Does evolution have a goal?

Two big problems with your statement.

1. How can a process have a "goal"?

Rivers over time have been observed to wear down their paths to create canyons. Would you say that the river's "goal" is to create a canyon?

2. What do you mean by "advanced"? Is the modern earthworm more "advanced" than a T. Rex?

Certainly with more time, a process based on mutations can produce more complex variations of life... but there are many examples where later variations are simpler than the earliear variations.

But without a way to tell if beings without tails are more "advanced" than beings with tails, this is a question that is too vague to have an answer.

No a process can not have a goal-- it is people who have goals. If you design an algorithm... it is your goal, not the algorithms goal.

I drive my car to work... my goal is to get to work. It is questionable if my car even knows it is going to work. If it does, it certainly doesn't consider getting to my job as a goal-- it would probably prefer to go to the beach.

Goal is not the same as "determined end state". My determined end state is death (as in if you accept the restrictions of modern science and our it is near certain that in 100 years my state will be death). Death is not my goal-- my goal is to get a betetr car before the time of my death.

You are correct that a process can have a "determined end state (if you mean a state that can be mathematically predicted with a high degree of reliability."

There are many examples of this-- for example, if I drop a rock I am pretty certain that it will undergo a process of falling. I can be quite sure of its path. This point seems to me to be quite uninteresting especially in light of this discussion.

However, there are also many processes that don't have a "determined end state". There are mathematical proofs of this backed up by experiment (i.e. both mathemeticians and phycists agree on this). Specific examples include Lorentz attractors from mathematics, and dual slit experiments from observational physics.

So there are process with a "determined end state" and processes without a "determined end state".

I am simply stating (and can back up with both reason and observation) that Evolution is one example of a process with no "determined end state"

What do you disagree with (other than arguing about whether processes can have goals which seems more an argument about words than anything else)?

Is there anything here? What are we arguing about?

ebrown_p is correct.

"Goal direction" implies a "desired end state" (see cybernetics) Unless we evoke a reductionist argument for "desire" in terms of say "neural processes" then process of itself cannot have a goal.

From Wikpedia "Cybernetics".

The main innovation of cybernetics was the creation of a scientific discipline focused on goals: an understanding of goal-directedness or purpose, resulting from a negative feedback loop which minimizes the deviation between the perceived situation and the desired situation (goal).

And actually, I would say that an earthworm is in fact, NOT more advanced than a T-Rex, who obviously had a major central nervous system, immune system and the like. The modern earthworm does not.

So all of this is fun and al, but I think it's safe to say that the author of this thread didn't mean to say that evolution desires to do anything. I'm pretty sure what he/she meant to ask was if evolution had a purpose (or end-point).

USA, let's suppose I accept your idea that there is an "end-point" (and that my daughter isn't the end point you are looking for).

What would happen after we reach the end-point?

Are we really talking about an end here... is it all over after that?

... or do we just stop "advancing" (on whatever undefined path we are advancing on) and just stay in one spot?

Or, do we then start regressing.

My question is whether "end-point" can be anything more than vague subjective judgement.

How would we know an "end-point" if and when one comes along.