Interesting, I hadn't thought of it like that. But I'm not really reading it as an attempt to convert. The context is Nagel's observation about how the idea of any kind of consonance between mind and world is strenuously resisted, as a consequence of it seeming to be too near to religion. He followed it up with Mind and Cosmos in 2012, which The Guardian named as one of the most despised books of that year. This, despite his own frequent profession of atheism. He says that the idea that the mind evolved as a consequence of mindless physical forces is self-contradictory and that there must be a teleological explanation for the existence of conscious beings. Nagel suggests that the emergence of conscious beings in the universe may be the result of an inherent tendency toward the development of consciousness and value. But again this is on the basis of philosophy, although of course as soon as the book came out it was described as 'providing aim and comfort to creationists'. Which is kind of the point I'm making.

I had some experience when I was very young as a casualty wardsman in a Catholic hospital. The head nurse was a Sister Mary Louise, always immaculately turned out in crisp white and polished black shoes. She was a stern disciplinarian and indefatigible worker, but her compassion impressed me. There were often tragic scenes, it being an emergency ward, and I was hugely impressed by her ability to empathise and literally provide a shoulder to cry on and to weep with the patients, but then to return to her normal equilibrium and carry on with her day. (My wife had major surgery at that same hospital many decades later and again the sense of compassionate concern was palpable.)

Since the content of Nagel's article is off-topic, I won't discuss it further in this post. Except to say that it may indirectly suggest why some of us, frustrated by the inadequacies of Reductionism, Materialism, and Naturalism, have labeled the ultimate origins of Mind, Consciousness, and Language as a poetic mystery, instead of a topic for scientific analysis.: — Gnomon

Agree with your analysis and glad you found that essay worthwhile. The bottom line is naturalism is essentially defined against what it denies: most obviously ‘the supernatural’. Which, in effect, is taken to mean religion - and not only that, but ideas associated with religion, which are a very broad palette of ideas. Nagel, commenting on Peirce’s platonist musings, says that Peirce’s idea of the ‘inward sympathy’ with nature is alarming to many people:

The reason I call this view alarming is that it is hard to know what world picture to associate it with, and difficult to avoid the suspicion that the picture will be religious, or quasi-religious. Rationalism has always had a more religious flavor than empiricism. Even without God, the idea of a natural sympathy between the deepest truths of nature and the deepest layers of the human mind, which can be exploited to allow gradual development of a truer and truer conception of reality, makes us more at home in the universe than is secularly comfortable. The thought that the relation between mind and the world is something fundamental makes many people in this day and age nervous. I believe this is one manifestation of a fear of religion which has large and often pernicious consequences for modern intellectual life.

That is the preamble to the famous and frequently-quoted passage on the fear of religion:

In speaking of the fear of religion, I don't mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper--namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself. I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.

My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind. Darwin enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world. Instead they become epiphenomena, generated incidentally by a process that can be entirely explained by the operation of the non-teleological laws of physics on the material of which we and our environments are all composed. — Thomas Nagel

I've observed it countless times in over 12 years of online debates of just these kinds of questions. There is an undercurrent, a kind of firewall, against such ideas as 'inward sympathy' or 'eternal verities' because they're associated with religion or at least with philosophical spirituality (which is the same thing for most people.)

So, this is the sense that 'fear of religion' drives a good deal of philosophical discussion, including naturalism about the mind. That is why I introduced it: not out of ‘finger pointing’ but because it is a real and potent undercurrent in debates about mind and cosmos.

Here Nagel turns to an analysis of the notion that reason itself has a naturalistic explanation, namely as a product of evolutionary adaptation - something which I’m sure nearly everyone accepts without questioning. It seems commonsense to say that ‘reason evolved in the service of survival’. He says, however, that

Unless it [this analysis] is coupled with an independent basis for confidence in reason, the evolutionary hypothesis is threatening rather than reassuring. It is consistent with continued confidence only if it amounts to the hypothesis that evolution has led to the existence of creatures, namely us, with a capacity for reasoning in whose validity we can have much stronger confidence than would be warranted merely from its having come into existence in that way. I have to be able to believe that the evolutionary explanation is consistent with the proposition that I follow the rules of logic because they are correct--not merely because I am biologically programmed to do so. But to believe that, I have to be justified independently in believing that they are correct. And this cannot be merely on the basis of my contingent psychological disposition, together with the hypothesis that it is the product of natural selection. I can have no justification for trusting a reasoning capacity I have as a consequence of natural selection, unless I am justified in trusting it simply in itself -- that is, believing what it tells me, in virtue of the content of the arguments it delivers. — Thomas Nagel

So notice here that Nagel rejects the idea that the faculty of reason can be seen as a product of adaptation - because to do so, is to undermine the sovereignty of reason. Which, one would hope, would be the last thing a philosopher would wish for.

The point he’s trying to make is that while cognitive science is adequate for the explanation of the various functions of consciousness, it can’t show how to bridge the explanatory gap between those accounts and the felt nature of first-person experience. You could know all about the physiology of pain without knowing pain, which you only know by having had it. Elsewhere he writes about the possibility of developing a ‘first person science’ although I haven’t studied that. You’ll find a comprehensive set of papers here https://consc.net/consciousness/ But I will say he’s a very clear writer and thinker.

The only reason I'm paranoid about this stuff is that it's very easy to "stack the deck" depending on what side you're on. — fdrake

This debate is one of the fronts in the culture wars. On the one side, scientific materialism says that humans are gene machines or moist robots, that free will and even consciousness itself are illusory (notwithstanding that an illusion can only be an artefact within consciousness). It is no coincidence that in addition to his writings on philosophy Dennett is also one of the prominent 'new atheists' (alongside Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, although the new atheist fad is now seen as rather passé).

On the other side, you have a number of writers and speakers from all kinds of backgrounds, with a great diversity of views. About the only thing they have in common is opposition to the materialist paradigm. You could include, amongst philosophers, Raymond Tallis, Mary Midgley, and Thomas Nagel. There are philosophers of cognitive science who straddle the border, such as Christof Koch, enactivists like Alva Noe, and the phenomenologists. Plus nowadays even the Vedic contingent, represented by Deepak Chopra. (Those Consciousness Studies conferences held by the University of Arizona must be pretty interesting. Check out the program for the next installment, in May this year.)

It had seemed to me that you rejected attempts to understand consciousness from a scientific point of view. — T Clark

Not at all. Neither does David Chalmers. Remember, Daniel Dennett is not a cognitive scientist, or actually a scientist at all. He's a philosopher who appeals to a scientific ideology in pursuit of a philosophical agenda.

There are some cognitive science writers I'm wanting to read more of, notably Antonio D'Amasio, Thomas Metzinger, and Anil Seth. Not that I'm expecting to always agree with their philosophical stance, but there's a lot to learn in this space.

Are they common where you live? (I know it's completely disconnected to the thread, but anyway....)

I first noticed them when I was still living at home with my folks. An invasive species in Australia. They’re super-smart, real scrappers, aggressive, who will generally prevail over everything in their ecological niche. At the last house I lived, there was an Australian native species with the homonym ‘miner’, a honeyeater, which were sufficiently prolific to keep the Indian Mynahs at bay. I’ve since moved out of the greater Sydney area and disappointingly they are quite prolific hereabouts. They bring down the neighbourhood.

Send me a test message, I have it enabled.

(Oh, and by the way, I hate Indian Mynahs :rage:

Um, that was March 9 this year, and it is very much happening just as they predicted. They pointed to the many recent studies about the deleterious consequences of social media, and said that now we’re at the point to check some of these influences before the same thing happens all over again, on a much vaster scale. I think it’s the fact that all these companies are trying to seize the commercial advantage and market dominance of being the next Google or Apple that will drive a lot of it - that’s what they mean by the AI arms race. And neither Government nor the legal framework has a ghost of a chance of catching up with what’s happening.

The scenario of humans inventing a technology they can’t control and then being destroyed by it is a common theme in sci fi. I sometimes wonder, if it’s also the reason that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence never finds any.

in what sense is the argument I put forward about the differences in approach not itself a philosophical question — Isaac

You said that you would create a questionnaire, consult students, and so on. I expect groups like Pew Research might have surveys on such questions (like this one.) That's the kind of thing psychologists do.

I'm sure Nagel wouldn't speculate on the speed of light, or other questions of the kind, because they are questions for physics.

What makes Thomas Nagel's book The Last Word a philosophy text? Well, Nagel is 'the University Professor of Philosophy and Law Emeritus at New York University,[3] where he taught from 1980 to 2016.[4] His main areas of philosophical interest are legal philosophy, political philosophy, and ethics.[5]' (Wikipedia) He's written a number of books on philosophy in addition to The Last Word. He's one of the few academic philosophers who is well-known outside the academy.

A fear of hard work. — Isaac

Oh, so an ad hominem against philosophers, presumably, and Thomas Nagel, in particular. Too lazy to cut it as a psychologist. Obviously I'm outmatched by such rhetorical firepower.

I've been following this thread, off and on - it's a fascinating exploration. Still, that particular presentation really throws into relief some of the social dimensions of what is happening. (They note that about half the people involved in AI research believe that there's a 10% chance that it could culminate in the extinction of the human race, which I think is significant.) They're not suggesting anything like an attempt to lay down tools and stop development. Towards the end they point to the example of the social impact of the film The Day After, aired in 1983 to a TV audience of 100 million, which depicted a global nuclear conflagration. It was followed by a panel discussion featuring a cast of luminaries including Kissinger and Carl Sagan. Then they pointed out, the world did manage to contain nuclear weapons to 9 countries, to (so far) avoid nuclear war, and to sign the Bretton Woods and Nuclear Non-Proliferation Acts. They're suggesting that there be a similar kind of public education campaign and discussion amongst the tech sector about how to properly direct what is about to happen. The alternative is a runaway train going god knows where. Anyway, I posted it to my Linkedin profile (not that I'm much of an influencer either ;-) ).

It's quality can be summed up in one quote... — Isaac

Cherry-picking a single remark doesn't convey the gist of a 5000 word essay, which I think makes many an important point over and above the oft-quoted 'fear of religion' - particularly about the naturalisation of reason. And it's not an essay in social psychology, but an essay on philosophy and cultural dynamics. And actually, that is relevant, as this is a philosophy forum. Perhaps you might feel more at home and less antagonised on a psychology forum?

The conclusion is a call to action, and as you're an influencer, I feel it might have particular significance for you.

In this final part of the discussion, the speakers emphasize the need for creating institutions and regulations that can handle the growing influence of AI. They call for a collective effort to establish frameworks that can address the issues surrounding AI development and deployment, such as slowing down public deployment, improving media coverage on the topic, and creating negotiated agreements to prevent an AI arms race.

The speakers also discuss the importance of ensuring that AI developers and companies are aware of their responsibilities and the potential consequences of their actions, particularly when it comes to creating powerful AI models. They argue that slowing down public deployment of AI would not necessarily lead to losing ground to China, but rather could help maintain a lead while focusing on responsible AI development. — ChatGPT

They really impressed on me the exponential nature of AI development and the possibility of vast unintended consequences of the AI 'arms race'. I particularly responded to 'new capabilities imply new responsibilities' - very important point.

Descartes thought animals were machines, right ? — plaque flag

I started a thread on Descartes and animal cruelty. I will add that during the course of the ensuing debate, I did some more digging, and found that Descartes himself was not involved in the atrocities that had caused me to start that OP. However, it was conducted by the students at some, at the time, "progressive college", convinced by Descartes' philosophy that animals are incapable of suffering, that they're basically like machines, so that when they were nailed to boards and flayed alive, their howls didn't signify actual pain.

Also please note scientism and scientific materialism are different from science, which is a method of discovery //and a vast and ever-growing body of knowledge and technique//. Where they enter the picture is in the attempt to treat philosophical issues as scientific problems, which they're not - and this, in the context of a culture which has essentially abandoned its own metaphysical base.

Ideas have consequences.

Hi Pierre-Normand - just been watching a pretty fascinating/scary analysis on youtube The AI Dilemma - worth the time, I think

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhYw-VlkXTU&t=380s

I don't think your depiction of it is mistaken, but it's not the whole story. Recall a salient passage from the original paper:

The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience. — David Chalmers, Facing Up to the Hard Problem of Consciousness

What I think Chalmers is actually trying to convey by 'something it is like...' is, simply, being. Being, and what it means to be, is surely one of the major preoccupations of philosophy (and much else besides) although it's not always explicit - for Heidegger questioning the meaning of being is philosophy. (And I do wonder whether eliminative materialism is in some ways a manifestation of what Heidegger called 'the forgetfulness of being'.)

Another point I'd make is that there is the study of consciousness as an object of analysis - which is cognitive science - which I'm interested in, and trying to get a better understanding of. And cognitive science and philosophy definitely converge in a lot of ways. But the philosophical question about the nature of the mind (a term I prefer to 'consciousness') is broader, and deeper, than the specific questions which are the subject of cognitive science. That is reflected in Chalmer's distinction between the easy and hard problems of consciousness. And you find within cogsci, there are those with different philosophical aims, views, objectives. They will agree on some things - methodologies, empirical facts - but differ in others, such as intepretation, what conclusion to draw from the facts.

But at the bottom of it, the fact is that the subject of experience - you and I - are not reducible to objects - which is what neuroreductionism, as a philosophical attitude, tends to do.

I’m a robot, and you’re a robot, but that doesn’t make us any less dignified or wonderful or lovable or responsible for our actions,” he said. “Why does our dignity depend on our being scientifically inexplicable? — Daniel Dennett

I think there's a completely unambiguous answer to that: we are not robots, or machines, or even simply organisms, but beings, and a science that doesn't understand that is a risk to humanity. You never know what you, or the person next to you, is capable of being, or becoming.

My objection to neuro-reductionism is that what it is seeking to explain is something which is different in kind to other topics of scientific analysis, and in so doing, it can't help but treat the human as a species, or a specimen - as an object of analysis, something which will yield to scientific method. Daniel Dennett, who is one of its leading advocates, puts it like this:

What, then, is the relation between the standard ‘third-person’ objective methodologies for studying meteors or magnets (or human metabolism or bone density), and the methodologies for studying human consciousness? Can the standard methods be extended in such a way as to do justice to the phenomena of human consciousness? Or do we have to find some quite radical or revolutionary alternative science? I have defended the hypothesis that there is a straightforward, conservative extension of objective science that handsomely covers the ground — all the ground — of human consciousness, doing justice to all the data without ever having to abandon the rules and constraints of the experimental method that have worked so well in the rest of science. — Daniel Dennett, Who's on First?

In Dennett's view, scientific method must be truly universal in scope - whatever can't be included in it, is either not worth knowing about, or unknowable. Notice that this basically assumes that science is capable of being all-knowing - the literal meaning of 'omniscient' - in respect of human nature.

Hence the frequent angry outbursts at those who dare challenge the supremacy of science, and the many scornful references to woo-woo and soft-headed philosophers who 'don't know the science'. And as always, the most vigorous advocates of 'scientism' never seem to comprehend the fly in their ointment; because, I guess, the difficulty is a philosophical one, and so it is not demonstrable in empirical terms - it becomes something like, 'you need to provide scientific evidence for why this can't be a scientific issue' - at which point, debate becomes futile.

I think what is behind this is the fear of the mystery of consciousness - the fear is what provides the sense of urgency, the impatience with critics, and the demand that we all must recognise scientific authority as the only path to certainty.

I've started this, about 20 minutes in as I write this. Insightful and important video, I think a must watch.

Note-- Like what? — Gnomon

If you read the remainder you might get Nagel's point.

Interesting current Aeon essay on this topic Meaning Beyond Definition.

The poster you're referring to is knowledgeable and articulate, and is making sound criticisms. Take this as a warning - keep it up and you'll be suspended and/or banned.

You are free to make any arguments you like, but please refrain from ad hominem attacks and insults ('I don't know under which rock you have been living', 'the woo woo land of your definitions').

Why invoke 'fear of religion'... — Isaac

Have you read the essay that this is quoted from, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion, by Thomas Nagel? I think what he says in that essay is extremely relevant to many of the arguments we see on this forum, including this one, which is why I quoted it.

Kant’s most basic idea, the axis around which all his thought turns, is that what distinguishes exercises of judgment and intentional agency from the performances of merely natural creatures is that judgments and actions are subject to distinctive kinds of normative assessment. - Brandom — plaque flag

Hence the incompatibility between transcendental idealism and naturalism.

I'm wondering where that self-confidence comes from. — Isaac

The original exchange which you keep referring to was a long time ago, but I think it had to do with something like the 'hard problem' issue. I noticed that in connection with that (and should we decide to pursue it again, it should be in one of the threads on it) that you tend not to recognise that there is a problem which neuroscience can't address. So at the time I made that remark, what I was trying to convey was that if you don't see it as a problem, then there's no use in trying to explain it further.

here you are deriding as 'evil' world views... — Isaac

Specifically I was referring to the eliminative materialism of Daniel Dennett and the way he uses Darwinian biology in support of that view, which I (and a lot of people) regard as anti-humanist. I was certainly not characterising anyone I differ with as evil.

Objective idealism is not postulating an object that can (perhaps) never be encountered by a subject. It is saying that there is an all-experiencing subject (often equated with God), who thus gives rise to all of reality — Ø implies everything

Could it also be seen as saying that the ideas, forms and principles that comprise the fundamental elements of reason are invariant, and so are grasped by all minds in the same way?

You may be interested in browsing the chapter extracts of a book on this topic, Mind and the Cosmic Order, by Charles Pinter, which argues the opposite of what you are saying. Pinter says that the mind is what distinguishes form, colour, and spatial relationships, which it interprets in terms of gestalts, or meaningful wholes, and that none of these are real in the absence of mind (although he doesn't limit this to the human mind but the entire realm of 'the animal sensorium').

However, the view is also compatible with indirect realism for the brain is continuous with the matter of the world and so as the world may be colored so may be a visual field within the brain. — lorenzo sleakes

I don't know if the brain, or any living organism, is 'continuous' with matter in that sense. Certainly the fundamental material elements in both are all those of the periodic table but the differentiators for living organisms are the ability to maintain homeostasis, to retain information in the form of memory, to act intentionally, and so on. There is nothing on the level of physics or chemistry alone which accounts for those attributes of living organisms (which is the principle insight behind biosemiotics).

It's only that design in nature seems obvious to me, but obviously there are those who don't agree, and I can't think of a way to make the case. I don't say that it means there is a designer, but I'm also sceptical of the idea that the order of nature can be explained purely in terms of naturalistic principles. I suppose what I believe is that whilst science explores, understands and can exploit the order of nature to great advantage, it still has a rather dim idea of the nature of the order. Like, we can see the laws of motion, but why we have those laws is not itself a scientific question, but a metaphysical one.

You seem to have argued essentially that you don't like Darwinism — Tom Storm

I reject neo-darwinian materialism as a philosophical attitude, personified by Daniel Dennett, who has published books in its defence. There are many other schools of evolutionary thought which are not nearly so extreme nor so ideological, although I’m also critical of ‘scientific naturalism’. To me, the fact that humans can wonder about their purpose in the abstract is itself an indication of their ability to transcend their biological origins. And the fact that such wondering is itself regarded as being suspiciously close to fundamentalism, says something.

What reasons do you have for concluding that evolution has a goal or a designer, if this is what you are suggesting? — Tom Storm

I said that I’m not atheist, but I’m also not particularly theist. It’s more that I reject the specifically modernistic idea that life arises by chance or by fortuitous origins, that it’s a kind of cosmic crapshoot. I’m not going to defend any obviously ID-related position. It’s more that today’s culture, in rejecting traditional religious accounts, have also rejected a great deal of philosophical reflection on life’s meaning and purpose with it - throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as the saying has it. And that’s because in our religious history, having the wrong ideas about such things could get you burned at the stake. This has left a deep shadow in Western culture.

My philosophy, as I’ve explained at length elsewhere, is that in sentient rational beings, the Universe comes to know itself. (That’s why I provided that link to Julian Huxley who also said that, this is not something unique to me.) Religious ideas are metaphors for that realisation, although obviously some more so than others. I have a book on my shelf, ‘You Are the Eyes of the World’, by the Dzogchen master LonChenPa. I think the East has a more explicit understanding of it, but it is nevertheless a theme or idea found in many world cultures (‘You are the world’ was both a globally-released pop song to save starving Africans, and a book by Krishnamurti.) And in the animal world, every single creature is more or less engaged in that undertaking. Check out that Steve Talbott essay I posted upthread.

...now it's his fault that some bookshops put his work in the 'Religion' section. — Tom Storm

That is by design!

Can you demonstrate that there is design in nature? — Tom Storm

I myself don't think it needs to be demonstrated, but that if I need to demonstrate it, then probably nothing I could say would be effective.

Once minds such as ours originate, they themselves become the possibility of memetic and technological evolution, till all three work together toward an exponential increase in human knowledge power. — plaque flag

That is a completely different matter from evolution by natural selection. As is well known, ideas of evolution were found in many cultures prior to Darwin, but it was the idea of natural selection that distinguished Darwin’s discoveries. And even then, it was quickly applied to (some would say, misappropriated by) those with other agendas, to promote agendas like eugenics. Evolution is one of those marvellously flexible words that can be applied to almost any sense of things improving or changing for the better.

God or the demiurge was a designer, right? — plaque flag

Plato’s demiurge was a designer, but God was not described in those terms until the early modern age. That is one of the points of Karen Armstrong’s Case for God, which said that by depicting ‘nature’s laws’ as ‘the handiwork of God’, early modern science laid the groundwork for the kind of atheist polemics that are the speciality of Dawkins.

But, prior to our development of design, and the coining of the word ‘design’, there were no instances of design in the cosmos, right? If the apparent design in nature is only apparent, and not actual, that must be the implication, mustn’t it?

Yes. Those on the Dawkins forum - the very first forum I joined - constantly used this defence against his many howlers, notwithstanding that his books are in the ‘Religion’ section of shops all over the world.

In fact, Darwin explained 'purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world.' — plaque flag

Only insofar as they serve the purposes of evolutionary theory, which is to survive and reproduce, and no further. The philosophical significance of the theory is gravely overstated in my view.

Apropos of all this, a splendid article by Jules Evans on Julian Huxley’s evolutionary transhumanism

https://julesevans.medium.com/julian-huxley-and-the-otter-potential-movement-45dbda59fac5

He should have stuck to his knitting. He did a great job as a science explainer, but he is not very good at philosophy. The first chapter of TGD book was entitled 'a very religious non-believer' and was about Einstein as an exemplar of his scientific atheism. But Einstein said things which Dawkins would never contemplate, like, 'there are people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views' (quoted in Isaacson's Einstein: His Life and Universe).

Religion has had much to fear from science in general — plaque flag

Any religion has something to fear from scientific discovery is not worth respecting in my view (although the misuse of scientific knowledge is another thing altogether.) You know, none of Darwin's books were ever condemned or prohibited by the major Christian denominations, outside American protestantism. And also, please do know that Thomas Nagel, in that essay, states unequivocally that he himself is atheist, lacks any religious sense. He's critical of the idea of neodarwinian materialism purely on philosophical grounds, elaborated in his later Mind and Cosmos.

Is there a need to anthropomorphise this process? — Tom Storm

No, but there's also no need to explain it away. Dawkins will often say that the processes he describes give rise to the 'appearance of being designed'. Compared to what? I wonder. Is anything designed whatever? Does the word have any referent, outside the activities of h. sapiens?

It by no means provides us with any evidence that evolution is directed by 'supernatural' powers. — Tom Storm

The fact that any discussion of purpose is bound to be interpreted as a reference to the supernatural is significant. Purpose, meaning and intentionality are fundamental items in the philosophical lexicon.

All he missed—and Darwin provided—was the idea that this Intelligence could be broken into bits so tiny and stupid that they didn’t count as intelligence at all, and then distributed through space and time in a gigantic, connected network of algorithmic process. — plaque flag

Connected by what, and how? Evolution itself is not an agency, it doesn't 'do' anything. People speak about 'the wonders of evolution' nowadays, but natural selection is a filter, not a force.

This would be a slanted or polemical account of evolution, right? — Tom Storm

One of Dawkin's books is called 'The Blind Watchmaker'.

The problem of intentionality, meaning, and purpose is a very deep one, although, as Thomas Nagel observed, much of the debate about it is shaped by the fear of religion:

Darwin enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world. Instead they become epiphenomena, generated incidentally by a process that can be entirely explained by the operation of the non-teleological laws of physics on the material of which we and our environments are all composed.

The topic I was discussing at the time was Daniel Dennett's materialist philosophy, in the context of which I said that I don't believe we are products of the Dawkins/Dennett dumb physical forces driven by the blind watchmaker - which I don't. I don't know how many evolutionary biologists believe it - some, I imagine, but I would think it's hardly a consensus.

I did glean, in my brief reconnoitre on the topic, that Chomsky himself is sceptical about some Darwinian claims, indeed I recall a book co-authored by him and Robert Berwick, Why Only Us? The authors argue that language is an innate ability that is unique to humans and cannot be explained by traditional Darwinian evolutionary theory. Instead they propose a new theory of language evolution, which they call the "biolinguistic" approach. They argue that the language faculty evolved as a result of natural selection, but that the development of language cannot be explained solely by the gradual accumulation of small changes over time. Instead, they suggest that there was a sudden genetic mutation that allowed for the development of language, and that this mutation was a key factor in the evolution of the human species.

Overall, some of Chomsky's ideas are uncomfortably close to innatism for the liking of empiricist philosophers. There's something altogether too platonic about his 'innate grammar'.

OK, I think I see what you mean. I specifically referred to Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, who have global reputations as evangalising atheists, and the kind of ideology they represent.

As for a very nuanced consideration of the idea of telos and teleology in biology that is opposed to materialism but still within the bounds of naturalism, have a read of Steve Talbott's Evolution and the Purposes of Life

I still don't understand your point, nor which evil ideology you're saying that I'm in thrall to, if that is what you're saying.

without mistaking our opinions for truth and knowledge. — Fooloso4

Could you elaborate a little on the distinctions that Plato draws between pistis, doxa, and noesis? Do you think that he equates noesis with opinion?

However, the idea that if you don't accept that this is somehow reflected in the cosmos at large and you don't believe evolution has a purpose — Jamal

That is rather ambiguous - can you explain what you mean by that?