User talk:ZuluPapa5/Purpose

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I don't have very much time to comment today, so I will be brief. For the lede, we really need to think of a better way of wording the sentence that starts "Because of its individual subjectivity..." I'm not sure what this is intended to mean. Zulu Papa, could you enlighten me? I also think that we should put more emphasis on "purpose" meaning an intended use for an object or tool. Again for the article body I won't go into detail here, but basically I think that a) there is an over-reliance on old sources (the older a source is, the more we should consider it to be primary rather than secondary), and b) the subjects chosen are overly broad. (I'm not sure cybernetics is really related to "purpose" all that much - Zulu Papa, could you explain why you chose to include this topic?) All the best — Mr. Stradivarius ^♫ 15:27, 18 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That lede statement was intend to address Viridias concerns. The statement was taken from a source which compared and classified purpose and teleology. In that context, many have argued that teleology should replace the concept of purpose. However, that source and another one by Reese have defined that purpose has a distinct value separate from teleology. Again this has to do with the adverbial form that purpose takes. Ultimately something has an inherent purpose or it serves a purpose from someone else. Machines serve a purpose of their maker and user, yet they have no means to select their own purpose. Inherent purposes are distinctly subjective to the individual, and can only unify upon agreement. This subject goes back to at least Aristotle, NPOV demands all sources be presented in balanced context. When new sources arrive they can be balanced in NPOV. Cybernetics certainly is related to purpose by the study of self-governance; why ... because the sources say so (read it for yourself), those folks have classified purpose, in that teleology is feedback controlled purpose, in the context of machine behavior. The cybernetic article discuss this in "the roots of cybernetic theory" and sites the same source in the "The early 20th century" section. Purpose is a regulative process, so say the sources for Kant and in linguistics. This line of reasoning led to influencing distinctions between static teleology and process oriented teleonomy. Then Reese, a behavior analysis researcher rejects both teleology and teleonomy, in favor of a reasonable conception of preserving purpose. Zulu Papa 5 * (talk) 04:31, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]