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From: typ125m@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au (John Wilkins)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: computer life?
Keywords: Survival, instincts
Message-ID: <1991Feb28.215632.19322@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au>
Date: 28 Feb 91 21:56:32 GMT
References: <5375@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <1991Feb26.213835.27074@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <1991Feb27.134800.18153@news.larc.nasa.gov> <1991Feb27.150208.27855@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Organization: Caulfield Campus, Monash University, Melb., Australia.
Lines: 25

rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:

>In article <1991Feb27.134800.18153@news.larc.nasa.gov> kludge@grissom.larc.nasa.gov ( Scott Dorsey) writes:
>>   Granted, this is a good point.  But manmade systems (like computers)
>>are not evolved, but designed.

> But the design has evolved (from the results of experience with prior designs).

Yes, but the "ecology" in which computers "evolve", the selection pressures,
are those of the teleonomic interests of humans. While one can say that
there is an evolutionary process going on in the refinement of computer
design, it is not the blind variation and selective retention of
organic or other natural systems evolution, and for that reason it
is dependent upon another evolutionary process to continue: social
evolution. Computer "life" is therefore supervenient upon three other
Lebensformen - the biological evolutionary process, the social
evolutionary process and the social or cultural evolutionary process.
Computers only have life in the same way any other adaptive tool does:
as expressions of human goals.

-- 
John Wilkins, Manager, Publishing & Advertising, Monash University
Melbourne, Australia - Internet: john@publications.ccc.monash.edu.au
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