What's the point of speaking of evolution as having purpose?

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Warning: constant rambling ahead.

It seems that when we look at patterns found in nature, when we group them, often attached to these understandings of the events found in nature we attach things such thing as "purpose" to them. For example, we look at the ecosystem, we see that there is a food chain occuring, and some of us try to justify certain things in society by referring to it. It's as if the events occuring in nature outside humanity is given a God status to it, a status that is not to be violated. A person thinking that they can do whatever they like would justify their actions by saying that "hey in nature, the strong takes over the weak." Such rationalization is what we now call an anti-social argument, an argument used by psychopaths or sociopaths. Behind these arguments, the argumentors fail to realize, that just because something is happening in nature, it does not give it any inherent justification. Events occur for random things (in all probability), meaning that it is not guided by a supreme hand that controls every events. They also fail to realize that events are not static, they change. Finally, what they fail to realize most of all, is that people are a part of nature. Thus, many people see the irrationale of such arguments, and they look for the truth, looking at not merely facts recited in words but facts recited in the understanding of a certain thing, and we see how such an argument has no basic grounds.

We are part of the system and anything we do or say is an event occuring in the system, so an argument of something doing a certain thing because it's naturally justified will not hold.

So why speak of evolution as something purposeful?

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Does anyone, except as an artefact of speech?

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Re: What's the point of speaking of evolution as having purp

Ray wrote:

...So why speak of evolution as something purposeful?

It's not purposeful in the sense of occurring at the behest of an intelligence with purpose, but since it has the effect of changing species to be able to function more effectively, it is sometimes useful to speak of it as thought it were by design.

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I agree with Dlowan,

I can't really think of a time when I heard someone talking of evolution as a purposeful action. I generally view it as a happenstance, just like anything else in nature.

I think that the mind works strongly on associations. Be it good or bad not contested, all we know is what we have experienced from the world around us. The entirety of the world around us is our nature, so it's not completely extraordinary for people to reference such at times. I think that once you start thinking of these as something more teleoligical (sp?) you permit it to be a faith. Questioning why people would believe these ( i.e. the strong takes over the weak) is like questioning someone's religious beliefs.

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Ray,

I've heard many people appeal to nature to justify moral arguments, particularly when discussing the meat industry. They say 'it's all part of the food chain' as if by convincing me that it's natural, they can also convince me that it's good. I had someone try to tell me once that, because human teeth had evolved eat meat, we ought to eat meat, and I am wrong to be vegetarian. I pointed out that the male human brain has evolved to urge occasional acts of sexual aggression, and asked if he thought we should conclude from that that human males ought to be sexually aggressive.

It's just another example of the old is/ought fallacy.

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Quote:

Does anyone, except as an artefact of speech?

Believe me, I have.

Quote:

It's not purposeful in the sense of occurring at the behest of an intelligence with purpose, but since it has the effect of changing species to be able to function more effectively, it is sometimes useful to speak of it as thought it were by design.

Hmm, that's true Brandon. We're anthromorphosizing (sp?) evolution now though. It seems somewhat neglecting the make it or break it possibility of genetic mutations.

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Well, to adhere to Aristotle's four types of causes, scientists attempt to apply evolution to Aristotle's four causes especially as a response to the creationist criticism that modern science has abandoned two of Aristotle's causes, formal (the structure of a thing) and final (the purpose of a thing).

Here's an interesting essay by the plant geneticist Dr. Massimo Pigliucci in which he applies evolution to Aristotle's criteria as a response to creationist criticisms.

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Ray wrote:

It seems somewhat neglecting the make it or break it possibility of genetic mutations.

Don't genetic mutations make up a very small portion of natural selection when compared with evolution? If we seem to neglect them when we end up saying evolution and natural selection are the same thing, maybe it's just because it's easier that way. We humans after all are selecting ourselves to have the easiest lives we can.

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The point of speaking of evolution as though it had a purpouse is to entrench a silly strawman version of evolution for creationists to ridicule.

In my experience anyway.

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Evolution takes on "purpose" only in the minds of those who feel their must be some "justification" for human existence. This set usually boils down to those proponents of Intelligent Design (see Michael J. Behe's DARWIN'S BLACK BOX ). However, even those in this philosophical camp allow for "some" cases where the Intelligent Designer relaxes control and allows environmental selection to operate. Alas, the borders and lines of distinction proposed by such believers are at best fuzzy and arbitrary. The main problem seems to be the inability of such proponents to comprehend the interaction of natural chemical reactions, selection pressure and storage of information gained from past entities combined with chance occurrences over extremely long periods of time that is the hallmark of evolutionary processes.

Interestingly, these processes, although purposeless in themselves, have given rise to one of many emergent properties. The one, relevant to this discussion, is the intent or purpose seen in higher animals and, specifically, human intent. This anthropomorphic projection is nothing new but if we are to turn a cold objective eye to the investigation of our origins this mode of thought must be kept to a minimum. For most newcomers to evolutionary thinking the "purpose" of any evolutionary product, such as feathers for aiding in the flight of birds, becomes obvious, but this is merely hindsight and gets it backward. Additionally, this thinking causes one to hit "dead ends" when pondering more complicated structures such as eyes and bird wings and allows proponents of ID to discount evolution because of "Irreducible Complexity" (How can a wing or eye be useful before it is entirely functional?). But turning that thinking around: why can't a structure be useful in other totally unrelated ways. So, why not feathers for the conservation of heat or the protection of skin from UV rays? Why not small non-functional wings for heat dissipation in insects or for sexually motivated displays? Then bigger and better such structures to attract more of the opposite sex and then

Ray, you are on the right path.

JM

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smog wrote:

Ray wrote:
It seems somewhat neglecting the make it or break it possibility of genetic mutations.

Don't genetic mutations make up a very small portion of natural selection when compared with evolution? If we seem to neglect them when we end up saying evolution and natural selection are the same thing, maybe it's just because it's easier that way. We humans after all are selecting ourselves to have the easiest lives we can.

Mutation is one of the components of evolution, one of the pieces of its mechanism.

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djbt wrote:

Ray,

I've heard many people appeal to nature to justify moral arguments, particularly when discussing the meat industry. They say 'it's all part of the food chain' as if by convincing me that it's natural, they can also convince me that it's good. I had someone try to tell me once that, because human teeth had evolved eat meat, we ought to eat meat, and I am wrong to be vegetarian. I pointed out that the male human brain has evolved to urge occasional acts of sexual aggression, and asked if he thought we should conclude from that that human males ought to be sexually aggressive.

It's just another example of the old is/ought fallacy.

Yes many people do appeal to nature to try to justify their moral stance. I've seen repeated references to homosexual acts among birds or monkeys, as if that "proves" it is normal, and therefore moral in humans.

When I ask if seeing certain species eat their young implies the same thing is moral and normal for humans, then you can hear the crickets chirp.

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Djbt, real life, you both have provided excellent examples of what I was thinking as well. It is something which I hear often, and which you both probably heard many times as well.

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The cannibalization of infants occurred in ancient times as a response to extraordinary circumstances, such as drought and war, when entire populations of cities faced famine and mass starvation.

The allowance for infant cannibalization is found in the Bible, in a backhanded sort of way, in the book of Deuteronomy which delineates the consequences to the children of Israel for disobedience to their god:

52"They [the enemies of the children of Israel] shall besiege you at all your gates until your high and fortified walls, in which you trust, come down throughout all your land; and they shall besiege you at all your gates throughout all your land which the LORD your God has given you. 53You shall eat the fruit of your own body, the flesh of your sons and your daughters whom the LORD your God has given you, in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you.
54The sensitive and very refined man among you will be hostile toward his brother, toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the rest of his children whom he leaves behind,
55so that he will not give any of them the flesh of his children whom he will eat, because he has nothing left in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you at all your gates.
56The tender and delicate woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because of her delicateness and sensitivity, will refuse[a] to the husband of her bosom, and to her son and her daughter,
57her placenta which comes out from between her feet and her children whom she bears; for she will eat them secretly for lack of everything in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you at all your gates."

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InfraBlue wrote:

The cannibalization of infants occurred in ancient times as a response to extraordinary circumstances, such as drought and war, when entire populations of cities faced famine and mass starvation.

The allowance for infant cannibalization is found in the Bible, in a backhanded sort of way, in the book of Deuteronomy which delineates the consequences to the children of Israel for disobedience to their god:

52"They [the enemies of the children of Israel] shall besiege you at all your gates until your high and fortified walls, in which you trust, come down throughout all your land; and they shall besiege you at all your gates throughout all your land which the LORD your God has given you. 53You shall eat the fruit of your own body, the flesh of your sons and your daughters whom the LORD your God has given you, in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you.
54The sensitive and very refined man among you will be hostile toward his brother, toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the rest of his children whom he leaves behind,
55so that he will not give any of them the flesh of his children whom he will eat, because he has nothing left in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you at all your gates.
56The tender and delicate woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because of her delicateness and sensitivity, will refuse[a] to the husband of her bosom, and to her son and her daughter,
57her placenta which comes out from between her feet and her children whom she bears; for she will eat them secretly for lack of everything in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you at all your gates."

To characterize this as an "allowance" is certainly false. This is listed as a cursed practice that the Israelites will take up when they are fully immersed in their sin and rebellion against God.

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Yeah, and their god will make them eat their children thereof.

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Giving evolution a driving purpose is called teleology, similar to any other teleology - another whole bag of beans.

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Re: What's the point of speaking of evolution as having purp

Quote:

So why speak of evolution as something purposeful?

We say that evolution is purposeful when the structures that we say populate evolutionary events are defined as having purposes.

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Re: What's the point of speaking of evolution as having purp

Ray wrote:

Warning: constant rambling ahead.

It seems that when we look at patterns found in nature, when we group them, often attached to these understandings of the events found in nature we attach things such thing as "purpose" to them. For example, we look at the ecosystem, we see that there is a food chain occuring, and some of us try to justify certain things in society by referring to it. It's as if the events occuring in nature outside humanity is given a God status to it, a status that is not to be violated. A person thinking that they can do whatever they like would justify their actions by saying that "hey in nature, the strong takes over the weak." Such rationalization is what we now call an anti-social argument, an argument used by psychopaths or sociopaths. Behind these arguments, the argumentors fail to realize, that just because something is happening in nature, it does not give it any inherent justification. Events occur for random things (in all probability), meaning that it is not guided by a supreme hand that controls every events. They also fail to realize that events are not static, they change. Finally, what they fail to realize most of all, is that people are a part of nature. Thus, many people see the irrationale of such arguments, and they look for the truth, looking at not merely facts recited in words but facts recited in the understanding of a certain thing, and we see how such an argument has no basic grounds.

We are part of the system and anything we do or say is an event occuring in the system, so an argument of something doing a certain thing because it's naturally justified will not hold.

So why speak of evolution as something purposeful?

Maybe because the odds against all of this happening purely accidentally are astronomical. This world is not an accident my friend.

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Re: What's the point of speaking of evolution as having purp

Ray wrote:

So why speak of evolution as something purposeful?

Evolution has no purpose, and is not a purpose. It is an aspect of nature, nothing more.

Many people have a hard time imagining a universe without purpose, or even a world without thought. Try it for a moment... it gives a strange feeling if you can get it...

Imagine the primordial Earth, with only single celled creatures living in its seas. The sun rises and sets each day, the waves lap at the shores. Storms sweep the oceans and the land, but there is nothing there to see it, nothing watching, nothing thinking. The planet is like this for hundreds of millions of years as continents drift about on the surface like butter on a hot skillet. Life is growing in the seas, but there is nothing watching, nothing cares.

This may seem like a fantasy world to many, but it really happened. It's our history and it's very real. Just as the world existed before each of us was born, it also existed before the human race was born. And it existed before the first flickers of thought ever formed the the simplest of neural bundles in the crawlies of ancient seas.

The naked truth is that there is nothing watching us and nothing putting things in motion. There never has been. As far as we know, even today, we humans are the first and only thing which has ever perceived the processes of nature. Is it any surprise that most people see those processes as reflections of themselves, and ascribe to them, a purpose.

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What's the point of speaking of evolution as having purpose?

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