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Comment by Brain_Thief | Hacker News Reader

I think you may have blown past my point a bit in the rush to label what is and is Not Science (:P). Generally speaking, scientists and engineers today do not seem to be indifferent to the concept of teleology at all - in fact, many of them seem to have reached very strong (and quite hostile) conclusions about the topic with shockingly little basis. This lack of open-mindedness regarding the concept is precisely the problem I am attempting to point out. The perspective is so pervasive among the engineering classes in particular that I have routinely heard very well-educated people espouse incredulity at the merest notion of a natural telos (when they're not openly hostile to the concept, that is); from what I can tell the concept does not occur to them even as a remote possibility. My own opinion is that this violates the spirit of scientific thought and should be addressed.

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You call it teleology. Other people call it story-telling.

Unless there's hard evidence to lift it above story-telling, it's just as unlikely to be true as any other comforting story.

The scientific basis for that is something called "narrative pseudo-logic". Brains seem to be something of a story machine. Unfortunately the bar for story plausibility is shockingly low, which is why humans believe all kinds of strange and wildly contradictory things about where the universe came from and what it's for.

The point of empiricism is to break out of narrative pseudo-logic and find stories that are reliably and consistently true when tested - not just stories that sound like they should be true because we want them to be, or we like them, or we're not imaginative enough to consider that they might simply be wrong.

It's funny that you are not only proving his point, but yours as well, by inventing some elaborate story of your own.

Why would you assume that empericism is in conflict with teleology?

No evidence has been observed and no empirical study is proposed.

Precisely. There aren't any sets of postulates of empericism and teleology which would produce a contradiction. It's simply the case that no evidence has been observed and no empirical study is proposed for any telos, nothing more, nothing less.

Empiricism isn't so much in conflict with teleology as teleology is outside the scope of empiricism but frequently abused as grounding for accepting or rejecting claoms within the scope of empirical exploration.

I, personally, am perfectly open to the possibility that there's some kind of "reason" to nature. However, until such a time that it is demonstrated, I remain indifferent. Until it is established that the "reason" is something that has any effect on anything (which it would, if it existed), it is irrelevant to any possible decision. What other stance could I take besides "meh"?

If you think it is something that should be accepted without demonstration, then please describe a framework of thought where this is acceptable and which still remains useful. I literally can't think of any.

"Generally speaking, scientists and engineers today do not seem to be indifferent to the concept of teleology at all - in fact, many of them seem to have reached very strong (and quite hostile) conclusions about the topic with shockingly little basis."

That's not surprising. There is a long and colorful history of conflict between scientists and a panoply of false narratives. This is ongoing and requires an active defense. If you wish to survive that gauntlet you'll need something pretty compelling; an abstraction camouflaged by obscure terms won't suffice.

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