The purpose behind causation

[Flann 5]

The lynchpin is human tendency to see purpose where there is none. The article I linked demonstrates this. Don't you feel yourself "observing" purpose in the moving water while watching the video? I certainly do. We're trained to see purpose, because to err on the side of not seeing purpose is to miss the plotting foe or stalking predator. We've evolved the tendency to err on the side of false positives with regards to determining purpose.

What you see in evolution are indicators that this "purpose-bias" exists there as well. This isn't to say that organisms with a complex enough nervous system don't have purpose. The word would be meaningless without an instance of it. But to see purpose elsewhere is false attribution.

Hi Interbane, I don't think anyone ascribes purpose to drops of water. You seem to extrapolate from patterns that may resemble a vague and meaningless purpose in water drops,to saying that we have a bias towards seeing purpose everywhere.
Dawkins and Dennett work very hard to convince us that purpose in nature is an illusion not because of our bias towards seeing purpose but because it is so evident in the biological world.
The cheetah stalking a gazelle does so with purpose and, the lionesses stalking theirs do so with coordinated execution of purpose.
Talbott in his essay shows, how biologists in their descriptions of biologically complex organisms use language of purpose continually in doing this.
Whether or not regulatory genes have intrinsic purpose in regulating, they work towards a goal in a coordinated and purposeful way.
I wouldn't say that they do possess intrinsic conscious purpose as a cheetah would have,but it strongly suggests purpose and intent underlying it.
The alternative is blind chance,trial and error and natural selection hitting on and creating working mechanisms.Yet even random events are not independent of the organisms responses.
Talbott critiques the notion of mutations as random and the tautological nature of the definition of "fitness" in evolutionary terms.
You can say that the complex interactions of biological structures in human bodies themselves, and with their environment are intrinsically purposeless, but they work towards that human seeing,hearing smelling, tasting,feeling, thinking and purposing.
This is why the language of purpose is pervasive in biology.
But this is an illusion insist the naturalists.It's all just mechanisms evolved over time from matter which had no plan or purpose in the first place. Undoubtedly there are mechanistic aspects to biological interactions but even that seems to fall short of doing justice to the immense complexity and subtlety of these things.

[geo]

Stephen L Talbott in his essay titled; Evolution and the illusion of Randomness, questions the appeal to the concept of randomness itself as indicator of purposelessness, and evolutionary "fitness" which seem to be lynchpins of the view of purpose as illusion.
I'm a bit out of my depth technically and will probably have to study the essay more to get my own head around the issues.
For what it's worth here's Talbott's essay.
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publicati ... randomness

Thanks, Flann, I'll try to get to the article soon. I will say "purposelessness" is kind of a loaded word. Obviously animals do have purpose. They live to, well, live. And to breathe, to eat, to procreate. Like the King Crimson song, Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream. To love and to be loved. Life is a beautiful thing.

It depends on how much power you grant to the words. Does "purpose" mean intention that comes from an unknown/supernatural source?

As you probably know, I don't generally entertain supernatural explanations. I see "supernatural" as stand-in for the unknown. Maybe we will someday better understand some of those underlying mechanisms that govern the universe. We can't begin to speculate on the supernatural when we don't fully comprehend—by a long, long shot—the natural world.

I don't believe that it's a given that humans are any more autonomous or purposeful than lower forms of life. But I do believe we do possess some degree of control and autonomy, even if we are also at the whim of unconscious forces. The best argument I've seen in support of human autonomy and purposefulness comes from Henry Bergson, who wrote:

"If determinists were right, and every act were the automatic and mechanical resultant of pre-existent forces, motive would flow into action with lubricated ease. But on the contrary, choice is burdensome and effortful, it requires resolution, a lifting up of the power of personality against the spiritual gravitation of impulse or habit or sloth. Choice is creation, and creation is labor. Hence the worried features of men; and their weary envy of the choiceless routine of animals, who "are so placid and self-contained." But the Confucian peacefulness of your dog is no philosophic calm, no quiet surface of unfathomed depth; it is the certainty of instinct, the orderliness of an animal that need not, and cannot, choose."

[Interbane]

"If determinists were right, and every act were the automatic and mechanical resultant of pre-existent forces, motive would flow into action with lubricated ease. But on the contrary, choice is burdensome and effortful, it requires resolution, a lifting up of the power of personality against the spiritual gravitation of impulse or habit or sloth. Choice is creation, and creation is labor. Hence the worried features of men; and their weary envy of the choiceless routine of animals, who "are so placid and self-contained." But the Confucian peacefulness of your dog is no philosophic calm, no quiet surface of unfathomed depth; it is the certainty of instinct, the orderliness of an animal that need not, and cannot, choose."

That's an interesting paragraph. I do think motive flows into action with lubricated ease. But I think that the more information there is to be weighed, the larger the "mechanism" of motive becomes, the more of a chance we have to be lost processing.

Even then, our most deliberative thinking is fast and easy compared to anything we've been able to recreate artificially. It's amazing how a layered complex of heuristic decision making can out-think the more discrete processing of silicon.

But when it comes to processing large amounts of information, there is nothing easy about it. It takes time, there are conflicts and sometimes those conflicts have no apparent resolution.

Sometimes those conflicts are between the behavior we've calculated to be best(refrain from eating that donut) with impulses that reflect our evolutionary heritage. The battle here isn't so much about ease of motive flowing into action. It's about seeing the disparity between instintual motive and deliberated motive. Would a fat dog exercise willpower if its bowl is always full? The onus for deliberative motive is outsourced to the human.

[Interbane]

Here is another sample of something that appears to be purposeful. The seed corkscrews itself into the ground.

http://io9.com/this-seed-plants-itself- ... 1693175430

[geo]

Even then, our most deliberative thinking is fast and easy compared to anything we've been able to recreate artificially. It's amazing how a layered complex of heuristic decision making can out-think the more discrete processing of silicon..

Interbane, you have really become an excellent communicator of complex ideas. My hats off to you, sir. I wish there was an emoticon with a smiley face doffing his hat.

In Stephen King's BAG OF BONES, the book I'm currently reading, the main character often refers to the "boys in the basement" who represent our unconscious thought processes. I love that "boys in the basement" metaphor. (I guess it would be equivalent to the elephant in the rider-and-elephant metaphor used by Jonathan Haidt.)

Here are a couple of King's references to the boys:

I walked and made no effort to think— an old trick from my writing days. Work your body, rest your mind, let the boys in the basement do their jobs.

All that should have rung true, and yet somehow it didn’t , quite. It should have, but . . . well . . . It was the boys in the basement. They were the ones who didn’t buy it. The boys in the basement didn’t buy it at all.

During my hike back down the lane to the house, I tried to think about nothing at all. My first editor used to say that eighty-five per cent of what goes on in a novelist’s head is none of his business, a sentiment I’ve never believed should be restricted to just writers. So-called higher thought is, by and large, highly overrated. When trouble comes and steps have to be taken, I find it’s generally better to just stand aside and let the boys in the basement do their work. That’s blue-collar labor down there, nonunion guys with lots of muscles and tattoos. Instinct is their specialty, and they refer problems upstairs for actual cogitation only as a last resort.

[youkrst]

Like the King Crimson song, Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttZngwirx3s

I wish there was an emoticon with a smiley face doffing his hat.

[Interbane]

Thanks for the compliments, but I feel like there's a bunch missing from what I actually meant. The layers of heuristic processing... it's like that lifeline in Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, where you ask the crowd. Our thoughts are sort of like that, at least that's the way it appears from everything I've read. When you think about something, the conclusion isn't a digital yes/no. It's more of a weighting of many different things, where more neurons say yes to one thing than the others. This is the work of the boys in the basement, that hidden labor we're unaware of. There's nothing absolute or certain, it's all messy and analog. But with so many layers of weighting and comparing, the end conclusion is remarkably strong, like the aggregate answer of the crowd in the gameshow.


Since this thread is less of a debate and more info, I think it's the place to respond in more detail to something Flann said. He mentioned that things like morality or purpose don't just arise from their antithesis. How could purpose arise where there is no purpose? How could morality arise from an amoral universe?

What I will say is that purpose and morality are unique. Not that they are in a different category, but that they are the most complex of all emergent phenomenon. There are simple phenomenon, such as order arising from chaos(water into a snowflake), and geometric shapes from chaotic systems(rainbows). I suspect there are thousands or millions of these sorts of phenomenon. The base of a pyramid, so to speak.

As they get more complex, they become more and more difficult to understand, naturally. Like the ability of a seed to corkscrew itself into the ground, or a bacteria autonomously tracking food. Autonomy is an emergent phenomenon less complex than purpose or morality or intelligence, but higher up than 'order from chaos'.

Somewhere higher up the pyramid is intelligence. Autonomy, along with abstract thinking, along with sensory perception, along with other phenomenon are all required as a foundation to intelligence, in the fashion of a pyramid. Less complex phenomenon give rise to more complex phenomenon. Or at least, they are required for the emergence of the higher level phenomenon.

Purpose and morality are currently at the top of the pyramid, from what I can tell. They require not only intelligence, emotion, and agency, but also other agents with intelligence and emotion. This pinnacle of the emergent phenomenon pyramid is so high up, in the clouds, that it makes sense that most people have an extremely difficult time to see how it's supervenient on natural systems, all the way down to the bottom of the pyramid. There's nothing supernatural or divine going on, yet it is insanely complex.

Back to purpose/nonpurpose. A phenomenon arising from it's antithesis. This argument falls apart when you consider other items that not only emerge from their antithesis, but require the antithesis. Cold, dark matter coalesces until it reaches critical mass, then ignites into a star. From absolute zero and perfect dark come the highest temperatures in the universe, the brightest objects in the universe. Without light, there is no shadow. Without cold, the idea of heat is meaningless. Many phenomenon emerge in contrast to their antithesis by the way nature works. There is no rule that says this can't happen. In fact, we know that it's essential.

The obvious counterargument is that morality and purpose are far more complex, even categorically different than heat and light. Which is why I unloaded the wall of text explaining emergent phenomenon. Purpose and morality are only different by virtue of their level of complexity. That doesn't put them in a separate category. They are part of the same category of naturalistic emergent phenomenon. The fact that they are at the top of this pyramid doesn't change things.

Just like heat and light and order and autonomy and intelligence, purpose can and does arise from a blank slate - a slate where purpose doesn't initially exist.

[Interbane]

Purpose
noun
1.
the reason for which something exists or is done, made, used, etc.
2.
an intended or desired result; end; aim; goal.
3.
determination; resoluteness.
4.
the subject in hand; the point at issue.
5.
practical result, effect, or advantage:
to act to good purpose.

Perhaps this thread should be titled "the causation behind purpose". It's a good dumping ground for the topic.


The big debate over purpose is how each side understands it. Purpose is something possessed by intelligent agents, or the products of intelligent agents. The dispute is over the objects. Many man-made items have characteristics that make it self-evident they have purpose. We created them for something, and we've been doing this for thousands of years. So our definition of purpose includes not only the goals we as humans have, but the means to those goals when imbued into tools. The means to cutting wood is imbued into a saw, for example. Our goal is to cut wood, and the purpose of a saw is the same.

We make so many tools that we recognize imbued purpose almost by instinct. It's in our tool-making nature. We see a triangular piece of stone, and the idea of an arrowhead flashes into our minds. Now, I'm not sure how much this is due to culture, or how much is due to capacity(like our capacity for language). But I do believe we have an amplified capacity for tool recognition. In other words, we have an amplified capacity for purpose recognition.

Not that this point offers much clarity. Purpose is still an ambiguous concept, muddled together with various connotations and is seemingly subjective. It's also difficult to demarcate the boundaries of the concept. But the point to take away is that we have the tendency to over-recognize purpose. We err on the side of finding tools, of finding ways to use the objects in our environment. It's a powerful selective advantage.

When evolutionists say that purpose is an illusion, they mean it in a similar sense to paradoelia and apophenia. We see false patterns everywhere. We see false purpose everywhere. That doesn't mean there isn't true purpose, or true patterns. What this means is we need to recognize the bias, and try to correct our vision of the world accordingly. Is the purpose of the wolf to control rabbit populations? Well, no. That's a consequence of a high wolf population, but that isn't the purpose of the wolf. Because the wolf is a product of nature, not intelligence. The wolf may have purpose, as an intelligent(though not sentient) creature itself. It's purpose is to survive and procreate, or something like that. But the wolf isn't a tool with imbued purpose.

[johnson1010]

purpose is the product of an intelligence.

The purpose some people have for books is to make their tables even. The purpose of the author in writing the book was to share a story with others. For the book to be read. The purpose of the publisher and distributor was to have something to fill store shelves with so that people would pay them.

Purpose is not absolute. It comes from the mind beholding something.

The purpose of Viagra was not to produce boners either. It was meant to be a blood pressure medicine. Someone saw the effects and said, "I have a better purpose for this medicine."

[youkrst]

"I have a better purpose for this medicine."

serving a higher purpose