Sunday, April 30, 2006

 

Marooned

A thought experiment occurred to me the other day.

Suppose you were marooned on a tropical island. After getting your bearings and enjoying a few papayas you decide to explore the island to see if it's deserted. While walking along the beach you discover a stopwatch in the sand. You know it must have belonged to a human because:

a) It has many small intricate parts that all work together in harmony to tell the time. These parts couldn't have developed gradually over time - each is interdependent with one another. Therefore, it must have been produced by an intelligent agent. Perhaps you're not alone on the island?

b) You know it's a human artifact because it's a stopwatch, and as a stopwatch it's part of a referential totality of significance which ultimately finds it's ground in a Dasein's that-for-the-sake-of-which.

If you chose 'b', does this mean all comparisons of living creatures with human equipment is, in the end, a fatally flawed analogy? Can humans really ever be like a potter's jar?

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