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

by dhw, Wednesday, June 08, 2016, 12:19 (2884 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I didn't say he preferred design, but he is discussing the difference in the two approaches and trying to sit comfortably in a neutral zone.-I didn't say you said he preferred design. He wrote: “A rather odd urgency sounds through all this earnest insistence that, while organisms certainly look as if they possessed intelligent agency, we should not be so foolish as to be compelled by the evidence of our own eyes.” You asked me what I thought he meant, and went on: “He may mean our interpretation of actual intelligence may be fooling us, and they are intelligently designed.” I can only repeat my response to this view of what he meant: -"Since his whole argument is based on the intentionality of organisms, I think he means some people (like you) accept that organisms look as if they are intelligent but insist that they are not intelligent.“ I don't see any reference whatsoever to intelligent design in the above statement. In any case, the website you later refer to is quite explicit on the subject of design: “In fact, Talbott himself is uncomfortable with the idea of design and his worldview doesn't seem to include a God, either. "The word [design] has its legitimate uses," he writes, but "you will not find me speaking of design."”-DAVID: Why 'acting intelligently' only after their invention? Intelligently designed processes can certainly act intelligently before and after.
dhw: I'm afraid I don't understand what you are getting at. I am suggesting that the cell communities themselves act intelligently when they invent the organ, but once the organ is functioning, they will continue to do the same thing over and over again (without “thought”) until problems arise, when they will again need to do some original “thinking”. This explains what you see as the apparently “automatic” behaviour of our organs.-DAVID: 'Apparently automatic' behaviour of organs is not 'apparently'; it is absolutely automatic in our bodies.-The invention of the organ clearly cannot have been automatic unless you wish to return to your earlier hypothesis that all innovations are preprogrammed or the result of divine dabbling (which you admit is less compatible with the bush of life). If the cellular communities possess an autonomous inventive mechanism that enables them to design a new organ, we can hardly expect this form of intelligence to disappear, and so it is quite logical that the same intelligence will also apply itself when there are new problems to solve. Otherwise, it will repeat the behaviour that has enabled the new organ to function, which it will do automatically until the next problem arises.