Design with Dave & David

Um, one question, um, I heard people talk about is the idea of design.

Um, and, uh, here's a good, uh ...

Let me pull up my, um ...

Here we go.

Okay.

Here's, here's a comment from somebody who is, "I don't believe in evolutionary behavioral scientists, but I've heard this sentiment expressed before, which is why is it a common statement that natural selection designs traits when it literally doesn't? It's just a passive filter changing relative frequencies of genes.

It doesn't design or create any gene or phenotype." Uh, thoughts about that, David?

Uh, it's a really great point.

Uh, there is ...

I think it's a misleadingly simple question.

It's actually hugely complicated, touching on many different things.

So why do we use design language when we're not intelligent design theorists? Uh, I think the answer is that, um, it is a useful and insightful way of thinking.

So, um, the philosopher Dan Dennett talks about the design stance as a kind of, uh-

Yeah.

... intuitive way of understanding the world.

He argues that natural selection is a design process without a designer.

That is, it creates the appearance of design, and he thinks that that is the best, most insightful way to understand the products of natural selection, that, uh, you do not actually need a designer to have the appearance of design or the improbable functional organization of matter.

So if you think about our tools, you know, hammers, cars, these are, uh, non-random organizations of matter, and they are improbably well-organized for solving a particular problem.

And Dennett has argued that natural ...

And, and Richard Dawkins and others have, have ar- argued that natural selection is the only process that can give rise to that improbable fit between form and function.

There are other psychological aspects to this question, which is why do we use the design stance, uh, when we're trying to understand the mind? We have systems in the head, um, for thinking about people, for thinking about artifacts, for thinking about tools and the proper functions of tools.

We have systems in the head for thinking about foraging, mating, whatever.

And so the question is, if we're minds trying to understand the human mind, which part of our mind should we use to understand the human mind? And in traditionally in psychology, we've used our folk psychology to do psychology.

We've used the system in the head that evolved for understanding people to understand people.

But you, Dave, have argued that we should ...