Teleology, Design and Intuition

by hamilcarr 10 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  hamilcarr

  An intelligent cause or an undirected process? Harmonia praestabilita (Leibniz' version of the more fashionable "fine-tuned universe") or a blind watchmaker? Many discussions on ID revolve around the validity of teleological arguments.

  The booming cognitive sciences may hold the key for a better understanding of human's preference for teleological arguments. It seems that counterintuitive arguments like the absence of a divine being are mostly beyond our intuitive mental capacities and it needs therefore years of education to overcome these deeply-rooted convictions.

  For what it's worth, an article on infantile intuition and teleology (one of the most powerful metaphors in western history):

  Recent research has led to the Promiscuous Teleology theory, which argues that children tend provide teleological explanations for a broader range of instances than adults, from artificacts, to biological kinds and natural, non-biological kinds such as rock formations and whether phenomena. This tendency results from a further tendency to give purposeful explanations when other types of causal explanations are not obvious, as well as a hair-triggered intentional reasoning mechanism. Researchers have shown that up until about 10 years, an age at which most U.S. children will have received a sufficient amount of science education to provide non-teleological explanations for non-biological natural phenomena, children give teleological explanations for these sorts of phenomena.
  
  When asked what the "function," if there is one, of various properties of the properties of artificats, biological kinds, and non-biological natural kinds, U.S. children younger than ten will readily provide a functional explanation, and prefer functional to physical explanations when given a choice. Children who are told stories about the origins of natural kinds (biological or non-biological), and later asked to recall those stories, often "reconstruct" them in order to make them fit more teleological explanations. British children have also been shown to have this tendency, though it is not as strong in them as it is in U.S. children, a fact likely due to the differences in religiosity between the the U.S. and the U.K. Children in the United States are more likely to be exposed to design explanations for natural phenomena at an early age than British children are.
  
  If children have a natural tendency to give teleological explanations for natural phenomena, they may also believe that such phenomena were intentionally created by an intelligent designer. And, in fact, U.S. children between the ages of 5 and 11, from both highly religious and non-religious households, will, if given the choice, answer that biological entities were created by God. Only after 11 do the tendencies to believe that God created animals begin to diverge for these two groups.

  Source

  Comments are welcome...
• 

  Leolaia

  Have you read Piaget? There are loads of good examples in his books. Here is a favorite of mine:

  Piaget, J. (1928). The Child's Conception of the World. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

  It's good and amusing reading, seeing how children try to explain the world around them.
• 

  Dogpatch

  interesting, thanks!

  randy
• 

  Narkissos

  Interesting indeed.

  Our imaginary structures reflect our practical relationship to the world. "Creation" to the Ancients was thought and expressed after human activity -- the creative gods were genitors, warriors, shepherds, gardeners, potters, house builders or magicians. The God of Enlightment theism was an architect or a clockmaker. The God of the post-industrial age is a designer. The G/god(s) (however called) of post-modernity may have to play dice after all (pace Einstein). But that will only happen if, and inasmuch as, we make our world and lives a game...
• 

  BurnTheShips

  whether phenomena

  Whether or not there is a gremlin in the rainclouds?
• 

  BurnTheShips

  Interesting indeed.

  Our imaginary structures reflect our practical relationship to the world. "Creation" to the Ancients was thought and expressed after human activity -- the creative gods were genitors, warriors, shepherds, gardeners, potters, house builders or magicians. The God of Enlightment theism was an architect or a clockmaker. The God of the post-industrial age is a designer. The G/god(s) (however called) of post-modernity may have to play dice after all (pace Einstein). But that will only happen if, and inasmuch as, we make our world and lives a game...

  Sounds like Marx's historical materialism, but instead of applying to society, it applies to Man's conception of God. As the means of production of goods changes, so does the economic employment of God.

  The ancients thought God or the gods were the masters of History. Perhaps it is how man concieves God and his relationship with him that controls the flow of history.

  Burn
• 

  BurnTheShips

  The main source of resistance to scientific ideas concerns what children know prior to their exposure to science. The last several decades of developmental psychology has made it abundantly clear that humans do not start off as "blank slates." Rather, even one year-olds possess a rich understanding of both the physical world (a "naïve physics") and the social world (a "naïve psychology"). Babies know that objects are solid, that they persist over time even when they are out of sight, that they fall to the ground if unsupported, and that they do not move unless acted upon. They also understand that people move autonomously in response to social and physical events, that they act and react in accord with their goals, and that they respond with appropriate emotions to different situations.

  and

  These intuitions give children a head start when it comes to understanding and learning about objects and people. But these intuitions also sometimes clash with scientific discoveries about the nature of the world, making certain scientific facts difficult to learn. As Susan Carey once put it, the problem with teaching science to children is "not what the student lacks, but what the student has, namely alternative conceptual frameworks for understanding the phenomena covered by the theories we are trying to teach."

  and

  One of the most interesting aspects of our common-sense psychology is dualism, the belief that minds are fundamentally different from brains. This belief comes naturally to children. Preschool children will claim that the brain is responsible for some aspects of mental life, typically those involving deliberative mental work, such as solving math problems. But preschoolers will also claim that the brain isn't involved in a host of other activities, such as pretending to be a kangaroo, loving one's brother, or brushing one's teeth. Similarly, when told about a brain transplant from a boy to a pig, they believe that you get a very smart pig, but one with pig beliefs and pig desires. For young children, then, much of mental life is not linked to the brain.

  http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bloom07/bloom07_index.html

  The panacea for this is of course, the scientific experiment. When one has a real world observation, those long stretch connections are easily shattered.

  Hence my posts here:

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/11/156756/2880015/post.ashx#2880015

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/11/156756/2880131/post.ashx#2880131
• 

  hamilcarr

  Leolaia, I've only read 'The Child's Conception of Number'. Many of his theories on numerical cognition have been refuted over the years. I may have been wrong on this point, but I had the impression that he overstressed the child's independence in its construction of reality, while contemporary research (f.e. on neurocognition) shows the importance of contextual influences.

  BTS, Probably there's no one-way relation between "man's conception of God" and "flow of history" in either direction (that's indeed one of the flaws of Marx's deterministic materialism), but still they're highly interrelated. The conception of God often reflects man's view on society and authority (take JWs as an example).
• 

  Narkissos

  BTS,

  Unlike Marx (and simply because I'm not a 19th-century man) I wouldn't read "progress" (nor regression, btw) into the process...

  I tend to disagree with your reflection on the relationship of Ancient gods and history. It seems to me that they actually lived (and wrestled) in history and in mythological time which was thought of after the manner of history (and this applies to the pre-monotheistic Yahweh too). It's only a subsection of monotheism which considers God as "master of history" -- mainly that part of Judaism and early Christianity which directly and undirectly reacted to Persian dualism, from Deutero-Isaiah to apocalypticism.
• 

  BurnTheShips

  I tend to disagree with your reflection on the relationship of Ancient gods and history.

  I was talking from a Judeo-Christian point of view I should have been more specific, and Persian dualism does comes into the picture, where history is the struggle between good and evil, moral and immoral.

  Burn