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> "how does evolution work so well to create the appearance of design?" Evolution doesn't create the appearance of design any more than airplanes create the ap
by yongjik 6y ago
> "how does evolution work so well to create the appearance of design?"
Evolution doesn't create the appearance of design any more than airplanes create the appearance of a gigantic bird. To an isolated Amazonian tribe, an airplane may indeed look like a giant bird, but that's only because they aren't familiar with modern aerodynamics - they cannot conceive that something that's not like a giant bird can be flying up so high, so they mentally equate airworthiness with bird-likeness.
- yters 6y agodawkins whole argument is evolution produces the appearance of design
- MaxBarraclough 6y agoSee also Dennett's idea of 'competence without comprehension'.
- earthboundkid 6y agoThis is different though because the concept of “design” or “teleology” gets reduced to history by evolution. This undermines the idea that humans can goals either, but if you undermine the idea that humans can have goals, you’ve eliminated the basis of doing science, leading to contradiction. You can bring goals back and say well evolution/biology only has apparent goals but humans really do have goals, but that’s actually a really hard task philosophically! The bird/plane case is different because to the ignorant, they may only know of birds, but you can explain that there is a more fundamental category of “flying thing” and a plane, like a bird, fits into that category without being a bird itself. With design you have to say, well there’s design and apparent design and for some reason biology has apparent design but humans have real design. It’s a tricky problem!