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Is purpose a primary sort of thing?

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Is purpose a primary sort of thing?

Mr. J
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Posted 06/22/09 - 12:26 PM: Subject: Is purpose a primary sort of thing?	#1
I’m coming for what I think is a Greek sort of understanding where purpose defines something’s nature. For example what defines man is his ability to reason and this also defines his highest purpose. So I think I am correct in seeing purpose to be fundamental to the construction of physics and ethics. But then i know a modern stance does not consider purpose in constructing ethics or physics but how and why? It just seems a mistake and I have this sort of tension where I find purpose necessary as a description of the world yet for some reason modern ethics and physics does not have purpose as a fundamental thing, yet it seems to me it is, so im confused. for more explanation see my post here: http://forums.philosophyforums.com...ogy-sui-generis-35589.html

wuliheron
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Posted 06/22/09 - 06:27 PM:

Lao Tzu wrote:

Habit is the end of honesty and compassion,

The beginning of confusion,

Belief is a colorful hope or fear,

The beginning of folly.

MarchHare
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Posted 06/23/09 - 06:54 AM:	#3
Mr. J wrote: I’m coming for what I think is a Greek sort of understanding where purpose defines something’s nature. For example what defines man is his ability to reason and this also defines his highest purpose. So I think I am correct in seeing purpose to be fundamental to the construction of physics and ethics. But then i know a modern stance does not consider purpose in constructing ethics or physics but how and why? It just seems a mistake and I have this sort of tension where I find purpose necessary as a description of the world yet for some reason modern ethics and physics does not have purpose as a fundamental thing, yet it seems to me it is, so im confused. I think there's substantial ambiguity about the word "purpose", which I touched on in your other thread. But an important aspect of ordinary uses of "purpose" is the emphasis on the purpose itself being possessed (usually consciously) by an agent, for example- "I found myself just walking around without a purpose." "There was no purpose behind that." "Now there's a person who has decided on their purpose in life." "I'm sure there was some purpose in this painting, but I've forgotten it." "I admire your purpose, even if I disapprove of your means." etc. Now, if "purpose" requires some sort of intention, then it seems perverse both to (a) ascribe purposes to natural phenomena, unless you think those natural phenomena were caused by conscious agents/an agent and (b) to ascribe innate purposes to agents that they are not aware of and might in fact actively oppose. For examples of (a)- "The purpose behind the alimentary canal is for the transportation and use of food through the digestive system." "The purpose of photosynthesis is to convert solar energy into energy that the plant can use in metabolic processes." "The purpose of an insect's extoskeleton is protection and support its internal organs." etc. Provided we're aware that we're speaking figuratively (as one might describe a person as "stormy" and a painting as "vivid") there's no confusion. But to equivocate the use of "purpose" in the above list of examples with my earlier list of examples is a recipe for perplexity: do acorns intend to grow into trees? Do we have purposes contrary to our intentions? As so often happens with natural language and science, the limitations of the former can lead to significant mistakes in the latter. With ethics, I think it's in (b) that the perplexity lies. For example, one might legitmately say- "The purpose behind her going to her room was so that she could be alone." "He went to the bar with one purpose and one purpose only: to get blind drunk." "My original purpose in staying unmarried was to avoid the pain of giving birth". - which are all things that functional accounts of ethics tend to consider CONTRARY to the purposes of people. So I might intend to act unreasonably in my choice of clothing, but reason apparentely "defines my nature" and I thus intend one thing but have another thing as my purpose. Suddenly, the prescription of the teleologist wise man are unappealing; in fact, he seems to have overstepped his authority: why should the teleologist's definition of what makes a person "a person" be a basis for the teleologist's giving that person purposes contrary to that person's intentions? I think there are huge fundamental problems with any attempts to base a system of ethics purely on (alleged) facts about human nature, especially when these facts are not scientifically arrived at. On the other hand, preference consequentialism does seem to be very popular these days, mainly because it allows for different people having different intentions and then extrapolates from those intentions to prescriptions. So I might intend to have some item of clothing, but decide via some utilitarian or universalisability criterion that stealing the item would be unethical. So I can hopefully summarise my objections to teleology in ethics and physics in three points: (1) the use of purpose in the intentional sense is superfluous to natural science and if anything the word can be a cause of confusion; (2) there is a distinction that needs to be remembered between the use of "purpose" in describing intentional behaviours on the part of agents and the use of "purpose" to figuaritvely speak about natural phenomena; (3) for these reasons, teleological facts are not part of modern science and for this reason (and general problems with any sort of Naturalistic Descriptivist ethics) they are not a suitable basis for a system of ethics in my opinion. I still like Aristotle's virtue ethics and the systems influenced by it, though.
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Xaphan
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Posted 06/23/09 - 06:55 AM:	#4
Mr. J wrote: . So I think I am correct in seeing purpose to be fundamental to the construction of physics and ethics. I don't agree that reasoning defines man's highest purpose. Of course, the most notable figures chosen to be representative for one's conception of his past generations confirm it, but after all those figures are nothing but a minority, making inadequate a generalization around it. I would define reasoning as a fortunate adaptation and highest purpose as the one most important goal for an individual. I'm pretty sure that agreeing with my definitions you agree with me sustaining that man's highest purpose is survival (not necessarily at the most intuitive level of the word). Without this purpose any other purpose would be complete nonsense and that all other purposes originate from this one. If we closely look at the basic definition of what is a purpose we can conclude that anything you would consider one's purpose at a certain point except that of living is not a purpose but just a way of reaching his highest and only purpose. So, at least as much it concerns this discussion in the context of human psychology, there is only one purpose and since it's existence is incontestable taking any given problem in a perspective from the opposing angle would be ,at least until present moment, inconceivable and absurd. Concluding, from man's point of view there is only one purpose, everything else is acting under reasoning in it's name. There is no purpose beyond those to reason.

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Posted 06/23/09 - 07:54 AM:	#5
Purpose may be wrapped up in the indictment of consciousness and its various manifestations and instantiations in existence, probably best described as the "direction of society and civilization". The rush to war like the US and its allies did in Afghanistan and Iraq, dispels the doubt in my mind that the highest purpose of the human is "to reason", because those administrators were not using modern reasoning with a touch of historical perspective! Purpose is all too wrapped up in the new sense of existence, the newfound human ability to engineer society, be it beneficial to most humans or not.
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Mr. J
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Posted 06/23/09 - 08:38 AM:	#6
MarchHare thanks for the long post and it does help clarify things; great examples! So let’s just say at the beginning to make sure not to confuse purpose with intention (this is probably where most of my ‘feeling’ of confusion came). In biology in order to know something you have to recognize its nature, you have to “know how it fits in the big picture.” I think this is another way of saying that in order to know something you have to know its purpose (non-intentional). In order to understand the alimentary canal you have to understand its purpose (non-intentional). I don’t think Aristotle thought the acorn has an intentional purpose to grow into a tree. Instead of “purpose” should we use another word? Should we just use the term “nature”? This fundamental sense of needing to know purpose (non-intentional) is why I had titled my other post “Is Aristotle’s Teleology sui generis?” Because it seems to me purpose (non-intentional) is a “just is” sort of thing. It’s built right in. It is not given by the gods and it is not intentional it just is. You don’t recognize something’s nature unless you understand its purpose. I hope I’m not making word salad. In my defense I think there is something important about the recognition of purpose (non-intentional) and that’s all I am trying to describe. In your ethics examples I think the proper use is again not-intentional. Teleology is fundamental in that you have to use this recognition of man’s nature in order to construct the Virtue Ethics. So it is the recognition that what separates man from other creatures is the use of reason (you can argue it is a matter of degree, that’s fine) and also you have to recognize that he is a social creature. Now you can construct an ethics. Now there is a third way I use purpose (non-intentional) and that is in recognizing an individual purpose as in these examples; “it is my purpose in life to play basket ball,” or “it is my purpose in life to create fine jewelry.” These are things people find in there life to be fundamentally true and again its necessary to find this in order to find eudemonia. Now these three ways I used purpose (non-intentional) do you think this is valid and are they in some way the same thing?

wuliheron
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Posted 06/23/09 - 09:22 AM:	#7
It sounds like you are asking about the primary function of these things. For example, the primary function of an acorn is to preserve the genes of its parents by growing into a new tree. Primary functions are emergent properties, that is, synergistic properties that cannot be easily predicted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence

MarchHare
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Posted 06/23/09 - 09:39 AM:	#8
"Mr. J" wrote: So let’s just say at the beginning to make sure not to confuse purpose with intention (this is probably where most of my ‘feeling’ of confusion came). I certainly agree it's important not to equate purpose with intention, but it is a requirement of the use of the word "purpose" in ordinary language (in the context of ascribing things to people) that the person intends the outcome of their purpose. For instance, these sentences would raise eyebrows- "The purpose behind his back-hand serve was to speed up the game, but he didn't intend to speed up the game." "The purpose of the court system is to adjudicate legal disputes, but no-one wants to adjudicate legal disputes." "The purpose of the hair dye was to change the colour of my hair to blonde, but I never intended to be blonde." It is true that, when there are conflicts of interests, one sometimes comes across sentences like this- "Our purpose in declaring war on the enemy was to violently settle a conflict of interests, but we didn't want the war." There, the speaker is explaining that they intended to avoid the war, but ultimately it was desirous to declare war. So while I agree that intention and purpose are not equivocable, I do think that in the context of people's purposes it is a necessary (but not sufficent) condition of the use of "purpose" that the purpose is intended by the possessor of the purpose. Mr. J wrote: In biology in order to know something you have to recognize its nature, you have to “know how it fits in the big picture.” Surely it's the other way around? For instance, we may know all the facts about giant squids, but have almost no idea how it fits into the larger picture of the ecosystem of the deep oceans. In most of the natural sciences (cosmology is a notable exception) one starts off with a very modest predictive framework, eg. "Ceteris paribus, water freezes at 0 degree centigrade" precedes "All liquids form into solids once the temperature has been lowered to absolute zero, liquid helium excepted". "Mr. J" wrote: I think this is another way of saying that in order to know something you have to know its purpose (non-intentional). In order to understand the alimentary canal you have to understand its purpose (non-intentional). But the non-intentional use of purpose is purely figurative and one loses no clarity (but plenty of conciseness!) in stripping out the teleological language altogether, eg. "The existence of the alimentary canal in a body has the effect of faciliating processing food into nutrients and waste products". There's no difference, in principle, between the figurative use of "purpose" to describe natural phenoma and straightforward "Subject-verb-object" that is structurally identical to how we would talk about agents, eg. "The liver processes toxins for us." The simple use of figurative language is no reason to move to actual metaphysics, either in teleological metaphysics or (horror!) active agency vitalist metaphysics. "Mr. J" wrote: I don’t think Aristotle thought the acorn has an intentional purpose to grow into a tree. Instead of “purpose” should we use another word? Should we just use the term “nature”? One could use the word "nature", but that stays in the realm of pseudo-science: when is something's action not in its nature? It seems to fall into the same trap that "quality" falls into in Aristotle's metaphysics, leading to the classic joke- "Aristotle, why does the moon glow cold?" "It has a cold-glowing quality." "Mr. J" wrote: This fundamental sense of needing to know purpose (non-intentional) is why I had titled my other post “Is Aristotle’s Teleology sui generis?” Because it seems to me purpose (non-intentional) is a “just is” sort of thing. It’s built right in. It is not given by the gods and it is not intentional it just is. You don’t recognize something’s nature unless you understand its purpose. I hope I’m not making word salad. In my defense I think there is something important about the recognition of purpose (non-intentional) and that’s all I am trying to describe. I think the consequences of your view would be this: there is an x (purpose) that cannot be detected by science, is not caused; but is always understood when we recognize something's nature, even if we aren't aware of the concept of purpose while we recognize something's nature. To snatch a term from William James, this view is lacking in "cash-value": the truth or falisty of the existence of x has no knowable consequences. On the other hand, I think you could describe much the same aspect of experience that you are describing (and I think we have all experienced) quite clearly this way: to fully understand the process of a thing's existence, one has to have some knowledge about the culmination of this process. For example, to stay with Aristotle, "Call no man happy until he is dead" (where happiness is eudamonia) points out the fact that it isn't until a life is over that we can begin to have a comprehensive assessment of whether it was well-lived or not. If it wasn't true that the culimination of a process plays an essential role in our assessment of the said process, we would be able to create satisfactory assessments without being aware of the culmination; for example, one would be able to know what it is like to build a house without having any understanding of what a house is. "Mr. J" wrote: In your ethics examples I think the proper use is again not-intentional. Teleology is fundamental in that you have to use this recognition of man’s nature in order to construct the Virtue Ethics. So it is the recognition that what separates man from other creatures is the use of reason (you can argue it is a matter of degree, that’s fine) and also you have to recognize that he is a social creature. Now you can construct an ethics. Firstly, I think virtue ethics is first and foremost a method: the Stoics, for example had a system of virtue ethics that worked from enlightened self-interest and the logos rather than Aristotlean teleology. Secondly, I think that any attempt to create a system of objective ethics based on the equivocation of the cosmological (be it the gods, nature, pleasure etc.) and "good" is doomed, for reasons that I could write an entire book on if I had the time/talent, but primarily because of G. E. Moore's Naturalistic Fallacy argument. "Mr. J" wrote: Now there is a third way I use purpose (non-intentional) and that is in recognizing an individual purpose as in these examples; “it is my purpose in life to play basket ball,” or “it is my purpose in life to create fine jewelry.” These are things people find in there life to be fundamentally true and again its necessary to find this in order to find eudemonia. Assuming that being "fundamentally true" means corresponding to reality, it could certainly be the case that one might conclude one has a "purpose in life", but for it to be true depends on certain facts about the agent holding. For instance, a person might say "It is my purpose in life to play tennis", but if they have absolutely no intention to play tennis and no-one intends them to play tennis, their use of the words is unorthodox. Could you give an example of these purposes in life that do not depend on facts about the intentions of the person living that life? "Mr. J" wrote: Now these three ways I used purpose (non-intentional) do you think this is valid It might be valid if you're talking to someone who knows exactly how you are using the words, but it isn't how the word is used publicly. "Mr. J" wrote: and are they in some way the same thing? There is a resemblance of use between the first and the second (which is why the same word is used for both) but that resemblance plus the fact that the word is the same does not equal sameness. For instance, there are aspects of "hold" that are common to both "holding a position" and "holding a cup of tea", but the two uses are irreducible. Edited by MarchHare on 06/23/09 - 03:05 PM
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nousPLOTINU
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Posted 06/25/09 - 06:18 AM:	#9
Mr.J, I think when you twist "the purpose of an object" into "the Nature of the same object", you are outlining the organization of the object. In this sense of the word purpose, new purposes can be imagined for an object, like using bacteria to spoil the food chain, or putting smallpox in people's blankets to kill them off. For those reasons I may have to disagree with you because the organization of the object and its functional instantiation is all too mental. Another fine example is using electric charge to shock, maim and kill people, rather than fulfilling their dreams of existence.
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Schlitz
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Posted 07/20/09 - 10:55 PM:	#10
No, purpose is not a primary sort of thing. Purpose is not a physical magnitude. Purpose has to do with designs- in another word, planning, which is a matter of desires. Presuming that final, true, physics can predict desires (and this is a pretty good presumption), purpose is not a primary sort of thing. That's the stance, anyway.

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