27.10.09
Samkhya and design arguments
James comments on design argument
I am very critical of the design argument, but in general the question is a problem not because we know it to be false but because of its metaphysical character, as indicated by Kant.
From another perspective it is interesting to look at the design argument, and Samkhya, in Bennett’s version at any rate: note that the triad of being, function, gives an expression, rapidly decaying into its own deviating mentations, of Schopenhauer’s idea of the ‘will’, and that cascade of triads ( a complex model in the second volume of Bennett’s DU) in the degrees of manifestation of the will, as Schopenhauer puts it, bring a factor of ‘will’ (which by definition pings a feeling of ‘design’) into all levels of reality, becoming at each stage more mechanical. As we encounter ‘natural design’ in nature that confusion of design or the ‘laws and mechanizing triads of will’ is what leaves us non-plussed or disconbobulated: it hits us on the funny bone. We think we see design, then it seems natural mechanism, then both….
Darwiniana » Schopenhauer, samkhya and design arguments in those who try to avoid them said,
27.10.09 at 12:46 pm
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