A sense of purpose

The manufacturing of a car is a purposeful process, intelligent shaping of matter into a useful form. Birds build nests and migrate for a purpose, or is that stretching it?

So the question is: at which point did anything purposeful occur for the first time?

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 1

Xysoo

Original post by zhog

Why does it matter, or should I say, what purpose does knowing serve?

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Reply 2

username1738683

Original post by Xysoo

Why does it matter, or should I say, what purpose does knowing serve?

Good point and thanks for saving the thread from going out for a duck. :biggrin:

Reply 3

hellodave5

Not sure what you mean by asking of the time something of purpose first occurred?

Reply 4

username1738683

Original post by hellodave5

Not sure what you mean by asking of the time something of purpose first occurred?

I mean to highlight the difficulty in breaking the chain of purposefulness, simple as that. If we regard Big Bang as entirely devoid of purpose or meaning, at which point between that and the car can we estimate that anything purposeful occurred in the chain of events? Are you happy with the label of 'a purposeful creation' for the car?

If we regard a human being as something other than a purposeful creation himself that narrows the field and makes it simpler: at which point between man and car did anything purposeful occur?

Reply 5

hellodave5

Original post by zhog

I see, thanks.
What do you mean by purposeful though? To judge something as purposeful seems a bit arbitrary?

Reply 6

Hunterj68

Original post by zhog

Purpose is subjective, but based on what you've said in the initial statement and the following replies makes me believe you mean an action something did with an intended use or for an intended outcome. Based on that, I'd say the first animal to come about after hundreds of millions of years of evolution, almost anything an animal does has a purpose. The purpose can be wide ranging, it could be something as simple as going on this website to pass time, eating a certain food over another, or even moving. Any conscious action, or inaction by an animal has an intended purpose.

Reply 7

username1738683

Original post by hellodave5

I see, thanks.
What do you mean by purposeful though? To judge something as purposeful seems a bit arbitrary?

What is arbitrary in regarding the making of a car as a purposeful process? It doesn't 'happen' for no good reason, it is made on purpose.

Reply 8

hellodave5

Original post by zhog

What is arbitrary in regarding the making of a car as a purposeful process? It doesn't 'happen' for no good reason, it is made on purpose.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean still, sorry.

Do you mean humankind's greatest achievement, which was invented with purpose about creating that object or tool...?
Many things, if not most, tend to happen through good fortune rather than an explicit objective making and then working towards it.

Unless you mean purposeful as a term separate to something done with purpose?

Reply 9

username1738683

Original post by Hunterj68

The emergence of a brain somewhere, of a 'thinking' ability? It is a good call, subjective as they all are, animals do 'think' and perhaps we can look at the emergence of such thing as a 'brain' and what it delivered as the turning point. But what about the kingdom of plants, brainless it may be but the degree of mechanization within it is as remarkable as that in the animal kingdom, or the couple of billion years during which there was nothing but bacteria on this earth laying the foundations for all else to follow? The workings within a cell, how can we tell whether they serve an intended function or not?

However, let's say it was the animal kingdom that started it. It follows that a sense of 'purposefulness' can arise from where there is none, which is as much a massive viewpoint to adopt as any other. I suppose that is the underlying point in all this.

Reply 10

username1738683

Original post by hellodave5

Unless you mean purposeful as a term separate to something done with purpose?

Any of the definitions in a dictionary covers it, it means a goal, intended result, the reason for which something is done. When a bird builds a nest he does it to serve a purpose and we have to wonder if when a plant's leaves turn in search of energy that is purposeful too or not.

Reply 11

hellodave5

Original post by zhog

Ah sure. In which case, as a whole... I would say the development of the constituents of biological life on our planet, for us, such as the basic physiological processes that developed in an evolutionary way allowing the many million years of biological life on our planet, as well as allowing me to type this.

As for our creations I probably don't know enough about them to remember if they were made purposefully. Most were just realisations after an idea was made, and older ideas sort of developed into. But I would say that would probably include our vehicular technology, such as cars and planes, and the combustion engines.
Medicines I would include also, but the most important such as antiseptics and antibiotics were I think chance findings (though in retrospect not massively hard to find).
Computers and the internet as well. Computers may be able to include as the mechanistic theory behind it and the possibility of a computing machine was developed quite a bit before the computer itself; but I think the internet was a novel shift from one application of the technology to another and its development in that way.
I'd also add medical physics to that with EEG, x-ray, CT, and f-MRI. All have been revolutionary.

:smile:

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 12

dozyrosie

Original post by zhog

There was never a sense of purpose, or a need to be so. Your analogy in favour of intelligent design is not intelligent, even if it was designed. What god with the alleged abilities of the Abrahamic one would be such a poor designer?