is my assumption, and although I do not mention Lennox in the above post, I had him in the back of my mind as I wrote it. Indeed, it was reading Lennox’s article that made a number of things in Feser’s last chapter become clear for me. But the most obvious thing is that he never justifies the claim that algorithmic processes are not possible without conscious rule following.This is repeated with variations throughout. However, it is good to have your perspective on it, because it brings into focus things about Aristotle scholarship about which (aside from Lennox’s enlightening analysis) I am ignorant.
…and of course, since the universe isn’t an algorithmic process but a quantum mechanical one, his argument falls far, far, far short of the science.
Does anyone have the guts to tell him that he’s more than 100 years out of date?
A philosopher finds a fundamental problem in evolutionary theory, news at 11.
*Groan*
I don’t have enough faces to palm.
“But the most obvious thing is that he never justifies the claim that algorithmic processes are not possible without conscious rule following.”
It is obvious. Mostly because Feser doesn’t make that claim at all. In fact in that last chapter he goes to a great length to point out that Aristotlean Final Causes are not concious (mental processes are examples where final causation is in action, but that doesn’t mean mental processes are the ONLY examples of final causation).
Please, for the sake of saving face, actually read the arguments instead of making up both sides.
Does Feser also think the hand of God is at work in Richard Lenski’s experiment? If so, I’d love to know why only some strains are getting the good mutations, while others are not. No doubt these simple organisms have offended God in some way, while others have been spared the smiting through some arcane worship.
If only there was some other, logical, way we could explain how this randomness might occur!
Gravity is expected to stop working shortly as well. As a purely physical algorithm, this surely is at odds with Aristotle and must therefore be wrong!
I saw an excellent set of programmes recently called The Code by Marcus du Sautoy, a well respected atheist and mathematician. Unsurprising that a mathematician would view the world in terms of mathematics, but there is no better description about the world. Everything is a result of mathematics, you just can’t escape it. I think religious people confuse mathematics with design, they see a spiral shell and intuitively believe that’s intelligence, but it’s not intelligence, it’s mathematics. It’s such a simple error to make, but it’s also a profound error.
I’m a little puzzled what Feser’s claim is, exactly, regarding materialist theories of mind. Obviously physical systems can, and do, run algorithms. The objection is usually that, per Searle, simply processing rules (syntax), which is what an algorithm does, is insufficient for meaning (semantics). So the comment you quote:
… is perhaps just stating that? But it’s not clear; maybe the context helps. It’s obviously one of the biggest perceived problems of physicalism, although I see it as a problem of our perception rather than a genuine problem. Nevertheless, it is an ongoing controversy, as I’m sure you know.
Sorry, bioteck, but here’s the quote:
But it is clear that Aristotelian final causation would allow for the world to be cut up into discrete units in just this way, and that they are just there to be perceived by us, at least with the mental equipment that we have which evolved in this world with these capacities. That ontological question is one that can be set aside entirely when we are speaking of evolution. But when Feser says –
– all this to “show” that the mind could not have evolved from a material substrate, by the purely algorithmic process of evolution. In other words, mind could not have evolved but must be surpervenient upon the process of evolution. And I do quote from Feser the claim that final causality is, as he says, pervasive in “the natural world from the level of complex biological organs all the way down to the simplest causal interactions at the microscopic level.” But don’t forget what he says about physical alogrithms and that:
– which is just what you say he doesn’t say.
So, I am acknowledging precisely what you say: Yes, final causes are pervasive. Nor did I say that they are conscious. Read what I said. But nevertheless, Feser is claiming that final causes cannot be reduced to efficient causes, cannot, in fact, be eliminated in favour of efficient causation, but that, in effect, is just what the theory of evolution does, even though it is describable in terms of final causality, and Darwin continued to use this language. But he was not using this language in the kind of robust sense that Feser has in mind. For Feser, Aristotle’s revenge comes in because it all, in the end, depends on mind, for mind itself cannot be the result of such processes. This is what he calls Naturalism. He thinks that naturalism abandons Aristotelian final causality (see 252). No one is denying that we can use intentional language in order to speak about the processes in evolution, say, and biologists do it all the time, but that doesn’t mean that Aristotelian final causes are somehow intrinsic in the way that Feser is taking them. Indeed, he is depending on an equivocation in the idea of intentional language in order to make his point, for his argument for God actually depends upon their being built into the things themselves, an inherent essential nature, which is unfolded in the natural processes. Otherwise, his natural law theory of morality would have no traction. (You cannot assume, with Feser, that he is being quite open and honest about the whole process. He has too many irons in the fire for that.[In fact, perhaps, a later comment: perhaps he simply does not recognise the connexions here between his natural law theory of morality and the robust sense of final causes that he is assuming.]) He pretends to be discussing this quite dispassionately, and that is clearly untrue. That’s why I began with what he says about mind and eliminative materialism. I don’t think (at the moment at least) that we can explain mind in terms used by the Churchlands in the quote that begins the chapter, but I do think that mind is not, as Feser’s analysis implies, the product of a kind of vitalism, an inherently teleological force inherent in natural processes, and it is clear that Feser thinks it is — if it is not, as is more likely, inserted directly into the process by God. As he says, as clear as can be:
Do you think that this final claim, right at the end of the book, does not point to what he has been saying about final causes? Give me strength! So, groan as much as you like, but Feser is not being quite so ingenuous as you suggest. In the end, all material processes depend on God, and this is clear when you consider the relationship of mind and brain. It’s as simple as that, and that is a point that I made in the course of my argument. But I am, quite frankly, getting a bit annoyed at people like you and dguller, who quote Feser very selectively in order to get the answer you want, when Feser’s answers and commitments are quite clear.
For a look on how Aristotle got his metaphysics wrong, and how there is no such thing as substances, essences, or forms, and then no final causality, you can check this out: http://enlightenment.supersaturated.com/essays/text/jamiemellway/principleofnoncontradiction.html
Yes, that’s what he’s saying. However, since mind is, without some very powerful evidence to the contrary, the effect of natural processes in the brain, Searle must just be wrong. Despite that, of course, this is not what Feser says, and it is easy to find physical systems that run algorithms without a user who assigns meaning to inputs and outputs. Indeed, it seems that the brain’s capacity for language — syntax and meaning — develops epigenetically, so that it is an intrinsic part of a physical system. Do we know the upper limit for the complexity of algorithms? After all, some of the behaviour that is observable in the natural world, quite aside from language, is immensely complex. Clearly, I am out of my scientific depth here, but I cannot see a logical reason for making Searle’s claim.
Eric… can’t reply to your comment at 07.04 directly, but hopefully this will position it below.
Feser says twice in your very last quote: “the secularist sees only the material world” and “the secularist sees only the brain and the body”.
Is it just me, or is someone as obviously smart as Feser misusing “secular” in this way a clear sign that he’s being dishonest?
Unless I am unaware of some other meaning, “Secular” refers to the separation of religion from other areas of society/organisation. It is not a metaphysical position regarding the existence of non-material or supernatural things – and many religious people are in fact (rightly) committed secularists.
In my experience, the only times I see people confusing secularism and atheism/materialism in this way are when I’m dealing with either angry morons, or dominionist well-poisoners.
Eric:
Just a few comments.
I would clarify this a little. Specifically, he objects to speaking about efficient causes while excluding final causes as an ultimately incoherent approach.
Feser: “Few materialists are eliminative materialists; it is very definitely a minority view, and most materialists are happy to acknowledge the obvious, viz. that the mind exists” (pp. 235-6).
It depends upon how you define “algorithm”. Feser’s definition is: “the manipulation of symbols according to rules” (p. 240). A symbol is basically something that stands for something else. For example, the word “cat” stands for cats. It is this “standing for” that is the problem, because the question is how exactly one takes a physical entity — such as marks on a paper, pixels on a screen, or neurons firing — and determines what it is actually supposed to refer to in the world. This is part of the broader problem of how intentionality is possible on a materialist account of mind.
He argues that what identifies “X” as a symbol of X is a mind interpreting “X” as X. “X” is just a physical mark, and as such is inert. What transforms “X” into a symbol of X is the intentionality of a mind. As he writes: “By themselves they cannot fail to be nothing more than meaningless neural firing patterns (or whatever) until some mind interprets them as symbols standing for such-and-such objects or events” (p. 239). This is relevant, because if a mind is necessary for symbols to be possible, then one cannot then rely upon symbols to explain the mind without being trapped in circular reasoning: “the theory goes around in a circle and is simply incoherent” (p. 240).
Moving on to your point about algorithms, if identifying symbols requiring the intentionality of a mind, then the processing of algorithms also requires the intentionality of a mind, because an algorithm requires the manipulation of symbols according to rules. No mind, no symbols, no algorithm. That’s basically his point.
This is related to the issue of whether one can account for the intentionality of symbols through causal chains. In other words, “if objects of type A regularly cause brain events of type B, then brain events of type B will come to “represent” or “mean” objects of type A” (p. 241). And a huge problem for such a theory is accounting for how the brain can identify the beginning and end of a chain of causes, and pick out of the series what exactly the brain event is supposed to be referring to. As Putnam has argued, on such an account, “cat” can refer to cats, cat fur, cat surface, temporal slices of cats, and so on. How does the material brain pick out what specific part of the causal sequence the symbol is supposed to refer to? There is actually no good answer to this question, because “apart from human interests and interpretation, there is just the ongoing causal flux” (p. 242).
If you are talking about his definition of “algorithm”, described above, then yes, it does show that physical systems cannot run algorithms. They cannot identify symbols without an interpreting mind for the reasons described above, and thus cannot operate algorithms.
This is an example of a rule-governed natural process. He is not talking about a rule-governed process at all, but an ALGORITHMIC process, which necessarily requires the manipulation of symbols. But even restricting ourselves to rule-governed behavior, there is the important distinction between following a rule and appearing to follow a rule, which he describes on page 240. Something can appear to be following a rule, but may be doing something else entirely. He gives the example of a person circling the desk according to a rule and a marble circling the desk, which is also circling the desk, but according to the laws of physics and not the rule the person was following. This is relevant, because we may think we know the rules that govern the behavior of a physical entity or process, but we may be wrong.
Regardless, even if rule following is possible, which I agree with, one is still stuck with the core problem of intentionality of the mind, and how an algorithmic computational account is simply unable to do so without begging the question and assuming intentionality to begin with. In some ways, it is similar to the need to include some type of teleology into any materialist account of the natural world.
First, that is not his point at all, and he openly admits to the majority presence of unconscious teleology in nature. Evolution can operate according to natural selection without any foresight whatsoever, according to Feser.
Second, if natural selection operates in order to do X, then natural selection has a final cause, and cannot simply be an efficient cause. You can say that X is the generation of new species, the survival of existing species, the maximization of variation, or whatever. If you can put anything in X, then you have snuck in a final cause into natural selection, and thus have not reduced final causes to efficient causes at all.
He does not call natural selection incoherent. What he calls incoherent is the attempt to “naturalize” teleology by using evolution by natural selection (p. 250). And we have already gone over the arguments for this position, some of which I find quite compelling, including Fodor’s argument that one can determine what hands are for without ever knowing their evolutionary history (p. 251), and Feser’s argument that if all talk of function is just about how humans perceive the world – because teleology cannot exist in nature – then any talk of function is irrelevant to any explanation of how the world works (pp. 252-3).
Nothing that Feser wrote relies upon Fodor’s current misunderstanding of evolution. His references to Fodor in TLS are from 1998 and 2000, way before the 2007 article that you cite and Fodor’s recent book Darwin Was Wrong. So, all the points that you make about Fodor’s recent work, which may be apt, are irrelevant to your criticism of Feser.
He does not say that there is anything incoherent in suggesting that a bear’s coat functions to provide a survival advantage. He argues that it is incoherent to deny the existence of function in nature, and then talk non-stop about function in nature. And that is what “naturalizing” teleology attempts to do.
That may be his overall strategy, but one does not have to agree with it to agree with the philosophical points that he makes when discussing philosophy of mind and of biology, especially when most of those arguments are made by atheist philosophers themselves.
Eric:
And one more thing.
I actually have a great deal of sympathy for Dennett’s philosophy of mind in which the sophisticated and complex mental phenomena that we experience to be unified and intentional can, in principle, be built up from mindless and stupid basic components in a gradual fashion, and when organized in a particular way has the result of our mental life. That would imply that the appearance of our mental life does not actually capture what is going on behind the scenes in our brains to generate that mental life. That what appears to be impossible is actually part of a self-imposed illusion or magic trick, which is resolved when looked upon in the right way, such as a Penrose triangle.
So, although Feser presents formidable objections to the materialist theory of mind, for example, I do not think that they are fatal objections. There are approaches, such as the one that I mentioned, that may be able to circumvent the objections, but I don’t think it’s fair to describe such objections as just dogmatic assertions without philosophical depth.
And if you object to Feser’s tone in TLS, then you would find his Aquinas and Philosophy of Mind to be much more scholarly and neutral in tone. They are not polemical works, and actually present the material in TLS, for example, in a more calm and academic light.
Just so you know.
dguller,
– “He argues that it is incoherent to deny the existence of function in nature, and then talk non-stop about function in nature.” —
But it is not incoherent. Certainly not on the grounds that we would simultaneously employ teleological talk of “function” on one level of discourse, yet reject it at another level of analysis.
It is not incoherent to notice the difference between how people TEND to talk about X and, at a more careful level of analysis, note how our tendency, habit or intuitions lead us astray. This is what science has done so well for us.
We all still speak of the “sun setting/rising” because on one level of experience, it is an easy referent to how it LOOKS to us. Yet a more careful analysis shows we need to be conceptual clear: in fact, it’s the earth revolving, not the sun. But we can keep on using “the sun sets/rises” advisedly as a convenient short hand. So it is not incoherent that: At a scientific level we deny that it is the “setting” or “rising” motion of the sun that occurs…yet we talk “non-stop” about “setting and rising” of the sun nonetheless.
The same goes for our intuitive assessment of gravity. We all talk “non-stop” in ways about what is happening gravitationally “the ball falls down”…yet a more careful analysis shows that if we only conceived of gravity in the way that is easy to talk about, we’d be missing much about the actual nature of gravity.
Same thing when it comes to “Natural/Scientific Laws…Scientific LAWS.”
This is a hold over from earlier theistic talk in which God’s teleology and authority were assumed in the way we described nature. Unfortunately, the fact we, and scientists even, continually speak of “Scientific Laws…or Laws Of Nature” can result in a type of cognitive error. So you get a lot of people inferring “Well…the universe follows LAWS…thus there MUST be a Law Maker! (God)”
This is to confuse what is really going on: What we, when doing science, observe are regularities that we DESCRIBE. So scientific “laws” are descriptive, not prescriptive. The “Law Of Thermodynamics” is no more normative, no more governs the behaviour of thermodynamics than the phrase “The door is open” governs the door opening, or being open. It’s description.
So the fact we use the word “law” “non-stop” to describe natural processes – a word that is associated with coming from an authority – does not indicate there is an authority when we apply it to nature. We have to be conceptually clear on these matters. Or…you get religion
So the same goes with “purpose,” “function” etc. The fact we may use those terms “non-stop” does not imply they are actual features of the phenomenon we describe.
As I’ve already been arguing on Feser’s site, no one there seems able at this point to show how they, or Thomism, or Feser, move from the set of observational descriptive declarations to choosing which descriptions amount to any Final Cause…let alone which descriptions magically turn normative for any entity. In other words, Feser seems engaged in a form of Naturalistic Fallacy and there has yet been no good argument to show otherwise.
It seems you’ve been agreeing with me as well on that web site.
And this happens to be a criticism that many “new atheists” make upon seeing Feser or Catholics invoking Natural Law/Final Cause reasoning.
Yet we are continually castigated as philosophically unfit to criticise Thomism.
RH
Eric
Dr Feser has made some serious accusations about your review of his work. You are either deliberately misrepresenting him, in his view, or are not competent to review works of philosophy of religion.
You would need to respond to his posting, and especially to the charge that you insert words were they do not appear in the text, and that you portray Feser as a champion of ID and Irreducible Complexity (when anyone who has googled “Feser Intelligent Design” would know that this is not the case).
This is now, officially, an issue of trust. The allegation is that we should not trust your posts, as you either lack the integrity or the competence to represent Feser fairly. Sorry to be so blunt, but there it is.
Perhaps you could clear this issue up. There seems to be an animosity on your part that I cannot account for. I have to wonder if you would have responded in quite this way to a similar book by an evangelical protestant, or conservative Jew.
Graham Veale
I think Eric can speak for himself, but I’ve been a careful reader of his since before this blog’s inception, and I can firmly declare that I see nothing in his writings that bespeak “animosity”.
I think it is Feser’s pot calling MacDonald black. Look at the language they use to describe their opponents. Who is using the more combative language by far? I think you can objectively see is it Feser.
Now me, I’m WAY more prone to animosity than Eric. Why he even bothers with a pompous windbag like Feser who can’t get even the basics of science right, and seems to think that all of our modern science AND philosophy is for naught yet lives in an age where he enjoys all the advantages of both. When he’s losing an argument on the merits, he resorts to childish attacks. He claims facts not in evidence, and deliberately and willfully misrepresents not only the position of his opponents, but of the sources that he purports support him.
He is dishonest. A liar. A theist (and yes, that’s an insult).
Animosity on Eric’s part? Say what? This coming from someone who favours* the guy who entitled his latest post — which is chock-full, as his responses to critics tend to be in my experience, with personal slights and charges of incompetence — “Eric MacDonad’s Assisted Intellectual Suicide”. I suppose he thinks — and maybe you agree — that the most despicable thing I’ve heard (well, read) all day is “clever”.
Feser’s the one getting worked up about philosophical — note well, philosophical, not personal — criticism. Welcome to philosophy. Unless you make bloody, mind-numbingly clear what your arguments are, there’s room for misinterpretation and misrepresentation. And that’s assuming Eric is doing either of those things!
You say one of the problems is that Eric “portray[s] Feser as a champion of ID and Irreducible Complexity (when anyone who has googled “Feser Intelligent Design” would know that this is not the case)”. I neither know nor care whether Feser’s a proponent of ID. He may explicitly be quite the opposite. But there can nevertheless be worries that ID slips in unnoticed and unintended in a theory like his. If Eric is right, then this is a serious worry about Feser’s book — no matter what he argues elsewhere or what his explicit stance is on the matter.
If Eric is wrong, that’s fine, but let’s keep our heads about us! Surely, if Feser thinks Eric’s wrong about this and doesn’t want his theory to have these implications then that’s something to clarify. Instead, we’ve got Feser running about accusing people of incompetence and malicious attacks. He’s threatening libel suits, here — for philosophical criticism!!! Come now.
* Apologies if you don’t. Just an assumption on my part, given your comment here.
Childish attacks indeed! The so-called “serious accusations” are just more of the same from Feser: “he’s criticizing my work so he must be stupid”.
Animosity? Really?! Really! Well, Feser hasn’t read or responded to this particular post, so perhaps I should wait. I acknowledge — and acknowledged to you in the last thread, that I was not comfortable with my conclusions in that post, and that I had misunderstood.
I’m afraid that I find Feser blustering, indignant and unclear, not to mention hostile and crudely impolite, and since he had to point out himself later that his argument was not one about irreducible complexity, it is clear that he thought this misunderstanding could arise. And so it did, but this is largely because his argument was and still is very unclear to me, and why he should have chosen this particular way to make his point is beyond me. I don’t think it succeeds, but not for the reasons that I had thought.
This post gives my more detailed reflections on the argument, though you may find it unsatisfactory as well. However, so far as I am concerned this is about argument, not about bluster. I admit to a some resentment towards Feser. I bought his book in all seriousness, hoping to read a thoughtful religious response to the new atheism, but then, to be told a few pages in that I am deeply immoral and insane did not really help to keep things in proportion. I note that this lack of proportion is still a quality that Feser exhibits to an extreme degree. I am willing to discuss with him, but I will not respond to the kind of hostility that I witnessed on his blog this morning. He knows that I accompanied my wife to Switzerland where she was helped to die as was her wish. To have cast his response in the way that he did quite frankly appalled and offended me, and until Feser can change his tone, I have no intention of responding to him in any detail at all, nor do I feel the need to.
As to responding in quite this way to an evangelical protestant or a conservative Jew, I think I would have to read the books first, wouldn’t I? However, I do find Feser’s style bombastic and hostile. He steamrollers over very complex issues with a kind of bravado that makes Zorro look pretty tame. I find his moral thought rebarbative and in many places plainly repulsive. And while he claims that there is a foundation for his views in a natural moral law which, so far as I can understand it, is simply an incoherent view of moral value, there seems very little reason to think that there is anything of substance that can be said here. Besides that, the consequences of this view seem to me simply inhuman. I linked a NYT article which I think provided evidence for the inhumanity that is reflected in this moral view, and yes, I do think it is obviously inhuman. I also referred to the case of the 9-year-old pregnant with twins in Brazil, or the woman whose life was saved by abortion in Phoenix. I think to most ordinary people, who are not bamboozled into believing the extreme views of Catholic natural law theory, these things do seem simply inhuman and immoral. However, taking Feser’s book as a guide, just his language about sex and the uses of sex is deeply troubling in my view. To suppose that sex for human beings is just biological function, something which contains no human meaning, is simply repulsive. And the harm that this view of sex has done is probably immeasurable, not least in Africa, where population has been allowed to grow far beyond the capacity of the land to accommodate people in a rich human environment. It was in Africa that JP II made his most urgent appeal about the immorality of contraception. The suggestion that was made by JP II’s advisor for family affairs, that it is better for a man to infect his wife with HIV than to use a condom, because some things are more valuable than life itself — a view that, though qualified by Benedict, has not been revised — is to me simply monstrous.
It does not surprise me that his response to my posts has been so hostile and over the top. I agree that the comparison of the pope with Himmler was perhaps as over the top as well, though it was something that came naturally to me when I was reading Feser’s book, where he speaks of the overemphasis that we place on life on earth. I think there is a similarity between what he was saying and what Himmler so chillingly says, though perhaps that was not quite the way to express it. It was, however, the way it seemed to me as I read. But I do find in the moral views expressed by Feser a deeply inhuman code, cold to the concerns of real people, who live their lives, very often, without much in the way of cushion between themselves and the brutality of the reality they face day by day. To proffer them the kind of hope that he does, based on what seems to me a callous disregard for the concerns of real people, is in fact, to my mind, a deeply immoral thing. Since Feser can only see in my repudiation of his world view immorality and insanity, it is only fair that pay him back in some of his own coin.
RH:
That is an excellent point, but I don’t think it works in this case in the way that you hope.
You are talking about the distinction between how things seem to be to us and how things really are. The sun seems to be rising and setting, but the earth is actually orbiting the sun. The former is our subjective experience and the latter is the objective reality.
If you are arguing that the appearance of function in nature is just our subjective experience, but not an objective reality in the natural world, then you have subverted all of biology. The heart does not seem to have the function of pumping blood through the circulatory system. It does, in fact, pump blood. It is not a subjective seeming, but an objective reality.
Actually, you confirm an argument that Feser makes, which is that if function is just a feature of our psychology, then we can talk of function when trying to explain our psychology, but it serves no useful purpose in explaining the natural world. And that is because if something does not exist, then it cannot influence anything, and thus cannot be a part of any explanation of reality. So, if function is just a byproduct of our minds, and not present in reality, then it cannot be a part of any genuine explanation of how the world works, being non-existent in reality. To argue otherwise would be like claiming that Harry Potter novels can explain how the London train system works.
That’s a bit much, though.
Look, I’m a liberal atheist, and philosophically I am as far from Feser as possible, but I have read three of his books, and several of his blog posts, and I have to say that Eric’s representation of Feser’s positions and arguments is often wildly and completely inaccurate. It seems that because he sees all of Feser’s arguments as in support of an ultimate conclusion that he finds repellant, i.e. Catholicism, he is unable to be charitable to Feser at all, and misinterprets and misstates a number of Feser’s positions and arguments. I mean, he even claimed that Feser does not offer arguments at all, period, which is just ludicrously false.
So, I can understand why Feser gets angry and frustrated by this misrepresentation, and that turns into nasty blog posts. I tend to try to ignore tone, if possible, and to focus upon the arguments, which is what I have been discussing on this blog. All I can say is that I encourage everyone else to do the same.
And I do want to praise Eric for recognizing that he did, in fact, make some errors in his previous posts on Feser, which is certainly a positive development.
dguller, this is just silly. The heart is a collection of complex molecules which happen to be arranged in a particular way, and which do a variety of very tiny little finicky semi-random things which happen to all add up to the phenomenon we call pumping blood. Why is the heart like that? Well, in the past, if there was a collection of complex molecules arranged in the particular way that would cause us to describe it as a member of a previous generation of living creatures, and it included a collection of complex molecules arranged in a particular way that would cause us to recognize it as a heart, it was more likely to perform the variety of tiny little finicky semi-random things which happen to all add up to the approximate self-replication processes which we call reproduction.
None of that requires function to be somehow written on the heart in invisible God-ink. Just because we can observe the collective functioning of all those tiny little bits that make up what we call a heart, discover regularities in that functioning, and draw inferences about how those regularities impact the likelihood that the collection of tiny little bits that we call an organism will remain organized in roughly the same way, that doesn’t mean the heart *has* a function innately. It just means that the collection of molecules we call the heart happen to do a collection of things which have an emergent regularity that it’s simplest for us call a function.
By your logic, one could as well argue that the function of a human is to create feces, because that’s a thing that we do pretty regularly as well. Or perhaps our function is to feed bacteria with our corpses. That humans create feces and feed bacteria with our corpses is an objective reality of the universe, not simply a matter of how things look to us. Yet I don’t think Feser (or you) want to argue that that’s our function.
“Functions” are precisely what you want to tell RH that they are not: a part of our subjective experience, a way for us to conveniently repackage what we see into concepts which are simple enough for us to contemplate instead of trying to mentally encompass the uncountably many atoms jiggling around semi-randomly inside our hearts interacting in incredibly complicated ways. We talk about “function” because otherwise we can hardly talk at all, but the objective reality is jiggling atoms creating complex emergent happenstance.
Function is part of a genuine explanation of how the world works in the same way that a large-scale, low-detail road map of the United States and a satellite photo of my hometown resolved down to the cars in my parents’ driveway are both parts of genuine explanations of planetary geography. The U.S. is not an expanse of white paper criss-crossed by blue and red and black lines and speckled with dots of varying sizes, but I can still use the road map to plan a trip from LA, CA to Portland, ME. The satellite photo is not a complete-down-to-the-last-atom replica of my town, but I can figure out where the forest preserves and the shopping mall are. Neither of them is real, but they bear sufficient resemblance to something real that I can convert them into usable navigational information.
I don’t claim that a Harry Potter novel can explain the London train system, but an Underground map should do the job nicely, even though it’s just a bunch of colorful lines and dots with words written on it. Those lines and dots are non-existent in reality, but they’ll get me from point A to point B.
Mind the gap.
And of course the “function” concept is so pervasive in our language that I can’t help using it even when I’m trying to avoid it:
Let’s try this instead:
Yet another excellent example of how hard it is to not think/speak in terms of teleology. As we discussed recently over at Jerry Coyne’s site, science is about tracking down all these little places where your mind plays tricks on you and learning how not to be fooled. Theology is about treating the things you have been tricked into believing as sacred, unquestionable revelations of the true nature of the universe. Ghosts, visions, and teleologies. It’s all of a piece.
Dguller,
——
“You are talking about the distinction between how things seem to be to us and how things really are. The sun seems to be rising and setting, but the earth is actually orbiting the sun. The former is our subjective experience and the latter is the objective reality.”
——-
Well, I would say that the phenomenon of how we see the sun “rising” has both subjective and objective features. The sun “is” rising on one level of analysis, in an arc relative to our position. So it is not in that sense a “false” inference or observation. And of course there is the
“objective fact” of how it looks to us. But we can still come to false conclusions when we aren’t careful with our inferences and concepts. If we move from the “fact” the sun is rising in some sense above our head to inferring that “The sun is rising due to it’s circling the earth” then that would be incorrect, an illusion. Analysis at another level will show what is really going on.
—–
“If you are arguing that the appearance of function in nature is just our subjective experience, but not an objective reality in the natural world, then you have subverted all of biology. “
—–
No. What I’m arguing for is conceptual clarity and caution. If by “function” one implies “what is it FOR?” (and at least one Thomist on Feser’s site is demanding this form of question/answer is necessary, which it is not)…then I’d disagree such a question is necessary to become informed about any biological phenomenon. Then, if you can mean by function essentially the “effect” then I’d be ok with that. “The actions of the heart have the effect of circulating the blood” tells me what to expect of the heart. Adding the word “function” in of itself imparts no more explanatory power in terms of what is ACTUALLY going on. One can also say: The pumping action of the heart circulates blood, facilitating the exchanges of certain gases necessary for the metabolic survival of a human being… ” etc
All of which can be stated without appeal to some final “end” or final cause or “function.” It is not NECESSARY to invoke “function” in order to gain or impart information about any entity, biology included (excepting certain facets of agential e.g. human purposes).
Now there may be explanations why we evolved with the tendency of seeking “purpose” and agential causes, and why we may so comfortably slip into teleological talk…hence why we easily fall to terms like “purpose” and “function” even when referring to non-agential entities.
But if we want to speak of the “function” of a heart we ought to be able to realise that ultimately we are talking of the effects of the heart in the human body, which can be understood non-teleologically, and in different language to clear our minds of confusion.
And an important distinction I think, is this: When we employ the word “function” it is essentially an arbitrary delineation. It’s just our way of saying “We want to be talking of only X set of descriptive statements.” For instance, the actions of my teeth masticate food, making food easier to swallow. But as with most biological functions, there are other consequences: the actions of my teeth and jaw also wear down my teeth. Which of these is the “function” of my jaws and teeth? We would usually want to say: the mastication of food, not the wearing down of teeth. The reason we do this is because, when you uncover the motivation for asking “what is the function?” it can be seen as selecting which descriptive statements we happen to be interested in: “How does the jaws and teeth aid the survival/health/desires/flourishing of a human being?” To talk of the “function” generally means we are simply interested in a certain subsection of possible descriptive information about jaws and teeth or the heart.
It’s no problem for us that this is a subjective choice…so long as we can RECOGNIZE that it is
subjective, and not go mistaking our demands for “function” as being objective, intrinsic to what we are studying. Because once we do that, we get into the problems I’ve already pointed out with Aristotelianism, wherein you are trying to say you are uncovering something “objective” when it really turns out one is imposing a subjective interpretation. What I’m talking about is honesty in what is happening.
And NONE of this means we can not understand biology or anything else on a non-teleological level. Using non-teleological concepts and statements and questions, we can certainly infer, and impart objective information – “is” statements or descriptions.
—–
The heart does not seem to have the function of pumping blood through the circulatory system. It does, in fact, pump blood. It is not a subjective seeming, but an objective reality.
——–
It’s an objective reality that the heart pumps blood through the circulatory system. There, I’ve just affirmed it. And that statement is informative about a biological organ. I didn’t have to appeal to “end” or “function” necessarily to do so.
Therefore your (and Feser’s) claim that I have to throw away all of biology without using “function” or teleology in the way an Aristotelian wants me to, is simply false.
Cheers,
RH
dguller,
(Sorry, I wanted to fit in one more reply before I go on vacation. I grabbed some of your conversation from the other thread for this…)
The problem in making “ends” and “function” and “purpose” into an objective property is, as I keep arguing (on Feser’s site as well): How, in the case of any entity, does this ever tell us which end/function/purpose/final cause/good ?
If “function” and “purpose” and “ends” are strictly speaking reserved for subjective “ends” we don’t get into this problem. This issue of the Thomist saying “but without Aristotelian/Thomistic concepts of causation and teleology, how do you explain anything?” shares a similar problem to the moral challenge assumed by so many theists: “But…without God…how would morality be objective?”
Before even having to defend how non-theistic morality could be objective, the right move is to first point out that it’s wrong in the first place to think God would make morality objective. So it’s not like “If you can’t explain your side, we theists win.”
Same with this issue where you are echoing Feser in saying “But without Aristotelian/Thomistic concepts of Final Cause and teleology as a basis, HOW could you explain anything about biology?
This is hardly compelling if the Thomist can’t, himself, show how his teleological concepts give us explanations. So far as I’ve seen, they don’t at all.
As I keep repeating, from any SET of descriptions of an entity, HOW does the Thomist/Aristotelian discern which description is the “function” or “end” or “final cause?”
No one yet has answered this for me, and you seemed to agree this was “fair criticism” on Feser’s site, and that you agreed this seemed unanswered (even after having read Feser on the subject?)
If that’s the case though, it’s more than simply a “fair” criticism: it’s a fundamental criticism. It shows that Aristotelian teleology does not IN FACT “explain” anything in rational terms. Not if the process of identifying any function, end or final cause is impossible or arbitrary. I haven’t even been shown how IN PRINCIPLE the Thomist can select from among any set of descriptions, that isn’t ultimately arbitrary, or question begging or special pleading.
So, when you write:
I think that physical entities are directed towards a sequential process operating according to natural laws towards the fulfillment of various ends. This is all that teleology is, and if you can agree that this happens in nature, then we have no disagreement at all.
But it’s the “toward an end” part and the use of the term “function” that messes things up here.
How do you non-arbitrarily identify the “end?”
If I want to gain information about, say, the nature of certain chemicals I don’t have to speak teleologically, speaking of an “end” in some teleological way: I can say “X mixed with Y results in Z.” No need to call this a “function” or that X is working toward an “end” in Z.
It is teleologically neutral. When we are talking as specifically as possible, trying to be as conceptually clear as possible about the nature of things, we have to be particularly careful about what words we employ. To use the words “fulfillment of an end” is to import words
best reserved for subjective ends, when we are being careful. We just don’t need those words – it’s clear that allowing those concepts in the door lead a lot of people to unjustified inferences ultimately to the idea an intentional Agent is ultimately behind reality.
The problem continues when you wrote:
Well, a hydrogen atom is simply a proton, and so its end could be the preservation of its own existence, as you mentioned above through the annihilation and creation of quarks through the exchange of gluons. It also has a variety of other capacities that can be actualized in different contexts, such as binding with other protons to form other elements, acquiring electron shells that can interact with other atoms to form molecules, and so on. Since all of these regularities occur with law-like predictability, it can be argued that they are all the ends of these entities. What is THE end? I have no idea. Maybe it is to achieve the lowest energy state possible, given its interaction with other subatomic particles. Maybe there are a number of ends. I have no problem with that, actually.
So you say “What is THE end? I have no idea.”
THAT IS THE PROBLEM with the teleological stance! If you don’t know The End of a hydrogen atom, then you can’t say that the Aristotelian teleological approach has given you knowledge or actually EXPLAINED anything! Speculation is not knowledge, nor is it ultimately useful as “explanation” without a method of confidently selecting it from other possible explanations.
If you assume the teleological principle of “things have ends/purposes/final causes” but it offers you no non-arbitrary method of discerning such things, then it is useless. The Aristotelian teleological stance doesn’t, in fact, explain anything! So it’s unjustified for you (if you think so) and certainly Feser to claim that it is necessary for explanations, when it seems neither of you can give an account of how to non-arbitrarily infer any particular end/function/final cause.
And Feser’s arbitrariness was clear as day in the passage in which he inferred the Final Cause of sex organs…he never once explained how his selection of descriptions wasn’t arbitrary from all the other possible descriptions concerning sex organs (e.g. that they also give gay people pleasure during gay sex – he arbitrarily rejects that as a possible end or Final Cause).
So, why you are granting Aristotelian teleology any credence when it seems you’ve already agreed to a criticism of it’s fundamental emptiness, is baffling.
(We can of course then move on to reasons why we might still use terms like goals, functions, purposes etc for non-agential entities…but we don’t need to in order to first point out the emptiness and failure of Aristotelian teleology to provide the knowledge or explanations we crave).
All this, btw, I right in good faith as I believe you argue in good faith as well!
RH
Anne:
All that matters is that the heart pumps blood. What the material composition of the heart is interested, but not essential to determine its function.
Of course not, but we can observe the heart in action, see what it does. It repetitively contracts and expands, which results in the pumping of blood throughout our circulatory system, which helps us to stay alive by transporting oxygen to our organs, and carbon dioxide to our lungs to expire, amongst many other things. I don’t know what you mean by “function innately”. It has the function of pumping blood. That’s it.
Those are all part of what it means to be a human. I have no problem with biological entities having a variety of functions, which ultimately means having a particular set of outcomes, at least as I understand “function”. I think that you, like many, think that if you admit purpose or function, then you have opened the door to a teleological argument for God. I don’t think that’s necessary, or even a good argument at all. In other words, one can happily accept purpose and goals in nature while rejecting a God. This is good, because it is senseless to deny that living entities have specific behavioral outcomes that occur with enough regularity that we can call them their ends or goals or purposes or function or whatever.
But the map is not the terrain, and we are interested in the terrain, no? In your analogy, we can talk about the different representations of the United States, but we are not talking about the United States at all. It is like seeing a finger pointing to the moon, and just talking about the finger, but thinking that one is understanding the moon.
Exactly. There is enough resemblance, which means that there are common properties in both the map and the United States that studying the map can inform our knowledge of the United States. But the properties that are present on the map that are not present in the United States would not allow us to have such knowledge. For example, if the map included dots for cities, then we cannot say that cities are circular, because that is not a correct correspondence. Similarly, if “function” is just part of the map, but not actually corresponding to anything in the terrain, then we cannot use it at all to understand the terrain.
As I said, I think it is reasonable to say that biological entities have functions, and that we are able to identify them through observation and scientific investigation. I think that anyone who denies this does so out of a fear of the possible theistic implications. And that is too bad, because the theistic implications do not necessarily follow, and one is stuck with several absurdities that become impossible to resolve.
Any thoughts?
RH:
Exactly. What is “really going on” is what I am interested in.
I think that perhaps we are disagreeing on semantics. To me, “function” is simply the expected action or behavioral outcome of a particular entity. It is what a particular entity is directed towards in an unfolding spatio-temporal process. It is what allows us to have regularity and order at all, because without such predictable and expected outcomes, our universe would be utterly chaotic.
I also agree that there are multiple levels of explanation when it comes to identifying the functions or expected effects of various entities, and that ultimately it is our interest that determines which one we will use. That is why I object to the idea that there is a single function that every entity must have as its purpose. I am comfortable with a number of functions or goals or predictable outcomes for entities to have, none of which takes primacy over the others, and some of which actually change in different circumstances.
I disagree with that there are no real functions in the world, and that they are just our subjective projections. A better way to put it is that our subjective preferences determine what level of explanation we will use to understand the real functions that are present in nature. Sometimes we will focus upon the atomic functions, sometimes the molecular functions, sometimes the cellular functions, sometimes the organic functions, sometimes the organism’s functions, sometimes the social functions, and so on. All of these are real functions, but differ in terms of the language and terminology that we use to understand them.
Before I respond to the rest of your comment, I just want to make sure that we don’t actually agree upon the essentials here. Is there anything that I have just written that you object to, or are we in effective agreement here?
dguller,
“Is there anything that I have just written that you object to, or are we in effective agreement here?”
I still find myself objecting to what I see as the unnecessarily confusing use of language. Naturally…I think that is on your part, not on mine
To me, “function” is simply the expected action or behavioral outcome of a particular entity.
Just to be precise, by “entity” in this context I would mean any existing thing (i.e. not restricted to agents). I presume that is how you are using the word. But if that’s the case, then it seems you want to apply the word “function” to every entity. It seems to dissolve the word of the type of specificity with which it is usually employed. For instance, I might speak of the “function” of the steering wheel of a car, in terms of fulfilling the purpose of it’s designer.
I may also speak of the “function” of the heart, in the sense I described earlier. But I don’t know anyone who would normally refer to the “function” of a rock falling to the ground (excepting when an agent’s purpose is involved). Or the “function” of a mountain cliff, or any of countless examples.
Certainly the expected action of a rock falling off a cliff is it’s falling to the ground via gravity.
But it seems unnecessary, non-sensical and non-standard to say that this demonstrated any “function.”
The way you are using the term “function” strikes me as how I may use the term “nature.” It is in the nature of a rock to be influenced by gravitational force (hence will “fall” to the ground if unimpeded). But it’s not the “function” of the rock. I just don’t see the use of importing that term. What does it get me that I can’t get otherwise, in more conceptually clear terms?
It is what allows us to have regularity and order at all, because without such predictable and expected outcomes, our universe would be utterly chaotic.
First, at least as you’ve phrased it, I think you have put the cart before the horse. I’d say that regularity and order allows the possibility of “function,” not the reverse.
I would say that “entities have natures” is a necessary type of assumption for rational inquiry and to speak informatively about anything.
But we don’t need “function” to “allow us to have regularity and order” and hence the possibility of prediction. We only need the “fact” that anything has a regularity and order” for this to be the case. In other words: Most basic is that things must have a nature. But that is not the same as “function” in your use, since you seem to be associating “function” with “regularity” whereas something could have the nature of “being chaotic” and “impossible to for us to discern.”
In this way, it should be obvious that it is conceptually necessary that anything that exists “has a nature” but not that it “has a function” because it’s possible for an entity to be irregular, ordered and unpredictable.
So “regularity” is necessary for knowledge, not “function” per se. And one can apprehend and become informed about regularities without necessarily referring to “function.”
I also agree that there are multiple levels of explanation when it comes to identifying the functions or expected effects of various entities, and that ultimately it is our interest that determines which one we will use.
Ok, so it sounds like you are agreeing on the subjectivity at the bottom of our concept of “function.” But then why go along with the Aristotelian project of trying to characterize it as intrinsic and objective?
What I’m confused about is what you think you are getting from Aristotelianism teleology, that I can not give you (as it were – that is non-Aristotelian, non-teleological stance)
I mean, I think we are trying to get to a similar place and generally we agree, except you keep using the term “function” everywhere in a way that, as I said, I don’t see as helpful at all, and carries more liability for confusion than it’s worth.
But you can go on as you wish…
RH
RH:
That is why I prefer the term “final cause”. Sometimes, “function” makes sense to use, other times “goal”, and other times “purpose”, and other times “end”. Each of these terms has different connotations, but they share the same underlying structure, i.e. a directedness towards specific and predictable outcomes, which is all a final cause is supposed to be. If you can agree that every entity has a final cause in this sense, then we are in agreement.
Honestly, I think that we are saying the exact same thing. What is a thing’s nature if not the set of properties that it manifests in the world, and how does a thing manifest such properties if not by its behavior in space-time? Part of an acorn’s nature is to develop into an oak, and so developing into an oak can be considered one of its final causes or predictable outcomes. Whether natures cause predictability and regularity or regularity causes natures is irrelevant. They are both two sides to the same coin, I think.
That’s not necessarily true. We can predict that something is unpredictable. Take the weather. We know that it is unpredictable. This is utterly predictable. In other words, something can have a nature that is unpredictable. Take radioactivity. We can predict that some radioactive atoms will decay, but we cannot determine which or when. That is a good example of how something can have a nature that is unpredictable.
Because the patterns and regularities that we uncover are real. Just because we have to choose which perspective or point of view to approach these patterns and regularities does not mean that they are subjective at all. The actualization of the nature of entities according to a predictable unfolding sequence of events is objectively real. Our description of that sequence of events may have a subjective element, but it is still real.
Here’s an example. Say you have the following objects: A, B and C. How many objects are there? Well, if you just took the individual objects, then there are three (i.e. A, B, C). But if you took the possible combinations of these objects, then there are five (i.e. A, B, C, AB, AC), and if you included reversibility, then there are seven (i.e. A, B, C, AB, BA, AC, CA). So, there are three different answers to the question. Does it follow that A, B and C are unreal, because our choice of frameworks will result in a different answer? Of course not. A, B and C are still real even though there are a number of different ways to describe them, each bringing out additional information not present in the others.
Same thing with final causes. I think that they are real. You think that they are impositions of our minds. I worry that Feser is correct that if you are right, then we cannot even talk about the natures of things, because natures inevitably involve final causes to understand the directedness towards specific outcomes rather than others, which allows us to identify natures at all. That is why bunnies do not spontaneously become bears. It is not in their nature or final causes to do so. In many ways, the nature of X and the final causes of X are inherent intertwined and inseparable. So, no final causes, then no natures in nature. Sure, they may be present in our minds, but then science is just about what we think and not about what is real in the world. And that is certainly not science at all.
My thought is that this is still ridiculous.
My point with the map/territory correspondence is that when we talk of “functions” we are making a map (a simplified representation which contains only the features which interest us most) of a territory we think of as “the heart”, but which is actually just a bunch of complicated molecules in a complicated arrangement having complicated interactions. The reason we are making this “map” is because the territory interests us primarily in the sense that the combined actions of all its components serve to propel a bunch of other complicatedly arranged complicated molecules (mapped/simplified as “blood”) through the series of complicated motions which we map/simplify as “circulation”. Most of the time we don’t care too much about the details of the individual atoms, or organelles, or muscle fibers, just as we don’t care what color the seat cushions are on our train from Blackfriars to Farringdon, as long as we reach our destination in a reasonable amount of time. These are definitely many-to-one maps. Information is lost.
And in fact, the whole reason that maps are useful is because they are incomplete representations of the whole, getting rid of the fine details that we don’t need and can’t really use, and including only the patterns our brains abstract from the whole as interesting, and which we might think of as (some of) the functions of that thing. And as far as I can tell, that’s all you’re using the term “function” to mean, if you include defecating and decomposing as functions — it’s a pattern of events which occurs consistently enough, frequently enough, and on a large enough scale for us to notice.
So in that sense, “function” *is* a concept which is dependent on minds, our minds, because it’s defined tautologically as something which appeals to our minds. It’s the same sort of tautological definition that you used above to say that you can only have algorithms in the context of symbols and symbols are only defined with respect to a mind, therefore algorithms require minds. Of course the *exact same goddamn process* could take place with nobody standing there interpreting it and comprehending it and making symbols about it. But then it’s not an algorithm I guess? So freaking what? Nothing has been proven except that if you define X to mean Y, then X means Y. This says nothing about how the actual universe actually operates, or whether teleology is actually essential to that operation. All it tells us is that teleology is a really convenient shorthand for our minds to use to interact with the universe..
The man threatened a libel suit for philosophical criticism. Libel! He admitted that it could be “gross incompetence” — after Eric said that he had misunderstood — and then proceeded to threaten a libel suit. And the title of his post? Too much to bear FOR A READER OF ERIC’S BLOG. I can’t imagine being Eric, trying to engage in a philosophical discussion and being attacked in such a way! So, no. You can ignore tone — heck, I ignore tone! — but this isn’t a matter of tone. This is a matter of a small, mean man, saying personally offensive things because his PHILOSOPHICAL VIEW has been criticized. As far as I’m concerned, if you must resort to such measures, you’ve no philsophical leg to stand on and no business being in philosophy.
So don’t give me some “that’s a bit much” bullshit. It isn’t — unless I’ve misread you, and you’re talking about Feser, which I would agree with entirely — and that’s the end of this story.
dguller,
Of course I think we are describing “real things.” We are making subjective calls as to how we’ll talk about them, which questions to ask, what set of characteristics we are interested in etc. But we are describing real things. So for the life of me I can not see where your “worry” comes from that we may lose anything in losing Aristotelianism.
“That is why bunnies do not spontaneously become bears. It is not in their nature or final causes to do so.”
But you could have stopped at “it is not in their nature…to do so.” “Final cause” if it is trying to be additional, doesn’t actually seem to add anything. And if it’s not additional to “nature” why bother with this Final Cause stuff?
What is the nature of water? Well, we can talk of it’s atomic or chemical nature, or at another level that it’s nature is to produce waves when perturbed, feel “wet,” to freeze into ice at certain temperatures, to evaporate into vapor at hotter temperatures etc. In every case, when being as descriptive as possible, we will be mentioning the other causes involved (e.g. mentioning the cause of heat to evaporation of water).
If those are real observations and descriptions, any philosophical system must acknowledge all these observations, and categorize them. What is fundamentally enlightening to add, or change the terms to “Final Causes?” There is nothing that Aristotelian teleology brings to the table that I’m going to “miss” in my descriptions, that I can see. I see no new knowledge added.
So..is this really boiling down to semantics?
I’d hope that you at least don’t buy the Thomistic notions of “Final Cause” in terms of normative inferences (?). In other words that you can move from any description to an “ought” the way Thomists want to do so (on the way to Natural Law).
As I’ve also written before, I find it makes no sense to buy into the use of the term “nature” the way it seems Thomists employ it: that the “good” is when anything acts in accord with it’s “nature.” Because if we are on the same page about “natures” then this is incoherent. Since a thing’s “nature” is anything that is within it’ capacity to “do,” then whatever a thing does is it’s nature. Hence it is incoherent to say anything “ought” to act in accordance with it’s nature, since nothing can do otherwise. From which it’s clear that their notion of “good” runs off the rails.
(BTW, as an aside, I keep getting at the Naturalistic Fallacy and is/ought question. Personally I think there is a way to bridge that gap, and even that moral statements can be objective. Sam Harris is part way there, but is too vague. There are, I think, more specific, precise ways to do it. But Thomism sure as hell doesn’t seem situated to do so.).
(It’s gotten late…I’m getting fuzzy. Gotta go…)
RH
Anne:
“The combined actions of all its components serve to propel …” So, is this propulsion really happening, or is it just a byproduct of our minds? In other words, is this part of the map, or the terrain?
There is an ambiguity here. There are two claims that being conflated here.
First, that if X appeals to our minds, then X is dependent upon our minds for its existence. This is clearly false, because there are a number of independently existing entities that appeal to our minds.
Second, that if X appeals to our minds, then X is dependent upon our minds to be noticed. Well, sure, but that actually proves my point. Remember, I am saying that final causes are real features of the world independent of our minds, but that our minds are capable of detecting final causes, because they stand out to us. This nicely reconciles the subjective and objective components of teleology, I think.
Right, but no-one would recognize what the algorithm even was. It would be like someone in the Bronze Age finding a calculator. All they know is that you press the buttons and the symbols change. They would have no idea what was happening, and it would be nothing but random changes to them. What makes it an algorithm is an interpreting mind projecting meaning into it in order to transform the inert physical marks into symbols.
Searle’s (and Feser’s) point is not that there must be a conscious being right there at all times, but only that there must be the potential in the background for a conscious being to interpret the physical marks as symbols. That is how a dead language is still a language, even if no-one speaks it.
You don’t have to agree with Searle and Feser. You just have to understand what the argument is supposed to be. Eric seemed to be bewildered by what they were arguing, and so I wanted to explain the argument to him.
But you are correct that if you have a different definition of “algorithm”, like Dennett does, then you will possibly have a different conclusion.
Well, it is supposed to be primarily an issue in criticizing the computational model of the mind in which brain states are supposed to represent thoughts, and that our thought processes is an algorithmic process in which we transition from one brain state to another according to a series of rules. This is supposed to be a problem, because a brain state is just a physical entity, and it is hard to see how a physical entity can refer to anything without a mind providing secondary intentionality to it. However, that means that to explain the intentionality of the mind, you have to assume the intentionality of the mind, which is circular.
This only becomes relevant to a discussion of teleology when one makes the further claim that intentionality of mind is parasitic upon the innate teleology in the world, and thus there is no mystery how intentionality is possible. It is a built-in feature of a world loaded with teleology.
Okay. So. Above, I pointed out that it is really easy to inadvertently use the language of teleology when it’s not appropriate or necessary, because our language and modes of thinking are just infested with teleology, which is in turn because intentionality is a natural mode of thinking for us, because we do an awful lot of things which can most conveniently be modeled using the concept of intentionality. And now you’re nitpicking my inadvertent slip into teleological language in order to prove some obscure point? I could have just as easily used the phrase “have the effect of propelling” as “serve to propel”, and it wouldn’t have changed the fundamental import of that statement at all.
Also, the whole notion that there has to be some clean-cut distinction between map and territory is also ridiculous. After all, the map itself is made of atoms all wiggling around and interacting randomly and arranged in a complex pattern, the details of which are irrelevant to us, as long as on the large scale the atoms that reflect blue light are arranged into a shape which we can interpret as the path of I-95. And of course, when we interpret that shape into the path of I-95 in our brain, there’s a map/territory thing going on there too. We don’t care which neuron fires when with exactly what amplitude at exactly what frequency. All we care is that somehow all the neurons get together to make the complicated collections of atoms which we, for convenience, refer to as ourselves to relocate from the region we identify as Philadephia to the region we identify as Baltimore, preferably without any dramatic alterations in the content or relative positions of the atoms in our respective collections. We ourselves are territories, our perceptions of ourselves are maps written on that territory, changing the territory and being changed by it. There is no necessary distinction, and it seems pretty silly to me to get all caught up in trying to find one.
Er, no. The whole concept of “noticing” implies a mind. *Everything* is dependent on minds to be noticed, whether it appeals to those minds or not. If a mind does not exist to notice a thing, the thing will not be noticed, because noticing is intrinsically something which can only be done by a mind. But this is just more tautology. There’s no meaningful statement about the universe in here. I mean, what this comes down to is, so what? Final causes are the things about the universe that we notice? Why give them such metaphysical prestige just because we notice them?
Okay, who cares? That’s not a statement about the universe, that’s a statement about the fact that when we assemble things that interest us in an order to which we assign meaning and then apply rules chosen by us to the assemblage, we can also assign meaning to the results. So what? People also assign meaning to the patterns in tea leaves and the shape of the creases on their palms. Our minds can project meaning into all kinds of random crap, but that doesn’t tell us anything about how the universe works, at least, not all by itself.
If that’s their point, it’s remarkably silly. Yes, if you want to call something a symbol, it’s by definition connected in some way to a conscious mind, because that’s the definition of a symbol. So what? Another pointless tautology.
The argument appears to be that Tautology Cat is tautological. If what you’ve said here is really all that Feser is arguing about, I’m really really not impressed by his usage of time, electrons, and dead trees. Eric may have misunderstood him, but if anything, that misunderstanding appears to have been a compliment.
Just to be clear here, do you actually support Feser’s argument, or are you just kind of devil’s advocating on his behalf in order to get everybody pointed at the *right* devil?
If this argument really all turns on the definitions of words, then how does it tell us anything important about the universe?
Again, silly. Why does there have to be any reference to anything at all? Why can’t this just be a matter of crudely copying patterns? I can set up a mass on a spring and an electrical circuit with resistors and inductors and capacitors, the two systems being mathematically identical to each other. Then I put an oscillatory signal into my mass on a spring, hook it up to a generator and use the generator to cause the electrical circuit to oscillate with mathematically equivalent amplitude, frequency, and phase, and then use that electrical circuit to run a little motor which sets a second (identical) mass/spring system oscillating with the same amplitude, frequency, and phase as the first. There need be no meaning and intention in the flow of that oscillatory signal, yet it will be transferred from one system to another without much degradation. What about our thoughts requires them to be magically different from this, other than just a vague uncomfortable feeling that they really really should be?
Yeah, okay. Except, I don’t buy this argument, and I’m not buying the rest of it either. I don’t think intentionality is something special that needs to be explained by magic ineffable superminds that are somehow complex enough and intentional to give rise to alla everything (which needs explanation because it’s so complex and intentional and all) and yet do not themselves need to be explained by an even super-er supermind. Seems to me that there’s still no good explanation for why our minds cannot, like everything else, be incredibly complex emergent phenomena which fundamentally result from very simple things following very simple patterns that add up to crazy complexity. And this feeble teleology sure doesn’t seem to be much of a contribution to the discussion.
I think Anne C. Hanna and RH have the right idea here, although I would concede that it’s very difficult to rid ourselves of our teleological intuitions and see how wrong this functional argument is. After all, a major *materialist* theory of the mind is called functionalism! To me, natural selection is just what happens when nothing happens. As Dawkins put it in The Blind Watchmaker:
Anne:
But is the effect of propulsion a core feature of the heart, or just an incidental property? For example, a basketball has a core feature of being bouncy, but being orange is an incidental property, meaning that it could be different colors, but still be a basketball, but if it could not bounce, such as if it were made of lead, then it would not be a basketball at all. So, would you say that the heart could not be propelling blood through the circulatory system, but still be a functioning heart, or would it be something else?
I don’t understand this argument at all. It would be like saying that there is no clean-cut distinction between a dog and a cat, because they are both mammals. Just because two entities share common properties does not mean that no meaningful and significant distinctions can be made between them. In addition, then your argument would lead to the bizarre conclusion that language is impossible, and I could not even understand you. After all, words all share common properties – such as carriers of meaning, operating according to syntax and semantics, and so on – and thus could not be distinguished from one another, and we are stuck with empty meaning when we use them. And if we can agree that despite common properties, we can make significant distinctions, then my distinction between a map and the territory it maps is still valid.
The point is only that either final causes are intrinsic parts of the world, or they are projections of our minds. If they are the former, then teleology is a part of nature, and Aristotle was correct. If they are the latter, then all talk of purposes and functions of organs and organisms has nothing to do with organs and organisms in nature, and only to do with our idiosyncratic psychology.
It only matters with respect to those who want to endorse a computational theory of mind. That’s all. If you endorse such a view, then there are many well-known problems, many of them pointed out by Searle, an atheist, to lead to absurdity or circularity. If you do not endorse such a mind, then none of this is relevant to you. Again, this has nothing to do with evolution, and everything to do with philosophy of mind. Evolution does not involve algorithms in the computational sense of symbol manipulation, and thus any objections to a computational theory of mind are irrelevant to evolution.
That’s fine. If you don’t consider brain states to be symbols referring to a referent in the world, then you don’t have a problem. However, if you believe that particular brain states refer to states of affairs in the world, such as “there is a cat in the room”, then you have a problem, because you have to explain how that brain state specifically identifies and selects the particular state of affairs. This is the problem of intentionality in philosophy of mind, and it is a toughie.
So you are against being clear about the meanings of our terms?
Here’s the problem as I see it. Your example basically involves two identical mass/spring systems and an electromagnetic mechanism to transmit the motion of one to the other to match its oscillation. This is not analogous to how the mind works at all. A brain state is not the same as a state of affairs in the world. In other words, the brain state is a series of neurons firing in some pattern, and the state of affairs is a cat sitting on a mat, for example. The brain state is completely different from the cat sitting on the mat, and so it is a different scenario from the one that you described.
If you could come up with a physical mechanism that allows a physical state – marks on a paper, movement of a needle, pixels on a monitor, verbal sounds, neurons firing – to accurately and reliably refer to a state of affairs in the world, then that would be relevant to the claims at issue here.
The intentionality of our thoughts is the problem. In other words, the fact that our thoughts are about other things and this “aboutness” is very difficult to understand on a physicalist account of mind. And there are a number of reasons for this, most prominently that any causal account simply cannot account for intentionality with any degree of specificity. This is one of Hilary Putnam’s arguments, which Feser discusses at: http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/02/putnam-on-causation-intentionality-and.html It is an interesting discussion, and actually represents Putnam’s position in Renewing Philosophy, a book that I happen to own.
You are correct that it does not have to be explained in such a way. The only relevant point is that no physicalist account of mind has been able to account for intentionality. An immaterial mind is one explanation, which dualists, whether theists or not, would endorse. However, that begs the question as to how an immaterial mind is capable of referring to anything either.
You are absolutely free to try to explain how intentionality is possible from “simple patterns that add up to crazy complexity”. Otherwise, this is just hand waving and question begging, and is no different from a theist who cannot explain evil, and just asserts that there must be a way for evil to be possible in the context of an all-good deity. If you would reject the latter, then you should reject your own claim.
As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I actually have sympathy with your approach, and it would be my preferring solution. However, my preferences aside, it is currently extremely difficult to offer up such an account that does not already assume intentionality of some sort. The most promising form is to start with simpler proto-intentionality of subsystems, which interact to result in intentionality. However, that assumes the existence of teleology of an Aristotelian sort in proto- and un-conscious entities, which then builds to a complex form of intentionality. I actually have no problem with that, but that is mainly because I am not afraid that accepting this means that I have to believe in God. That is an entirely separate issue.
Any thoughts?
AR:
Really? Libel? Where did he say that?