Very fun post. It's great to think about these issues, and I sure look forward to your next post in the series.
Determining the telos of things is very difficult, it seems to me. With a guitar, human created, it's a bit easier, but even here things are a bit gray. If your life is going well and you have plenty of money to pay for utilities, it's easy to say the purpose of a guitar is to help you make music. But if you're starving and cold, and happen upon a guitar, its purpose for you might be to add to a fire that's keeping you warm in the winter. Even with non human created things it can get tricky. An acorn's purpose from an oak forest's perspective is to seed another oak tree, but for a squirrel, its purpose is to feed self and family. It all depends on point of view.
That's why, when I think about the fact/value split, I can't help wondering if it's inevitable, something true that modernity has uncovered. Even if you believe all things have a telos, how is one to know what the telos of things are? And if it depends on point of view, then things might have purposes while not having a single purpose. We will never all agree on what the purposes of things are. We are adrift in a world of relativism, of point-of-view-ism, and only God, one imagines, could clear things up. And yet God does not do so in any consistent way. At least so far (try getting a consistent set of values out of the Bible, for example). God is hidden when it comes to revealing values to humanity at large.
The only reason we do not believe in telos or things or animals or people having purpose is because we are living in a post Christian age, belief in God is no longer universal. So if their is no God then we lose purpose also. Not believing in a God or higher power strips us of purpose unfortuntely one of the casualties of modern times.
I do believe that God does create things to have a MAIN purpose, but also has a secondary purpose or use, that does not mean that it has no purpose. It is possible that God in his infinite wisdom created the Acorn knowing it would grow a tree and also feed the squirrel.
Teleology is, iirc, the basis of Alfred Adler's work (though I admit that my only exposure was through the book "The Courage to be Disliked").
Very fun post. It's great to think about these issues, and I sure look forward to your next post in the series.
Determining the telos of things is very difficult, it seems to me. With a guitar, human created, it's a bit easier, but even here things are a bit gray. If your life is going well and you have plenty of money to pay for utilities, it's easy to say the purpose of a guitar is to help you make music. But if you're starving and cold, and happen upon a guitar, its purpose for you might be to add to a fire that's keeping you warm in the winter. Even with non human created things it can get tricky. An acorn's purpose from an oak forest's perspective is to seed another oak tree, but for a squirrel, its purpose is to feed self and family. It all depends on point of view.
That's why, when I think about the fact/value split, I can't help wondering if it's inevitable, something true that modernity has uncovered. Even if you believe all things have a telos, how is one to know what the telos of things are? And if it depends on point of view, then things might have purposes while not having a single purpose. We will never all agree on what the purposes of things are. We are adrift in a world of relativism, of point-of-view-ism, and only God, one imagines, could clear things up. And yet God does not do so in any consistent way. At least so far (try getting a consistent set of values out of the Bible, for example). God is hidden when it comes to revealing values to humanity at large.
The only reason we do not believe in telos or things or animals or people having purpose is because we are living in a post Christian age, belief in God is no longer universal. So if their is no God then we lose purpose also. Not believing in a God or higher power strips us of purpose unfortuntely one of the casualties of modern times.
I do believe that God does create things to have a MAIN purpose, but also has a secondary purpose or use, that does not mean that it has no purpose. It is possible that God in his infinite wisdom created the Acorn knowing it would grow a tree and also feed the squirrel.
Great analysis. Looking forward to the next post.