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From: mrh@cybvax0
Newsgroups: net.bio
Subject: Re: Orphaned Response
Message-ID: <1038@cybvax0>
Date: Wed, 30-Apr-86 00:35:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.1038
Posted: Wed Apr 30 00:35:00 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 11-May-86 16:51:03 EDT
References: <311@dg_rtp>
Lines: 65

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