Evolutionary Philosophy and Reasons for Existence

Postscript: actually I am coming around to the view that it is actually the materialist outlook that is self-absorbed, exactly because it can see no real connection between man and nature. If 'nature is dumb' - if the watchmaker is indeed blind, and we are only here by virtue of our selfish genes, then it stands to reason the only motives are material ones, and Nature is simply this vast quarry from which we extract resources and on which we build our artificial environments. Our morality, such as it is, has no relationship with nature on the whole, but can exist in the theatre of the conscious ego. Now that is self-absorption. (Incidentally I have just seen Avatar, which has partially inspired this rant. I'm with the blue guys.)

To accomodate this, genetic theorists had to devise a way to show that, in fact, this was still the 'selfish gene' at work.

US believe the evolutionary account of life. I think it is much more fundamental than fundamentalism, if you catch my drift.)

Well, you may consider this circular, but the thing is that within the paradigm of evolutionary biology, the fact that something that has persisted until the present (be it a gene, an organ, a behavior, or an animal), is in itself a statement about its evolutionary implications.

That doesn't mean that all things need to be advantageous -- they can be neutral, or they can be disadvantageous but compensated by other factors.

or they can be deleterious, ala Biased Gene Conversion, and still stick.

You don't even need to invoke that mechanism, though. There are innumerable things that play into our survival and fecundity. Just because something is deleterious doesn't mean it will disappear from a population, so long as its overall effect size is very small. It may end up being less frequent, but something can persist at a frequency lower than 100% of a population.

And also, being of the opinion that evolution isn't done until a species goes extinct and will therefore continue, one has to consider that certain disadvantageous features eventually will become less frequent or disappear but it will take tens of thousands of years to happen.

Right -- like the appendix. Its immune and digestive functions are negligible. Before modern medicine appendicitis would have been nearly always fatal. Untreated appendicitis may select out a lot of individuals, but it is probably negligible from a population point of view.

Furthermore, there may not be a simple genetic determinant that confers risk or protection against appendicitis, and selection against a polygenic phenotype may yield other problems. (or monogenic too, I suppose, after all my favorite example is sickle cell which is a single point mutation)

...can we still ask why has life evolved in the way that it has?

I think the mainstream answer is: for no particular reason.

I am pretty sure that any evolutionary biologist will give that answer. There is no 'grand design', life just is the way it has evolved in 'a blind universe of pitiless indifference'.

Darwin's theory...observes that...random mutation will result...to the emergence of new species.

However Darwin himself, and his successors, held that this principle explains everything that lives.

But the question as to why...are not addressed and indeed are dismissed by scientists as 'teleological'.

However in response to the question as to why life arose in the first place - if this is in fact a question...

...and why it turned out like it did - that is, as H. Sapiens and not like some indefinite mass of bluegreen algae...

Beyond your distaste - what's preposterous about it?

I'm curious about your correlation of materialism ("the materialist outlook that is self-absorbed, exactly because it can see no real connection between man and nature"). I'm no expert on it, but as I understand it; precisely because the materialist's "tools" (read: matter) is/are all elements of nature, how might that equate to seeing "no connection"? It doesn't seem to follow at all...

I doubt anyone will ever come up with one gene that is responsible though, and not just because it's polygenic. It's simply because altruism is a concept, it's not an easily measurable thing, so you can't take a million people, score them on an altruism test, and then go mine their genes. To speak of a gene for altruism (selfish or not) makes as much sense to speak of a gene for walking.

Process philosophy, panpsychism and process theology. Try them you may like them.

appendicitis must have been raging, when I was a kid...so many had the scars.
funny how an illness like that becomes a veritable pandemic, huh ? a medical miracle , that they could control it.

Random Mutation was the original birth of biological dogma. Accolades come to those who invent a term for that which is unknown, giving many the impression that some know what they are talking about, when in fact they do not. Ignorance can cover its tracks pretty good with the clever use of a new word. The modern day sound byte relies upon this tactic.



Not random mutation part. Only natural selection and the unknown mechanism that functioned upon.

I noticed this about four years ago. The term Random Mutation was being defended by infidels in many arena's. Your provided Dawkins quote illustrates the newly understood definition for Random Mutation.

From your quote: Dawkins,
"Mutation is random in the sense that it's not anticipatory of what's needed."

You will notice he dropped the term "random" and simply said "mutation". Yet he was directly answering a question about "random mutation".

You see, Darwin new nothing of the Genetic Code. The term Random used by his followers was seemingly justified back then because of this. But the more we understand codes, the more we realize there is nothing random about them at all.

Dawkins comes to defend traditional classic Darwinism with a new explanation, that leads us to believe it's not just a happy accident, but instead, it's our lacking ability to predict the mutation. Thus the term Random sees a new life... so to speak.

my guess would be that appendectomies were raging at the time. when i was a kid everybody had tonsillectomies and it became a fad or a craze until it was decided that it caused more harm than good.

Dawkins at work. "Random" now means "does not look ahead to act with a goal in mind"

Also he says that everything is exactly as you'd expect it to be if Evolution were true.

What do we know about what we might expect ? What do we know about all existent forms, all non existent froms, all possible, or the impossible ?

He's offering a trick again. We only expect what we have seen already.

We did not expect to find life in sea vents or volcano.

The theory behind the Selfish Gene is that beings are really automatons whose only real purpose is the effective propogation of genes.

Please give an example of a "non existent form".

i cannot see...that...evolution...could answer why. It is man as machine.

'why do the wheels go round on my car?' can be answered in mechanistic terms.

'Why it is on the A4?' can be answered 'because your brother is picking up a doner..." which can be interpreted as either a mechanistic answer or a socio spiritual one.

"why are we here?" is thus a question ambiguous in meaning.

Asked of machines it could be in one sense 'thats not an answer applicable to the motivation of machines',...

or mechanistically 'because the universe created us machines here, and this is the latest map of history with regard to homo sapien'.

But accepted in the human spiritual sense 'why are we here' is a much more difficult question

..... but how can evolution possibly help answer it except by stating that we are machines...

...and therefore the question becomes not applicable because the spiritual sense of the question is self illusion and delusion by a machine asking the question in an incorrect way.

Science is the study of the universe through data collected necessarily by machines.

Once humans are seen as machines by science ..... then it can ask questions of humans and include the data in its overall project.

Evolution provides a mechanistic answer to the question 'why are we here?'...

...and what follows scientifically is profound in its understanding of people and life generally.

Its all machine; the universe, life and all history.

...evolution can provide us with historical data and materialistic observations...

...that could modify how we answer the question 'why are we here?' in the spiritual sense.

Personally, I believe that any machine which functions by running a codified program is an artificial machine. Those without a program are natural. In this sense, by noting the genetic code, man is therefor an artificially constructed machine.

"why are we here?" is thus a question ambiguous in meaning.

It is not ambiguous. The meaning behind that question is to request meaning from another sentient source. The answer to the question is ambiguous, and depends upon it being asked of a sentient or non sentient agent. We cannot ask "why" of a rock. We can ask "why" of another sentient entity. Sometimes we ask "why" to ourselves but thinking we are asking the rock.

It's only difficult to determine who to actually ask. Ask the wrong entity, who does not know the answer, and yes, the question is very difficult for them indeed, inviting much speculation. But ask the question to the correct entity, the one who knows, and it is quite obvious to them.

If all men were exterminated, this would not affect the laws of inanimate nature. But the production of machines would stop, and not until men arose again, could machines be formed once more. Some animals can produce tools, but only men can construct machines; machines are human artifacts, made of inanimate material.

The Oxford dictionary describes a machine as 'an apparatus for applying mechanical power, consisting of a number of interrelated parts, each with a definite function'. It might be, for example a machine for sewing or printing. Let us assume that the power driving the machine is built in and disregard the fact that it has to be renewed from time to time. We can say, then, that the manufacture of a machine consists in cutting suitable shaped parts and fitting them together so that their joint mechanical action should serve a possible human purpose.

The structure of machines and the working of their structure are thus shaped by man, even while their material and the forces that operate them obey the laws of inanimate nature. In constructing a machine and supplying it with power, we harness the laws of nature at work in its material and in its driving force and make them serve our purpose.

This harness is not unbreakable; the structure of the machine and with it its working can break down. But this will not affect the forces of inanimate nature on which the operation of the machine relies; it merely releases them from the restriction the machine imposed on them before it broke down.

So the machine as a whole works under the control of two distinct principles. The higher one is the principle of the machine's design, and this harnesses the lower one, which consists in the physical chemical processes on which the machine relies. We commonly form such a two-leveled structure in conducting an experiment; but there is a difference between constructing a machine and rigging up an experiment. The experimenter imposes restrictions on nature in order to observe its behaviour under these restrictions, while the construction of a machine restricts nature in order to harness its workings.

The theory of boundary conditions recognizes the higher levels of life as forming a hierarchy, each level of which relies for its working on the principles of the levels below it, even while it itself is irreducible to these lower principles. I shall illustrate the structure of such a hierarchy by showing the way five levels make up a spoken literary composition.
The lowest level is the production of a voice; the second, the utterance of words; the third, the joining of words to make sentences; the fourth, the working of sentences into a style; the fifth, and highest, the composition of the text.

The principles of each level operate under the control of the next higher level. The voice you produced is shaped into words by a vocabulary; a given vocabulary is shaped into sentences in accordance with grammar; and the sentences are fitted into a style, which in its turn is made to convey the ideas of the composition. Thus each level is subject to dual control: (i) control in accordance with the laws that apply to its elements in themselves, and (ii) control in accordance with the laws of the powers that control the comprehensive entity formed by these elements.