Barbarian
Member
This article gives a POV that might cheer creationists as well as scientists. There are legitimate "purposes" to biological entities, even though they evolve by mutation and natural selection.
Are biological "Functions" and "Doings" real in the universe? According to most scientists, "no." They are mistaken manners of speaking. You see, in all of physics, there are only "Happenings," not Functions in the biological sense, in which the function of the heart is to pump blood. Nor are there Doings. Balls rolling down hills are not doing anything at all.
What is the function of your heart? Darwin would answer that it is to pump blood. But your heart makes heart sounds. Why are these causal consequences of beating hearts not the function of your heart? Darwin would answer that you have a heart because it was selectively advantageous for your ancestors to have a heart that pumped blood. Hence the function of your heart is to pump blood, not make heart sounds.
Three points are crucial here: i) The function of your heart is a subset of its causal consequences, here pumping blood, not making heart sounds. ii) A Kantian whole is an organized being in which the parts exist for and by means of the whole and the whole exists for and by means of the parts. You are a Kantian whole, as is a bacterium. iii) You and the bacteria are at a level of complexity where most complex things will never exist in the non-ergodic universe above the level of atoms.
Thus, when Darwin tells us that the function of your heart is to pump blood, he is also telling us why hearts and you exist in the non-ergodic universe.
This last paragraph is the central truth I wish to point to: Once a complex Kantian whole exists in the non-ergodic universe above the level of atoms, we can legitimately discriminate the causal consequences of the parts that help sustain the Kantian whole from causal consequences of the same parts that are mere side effects.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2012/02/27/147493592/are-functions-and-doings-real-in-the-universe
Are biological "Functions" and "Doings" real in the universe? According to most scientists, "no." They are mistaken manners of speaking. You see, in all of physics, there are only "Happenings," not Functions in the biological sense, in which the function of the heart is to pump blood. Nor are there Doings. Balls rolling down hills are not doing anything at all.
What is the function of your heart? Darwin would answer that it is to pump blood. But your heart makes heart sounds. Why are these causal consequences of beating hearts not the function of your heart? Darwin would answer that you have a heart because it was selectively advantageous for your ancestors to have a heart that pumped blood. Hence the function of your heart is to pump blood, not make heart sounds.
Three points are crucial here: i) The function of your heart is a subset of its causal consequences, here pumping blood, not making heart sounds. ii) A Kantian whole is an organized being in which the parts exist for and by means of the whole and the whole exists for and by means of the parts. You are a Kantian whole, as is a bacterium. iii) You and the bacteria are at a level of complexity where most complex things will never exist in the non-ergodic universe above the level of atoms.
Thus, when Darwin tells us that the function of your heart is to pump blood, he is also telling us why hearts and you exist in the non-ergodic universe.
This last paragraph is the central truth I wish to point to: Once a complex Kantian whole exists in the non-ergodic universe above the level of atoms, we can legitimately discriminate the causal consequences of the parts that help sustain the Kantian whole from causal consequences of the same parts that are mere side effects.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2012/02/27/147493592/are-functions-and-doings-real-in-the-universe