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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   3621 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 7, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I'm ambivalent about Platonic forms (despite the prevalence of such views among physicists), but I'm definitely down with Aristotle's four causes. I even have a toy example I like to use involving an ordinary claw hammer, and how they are four different ways of answering the question "why is this hammer here?"

I even have a toy example I like to use involving an ordinary claw hammer, and how they are four different ways of answering the question "why is this hammer here?"

Its the final cause (teleology) that really gets people upset with Aristotle here. He believed you could meaningfully talk about a dog having sharp front teeth because:

  1. Material - Enamel
  2. Formal - "Tooth"
  3. Efficient - Genetic expression
  4. Final - To sever meat to eat

Whereas modern scientists are iffy on #2 and hostile to #4.

I think you're greatly overstating hostility to #4 here. This is my field and I'd say the majority of biologists is not only fine with it, but even frequently colloquially uses the language indicating #4 as the primary reason. Me included. Yes, it's more complicated overall, but "genetic variants associated with sharper front tooth developed because it allowed specimen to sever meat better and so they had more offspring" is more or less correct in my view.

Yeah, this is a point I keep making to people — natural selection the process may be atelic, but the products of evolution are consequently telic — that's what makes an adaptation an adaptation. Indeed, I argue that this, though oft ignored, is one of the key philosophical insights of Darwinian theory: the explanation of how you can get purpose without a Purpose-Giver.

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