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If we have never formulated a tentative rule of the kind “all roses I have seen, smelled sweet,” we would not be tempted to say: “this flower looks like a rose— therefore it will smell sweet.” In other words, if we have had no success with inductive inferences, we are unlikely to proceed to deductive ones. +
Consequently there is no past experience of steps that led towards it or actions that brought it about. There are no abstracted cause-effect relations that one could try to implement to reach an unfathomable end. In short, even for those who believe that knowledge does not pertain to anything beyond the realm of experience, a cause that lies outside has no explanatory power. +
Definitions set conditions which the abstract form we call concept must satisfy, and it is the same conditions that some experiential material must fit in order to be accepted as a proper instantiation of the concept. +
Prediction, in one form or another, permeates our living, and the expectation that the efficient causes we have isolated in the past will have their effects also in the future, is the key to whatever success we have in managing our experience. +
Prescriptive purposes, therefore, are there prior to their embodiment, which then has the particular purpose in it. +
Though the sequential frames that compose the concept of efficient cause are obviously abstracted from prior experience and therefore lie in the past, they can, and often are, projected as predictions into areas that have not yet been actually experienced. +
Hence, it was unfortunate, to say the least, that the term teleological was indiscriminately applied to the explanation of actions that are in no way determined by something that lies in the future, something that still awaits to be experienced. +
Hence it is quite legitimate to call the attainment and maintainment of the projected state the purpose in the mechanism. +
That is to say, neither of these two basic elements in the construction of our experiential world is conceivable unless we segment experience into separate discrete frames and then focus attention on similarities or differences between the segments. +
Where evolution is concerned, then, there is no harm in using ‘purpose of’ as a descriptive tool, provided one does not mistake it for the purpose for, which would imply a guiding outside force that intentionally designed the thing one is describing. +
Hence, an external agent with powers that override the constraints we run into in our experiential world, would have to be supernatural and therefore out of bounds for science. +
According to this break-down, change is a relational concept and, as such, requires more than one segment of experience, as well as a comparison. It also manifests what I consider a basic presupposition of all conceptual analysis: Segments of experience, insofar as they reach the level of conceptualization and rational description, always appear sequential. This sequence is usually interpreted as a temporal one. +
In contrast, if archaeologists, in digging up remnants of a bygone civilization, find an unknown item and discover that it generates a flame when it is handled in a particular way, they may conclude that this was indeed its purpose. This would be conceived as the purpose of the item, in their description. +
Thus it is, indeed, an inductive procedure, because ‘what works’ is seen from the organism’s point of view and selected within the organism’s own experience. +
Thus there was no proper causal connection between reinforcement and subsequent behavior, because it was to some extent the rat who decided what it considered reinforcing and what not.
Taylor wants to turn the effects of a feedback mechanism’s behavior into a ‘causal factor’, but he overlooks that one and the same effect does not always generate the same subsequent behavior. +
The example of the bronze statue again offers a useful image. The shape of the statue is quite literally ‘defined’ by the mold, in the sense that the mold constrains and delimits where the liquid metal can flow. Analogously, the ‘parts of a definition’ constrain and delimit both conceptual construction and the application of concepts. +
An organism’s actions, thus, are selected and shaped according to what worked in the past. +
The way the sculptor imposes form, is by chipping away the bits of marble that do not fit into his vision. The way form is imposed on the bronze, is by pouring it into a constraining mold. Potentially, the material could end up in innumerable other forms, but the procedure of statue-making, be it chipping or casting, eliminates all but one. +
If there is no preference for not having pain and getting blisters on one’s fingers, there is no reason why the toddler should not touch the hot stove every time it happens to be near enough. +
From this, one is led to conclude that the scientific search of efficient causes is fueled largely, if not entirely, by our intention to use them for the attainment of goals. +
