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From: bane@parcvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.bio,net.origins,net.philosophy
Subject: Re: the Goal of evolution
Message-ID: <324@parcvax.Xerox.COM>
Date: Mon, 19-May-86 23:01:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: parcvax.324
Posted: Mon May 19 23:01:56 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 20-May-86 20:53:40 EDT
References: <487@bcsaic.UUCP> <1002@cybvax0.UUCP> <1494@umcp-cs.UUCP>
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In article <1494@umcp-cs.UUCP>, flink@umcp-cs.UUCP (Paul V Torek) writes:
> > ...
> >understanding; but perhaps not so bad compared to a cockroach's.  I
> >have no problem ascribing goals to a cockroach.)
> 
> DNA codes information, in a sense, but that seems to me about all you can
> say.  Cockroaches probably have goals, but then they probably have
> (rudimentary) minds; DNA doesn't seem to be built the right way to have
> either.  Also, a cockroach can compare its perceptions to its goals and
> figure out whether things are going the way it wants them to -- can DNA?

Anyone who has worked with insects would never say they had a mind.
As far as I can tell, they are nothing more than stimulus-response
machines; the response can be complicated, true, but nothing that
requires a mind.

Cockroaches, for instance, have no "brain" as we know it, but rather
SMALL clumps of neurons along their back.  If you cut off a
cockroach's head (I did, in biology lab), it will live for days,
acting very much like a cockroach (crawling around, etc.).  It
eventually dies of hunger.  Same with praying mantis's (same
experiment, *sniff*).

I can't imagine a cockroach comparing perceptions to goals - the air
pressure changes suddenly, it scuttles.  Small, enclosed space, it
slows down.  Head toward stimulus of food and pheromones of opposite
sex. Etc, etc.  There are a relatively limited number of these.

				- rene
-- 
Rene P S (nee Steiner) Bane
bane@parcvax