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From: friesen@psivax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.bio,net.origins,net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Occam vs Telos
Message-ID: <1182@psivax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 15-May-86 15:44:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: psivax.1182
Posted: Thu May 15 15:44:59 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 18-May-86 14:40:45 EDT
References: <211@spar.UUCP> <1028@cybvax0.UUCP> <1188@umcp-cs.UUCP> <246@spar.UUCP> <1051@cybvax0.UUCP>
Reply-To: friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
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In article <1051@cybvax0.UUCP> mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) writes:
>
>The problem with teleological explanations is that they make more than just
>correct or useful predictions: they make a whole bunch of incorrect
>predictions as well that descriptive and theoretic explanations don't.
>For example, thinking of animals as people.  You immediately start to run
>into all sorts of questions about why animals don't do this that and the
>other thing, which requires so many explanatory notes that the search for a
>non-teleological description becomes worthwhile.

	You seem to be assuming that ascribing purpose necessarily
implies human-like reasoning falculties. I consider this false.
>
>>     If biological entities truly possess goal-oriented behavior, then is 
>>     our so-called "anthropomorphic" tendency to see purpose in living things
>>     not a reflection of nature as it really is? 
>
>It's a reflection of our nature, and our environment of other human beings.
>Not necessarily anything else.  Much like "The man with a hammer sees all
>problems as nails."

	I disagree here also. You seem to be working with a very
restrictive definition of the term purpose! And a very anthropocentric
one at that. I would say that the definition of purpose would be
something like: "The activity/behavior of the system is contingent
upon the current state of the world in such a way that the final state
tends to approach a *predetermined* state". Or at least some variant on
this. That is I *define* purpose as "producing goal-directed behavior".
Thus an animal *can* show purpose under this definition, and in
a non-anthropocentric way.
>
>The program doesn't have a purpose of it's own: you have a purpose for the
>program.  The program is just an automaton.  (And my personal feeling is that
>people are just automatons, and that purpose is a meaningless term recited by
>some of us automatons to describe function that is too complex for us to
>manipulate competently.

	I would say that if the program has sufficient flexibility it
may be said to have purpose, where the purpose comes from does not
matter! It does not matter in this sense whether people are automatons
or not, if they show "goal-directed behavior" they have purpose, by
definition.
-- 

				Sarima (Stanley Friesen)

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