What is the meaning of life?

[Vinnie]

@Roy

But that’s only your opinion, there is no actual support for it.

I’ve argued this several times on this forum. The latest instance was probably here.

Fairly new Evolutionary Creationist; could use encouragement

You appear to be talking about extrinsic teleology and I can agree to an extent since I am not an ID proponent. But what I often see missing from these discussions is the much more important intrinsic teleology. I clearly see goal-directness in biological systems and mutations being random simply means they did not occur with the purpose of helping the organism adapt to the environment. They certainly are not truly random since they follow physical laws. But some examples of goal-directedness…

You are welcome to show where the premises fail or the conclusion does not follow. Also on the level of organisms, I think you need to provide justification for your views. To say organisms lacks goal-directedness (intrinsic teleology), despite the constant teleological language surrounding them, is something you need to argue, not assume. Without intrinsic teleology, there is no such thing as fitness, adaptation, and survival. We have only blind rearrangements of atoms.

Not to mention, intrinsic teleology (dealing with the substrate) is how we solve the problem of induction which I suspect you are left with. Purely mechanistic philosophy cannot justify its own empirical baseline. Without doing that, I don’t think such a philosophy is worth very much.

@Roy

There is difficulty in precisely defining what a living organism is, precisely because there are edge cases like viruses.

Viruses are not living organisms to me but they are complex substances (not accidental aggregates). I have to agree with the philosopher David Oderberg that the existence of twilight does not erase the real distinction between day and night. Edge cases do not eliminate fundamental ontological categories. It would be a fallacy to suggest otherwise.

@Roy

You could say that the environment selects against the rock’s shape, but that would be conferring on the environment an ability that it doesn’t actually have.

It was a reductio ad absurdum argument. My precise point was the environment itself has no intrinsic sorting power (creative or goal-directed agency). If the environment is just blind physics, then I would say the organism is what makes “selection” possible in biology. Natural selection requires a goal directed organism with all the buzzwords (homeostasis, survival, reproduction, success, failure etc).

@Roy

Teleology of what? The process, or the organisms it affects? Natural selection can be simulated on programmed ‘organisms’ which can lack teleology.

Teleology of what? The organism intrinsically (e.g. self maintenance and being ordered towards homeostasis) while the process of natural selection is an extrinsic filter acting on it. That is what. Simulated? Computer code is an example of extrinsic teleology from soup to nuts. It is defined and given meaning by the coder. No line of code, not a single variable or fitness function exists by accident. They were all created by an external mind and given meaning by that external mind. Fitness functions look like coded teleology to me. Without defining what constitutes “success” vs “failure” how do you have anything more than electrical signals or blips of noise?

Vinnie