# "Now we begin to see why the intentional stance is a legitimate source of explanation, even if its…
Date: 2023-06-26

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"Now we begin to see why the intentional stance is a legitimate source of explanation, even if its theoretical entities are merely abstract crutches: evolution has molded organisms with a telos, or purpose, whatever that may be, and this satisfactory molding means that organisms, including mental agents like us, will reliably behave in a rational way."

"will reliably behave in a rational way" is an overstatement.

For instance breeding animals in captivity is sometimes extremely difficult. The animals are not really violating their telos but their rational directives only apply to very specific environments.

There is also the case of animals, like humans, that approach an overshoot point where further breeding might actually endanger the species. If such an animal stops breeding you can't reliably predict it but if it keeps breeding its no longer rational.

Evolution can only code for situations that have arisen previously in a regular fashion. So evolution strongly favors diversity in order to be prepared for the unknown but that diversity might equally make an organism molded by evolution appear irrational.

Perhaps in the name of diversity some butterfly has a pattern on its wings that attracts a predator. Such butterflies exist as perpetual mutant background noise until the one day that it turns out they attract some predator that eats their normal predator instead of them.

Another variant is sex related genes - they might benefit one gender and make another gender behave irrationally from a reproduction telos. Those genes can still stay though if the benefits for the gender being helped outweigh the loss of telos for other genders.