Of all the conceptual tar-pits into which discussions of Darwinian naturalism often sink, none smothers its victims so prolifically as the concept of “design”. We reserve it jealously for the foresightedly purposeful efforts of conscious agents, which leaves us fumfering about for a word to describe the beautiful machinery of living things, and the powerful (but itself purposeless) process that has shaped them so perfectly to the uses to which they are put. Writers of books about evolution must squirm and fidget to avoid the word, lest they give the impression of telos in discussing natural selection’s mindless action. When they do use it — which is natural enough, as the raison d’etre of, say, a bird’s wing is obviously that it allows the bird to fly — they must baffle it with scare-quotes and disclaimers.
It’s a pity. This narrow, anthropocentric definition of “design”, a categorical relic of a prior era of human understanding, leaves us with no proper term for the difference between a rock, which obviously is not “for” anything, and an eagle’s eye, which obviously is.
My view (see here, for example) has always been that we ought to broaden the definition of “design” to include not only the products of conscious agency, but also the creations of the mindless, but stupendously productive, engine of natural selection. I unapologetically see the human heart, for example, as having been designed to pump blood (so unapologetically, in fact, that I can say so without scare-quotes).
Today, however, I ran across an article at American Scientist that, after a nod in the direction of the tar-pit, argues that we should not broaden, but further restrict our ascription of design. The authors suggest that even a great many of the things we uncontroversially regard as designed — can-openers, airplanes, and so on — are not really “designed” at all, but are themselves products of the same sort of selection-by-trial-and-error that generates the design of living organisms.
The argument is interesting in that if you carry it far enough, it really holds the materialist’s feet to the fire: if the human mind is itself the product of, and operates strictly according to, the lawful processes of the material world, then we may arrive at the conclusion that there is none of what we traditionally mean by “design” to be found anywhere. In other words, while I have been willing to make a conventional distinction between the products of conscious agency and the products of natural selection, but think that the meaning of the word “design” should be applicable to both, it can fairly be argued, if materialism is true, that the distinction is ultimately meaningless.
Read the essay here.
5 Comments
This sounds a bit like the old notion that, if it occurs in this universe, it’s natural, no matter whether it came to be with help from intelligent agents. By that reasoning, something like plastic is perfectly natural: as a certain philosopher might say, plastic’s esse implies its posse.
I’ve always found this train of thought interesting, because it also blurs the normally-clear distinction between invention and discovery. In a sense, plastic is something we arrived at, and while we normally think of it as the product of our minds and hands, we can also think of it as something we “dug up” through our efforts at finding a solution to whatever problems plastic is supposed to address. If plastic hadn’t been possible since the beginning, we’d never have arrived at it.
Something very similar happens to ‘freewill’. Is this a coincidence?
Yes, Kevin, that sums up the article’s argument very succinctly, I think.
No coincidence at all, I’d say, David.
“Freewill” is another of those tar-pits…
Is “freewill” one word? Hmmm . . . now that I’m looking carefully, I see that it is. But “free will” is two words. Problem solved.
The problem of free will, however, remains . . .
Jeffery Hodges
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