3 ms·

I was with you up until that last phrase - what it is trying to do You're going to get yourself into hot water with that "trying" word in there. It's a mistake

I was with you up until that last phrase - what it is trying to do You're going to get yourself into hot water with that "trying" word in there. It's a mistake to look at this as a designed feature with a goal, when in fact what's going one is emergent, just doing whatever the heck it does, in concert with other features of the organism, in such a way that its chances of having successful offspring is increased.

lkrubner 12y ago
If I am eating dinner, and I want to add salt to the meal, then I try to reach the salt container, using my shoulder and arm and hand, and using my muscles and tendons and nervous system. How much of my body is involved in bringing food to my mouth? You can define this in slightly different ways, but you end up with the same result: some parts of my body allow me to bring food to my mouth. In those moments, it is entirely appropriate to say that the system is trying to bring food to my mouth. And yes, that increases my chances of having children. It is possible that something else, unknown to me, is also happening, emergent, and in 2 million years that emergent quality will be more obvious. But in the short term, it is altogether reasonable to say that parts of my body were working as a system to bring food to my mouth.
- delecti 12y ago
  There's a difference between what you are trying to do (eat), and what evolution is "trying" to do. It's really just a lot of throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. We happen to have bodies with arms that can move food to our mouths, but there was no agency in evolution doing that.
  - wpietri 12y ago
    I agree completely on a philosophical level. But evolution has equipped us with a substantial ability to think in terms of agents with intentions. So I think talking about what evolution "wants" is in practice a very useful framing. The same is true in talking about what a company or a country "wants". As George Box put it, "All models are wrong, but some are useful".
    - chenelson 12y ago
      But I think that's the point: when we attempt to "frame" nature in terms of agency, our dialectic often drifts toward "I" and bias. It's all rather circular. Perhaps Aristotle and George would have been good friends?
      - wpietri 12y ago
        Sure, but all of our cognition is biased. We're made out of meat. I agree that using our agency-processing abilities can easily lead to wrong answers. But that's true of any of our abilities. We have a lot of hardware for visual processing, so we make graphs. Sometimes graphs mislead. But that doesn't mean we should stop using them. Instead, I think it means we should be aware of the limits of any particular cognitive mode and be energetic in cross-checking.
        chenelson 12y ago
        Right, in science, bias is what we are attempting to isolate and eliminate from the experiment. Thus, regardless of what type of meat I am, causation and will exist predictably...regardless of social ontology. I think of it in terms of bias vs bias bias, and getting caught up in my own reflection; or, it's turtles all the way down (rationalism).
        wpietri 12y ago
        Sure, but what goes on in an experiment is a small part of science. Hypothesis generation is looser. As is public understanding. If I can take people who don't get evolution and talking to them in terms of what evolution "wants" pushes them over the edge, I still see that as a step forward.
        chenelson 12y ago
        Well, I'll be patiently waiting for the day when a sophist moves the ball for us and not for their scheme.
  - Shorel 12y ago
    We've been evolving for so long that most of things thrown are things that stuck before, and some things that work now will fall into disuse at some point, to be latent again.

lkrubner 12y ago

If I am eating dinner, and I want to add salt to the meal, then I try to reach the salt container, using my shoulder and arm and hand, and using my muscles and tendons and nervous system. How much of my body is involved in bringing food to my mouth? You can define this in slightly different ways, but you end up with the same result: some parts of my body allow me to bring food to my mouth. In those moments, it is entirely appropriate to say that the system is trying to bring food to my mouth. And yes, that increases my chances of having children. It is possible that something else, unknown to me, is also happening, emergent, and in 2 million years that emergent quality will be more obvious. But in the short term, it is altogether reasonable to say that parts of my body were working as a system to bring food to my mouth.

delecti 12y ago
There's a difference between what you are trying to do (eat), and what evolution is "trying" to do. It's really just a lot of throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. We happen to have bodies with arms that can move food to our mouths, but there was no agency in evolution doing that.
- wpietri 12y ago
  I agree completely on a philosophical level. But evolution has equipped us with a substantial ability to think in terms of agents with intentions. So I think talking about what evolution "wants" is in practice a very useful framing. The same is true in talking about what a company or a country "wants". As George Box put it, "All models are wrong, but some are useful".
  - chenelson 12y ago
    But I think that's the point: when we attempt to "frame" nature in terms of agency, our dialectic often drifts toward "I" and bias. It's all rather circular. Perhaps Aristotle and George would have been good friends?
    - wpietri 12y ago
      Sure, but all of our cognition is biased. We're made out of meat. I agree that using our agency-processing abilities can easily lead to wrong answers. But that's true of any of our abilities. We have a lot of hardware for visual processing, so we make graphs. Sometimes graphs mislead. But that doesn't mean we should stop using them. Instead, I think it means we should be aware of the limits of any particular cognitive mode and be energetic in cross-checking.
      - chenelson 12y ago
        Right, in science, bias is what we are attempting to isolate and eliminate from the experiment. Thus, regardless of what type of meat I am, causation and will exist predictably...regardless of social ontology. I think of it in terms of bias vs bias bias, and getting caught up in my own reflection; or, it's turtles all the way down (rationalism).
        wpietri 12y ago
        Sure, but what goes on in an experiment is a small part of science. Hypothesis generation is looser. As is public understanding. If I can take people who don't get evolution and talking to them in terms of what evolution "wants" pushes them over the edge, I still see that as a step forward.
        chenelson 12y ago
        Well, I'll be patiently waiting for the day when a sophist moves the ball for us and not for their scheme.
- Shorel 12y ago
  We've been evolving for so long that most of things thrown are things that stuck before, and some things that work now will fall into disuse at some point, to be latent again.