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Sorry to be that person, but nothing evolves "for" any one function. And one can't prestate the potential set of functions of any subsystem of an organism. It's

Sorry to be that person, but nothing evolves "for" any one function. And one can't prestate the potential set of functions of any subsystem of an organism. It's the other way around: systems evolve, we ascribe functions to them after the fact. It's better to say that similar environments, pressures and circumstances result in similarly evolved features.

posterboy 9y ago
Are you a nihilist or just parroting? I for one don't even do anything "for" anything. It's funny how your argument can be applied against determinism and free will at almost the same time.
- vbuwivbiu 9y ago
  Actually I believe in free will, and I don't think the universe is deterministic, and I am partially parroting. But evolution has no purpose and nor does the universe. Purpose is something we humans (and possibly other animals) invent for ourselves, i.e. purposes are created by evolution.
  - posterboy 9y ago
    But evolution does work via purpose, whereas mutations that aren't fulfilling a purpose will not create an evolutionary advantage. So the antropomorphism is just a sylogysm. Maybe eg. the dying of species, broadly taken as an evolutionary mechanism, doesn't seem to serve an advantages purpose, although maybe it's just a mutation of (local) state all the same, so maybe or not that's advantageous for the universe.
- kahnpro 9y ago
  A purpose implies intent or some kind of forethought, which evolution works completely without. It's not a positive action (there is light so we need to develop eyes), but a passive result (there is light so the ones who happened to have eyes survived more often and reproduced more successfully).
  - posterboy 9y ago
    As a matter of fact, antropomorphisms are a very popular figure of speech and I've never seen much come from a remark against the preoccupation of evolution. The funny thing is, when you talk about human procreation suddenly there is intent and the goal post could be shifted to exclude those cases where pregnancy was not expected and I could probably question the cases where it's intended too because "a child" is a very broad cincept and as after thought not all cases turn out as expected and I would keep shifting in the same way you were about evolution, just to provoke discussion about free will and where to draw the line. Maybe frequent reminders against creationisms are necessary to provoke fundamentalists, which I don't personally have contact with, so this meme is just boring.

posterboy 9y ago

Are you a nihilist or just parroting? I for one don't even do anything "for" anything. It's funny how your argument can be applied against determinism and free will at almost the same time.

vbuwivbiu 9y ago
Actually I believe in free will, and I don't think the universe is deterministic, and I am partially parroting. But evolution has no purpose and nor does the universe. Purpose is something we humans (and possibly other animals) invent for ourselves, i.e. purposes are created by evolution.
- posterboy 9y ago
  But evolution does work via purpose, whereas mutations that aren't fulfilling a purpose will not create an evolutionary advantage. So the antropomorphism is just a sylogysm. Maybe eg. the dying of species, broadly taken as an evolutionary mechanism, doesn't seem to serve an advantages purpose, although maybe it's just a mutation of (local) state all the same, so maybe or not that's advantageous for the universe.
kahnpro 9y ago
A purpose implies intent or some kind of forethought, which evolution works completely without. It's not a positive action (there is light so we need to develop eyes), but a passive result (there is light so the ones who happened to have eyes survived more often and reproduced more successfully).
- posterboy 9y ago
  As a matter of fact, antropomorphisms are a very popular figure of speech and I've never seen much come from a remark against the preoccupation of evolution. The funny thing is, when you talk about human procreation suddenly there is intent and the goal post could be shifted to exclude those cases where pregnancy was not expected and I could probably question the cases where it's intended too because "a child" is a very broad cincept and as after thought not all cases turn out as expected and I would keep shifting in the same way you were about evolution, just to provoke discussion about free will and where to draw the line. Maybe frequent reminders against creationisms are necessary to provoke fundamentalists, which I don't personally have contact with, so this meme is just boring.