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From: wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly)
Newsgroups: net.bio,net.origins,net.philosophy
Subject: Re: the Goal of evolution
Message-ID: <784@rti-sel.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 23-Apr-86 17:40:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: rti-sel.784
Posted: Wed Apr 23 17:40:47 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 27-Apr-86 05:36:35 EDT
References: <487@bcsaic.UUCP> <1002@cybvax0.UUCP> <32@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP> <204@spar.UUCP> <311@dg_rtp.UUCP> <211@spar.UUCP>
Reply-To: wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly)
Organization: Research Triangle Institute, NC
Lines: 30
Xref: watmath net.bio:408 net.origins:3040 net.philosophy:5147

In article <211@spar.UUCP> ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) writes:

>...  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? 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