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That is the way I wanted my sentence to be understood, »evolve« in »[...] would the elephants evolve to be tusk-less?« is intended to mean nothing more than bec
by danbruc 4y ago
That is the way I wanted my sentence to be understood, »evolve« in »[...] would the elephants evolve to be tusk-less?« is intended to mean nothing more than become dominant due to evolution and I do not see how that word in that context could be understood as anything else.
- bigDinosaur 4y agoFair enough. I don't actually think you're wrong, to be clear, I think it's just easy to mix together related but distinct concepts here and the teleological angle makes that surprisingly easy to do (but it's almost impossible to actually avoid).
- danbruc 4y agoIsn't teleology a red herring here? We may use language that sound teleologically - nature wants this or that - but that does not imply that we actually have any teleologically world view behind that. If someone says that the universe wants to minimize the action, then I don't think they ascribe any desires to the universe [1], they just want to say that physical systems behave in a way that minimizes the action which we figured out by inspection and experiment. [1] At least by default, they can of course clarify that they actually think the universe has desires.