The water flows downhill not because it wants to reach the center of the Earth, but because water flows downhill. There is a telos there- water doesn't flow uphill in all cases where flowing uphill results in flowing downhill later. Things in general do not plan, even when they have a simple purpose.
The purpose of teeth aren't to chew in the future, but to chew what was available in the past. Mary isn't driving to where the grocery store IS, she's driving to where the grocery store was the last time she saw it or (more generally) where she thinks the grocery store is. Her belief in the grocery store is the immediate cause of her navigation. Backwards causation isn't inherent in teleology: water flows downhill because it has the purpose "flow downhill", not the goal "reach the bottom".
The anthropomorphic flaw also isn't in teleology, it's in the execution of teleology; if you ascribe the correct purpose to every event. That becomes complicated when we ask what the purpose of life in general, or of the universe as a whole is: is it as complicated as driving to the grocery store, or as simple as running downhill? The bronze statue tarnishes, but it would be madness to claim that the purpose of the statue was to tarnish. All life which hasn't died out has avoided dying out, and it would be similar madness to claim that is evidence that the purpose of life is not dying.
To say that motherly love is inheritable and was pro-survival is one thing; to claim that is has the specific external purpose of being pro-survival is quite different. Capture is also an error used by agents, not by the process.
Those fallacies are worth cautioning about. However, they aren't fallacies of teleology but fallacies of most teleologists.
Today's post, Three Fallacies of Teleology was originally published on 25 August 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
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