kort@hounx (04/27/86)
It's fun to speculate on the role of consciousness in evolution and survival. Herewith some idle musings on the possible sequence of evolutionary events: 1. Nonconcious species evolved with ever-more-successful programs of wired-in behavior (instinct). Example: Nest-building. 2. Some species evolved with feedback loops that would modulate their instinctive drives according to information gathered via the senses. Example: Sniffing out prey. 3. Some species evolved with delay networks, that enabled them to postpone their response to environmental stimuli to a more propitious time. Example: Waiting until the prey was cornered. 4. Some species evolved with memory in which complex strategies could be learned by trial and error. Example: Stalking from downwind of the prey. 5. Some species evolved with memory maps of their local environment. Example: Cave-dwelling elephants. 6. Some species evolved with ideation and planning, based on the exploitation of the information in their memory maps. Example: Planning a hunt. 7. Some species noticed that the self was also an object which took up space in the environment, and was subject to the construction of a memory map, known as a self-image. Example: Narcissus. 8. Some species made use of their self-image to plan their exploits based on recognized strengths and weaknesses. Example: Notre Dame's exploitation of the Forward Pass. 9. Some species planned programs of self-improvement based upon a critical evaluation of their self-image. Example: Jean Houston. 10. Some species became conscious. Example: (Fill in the blank.) Barry Kort
mrh@cybvax0 (04/30/86)
In article <1188@umcp-cs.UUCP> mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) writes: > Mike Huybensz writes: [replying to Michael Ellis] > >Purpose and goals have no place in scientific theory about (literally) > >brainless subjects because adding them to an explanation adds no more > >predictive or descriptive ability. Thus Occam's Razor throws out "purpose" > >and "goals" in favor of "function". (There are meanings of "function" that > >do not imply purpose.) > > Actually, the reason for the rejection of "purposes" is much simpler: the > notion of purpose is inherently subjective. The only reason I'd disagree is because when studying people the subjective analysis (including purposes) still gives results that are hard to rival in a more scientific manner. But yes, I agree that "purposes" in the inanimate are subjective, as subjective and meaningless as gender in the inanimate (which numerous languages saddle us with.) > >Wait a minute: who chose survival as a goal over extinction? While we may > >personally prefer one over the other and pay more attention to it, there is > >no reasonable argument that one or the other is a purpose or goal of > >evolution. Both are phenomina associated with evolution. > > Well, I prefer an intermediate position: that evolution enforces survival as > a goal of organism systems/genotypes. The goal is there, but by the > subjective nature of the thing, it is associated with individuals with > respect to themselves. Sorry, but an intermediate between two goals is still a goal, and I don't see how non-thinkers and abstractions can be said to have goals. Do gaseous molecules have pressure as their goal? Does quantum mechanics have a goal? Of course, I could (*shudder*) get us started on whether thinkers have purposes, goals, souls, free will, or whatever. But PLEASE, let's not start that again. Let's just work on agreeing about the non-thinking and abstractions such as evolution. > > Evolution operates on > >just plain matter like any other descriptive law. We make descriptive > >abstractions like matter and species for our own convenience, where it > >is simplest and most compact for us to describe and predict. > > I'm not convinced by this last line anymore. The descriptive abstractions > are backed up by real phenomenological differences, after all. Natural phenomina, no matter how real, don't imply any purpose. > The question of whether there is goal-oriented evolution is not moot, and it > simply isn't a question of semantics either. The "punctuated evolution" > school, in its descriptive explanation, begs the question of why certain > morphological changes seem to happen almost instantaneously. I would > suggest that it is possible that there is some impetus which actively seeks > the completion of the transformation. THis is rather different from an > explanation which argues that the dispersive force is simply mutation, and > that the favorable changes are simply the ones which persist. The second is > a more orthodox explanation, but orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth in > science. If you had to explain the tunneling effect of electrons before quantum mechanics was proposed, would you look for an impetus, a purpose of the electrons? Why must you try to find purpose when you don't know something? That's exactly the cause of "god of the gaps" syndromes. Are you a closet supporter of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin? :-) (This last sentence.) -- Mike Huybensz ...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh
ellis@spar (04/30/86)
>>... As far as I can tell, evolution is the implicit rationale whereby >> teleological arguments (`the purpose of my heart is to >> pump blood') are supposedly reduced to `proper scientific causal' >> explanations (`hearts gradually evolved because pumping blood >> led to species more fit to survive'). >> >> What's so awful about `purpose', anyway? Goals imply that `information' >> exists which can refer to and cause potential future real world states >> of existence. ... > >Perhaps I'm misreading what you've been saying here, but what most >people think about when they hear "goal" is the notion of a force >directing a process toward an ideal future state. Saying "I'm going to >direct everything in my life toward becoming a lighthouse keeper" is >different than saying "everything that's happened in my life makes it >possible that I'll be a lighthouse keeper some day." And this seems to >be implicit in your concept of information that somehow refers to >future real states. Suppose we have a dammed lake at the top of a >hill, and a valley below. If the dam is removed, does the lake's >flowing to a stable state in which all water resides in the valley >involve somehow the system's referring to future real states in which >the water either flows or doesn't flow downhill to the valley? And how >does information 'refer' to a system's potential future states? I do not see how the dam in your example possesses the required internal organization to contain a hypothetical model of the future inside itself, such as possessed by highly goal-oriented computer programs and biological systems. [This] >approach strikes me like the 'anthropic principles' certain cosmologists >are enamored of: a lot of fun to think about but ultimately not that >useful as models that can generate falsifiable hypotheses. >- Cheers, Bill Ingogly Cosmologists? Like who? Most of the ideas I'm concerned with here are from biology, cybernetics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and philosophy. I apologize for my stupidity and general inability to make a convincing case for notions that are as new to me as they apparently are to most readers... An example swiped from Dennett's "Brainstorms" is relevant here. If I were to try to understand a how a chess program worked, the first thing I'd assume is that its intention was to win at chess. As I understood it better, I might learn that it was not aware of various goal-oriented concepts in chess, such as the desirability of advancing pawns with the intention of forcing queening situations. Intentional statements differ in verifiability from kosher causal statements in degree only. In both cases, we infer statements that are not logically deducible from observations; in both cases, we need be prepared to alter our hypotheses in the face of new evidence. I agree it is one goal of science to reduce intentional statements to `rigorous' causal statements. What I do not see is why such reduction necessarily invalidates teleological explanation. -michael
friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) (05/16/86)
In article <1188@umcp-cs> mangoe@umcp-cs writes: > >The question of whether there is goal-oriented evolution is not moot, and it >simply isn't a question of semantics either. The "punctuated evolution" >school, in its descriptive explanation, begs the question of why certain >morphological changes seem to happen almost instantaneously. I would >suggest that it is possible that there is some impetus which actively seeks >the completion of the transformation. THis is rather different from an >explanation which argues that the dispersive force is simply mutation, and >that the favorable changes are simply the ones which persist. The second is >a more orthodox explanation, but orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth in >science. > While "radical" puncuated evolution theory does indeed beg the question of mechanism, there is really little evidence for its claims. In fact there is much counter evidence supporting more gradual changes. Part of the problem of course is that from a geological point of view "almost instantaneously" can mean 10's of *thousands* of years. The less extreme versions of PE, such as proposed by Ernst Mayr, do not require any new or unusual mechanisms, the standard population genetics effects combined with selection are deemed to be sufficient to explain the observed rates of change during speciation. Personally I think we are headed to a new synthesis in which many of the better concepts from PE are fused with the more stable components of "orthodox" evolutionary theory. -- Sarima (Stanley Friesen) UUCP: {ttidca|ihnp4|sdcrdcf|quad1|nrcvax|bellcore|logico}!psivax!friesen ARPA: ??
pan@well.UUCP (Philip Nicholls) (05/21/86)
It has been a while since I kept abreast of newly breaking ideas in evolutionary theory. I do not recall a "punctuated evolution ", but do recall a "punctuated equilibrium", which, at the time, I thought made alot of sense. If these two ideas are one and the same, I would like someone to present the sources of counter-evidense. So far, much of the discussion of goal oriented evolution sounds neo-Lamarkian to me.