Beyond Survival of the Fittest

[Wayfarer]

incidentally, regarding this passage from your linked essay:

@Geoff Dann

Teleology is going to be an important concept from here onwards. It comes from the Greek word “telos”, meaning “end”, “purpose” or “goal” and refers to a kind of causal process or order. A teleological process is one that is directed by its goal. We can think of mechanistic physical causality as “pushing” the world from its current state to future states, whereas teleology “pulls” it towards a specific end point.

I outline a somewhat different approach to Nagel’s (although by no means incompatible with it) in this thread On Purpose (Reprise) (‘Reprise’ because it was a re-statement of a thread originally posted on the previous platform.)

I’m arguing that the neologism ‘teleonomy’ which was introduced to biology to allow for the obviously goal-directed behaviours of all organic beings (even their component parts) really amounts to an acknowledgement of teleology.