Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!bellcore!decvax!decwrl!spar!ellis From: ellis@spar.UUCP Newsgroups: net.bio,net.origins,net.philosophy Subject: Re: the Goal of evolution Message-ID: <211@spar.UUCP> Date: Tue, 22-Apr-86 07:03:51 EST Article-I.D.: spar.211 Posted: Tue Apr 22 07:03:51 1986 Date-Received: Wed, 23-Apr-86 22:58:46 EST References: <487@bcsaic.UUCP> <1002@cybvax0.UUCP> <32@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP> <204@spar.UUCP> <311@dg_rtp.UUCP> Reply-To: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, CA Lines: 95 Xref: watmath net.bio:399 net.origins:3029 net.philosophy:5129 >>>> Mike >> Me > Wayne >>>>Evolution is undirected: ie. it has no long-term goals. >> Survival? Existence? >If survival is the goal of evolution, >then why have so many species failed to survive? > >If existence is the goal, >then why are there so many species that no longer exist? Goals are not necessarily realized. >It turns out that these are not brain-teasers. Since neither survival >nor existence are goals of evolution, the questions are moot. An entity >must have understanding to have goals. Evolution has no understanding, >and hence is a goal-less process. > >(Naturally, this is not to say that evolutionists have no > understanding or goals...) I guess I shouldn't be surprised that so many are quick to assert that Aristotle's `telos' (roughly `purpose, goal, or aim') has no place in scientific explanation. After all, physics and chemistry flourished only after purging all but efficient causes, yes? Viewed game-theoretically, the evolutionary payoff matrix has two results -- extinction or survival. I fail to see how to prevent evolution from becoming tautological unless it is seen as the rationale behind the first scientifically sanctified `goal'; appropriately, this goal is existence. Sure -- we usually view biological teleology behavioristically -- one does not have to attribute conscious goals to genes, organs, species, or whatever, to speak of the `purpose' of that which is under analysis. The purpose of my heart is, after all, to pump blood, is it not? Why are so many species of female dominated social insects haplodiploid? Because females of such species shared more genetically with their sisters than their brothers or even their own offspring. But that's NOT a cause-and-effect explanation. In fact, it is amazingly close to saying why such insects `ought to have' such a `goal', conscious or otherwise. In fact, it IS a teleological explanation. It is not my argument that insects have conscious goals (maybe they do, but that is beside the point). The traditional point of view is that for such insects, with each generation, there is a bias in `survival payoff' strongly favoring any genetic change towards social female societies. To say that such insects forego parenthood and instead help their mothers produce nearly identical sisters `because variants which are more successful at reproducing themselves are more likely to survive' is to explain one goal with another -- survival of genotype -- the goal of evolution. Such teleological explanations are totally different from `real' causes as the gravitational attraction behind falling rocks; evolution, like entropy, operates on the level of information, not the level of raw matter itself. Evolution, or any kind of feedback loop, is likewise unanalyzable viewed by discrete cause=>effect events, whereby causal explanations are reducible to primitive discrete interactions, such as described by Wesley Salmon in "Causal Structure of the World": chain fork junction collision before c1 c1 c1 c2 c1 c2 | / \ \ / X after e1 e1 e2 e1 e1 e2 There is no way to embed anything like feedback loops or evolution within such interactions as the above. Feedback loops require that a later event, such as a next-generation copy of (genetic) information, be identified with an earlier `instantiation' so that we `imagine' that the cause effects itself. 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. Every text I have encountered on modern biological methodolology and epistemology embraces teleology in some form. (Re: Mayr's "Growth of Biological Thought" or Rosenberg's "The Structure of Biological Science"). There seems to be a metaphysical rebellion among biologists these days. I think it is clear that the natural teleology intrinsic in evolution explains WHY consciousness is intentional and goal-directed (rather than strictly rational) in the first place. -michael