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Author
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Topic: A physics student's view of evolution (response to Barham)
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Erik
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Member # 160
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posted 14. July 2002 11:52
Sorry about the long delay. I have been occupied with things in real life and I’ve indulged in some distractions on the ARN board.
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James Barham: I guess I would be happy simply accepting the pronouncements of scientists from on high, were it not for three things: (1) Not everything can be explained mathematically; (2) Science advances over time, and what is widely believed today is often no longer believed tomorrow; and (3) Even today, scientists often disagree with each other. Under these circumstances, alas, I am forced to think for myself.
Actually, the intended implication of my comment about word arguments was not that you should blindly accept authoritative writings, but that you do blindly trust writings you don’t understand just because you think you would like it if you did understand it. I think you uncritically accept stuff you believe you like.
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James Barham: Now, as I said, my personal interest in all of this is to understand the place of purpose (or teleology) in nature. On this subject, it is certainly not the case that there is some one scientific authority I can safely turn to to find the answers I seek. So, what would you have me do except read as widely as possible, and try to understand things as best I can?
To avoid misunderstanding the physics literature, you could try reading introductory textbooks on physics and mathematics. As for finding purpose in nature, that’s not a question that is considered part of the present physical theories, nor even the present cutting-edge physics. Therefore you will find no guidance at all in the physics literature, so you will be forced to make your own interpretations, which is a hopeless task if you are uncertain of even the terminology used.
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James Barham: If my articulation of what I have understood then necessarily takes the form of "word arguments," what alternative do I have? Of course, I still want to make the word arguments as precise as I can, and to that end, I am grateful to you for your efforts to help me get the words right. But I don't see the use of "word arguments" as in itself something blameworthy.
The risk of misunderstandings is large if you read mathematical arguments you do not understand in the physics literature and try to translate them into arguments about your favourite metaphysical questions.
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James Barham: Here are some miscellaneous replies to some of the points you raise, drawing on the scientific sources that I have found the most persuasive. If I am still misunderstanding what I have read (which I admit is possible), then I would be grateful for your further indulgence in setting me straight.
I lack the motivation to deal with them all, so I decided to just look at one of the original sources that interested me independently of our discussion here. I’ve read Laughlin’s et al.’s article in Advances in Physics in its entirety, but none of your other sources.
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James Barham: On Determinism:
"Consider an analogy. A rigid steel rod of, say, 1 cm diameter is almost unbendable if it is only 10 cm long. But suppose it is 10n miles long? Very minute impacts would cause it to wave about like a blade of grass. The actual constitution of matter is not such that there is complete rigidity over indefinite lengths; rigidity is an idealization. Similarly, I suggest, the 'determination' of one state of affairs by another is also an idealization and is only to be taken as a good approximation to the extent that, in any actual instance, prediction over finite time intervals is found in fact to be a good approximation." (Kenneth G. Denbigh, Three Concepts of Time, Springer, 1981, p. 85)
Unless I very much mistaken, Denbigh disagrees with you (and, of course, the majority opinion that you articulate) about determinism. So what am I, as a layman, to do? I listen to what both of you have to say, and I have to decide which of you makes the better case. In my view, Denbigh's argument makes more sense than yours. Why do I feel this way? Because I believe that in the end determinism is a metaphysical notion inferred incorrectly from the great success of math in certain limited situations.
You must have misunderstood my posts. I don’t remember having claimed that determinism is the case. I have been trying to clarify the meaning of “determinism” rather than arguing for the correctness of determinism. I agree with Denbigh insofar as determinism could be an idealization. I don’t think it is established that determinism is an idealization, although QM is suggestive.
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James Barham: I agree with you very strongly that it is imperative to be careful not to confuse ontological with epistemic issues here. But things are not quite as clear-cut as you suggest. After all, our cognitive access to the world is our only evidence for what the world must be like in itself. Therefore, at the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves, Is our inference to what the world is like in itself better grounded in mathematical idealizations, or in experience (success or failure of predictions)? I believe, the latter.
The use of the word “idealization” begs the question, of course, since an idealization is at least partly inaccurate by definition. Furthermore, the choice between either mathematical models or experience is false dichotomy, since mathematical models are typically tested against empirical data. The answer to your question is not “the latter”, but “both”. Inference is best based on both mathematical models and empirical data.
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James Barham: Here is another quote that perhaps says what I am getting at better than I can:
"One of our strong reasons for believing in science, and in physics in particular, is the ability that its laws give us to make precise predictions. For example, the laws of mechanics and of gravity accounted for the locations of the planets and of comets over long periods of time. There are, however, other physical phenomena, such as the weather, for which we obviously have only short-term predictive power (say, two or three days at best), rather than the long-term predictive power we seem to have for the solar system. The traditional view was that systems consisting of only a few parts (for example, the planets moving about the sun) are amenable to the precise calculations necessary for meaningful prediction, whereas complex systems, such as a collection of gas molecules (or the atmosphere) are simply beyond our calculational abilities. However, no in-principle difference was seen between these two types of systems as regards determinism. One was just too complicated to handle computationally---a mere practical limitation.
"This traditional view, or intuition, was based on an examination of the (relatively few) physical problems that we could solve analytically (as in the case of the two-body central-force problem above). Such integrable systems are, essentially by definition, the ones that can be treated by the methods of (classical) mathematical analysis. The exactly soluble problems of classical mechanics usually turn out to be separable. This means, roughly, that the equations describing their behavior separate into sets of individual one-body problems. That might already have given us some hint about how special, and not surprisingly, atypical, these cases are. Nevertheless, we took our 'old' insights, formed on the basis of those systems we were able to handle analytically, and assumed them to be typical of all physical systems. (Of course, what else could one reasonably do but form a picture of the physical universe based on a theory that appeared to be enormously successful?) But, as we have just indicated, such integrable systems turn out to be very special. Our intuition, or general picture of the world, was based on a poor induction from too narrow a range of systems. For nearly 300 years we thought we understood classical mechanics, but we didn't." (James T. Cushing, Philosophical Concepts in Physics, Cambridge UP, 1998, pp. 171--172)
In short, we now have good reason to believe that the world is a fundamentally different place from the one described by Newton's equations. Therefore, we have good reason to reject Laplace's inference from Newton's equations to universal determinism. I am not saying that I believe this is so because I have special knowledge of the relevant mathematics; I am saying that I believe the scientists who say this is so. I find their view more persuasive than the majority view.
I agree that we can reject the conclusion that Newtonian mechanics proves that the world is deterministic, because we know that Newtonian mechanics does not always apply (this has nothing to with integrable systems and everything to with atomic phenomena). We know that Newtonian mechanics can be derived as a large-system limit of QM, and it is viable to interpret QM as an indeterministic theory. What we cannot exclude is that our future successors of QM and general relativity will describe the world deterministically.
If Cushing is arguing that determinism is false, then his argument is very poor, since integrability and extreme sensitivity to initial conditions do not exclude determinism (it does exclude the practical exploitation of determinism for predictions, but not the truth of determinism). If he is arguing that determinism is not established, then his argument is a good one.
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James Barham: On the layered model of reality:
"In this case we can see how the whole becomes not only more than but very different from the sum of its parts." (Philip W. Anderson, "More Is Different," Science, 1972, 177: 393--396, p. 395)
"In some sense, structure---functional structure in a teleological sense, as opposed to mere crystalline shape---must also be considered a stage, possibly intermediate between crystallinity and information strings, in the hierarchy of broken symmetries." (Ibid., p. 396)
No comment. I don’t know what Anderson is trying to say based on such a brief quote. Perhaps he really does agree with your metaphysical ideas. Perhaps not. I may make the trip to the archive for old issues of journals to find out what the second quote means, but I don’t have the time right now.
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James Barham: "This, then, is the fundamental philosophical insight of twentieth century science: everything we observe emerges from a more primitive substrate, in the precise meaning of the term 'emergent,' which is to say obedient to the laws of the more primitive level, but not conceptually consequent from that level." (Philip Anderson,"Historical Overview of the Twentieth Century in Physics," in Laurie M. Brown et al., eds., Twentieth Century Physics, Volume III, New York: American Institute of Physics Press, 1995, pp. 2017--2032, p. 2020)
No comment. This is also too vague without its context (and I wouldn’t be shocked if it was vague even in context). I wonder what “conceptually consequent” means.
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James Barham: "The ideas and concepts of symmetry breaking, renormalization group and decoupling that stemmed from a deeper study of relativistic field theoretical models adumbrate and justify a picture of the physical world that is hierarchically layered into quasi-autonomous domains, with the ontology and dynamics of each layer essentially quasi-stable and virtually immune to whatever happens in other layers." (Silvan S. Schweber, "The Metaphysics of Science at the End of a Heroic Age," in Robert S. Cohen et al., eds., Experimental Metaphysics, Kluwer Academic, 1997, pp. 171--198, p. 172)
"Renormalization-group methods in condensed matter physics gave new insights into why the details of the physics of matter at microscopic length scales and high energy are inconsequential for critical phenomena. What is important is the symmetry involved, the conservation laws that hold, the dimensionality of space and the range of interactions." (Silvan S. Schweber, "Physics, Community and the Crisis in Physical Theory," Physics Today, November 1993, Vol. 46, No. 11, 34--40, p. 37)
Here I think it is apparent what the author means, namely that some phenomena are such that they arise for a wide range of hypothetical microscopic dynamics. This is certainly interesting as physical phenomena, but I don’t think it has any deep metaphysical implications for reductionism or determinism. Indeed, if a wide range of conceivable microscopic dynamics will suffice to explain the phenomena, then so much better for reductionism! (Perhaps other parts of Schweber’s writings indicate disbelief in reductionism, but the quoted part seems consistent with reductionism.)
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James Barham: "This example shows further that this is not just a matter of convenience and practice; but that the formal structure of a general framework must be supplemented by numerical information, the accuracy required and estimates and bounds on the neglected terms. This is necessary before such formalisms can be used to describe realistic physical situations. The supplementary information is precisely what defines and specifies the level." (Max Dresden, "Reflections on 'Fundamentality and Complexity'", in Charles P. Enz and Jagdish Mehra, eds., Physical Reality and Mathematical Description, Reidel, 1974, pp. 133--166, p. 153)
"The conclusion to be drawn is that the behavior of large aggregates of elementary atoms should not just be understood in terms of a simple extrapolation of the properties of the system with just a few atoms. There seem to be many levels of complexity, and at each such level entirely new properties begin to appear." (Ibid., p. 161)
The first quote is pretty uninformative. The second quote does seem to indicate a view similar to yours.
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James Barham: "This unpredicability has disturbing implications for the traditional ways of relating theory and experiment. Competition among two or more principles of organization is common in nature. When it occurs, the deductive paths from the microscopic model assumptions to the observed behaviour become unstable at low energy scales and essentially impossible to solve accurately. The theory may describe the behaviour or it may not, but whether it does is unknown because the theory cannot be solved with sufficient accuracy to tell. In other words, the predictive power afforded by knowledge of the underlying equations of motion is blocked for reasons having nothing to do with complexity. This then implies that the theory is under-constrained by experiments at low and intermediate energy scales and cannot be falsified by them even in principle . . . Thus there is reason to suspect that the laws of self-organization of matter may render the most fundamental equations of the universe both unknowable and useless." (Robert B. Laughlin et al., "The Quantum Criticality Conundrum," Advances in Physics, 2001, 50: 361--365, pp. 363--364)
This is the article I’ve read. I don’t really understand which position Laughlin is trying to argue for. My two interpretations are:
(i) Our physical theories are underdetermined for all phenomena and (in practice) untestable for many phenomena.
(ii) Our physical theories are underdetermined for some special kinds of phenomena (phase transitions) and (in practice) untestable for these phenomena.
I agree with the “untestable” part in the sense that absurd levels of accuracy may be required for detailed simulations of many-body systems. I can’t judge the first part of interpretation (ii), but it would seem unlikely that QM is underdetermined when it comes to physics of manageably sized microscopic systems. It has proved to be an extremely accurate theory and is by now a very well-tested theory. Although QM can be formulated in a variety of ways (e.g. Bohm’s deterministic pilot-wave formulation), I am aware of no accurate theory of atomic physics that does not contain basic QM within it. In short, I can accept Laughlin’s argument in the sense of interpretation (ii), but not interpretation (i).
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James Barham: "Details are required to account for why a given instance of a pattern can arise, but such details obscure and even block understanding of why the pattern itself exists. Physicists have a technical term for these patterns of behavior. They call them 'universal' . . . Asymptotic methods such as the renormalization group provide explanations for this remarkable fact. They do so by providing principled reasons grounded in the fundamental physics of the systems for why many of the details that genuinely distinguish such systems from one another are irrelevant when it comes to the universal behavior of interest." (Robert W. Batterman, The Devil in the Details: Asymptotic Reasoning in Explanation, Reduction, and Emergence, Oxford UP, 2002, p. 4)
I fail to see the relevance.
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James Barham: "Emergent properties are universal. It is legitimate to search for, and expect, explanations of their universality. Contrary to received opinion, such properties are not brute and inexplicable features of the world. As we will see in several places throughout the book, reduction and explanation, when properly understood, do not march in lock-step. Asymptotic explanations are possible even for phenomena that are in an important sense irreducible and emergent." (Ibid., p. 6)
I think this is a fancy way of saying that some phenomena can arise out of many kinds microscopic dynamics and therefore to a large extent can be studied without considering the detailed dynamics.
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James Barham: At any rate, Erik, I hope you appreciate my dilemma. I cannot just accept what you say on these deep issues on your say-so, in spite of your much greater technical command, because, as you see, there are others with technical command equal to yours who disagree with your metaphysical interpretation of the math.
My own writings are insignificant. I don’t think you should blindly accept what I write here, but I also don’t think you should blindly accept what (you think) your favourite physicists write. You should realize that metaphysics is for the most part gravely underdetermined by physical theories and therefore physicists who try to describe their theories in metaphysical terms will typically not be describing what the physical theories say, but their personal metaphysical interpretations of what the theories say (especially when large amounts of prose and very few equations are involved).
Erik
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James A. Barham
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posted 14. July 2002 21:22
Erik:
Thanks for the detailed comments.
I think we are not as far apart in our actual beliefs as we are in our emotional attachments and rhetorical strategies.
It seems to me that you are mainly interested in physics, not philosophy. With me, it is the reverse. However, the world is one, so it is not possible to keep everything in neat compartments. We have to try to communicate across disciplinary divides as best we can.
Certainly, I plead guilty to having an inadequate grounding in physics. However, I don't think I am just reading my own ideas into the condensed-matter physicists. I think there is a real and substantive disagreement between the condensed-matter physicists and the high-energy physicists. I am simply saying that from my point of view the emergentists make a lot more sense than the Laplacian-style reductionists.
Perhaps I should also make clearer than I have that I don't claim that any of these physicists would necessarily agree with the use I am making of their ideas. I'm sure most of them have never even thought about most of what I am saying, and if they did, I doubt that they would be willing to go nearly so far as I am going (Denbigh might be an exception).
What I am saying is (1) the purposive and intelligent behavior of living matteris simply an empirical fact; (2) natural selection does not begin to explain this fact because it presuppposes it, as does molecular biology; (3) the emergentist or layered view of reality espoused by condensed-matter physicists is a metaphysical framework within which we can begin to make sense of this fact; (4) within the general emergentist framework, of course, we still need a specific theory of the living state. Here, some biophysicists (especially Mae-Wan Ho) actually are beginning to use the work "purpose," although most (F.E. Yates, Giuseppe Vitiello, John Watterson, Gerald H. Pollack, Hans Frauenfelder, Herbert Frohlich, A.S. Davydov) would no doubt not like to go quite that far. But I am saying that any intrinsic dynamics of the living state is going ipso facto to be a dynamics of purposive behavior. Maybe scientists don't like the word "purpose", but in plain English, that's what it is. Let's call a spade a spade. It is a label, not an explanation. As a label, I don't see what real objection there can be to it.
So, the claim is not that the physicists I cite themselves agree with what I am saying. My claim is that a general viewpoint that is supported by what they do say allows us to begin to make sense of the teleological character of life.
Finally, I would still like to dispute one thing you say:
"If Cushing is arguing that determinism is false, then his argument is very poor, since integrability and extreme sensitivity to initial conditions do not exclude determinism (it does exclude the practical exploitation of determinism for predictions, but not the truth of determinism). If he is arguing that determinism is not established, then his argument is a good one."
The point is not that there is not a valid distinction between ontology and epistemology. The point is what metaphysical lesson we are to draw from the successes and failures of our equations. The fact that the equations themselves are deterministic is not in itself a guarantee that the world is deterministic. To draw that conclusion, you have to make the additional assumption that the equations faithfully represent reality. But that is the very point that Cushing and I are disputing. By merely reiterating the ontology/epistemology distinction, you give us no additional reason to believe in the ontological validity of the equations.
[ 14 July 2002, 21:29: Message edited by: James A. Barham ]
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Frances
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posted 15. July 2002 01:26
James states that:
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(1) the purposive and intelligent behavior of living matteris simply an empirical fact; (2) natural selection does not begin to explain this fact because it presuppposes it, as does molecular biology;
I have now several times addressed this claim and James has yet to show that natural selection presupposes purpose or intelligent behavior. In fact it doesn't as I have tried to show several times now.
All that matters is variation and reproductive success, no needs for purpose or intelligent behavior.
Perhaps James could explain to me why he continues this claim? What am I missing here?
[ 15 July 2002, 01:31: Message edited by: Frances ]
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posted 15. July 2002 09:53
Elend: If you would like to develop a FAQ on complexity or complex systems, we would love to post it somewhere on our site.
A good start might be to begin a thread called "What is Complexity" to allow Brainstorms participants the chance to contribute.
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James A. Barham
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posted 15. July 2002 10:44
Frances:
Yes, I know, we keep going round and round about this. I will try to say one more time exactly why I claim that natural selection fails to explain the existence of purposive or goal-directed systems in nature:
(1) Before a trait can spread through a population by the selection mechanism, it must first already exist in one or more individual organisms. That is, natural selection can explain why some traits proliferate, but it cannot explain why a trait comes into existence in the first place.
BTW, this claim is hardly unique to me. See W. Fontana and L.W. Buss, "'The Arrival of the Fittest': Towards a Theory of Biological Organization," Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, 1994, 56: 1--64.
(2) Once a trait exists, then it proliferates (if it does) because it is functionally superior to other variants. This functional superiority is itself a teleological notion. It just means that the trait enables the organism to achieve a certain functional goal in a way that is relatively superior to other organisms, thereby causing genes for the trait to be represented in relatively greater numbers in subsequent generations.
So, natural selection is simply presupposing the functional integrity of the individual organism at every step of the way. Natural selection provides a sort of explanation for the proliferation of traits at the population level, but it provides no explanation at all of the original existence of traits, and even the explanation it does provide at the population level presupposes the relatively superior functioning of the unexplained inidividual traits. Remember that any mention of "good" or "bad", "better" or "worse", "well functioning" or "badly functioning" is already to presuppose normativity and teleology. The organism is a goal-directed system through and through, and biological goals establish NORMS in relation to which actions may be evaluated as good or bad. This has no parallel in the physical sciences, and all of biological science simply takes it for granted. That is the crux of the problem, from a philosophical perspective.
[ 15 July 2002, 10:46: Message edited by: James A. Barham ]
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Frances
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posted 15. July 2002 12:14
1. Indeed natural selection does not generate new variation. Perhaps RM&NS can explain how though?
2. Traits do not proliferate because they are functionally superior. Traits proliferate IF they provide a differential survival.
There is not goal involved. There is no teleology involved since nowhere in RM&NS is there a purpose involved or foreward looking.
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Stephen Wright
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posted 15. July 2002 14:13
Erik and Frances,
Please consider an attempt to root this conversation into fundamentals. At present there are three sources of context for the explanations being offered. Science data, generated from reductive empirical measurements and observations. Philosophy, generated through holistic analysis. And lastly, input from the newer field of Philosophy of Science. The outstanding work done in this third category is truly advancing our ability to nail down what constitutes an explanation that is best connected to empirical facts and is also expressible in universal terms making it possible to be defined in a more inclusive framework or holistic context. It is here in the field of Philosophy of Science that rigorous logic and demanding research may bind concepts from both fields into coherent and comprehensive maps of reality. I suggest that the work of R. Batterman cited by James Barnham is specifically germane as rebuttal to your reliance on very narrow definitions that seem to embrace reductive viewpoints as the only context.
Fundamental to the issue at hand is the process control viewpoint, which can be derived from analyzing the flow of information in evolution. The process of life’s gains in complexity and in specific adaptations to specific environmental conditions occurs in an orderly fashion. Evolution, as this process, has variables in the classic sense. One of them is natural selection. It is crucial not to mix up the process, evolution, as being synonymous with just one of its variables. All processes can be understood to be measurable regarding their statistical capability to produce results. Cpk, Ppk or any quantification value of the process capability relies on the integrity of the variables’ functionality assignations. These objective values are only significant data if they name ALL primary variables and have identified and quantified them as to their specific effects in the process. Observation and analysis of processes functions has lead to a revolution in quality in the real world of manufacturing.
Natural selection and its various sub-categories act as a filter and have no teleological essence of themselves. However, the process of evolution has as a variable the leveraging of will power. The DESIRE to survive, to learn and to respond is present from the beginning of Darwin’s position. Darwin did not exclude local purpose and intent from his work in any manner that I have discovered, other than as supernatural intervention. Please note my favorite teleological word, useful, in the fundamental definition of Darwinism.
“I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection.”
-Charles Darwin from The Origin of Species
Not only did Charles Darwin think in terms of useful practice but understood that behavior was modified in conjunction with body parts by natural selection. In this next quote the keyword is profitable, meaning useful or applied for the purpose of individual gain.
Ibid: Chapter 8 Instinct
“It will be universally admitted that instincts are as important as corporeal structures for the welfare of each species, under its present conditions of life. Under changed conditions of life, it is at least possible that slight modifications of instinct might be profitable to a species; and if it can be shown that instincts do vary ever so little, then I can see no difficulty in natural selection preserving and continually accumulating variations of instinct to any extent that was profitable. It is thus, as I believe, that all the most complex and wonderful instincts have originated.”
In the conclusion to the chapter he rams home his understanding of instinct (behavior) as being essential to his theory of natural selection.
Ibid: Summary
“No one will dispute that instincts are of the highest importance to each animal. Therefore, there is no real difficulty, under changing conditions of life, in natural selection accumulating to any extent slight modifications of instinct which are in any way useful.”
In the Descent of Man he goes even further into the subject of the influence of mind in his theory. The following quote from Chapter 3 shows Darwin believed that purposeful behavior became converted to instinct and became inheritable.
“I am, however, very far from wishing to deny that instinctive actions may lose their fixed and untaught character, and be replaced by others performed by the aid of the free will. On the other hand, some intelligent actions, after being performed during several generations, become converted into instincts and are inherited, as when birds on oceanic islands learn to avoid man.”
In the same quote he goes on to say that “the same unknown causes acting on the cerebral organization” induce spontaneous changes in the physical structures of animals. Here Darwin is clear that behavior causes mental changes, which inductively produce physical changes that can be translated into the genetic material.
“These actions may then be said to be degraded in character, for they are no longer performed through reason or from experience. But the greater number of the more complex instincts appear to have been gained in a wholly different manner, through the natural selection of variations of simpler instinctive actions. Such variations appear to arise from the same unknown causes acting on the cerebral organisation, which induce slight variations or individual differences in other parts of the body; and these variations, owing to our ignorance, are often said to arise spontaneously. We can, I think, come to no other conclusion with respect to the origin of the more complex instincts, when we reflect on the marvellous instincts of sterile worker-ants and bees, which leave no offspring to inherit the effects of experience and of modified habits.”
I find Darwin’s actual words very congruent with information theory. I find the word induce a perfect choice, as it implies a specific behavior becoming an active influence on the adaptation process.
Additional from the Summary of the Descent of Man.
“The main conclusion here arrived at, and now held by many naturalists who are well competent to form a sound judgment is that man is descended from some less highly organised form.
A great stride in the development of the intellect will have followed, as soon as the half-art and half-instinct of language came into use; for the continued use of language will have reacted on the brain and produced an inherited effect; and this again will have reacted on the improvement of language.”
Darwin observed purposeful behavior and based his deductions on it. Local teleology and survival motivation are without doubt core conceptions of Darwin’s worldview. In life, certain observations are obvious and may lose their immediacy in the lab. There is not a livestock farmer in world that doesn’t understand the truth in the statement “you can’t judge the dog’s fighting ability until you judge the fight in the dog.” The will or focused intent to engage the environment with responses to stimuli surely is an associated variable in survival and therefore a legitimate factor in the evolution process.
[ 15 July 2002, 17:04: Message edited by: newchurchguy ]
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Stephen Wright
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posted 15. July 2002 15:20
Frances wrote, “1. Indeed natural selection does not generate new variation. Perhaps RM&NS can explain how though? 2. Traits do not proliferate because they are functionally superior. Traits proliferate IF they provide a differential survival.”
Point #1’s hope to supply a function to address new variation and have a complete set of primary variables for evolution is in trouble from the start. NS by definition cannot, as it begins its agency on traits already established. RM, as the sole cause is by a high order of magnitude, statistically contraindicated.
Point #2 is equally unsettling. In the process control world, functional superiority is translated mathematically into values that will favor it through its place in the process, as it will connect with the objective goals more often then competing variables that are less inclined by their lower functionality. I also suggest that in terms of understanding the flow of biological information that there are new understandings that help us see that the observer function of life doesn’t just forget mistakes.
From The Touchstone of Life by Werner Loewenstein, Page 82: “But to deal with molecules, I take leave of the precept of the “survival of the fittest” designed for whole organisms, in favor of a more conservative selection mode where not only the fittest, but also something of the not-so-fit survives: its information.”
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James A. Barham
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posted 15. July 2002 18:34
Newchurchguy:
Thanks for your input. I am no Darwin scholar, and I have seen debates between people who are about whether Darwin believed natural selection eliminated the need for natural teleology or not, but I suspect you are quite right that he was a lot less dogmatic than his modern followers in this regard.
I think that what happened with natural selection is like what happened with the concept of mechanism. The early seventeenth-century natural philosophers all understood that a machine may appear to work autonomously for a while, but it logically entails a designer to explain how it came into existence, and also to keep things functioning smoothly afterwards. Somehow, this insight---that mechanism entails theism---was lost sight of during the eighteenth century. Thinkers like La Mettrie and d'Holbach who felt that mechanism was consistent with atheism were far less able philosophers than the earlier generation of men like Newton and Boyle, who saw clearly the absurdity of combining mechanism with atheism. For the earlier generation, vitalism was the great threat to theism, not mechanism (see the writings of Ralph Cudworth on this point).
I think something similar must have happened during the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, when the fact that natural selection logically presupposes the immanent teleology of life was lost sight of, and the claim that it succeeded in eliminating teleology altogether began to be made erroneously. I don't know the history well enough to know for sure whether this is the case. Perhaps someone else could pinpoint the thinkers who played the role of La Mettrie and d'Holbach in this process. (Helmholtz, du Bois-Reymond, Jacques Loeb? I guess there must have been many of them.)
Frances:
You wrote:
"2. Traits do not proliferate because they are functionally superior. Traits proliferate IF the provide a differential survival."
Can you explain this a little bit? This seems to me a distinction without a difference. If traits provide differential survival, it is surely because they are functionally superior to the alternatives (assuming selection is occurring, of course, and disregarding cases of accident, genetic drift, and so forth---since that is what we are discussing).
[ 15 July 2002, 18:40: Message edited by: James A. Barham ]
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Frances
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posted 15. July 2002 23:17
NewGuy:
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Point #1’s hope to supply a function to address new variation and have a complete set of primary variables for evolution is in trouble from the start. NS by definition cannot, as it begins its agency on traits already established. RM, as the sole cause is by a high order of magnitude, statistically contraindicated.
I do understand that NS is not able to generate new variation but random mutations may be. You claim that "RM is statistically contraindicated". Such a claim deserves a clarification.
I do not undestand your #2 point.
Btw survival of the fittest seems to be a poor description of natural selection. But yes, not always the fittest survive, there is surely a random component to reproductive success and survival as well.
James still continues the claim that natural selection presupposes the "immanent teleology of life" but I am still not convinced that this is the case especially when considering RM&NS and NewGuy's comments.
James:
You ask me to clarify functional superiority and differential survival. Natural selection does not select the functionally superior solutions but allows variations which have a higher fitness to reproduce more succesfully.
In fact if there is no need for a particular functional superiority it will not be selected for.
Newguy: I agree with you that NS per se is not teleological. That NS can lead to instictual behavior which may be beneficial for survival does not make NS perse purpose or goal driven. But while thinking about these issues, something did occur to me, if behavior is not genetically transmitted, but through parenting passed down generation on generation or through education, we will see a whole new transmission mode of knowledge arise.
Something to ponder
An interesting project on ontogeny
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In (Bongard & Pfeifer, 2001) we demonstrated that the developmental encoding is compact, and how such an encoding leads to repeated, higher-order phenotypic structures in the evolved agents. In a forthcoming publication we will show in more detail how evolution shapes the underlying genetic regulatory networks of the virtual agents. Finally because the encoding scheme is highly evolvable, it will be shown that it can be used to evolve agents which exhibit increasingly non-trivial behaviour, which an outside observer may classify as intelligent behaviour.
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James A. Barham
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posted 16. July 2002 10:06
Frances:
You wrote:
"In fact if there is no need for a particular functional superiority it will not be selected for."
I would just point out to you that "need" is a teleological concept that has no counterpart in physics or chemistry.
On the other matter, your point #1, regarding the source of biological novelty, here is a quote I just ran across that nicely summarizes the dynamical viewpoint on this matter:
"novel biochemical patterns and dynamical control processes may arise at a point of instability; that is, at a bifurcation point. The recognition of bifurcations, at which point the evolution of a biodynamical system may take different paths, has thus revealed that instabilities are an indispensable source of biological function and order . . .
"biological systems do not function by simply dampening out or counteracting oscillations in biochemical and physiological parameters through homeostatic feedback. On the contrary, sustained oscillatory dynamics and complex pattern formation resulting from instabilities under nonequilibrium constraints may be involved in biological control at all levels of physiological organization."
(J. Walleczek, "Changing Paradigms in Biomedicine: Implications for Future Research and Clinical Applications," in J. Walleczek (ed.), Self-Organized Biological Dynamics and Nonlinear Control, Cambridge UP, 2000, pp. 409--420. The passage cited is on p. 411.)
What is the point of this? Just that the dynamics is the causal factor driving differential reproduction. "Natural selection" is just a superficial, phenomenological description of this process that does not get at the real causation.
I don't think that nonlinear dynamics alone is the whole story, by the way, but I do think that the notion of "bifurcation" is a big improvement over the neo-Darwinian notion of "random mutation."
Life is simply too coherent and too highly coordinated for chance to play the major role assigned to it by neo-Darwinism. We have got to construct a "purposive dynamics" (in the words of the philosopher Lenny Moss) to get at what is really going on and to give an adequate scientific explanation of the teleology (goal-directedness) and intelligent agency (means-ends logic) exhibited by all living processes.
[ 16 July 2002, 10:08: Message edited by: James A. Barham ]
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Erik
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posted 16. July 2002 10:53
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Newchurchguy: Please consider an attempt to root this conversation into fundamentals. At present there are three sources of context for the explanations being offered. Science data, generated from reductive empirical measurements and observations. Philosophy, generated through holistic analysis. And lastly, input from the newer field of Philosophy of Science. The outstanding work done in this third category is truly advancing our ability to nail down what constitutes an explanation that is best connected to empirical facts and is also expressible in universal terms making it possible to be defined in a more inclusive framework or holistic context. It is here in the field of Philosophy of Science that rigorous logic and demanding research may bind concepts from both fields into coherent and comprehensive maps of reality.
Are you referring Bayes theorem, Occam’s razor theorem, Solomonoff’s view of science, etc.? If not, I have no idea which work in the philosophy of science you think is “outstanding” and “advancing our ability to nail down what constitutes an explanation that is best connected to empirical facts”.
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Newchurchguy: I suggest that the work of R. Batterman cited by James Barnham is specifically germane as rebuttal to your reliance on very narrow definitions that seem to embrace reductive viewpoints as the only context.
And in making that suggestion, you reveal that you did not read my posts very carefully. I have not argued that reductionism is true. I started this thread with the intention to reply to Barham’s claims about evolutionary biology. Barham, however, quickly moved the away from the original topic. In the process, he abused standard terms. I decided to try to correct this abuse of terms. I never argued that reductionism is true, only that the word has a specific meaning. R. Batterman may well have produced some really fine arguments that reductionism (in its legitimate sense) is false. In that case it could be interesting to read, but hardly relevant to any position I’ve argued for in this thread.
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Newchurchguy: Fundamental to the issue at hand is the process control viewpoint, which can be derived from analyzing the flow of information in evolution. The process of life’s gains in complexity and in specific adaptations to specific environmental conditions occurs in an orderly fashion. Evolution, as this process, has variables in the classic sense. One of them is natural selection. It is crucial not to mix up the process, evolution, as being synonymous with just one of its variables. All processes can be understood to be measurable regarding their statistical capability to produce results. Cpk, Ppk or any quantification value of the process capability relies on the integrity of the variables’ functionality assignations. These objective values are only significant data if they name ALL primary variables and have identified and quantified them as to their specific effects in the process. Observation and analysis of processes functions has lead to a revolution in quality in the real world of manufacturing.
Failed communication. Try again.
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Newchurchguy: Natural selection and its various sub-categories act as a filter and have no teleological essence of themselves. However, the process of evolution has as a variable the leveraging of will power. The DESIRE to survive, to learn and to respond is present from the beginning of Darwin’s position. Darwin did not exclude local purpose and intent from his work in any manner that I have discovered, other than as supernatural intervention.
Do you mean that some organisms (e.g. great apes) have a desire to stay alive and that such a mental quality increases the reproductive efficiency in the same way that, say, resistance to medical treatments can increase the reproductive efficiency of HIV? If so, I agree.
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Newchurchguy: Please note my favorite teleological word, useful, in the fundamental definition of Darwinism.
“I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection.”
-Charles Darwin from The Origin of Species
And Darwin’s unstated assumption is of course that something that is “useful” is also a reproductive advantage. This is quite reasonable for a general discussion, but it does not mean that it is legitimate to ignore the context and latch on to the single word “useful” just because it happens to be your favourite word.
Regarding teleology, you should read what Dobzhansky, Ayala, Stebbins and Valentine had to say about teleology. There is nothing intrinsically teleological about usefulness. The slope of a mountain can be very useful for skiing, but that doesn’t mean that this usefulness for skiing is the sole reason for its existence.
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Newchurchguy: In the conclusion to the chapter he rams home his understanding of instinct (behavior) as being essential to his theory of natural selection.
You have misunderstood the chapter. Darwin wrote the chapter on instinct, because explaining the origin of instincts was something he regarded as a major challenge for his theory of differential reproductive success. Darwin anticipated objections of the kind “But the slave-making ants could not possibly have originated by differential reproductive success!” and did his best to answer. That is, he accepted that his theory must explain the origination of such instincts, not that such instincts are an essential part of natural selection.
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Newchurchguy: Ibid: Summary
“No one will dispute that instincts are of the highest importance to each animal. Therefore, there is no real difficulty, under changing conditions of life, in natural selection accumulating to any extent slight modifications of instinct which are in any way useful.”
In the Descent of Man he goes even further into the subject of the influence of mind in his theory. The following quote from Chapter 3 shows Darwin believed that purposeful behavior became converted to instinct and became inheritable.
“I am, however, very far from wishing to deny that instinctive actions may lose their fixed and untaught character, and be replaced by others performed by the aid of the free will. On the other hand, some intelligent actions, after being performed during several generations, become converted into instincts and are inherited, as when birds on oceanic islands learn to avoid man.”
In the same quote he goes on to say that “the same unknown causes acting on the cerebral organization” induce spontaneous changes in the physical structures of animals. Here Darwin is clear that behavior causes mental changes, which inductively produce physical changes that can be translated into the genetic material.
I really don’t see your point. To which parts of my posts is this a reply?
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Newchurchguy: Darwin observed purposeful behavior and based his deductions on it. Local teleology and survival motivation are without doubt core conceptions of Darwin’s worldview. In life, certain observations are obvious and may lose their immediacy in the lab. There is not a livestock farmer in world that doesn’t understand the truth in the statement “you can’t judge the dog’s fighting ability until you judge the fight in the dog.” The will or focused intent to engage the environment with responses to stimuli surely is an associated variable in survival and therefore a legitimate factor in the evolution process.
Why do you tell me this?
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Frances: 2. Traits do not proliferate because they are functionally superior. Traits proliferate IF they provide a differential survival.
Since this is an environment where many do not understand the basic processes of evolution, I recommend emphasizing that Darwinian evolution is about differential reproductive success, and that survival is only one component in reproduction.
Erik
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Moderator
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posted 16. July 2002 15:49
Erik,
You'll need to start making posts with far less quotation concentration. It may seem like an unnecessary and burdensome rule, but I have my reasons. I'd appreciate it if you could reference the remarks of others within the body of your own remarks.
If the trend persists, my policy on this is to begin by deleting out quotations (if I feel they are excessive). I then move to deleting entire posts.
Thanks for your cooperation.
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Moderator
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posted 16. July 2002 15:51
I've let this topic stray too far out of line.
I'll give it until Friday to correct itself.
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Frances
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Member # 169
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posted 16. July 2002 20:32
James objects to my use of the word "need" by stating that need is teleological. I find this 'cluthing at straws' to say the least. If we want to argue semantics then I suggest a different forum.
James also objects that Natural selection does not get to the causation. To the extent that it does not explain the why of differential survival and origins of variation James is correct. But why should this be a problem?
Do we reject gravity just because it's causation may be unknown for now?
James's claim that life is too coherent and too highly coordinated for chance to play a significant role remains unsupported.
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