Midgley Article Issue 71

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humean
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Midgley Article Issue 71

Post by humean »

In "Purpose, Meaning & Darwinism," Mary Midgley accepts the ultimate conclusion of Darwinism that human beings are entirely a product of natural processes (i.e., evolution). However, she attempts to rescue from this state of affairs the idea that the universe exhibits a telos or purpose and "good and evil." She bases this conclusion, in part, on the assertion that there is purpose in the natural world--e.g., humans and other animals exhibit purposeful behavior--and that humans think certain states of affairs are good or evil depending upon how we are affected by them. This appears to be an equivocation. Dawkins and Weinberg are asserting that the universe as a whole does not exhibit a purpose and is not as a whole good or evil. The assertion that humans and other animals behave with ends in mind and have feelings about their own success or failure in meeting those ends does not support the assertion that the universe as a whole is purposeful or good or evil or anything else.

More fundamentally, Midgley seems to misunderstand the nature of evolutionary theory itself. Genetic variations are random: fitness is a matter of possessing the right tools to fit into the environment at a given time. Midgley seems to equate evolution with progress or purpose in a more global sense. This idea is not supported by current evolutionary theory.
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