I posted the link as an example of a well known kind of teleological argument and a well known explanation of its fallacious nature. I thought a specific exposition would be more informative than just linking to the Wiki article on the telelological argument, or results for 'teleology' from another online encyclopaedia.Seth wrote:The problem with this argument is that while natural evolution may be the most "parsimonious" explanation, it does not follow that it is the only explanation, as BT corn proves.Brian Peacock wrote:The fine tuning argument is an appeal to specificity, which in turn is an appeal to ends, which in turn is a concrete example of the teleological fallacy.
That a Designer may not be "necessary" to the evolution of species does not mean that a Designer was not nonetheless involved in the evolution of species, or a species, again as BT corn proves.
With the advent of human manipulation of DNA to create new organisms that did not evolve "naturally" (meaning through the forces of chance and natural selection only) the teleological argument regains a position at the table because the ability of humans to design living organisms destroys the argument that the author you cite makes in regards to the watch and watchmaker.
While a watch is neither self-replicating nor self-powered, as she suggests, there is nothing in physics or science that prevents an intelligent designer from building a living organism out of fundamental particles and amino acids that is self-replicating and self-powered. Nothing supernatural is required. All that is required is advanced intelligence not so far advanced from our own and the physical capacity to manipulate DNA directly.
Therefore, the article you cite is incorrect and invalid on that basis. Natural selection may be parsimonious, but it is not the only way that an organism can come to be as it is today, as BT corn and a host of other new and genetically unique human-designed and created organisms prove, and therefore there remains room for intelligent design within the panoply of science and entirely without the sphere of supernaturalism. If we can do it, some other intelligence could have done it in the deep past and there would be no way for us to know if that occurred or not. But that ambiguity does not destroy the possibility, however remote, and so intelligent design of life on earth (or as I call it the Origin of Life on Earth - OLE) remains a valid scientific hypothesis having nothing to do with supernaturalism or theology.
OK, that said, let me flesh out my statement quoted above.
The argument from specificity, of which the fine tuning argument is but one example, maintains that it is reasonable to conclude, intuit or even imagine that the development of the universe could have resulted in many different sets of circumstances to the ones in which we find ourselves today, and therefore Reality as we understand it necessarily comprises a very particular, specific or unique set of circumstances. The specific circumstances of Reality as we understand it are therefore just one out of the set of all the possible sets of circumstances which may have arisen. If Reality were not specifically ordered in this way, it is said, then Reality as we understand it would not be the real reality as we understand it and we would not exist to inhabit and apprehend it.
Thus it is argued that the possibility of the specific set of circumstances which comprise Reality are so remote or unlikely as to appear virtually impossible to have arisen by chance alone, as science suggests. Therefore some 'special explanation' is needed to account for the particular and specific circumstance as we find in, and define as, Reality.
Of course, for religionists of a certain stripe their nominated deity is just such a 'special explanation' and is said to wholly account for the fact hat we find ourselves in our specific set of circumstances, on our specific life-abundant planet orbiting our specific star, in our specific galaxy within our specific universe. And so it is said that Reality has been specifically ordered according to a particular nominated deities particular specifications.
Another way of approaching this is to say that our current set of circumstances represent an 'end' that could not have occurred without a specific set of antecedent circumstances, and that the arrow of time has travelled along a specific causal chain beginning in the past to arrive at our particular present. There is not much dispute about this view of causality in general terms (and perhaps no reasonable dispute at all), however the teleological argument for the existence of God maintains that the purpose of the causal chain is to arrive at the specific end of our present circumstances and that the present is a desired, and therefore necessary end specifically ordered according to God's intent and by God's power.
The end of a chain of purposeful causation is what Aristotle referred to as telos, hence teleology. However when teleologic reasoning is applied to things like evolution or cosmology certain difficulties arise born of a confusion over what might properly represent a purpose and what might represent a cause.
When teleological thinking is applied to the formation of the human eye for example, as indeed it has been applied by creationist to dispute the principles embodied in explanations from Darwinian evolution, the teleologician is obliged to consider the purpose of the eye in terms of its function--that of facilitating 'sight'--and to describe some cause (or causal chain) that is necessarily going to arrive at Human's ability to see. This in turn obliges the teleologician to posit that the ultimate goal of sight and seeing was always a necessary factor in all antecedent circumstances; therefore the eye was always intended to see, for that is its purpose or function, and all elements in the causal chain of the eye's formation worked towards this end from the first to the last, that is; that a future end must always be materially represented in circumstances past; the 'end' of seeing causes the formation of the eye. This is fallacious because it requires that the chain of causation leads from future to past, and this requires time's arrow to fly backwards!
Acknowledging this counter-factual necessity leads to the invocation of another special explanation, one which might surmount the rational objection to backwards causality, and again religionists of a certain stripe will say that at some antecedent point in time God desired humans to see and therefore caused the set of circumstances which then allowed the causal chain to flow forwards and lead to the formation of the eye.
When this is allied to the argument from specificity one can see that it can act as an apparent bolster to arguments for a creative, intentioning, powerful controlling agent even though such claims are by there nature nothing but convenient blind assertions dependant on God's antecedent existence - and this is itself fallacious when it is taken as a 'proof' of God's existence just becasue humans have eyes that can see. The specific example of the eye is irrelevant of course because such an exposition amounts to a simple un-supported assertion that, "Because X therefore God." So-called 'fine tuning' is just such an X.
I like the Douglas Adams puddle explanation I posted earlier because it hints at a general kind of anthropomorphism inherent in teleological thinking. The water in the puddle can have no intent of course and it did not seek to travel downhill, avoiding being absorbed into the ground or evaporated into the air, specifically in order to arrive at the bottom of a depression and become a puddle, even if an Aristotelian reading of the scenario would say that the telos of water is to always to run downhill (or more broadly to always move towards the centre of the Earth).
The general anthropomorphism occurs when we ask, "But how does the water end up in the puddle when the water's future circumstances cannot directly effect its past circumstances?" and use teleological thinking to equate the causal chain between future circumstances and past circumstances with the 'purpose' of the water - as per the Aristotelian view. Purposefulness is clearly a mental state, and as we intuitively know that water cannot be purposeful in this way (though in some cultures water may indeed be imbued with a deliberate purposefulness) some special explanation such as a 'purposor' has to be invoked on the water's behalf. Thus it might be maintained that that which causes the water to arrive at its current, puddlish circumstances is a 'purposing' agent capable of ordering Reality such that water always moves towards the centre of the Earth.
Again religionists of a certain stripe will say that God specifically ordered Reality such that gravity acts in the way it does and in this respect the universe is 'fine tuned' for puddle formation.
Another example of the general anthropomorphism of teleological thinking is highlighted by your citation of BT corn. By saying that human intentioning agents can create unique, complex organisms which did not previously exist by manipulating genetic information directly, then we should not (cannot?) rule out that complex organisms, such as humans, have also been created by an intentioning agent not unlike ourselves. No doubt we will disagree on whether the life that has thus far arisen in our biosphere has occurred only "through the forces of chance and natural selection" as evidence suggests, not least because there seems to be an imaginable set of possible circumstances where it might not - and this of course holds the door open for an entity such as God is claimed to be. But here these imaginable possibilities merely represent a set of antecedent circumstances that necessarily comprise an unfalsifiable hypothesis - that God did it. In this respect the god-hypothesis amounts to an unarguable argument, that is; an argument in which the advocate of naturalism is asked to demonstrate a negative claim that a creator did not create, and this cannot be disproved or discounted for lack of evidence. In rational discourse one cannot argue against this exposition of the god-hypothesis and consequently I shall not be drawn further on this particular aspect of your point of view.
