Talk:Teleology
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It is flawed to use the word sight to debate final cause in the example of eye and sight (chickens and eggs). It confuses the definition of final cause. Final cause is the '...ness' of something.
What is it that makes a table a table what is tableness - what makes a pen a pen - what is pen-ness? Many say "pens write - and that's pen-ness" - "just like eye-ness is sight, eyes see".
Pens do not write and eyes do not see, pens dribble ink in a controlled fashion when brought into contact with a surface that they were designed to or coincidently can dribble on - and thus in combinatioon with other forms they can do something called write - the pens final cause (pen-ness) is to work with other causes to write - which in turn has it's own formal cause - communication. We would't say pens communicate.
Eyes do not see - eyes detect light - better eyes detect light better and focus it better / faster / clearer etc. Eyes in combination with brains 'see'. Primitive eyes in combination with primitive brains sense and induce reaction without thought - is that sight? Eye-ness is not sight. Final Cause of a thing is not end-cause it is a composite of other other forms of causein a heirarchy of abstractions.
Apply the suffix 'ness' to things and you begin to understand final cause.
62.25.109.196 11:33, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I removed my contribution on "American philosophy" because of possible copyright issues. It's part of a larger piece on teleology in American philosophy, and I have become aware that it may be protected by copyright.Rats 03:35, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
These two sentences conflict:
- Teleology, on the other hand, holds both that man sees because he has eyes and has eyes so that he can see.
- As Aristotle wrote in support of teleology, "Nature adapts the organ to the function, and not the function to the organ" (so organ is the eyes; seeing is the function)
Well, at least I think they do. I don't understand the article at all anyway and I have an exam on epistemology in a few hours. Anyone up for a Simple English translation? 218.102.218.7
I've added a section which those socialised in the analytic tradition in philosophy tend to overlook: that there is also a specifically 'middle european' angle to the teleology debate - namely Kant, Hegel and the 'dialectical' tradition. It's a big debate, mine is a short addition, but it does at least emphasise this one point: the notion of the 'present as history'. (Brianshapiro raised this point a while back - perhaps this is a start.) best, ifs-ffm
Dear Wiki - Thanks for moving closer to the center on this term. It is can be quiet alarming to see words being high jacked or whose meanings are diminished by the 'world view' filter of a few --- and then passed on to others as definitive…. Although (in my opinion) there are some tinges of post modernism I do applaued you in your efforts...
Can someone help me with this... I wanted to include some very recent, interesting comments by one of the more note worthy philosophers of modern time… Antony Flew is the David Hume of our day….And he recently (December 2004) stated, "What I think the DNA material has done is show that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements together," he said. "The enormous complexity by which the results were achieved look to me like the work of intelligence."….. I mean this stuff is hot off the press, and Flew is note worthy….
Wiki-P has noted some philosophers who are not in the middle of the teleology debate today... I hope Wiki-P is "cool" as they want us to believe…. If you're going to have links to these other philosophers, include Flew and let the chips fall where they may, vice framing definition of teleology in a 'preferred' world view….
Don't filter knowledge through your singular world view - to the exclusion of the conclusion of the observations of some of the best minds known within the last 50 years… fear
HELP
I'm removing this, because I find it particularly troublesome:
- It was one of the merits of Darwin's theory of evolution that it eliminated teleology from the account - it was no longer necessary to suppose that giraffes grew long necks in order to reach high branches (or that God had designed them with that intention).
I think something like this would be a better formulation:
- Darwin's theory allows us to make claims like "giraffes grew long necks in order to reach high branches" without a guilty conscience; we know that what this claim "really" means is something like "over the course of their evolution, the giraffes with shorter necks tended to die out, recursively increasing the percentage of giraffes with long necks. This is why giraffes have long necks." Thus the teleological talk is "just shorthand" for this more verbose claim.
I don't like this formulation either, because I think it does violence to human psychology. (I may explain this later.) But I think it may be an improvement.
--Ryguasu
[edit] teleological Casus Belli
If we applied pseudo giraffe teleological explanation to horses, shouldn't they already have developed 8' legs in order to jump over 10' fences? Could nuke bombs have been developed to curb overpopulation? Could preemptive war ben devised for similat noble purposes?
- For the horses, not already; they've only had a few generations since we've been making them jump over fences...and besides, they don't tend not to reproduce if they're good jumpers. On the other hand, we've seen this with the strains of bacteria resistant to penicillin. I'm not exactly sure what you're saying in the second part, but it seems that you're also ignoring the Darwinian constraint of reproduction; however, if it seems that humans who go to war more often have populated the Earth now, that may be due to natural selection against overpopulation (though I doubt it). --Geoffrey 23:03, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The articles for teleology and teleological argument are confused as to what "teleology" means, or at least what it has meant in the philosophical sense. Stating that God creates life spontaneously is not "teleological". Rather, teleology is about meaning or purpose being behind a PROCESS. Thus, a philosopher like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who argues that consciousness and God drive evolution, is making a teleological argument. Other philosophers and thinkers who have made "teleological arguments" are Aristotle, who phrases it in terms of "final cause", Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who talks about reality driving towards perfection in the Absolute, and Karl Marx, who offers a historicist teleology which describes a final state of human history that we're being driven to. I believe certain religions like Zoroastrianism have teleologies that talk about a process in nature driven towards a meaningful goal. Use of the concept "teleology" in any other way, is either new to me, or misunformed. Please, someone correct these articles! Brianshapiro
I am so delighted to find Wonderful Wikipedia
Ray K
- I appreciate your comments, although i'm not sure how they should be integrated into the article. feel free to edit as you will! i attempted to differentiate between the two uses for the word in the intro -- both your definition of a purpose behind the process (as less commonly used) and the position that there is such a purpose (as more commonly used). for an example of the latter, consider this link. please! stick around! you obviously know what you're talking about and i'd greatly appreciate your help!Ungtss 16:38, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
