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From: ellis@spar.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.bio,net.origins,net.philosophy
Subject: Re: the Goal of evolution
Message-ID: <269@spar.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 20-May-86 10:03:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: spar.269
Posted: Tue May 20 10:03:35 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 20-May-86 20:50:25 EDT
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Reply-To: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
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Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, CA
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>>>John R. Bane  >>Paul V Torek  >Rene Steiner/Bane

>> >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..
>..
>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.

    The existence of mind with conscious goals is a different question from
    whether goal-directness a scientifically respectable quality to
    attribute to biological entities. From what I have read, it appears to
    be widely accepted within most modern biological methodologies that
    teleological descriptions are useful, verifiable, and necessary in most
    descriptions and theories of living things, at least within disciplines
    where reduction to the "mechanical" explanations of chemistry, physics,
    and engineering is in the far distant future. 
    
    By my account, the possession of "mind" is not a requirement of
    goal-directness; what counts is the possession of an internal program
    which is able to reference and attain potential real world states
    through self-monitoring and self-directing mechanisms, such as the
    teleomechanisms DNA employs to assure the development of an embryo,
    despite remarkable laboratory-induced disruptions that would never occur
    in nature.

    As to whether cockroaches have minds, few would argue that their
    thoughts, purposes, and feelings, such as they would be if they did
    indeed exist, could be very similar to or as complex as ours. 
    
    Can anyone tell us how much complexity is required to feel pain or
    hunger, or to perceive and respond to those parts of the external world
    that are meaningful to an insect's survival, anyway? Do most of an
    insect's responses which we understand make sense in terms of their
    survival value? Do most people who believe in evolution deny that what
    some call "mind" must have evolved right along with "body". If mind did
    not evolve, where did it come from? 

-michael

    Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistable march of evolution, reality
    ever newborn; by constantly shattering our mental categories, you force
    us to go ever further in our pursuit of the truth.

-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin