For example, my understanding is that most teleosemantic theories try to ground our notions of purpose/agency in biological evolution. My feeling is that this is overly restrictive.
As a person who makes a teleosemantic argument, it seems silly to argue that the only source of purpose is evolution, but it also seems right to say that, in some sense, all human purposes and purposes imbued to things created by humans have their ultimate origin in evolution making creatures who care about survival and reproduction (and not as in care as in psychologically care (though they may do that), but care as in be oriented towards achieving the goals of survival and reproduction). The problem with swamp men counterexamples is that swamp men don’t exist.
That said, obviously things can get purpose from somewhere other than evolution, and this is not an argument that evolution is somehow special in that it’s the only source of purpose since evolution is just one of many processes that can create purpose. It’s only special in that, on Earth, it’s the process from which most other purposes are created.
As a person who makes a teleosemantic argument, it seems silly to argue that the only source of purpose is evolution, but it also seems right to say that, in some sense, all human purposes and purposes imbued to things created by humans have their ultimate origin in evolution making creatures who care about survival and reproduction (and not as in care as in psychologically care (though they may do that), but care as in be oriented towards achieving the goals of survival and reproduction). The problem with swamp men counterexamples is that swamp men don’t exist.
That said, obviously things can get purpose from somewhere other than evolution, and this is not an argument that evolution is somehow special in that it’s the only source of purpose since evolution is just one of many processes that can create purpose. It’s only special in that, on Earth, it’s the process from which most other purposes are created.