In Chance or Purpose, Christoph Schoenborn points out that Adolf Portmann thought it significant that animals sometimes engage in playful activity that is useless but beautiful. Schoenborn seems to think that this fact is an embarrassment to ateleological evolution or "evolutionism" (his term), but to my knowledge, he doesn't spell out exactly how it is so.
My first thought upon listening to Schoenborn's point is the likely retort that what is merely play to the individual (and may be useless for that individual's survival) may be useful to the species. Such a point is like Dawkins' distinction between the way in which an activity may be viewed by the individual who engages in it (his example is of sex for pleasure) and the way in which it serves the species/gene pool (reproduction). That distinction seems valid, at least to a point, but to let one's mind rest there would be to miss what I believe is Schoenborn's point.
I would develop the point in the following way. We engage in intrinsically desirable activities simply because they are desirable, not because they are useful. Yes, those that are useful may be more likely to survive in future generations. So intrisically desirable activities survive only if they are useful. But temporally speaking, they are able to contribute to survival because they were first regarded as intrinsically desirable rather than vice versa. Utility comes from desirability.
One may object that playful activities may be ways of rehearsing already practiced useful activities. Play fighting is a parody of real fighting. So it would seem that, temporally speaking, the useful comes first.
My reply would be that even those activities that seem merely useful have their origin in ones that are intrinsically desirable. Animals fight only because they desire to eat. Or in some cases because they enjoy the fight itself.
Of course, the animals eats to survive--or does it? It eats to enjoy the flavor of its food as well as the feeling of a full stomach, and to avoid the pain of hunger. When it comes to motivation, desire comes first.
There is something important about the primacy of desire. Important even for human ethics. Desire is forward-looking. Explaining motivation by pointing to past utility can leave out desire. It can look at nature like a machine in which everything moves as it does because it is pushed by something else. This interpretation of nature treats the present simply as the result of the past. But each past was what it was because of an inherent striving for the future. The present is a continuation of that striving. To understand the present one must grasp it in terms of its future-directedness.
It may be that a mechanistic approach to nature, by looking at the present as the inevitable result of the past is an unwitting anthropomorphism inasmuch as a whole is machine-like only if it functions as a machine for someone.
It may be that evolutionary utilitarianism inasmuch as it treats the useful as prior to the intrinsically desirable, is likewise an unwitting anthropomorphism inasmuch as it treats nature as a whole as if it were a either person engaged in instrumental reasoning or as a machine operated by someone. Ditto with Dawkins' treatment of the selfish-gene.
Another thought: looking at the role of desire in motivating animals operation and comparing it to the past utility, etc. I am reminded of the light/aperture metaphor that I used earlier. That is, aspects of animal (and other) evolution that can be described in mechanistic terms complement the teleological aspects in a manner analogous to how an aperture lets in light. More on that later, perhaps...
My first thought upon listening to Schoenborn's point is the likely retort that what is merely play to the individual (and may be useless for that individual's survival) may be useful to the species. Such a point is like Dawkins' distinction between the way in which an activity may be viewed by the individual who engages in it (his example is of sex for pleasure) and the way in which it serves the species/gene pool (reproduction). That distinction seems valid, at least to a point, but to let one's mind rest there would be to miss what I believe is Schoenborn's point.
I would develop the point in the following way. We engage in intrinsically desirable activities simply because they are desirable, not because they are useful. Yes, those that are useful may be more likely to survive in future generations. So intrisically desirable activities survive only if they are useful. But temporally speaking, they are able to contribute to survival because they were first regarded as intrinsically desirable rather than vice versa. Utility comes from desirability.
One may object that playful activities may be ways of rehearsing already practiced useful activities. Play fighting is a parody of real fighting. So it would seem that, temporally speaking, the useful comes first.
My reply would be that even those activities that seem merely useful have their origin in ones that are intrinsically desirable. Animals fight only because they desire to eat. Or in some cases because they enjoy the fight itself.
Of course, the animals eats to survive--or does it? It eats to enjoy the flavor of its food as well as the feeling of a full stomach, and to avoid the pain of hunger. When it comes to motivation, desire comes first.
There is something important about the primacy of desire. Important even for human ethics. Desire is forward-looking. Explaining motivation by pointing to past utility can leave out desire. It can look at nature like a machine in which everything moves as it does because it is pushed by something else. This interpretation of nature treats the present simply as the result of the past. But each past was what it was because of an inherent striving for the future. The present is a continuation of that striving. To understand the present one must grasp it in terms of its future-directedness.
It may be that a mechanistic approach to nature, by looking at the present as the inevitable result of the past is an unwitting anthropomorphism inasmuch as a whole is machine-like only if it functions as a machine for someone.
It may be that evolutionary utilitarianism inasmuch as it treats the useful as prior to the intrinsically desirable, is likewise an unwitting anthropomorphism inasmuch as it treats nature as a whole as if it were a either person engaged in instrumental reasoning or as a machine operated by someone. Ditto with Dawkins' treatment of the selfish-gene.
Another thought: looking at the role of desire in motivating animals operation and comparing it to the past utility, etc. I am reminded of the light/aperture metaphor that I used earlier. That is, aspects of animal (and other) evolution that can be described in mechanistic terms complement the teleological aspects in a manner analogous to how an aperture lets in light. More on that later, perhaps...
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