• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Intelligent Evolution?

Belz... said:
You might be correct, Apathia. Maybe they just misunderstand the term "intelligence" ?
Click to expand...

I think most Creationists do. Christainity has a decided Platonic mindset that looks at mind as some kind of metaphysical reality. Then they confuse that metaphysical entity with ordinary mental activity. They then want to read it into nature and Human behavior.

It's that "Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness," I mentioned before.
BTW Alfred North Whitehead was a Christian and attempted to give his faith a different philosophical base called, "Process Theology."
He had no quarrell with science regarding Evolution.
Many of his ideas were shaped in conversations with his fellow mathematician and pholosopher, Bertrand Russell.
Russell was my first introducer of the idea that mind is a process.
It took me a few years though to get over my unconscious Platoisms.
 
Apathia said:
You know his complaint by now, don't you?

It's like saying
Birds fly and build nests, without intelligence, in just the way humans build
747s and condos, without intelligence.

It's just that oversimplification of your anology that he's choking on.
He's choking just where your average joe IDer would (not that he's an IDer himself).
I hope we've moved beyond this in this thred, or there will still be a choking hazzard for those who try to swallow the chess pawns rather than use them to advance the game.
Click to expand...

Yes. (sort of).

The engineer's role in setting the specifications is very similar to Behe's proposed role for The Designer. The analogy without caveats and clarifications is an analogue of the process supported by IDers.

Because of engineering's use of intelligence, and the engineer's role in evolutionary algorithms being very similar to that of "The Designer" in ID, the analogy is risky because evolution doesn't work with intelligence. An ID proponent would say that the analogy doesn't remove the need for a Designer, so would probably take this analogy as saying that evolution is ID. (As did Dembski).


Likening evolution to technological development in general, as in the OP is misguided, as in general technical develompent has not used a process akin to evolution.

Trial and error is not evolution, it is trial and error, learning form mistakes, and making predictions ablout how somethiong might be improves, then trying it.

If you want to explain how evolution does work, I have no argument with the Sam and Ollie story or the blind watchmaker (which is essentially the same). I was pointing out that you need self-replication for natural selection otherwise you need to impose selection. I would then say that now this is more than a story, and say such evolutionary algorithms work and are used in engineering. (AFAIK, when Dawkins suggested the blind watchmaker evolutionary algorithms were little used in engineering).

If you do use such an analogy to explain the mechanism, you will need to accept that someone who is predisposed to ID will spot that the selection is imposed. It is therefore better to say that with self-replication, natural-selection is implied, which is true, and clarifies the nature of evolution.
 
The way I play with Southwind's analogy is that it's not merely the technological artifacts that are evolving but the Human dynamic with them. Human being and culture are integral. So it's not a matter of selection imposed from without the dynamic. As in nature the selection and replication are internal to what can be likened to an organism or ecology as opposed to a top down political rule. There is not the sort of "Designer" as ID advocates expect. There are, of course, people you design in the arts and engineering, but this relative sense of design isn't the same as the independent, outside, decider, transcendent fiction of ID conception, whether it be an individual mind or the mind of the Cosmic Tinkerer. The Mind of Platonic Idealism is just a fictitious concept.

But also the concept of mind and intellect of a realtive sort can't be seperated from Human behavior and culture. Our relative sense of volition and intelect are systemic to what we are and what we endevour. So the Human creation process can't be simply reduced to the same formula as biological evolution at large. Relative to the various elements of the Human process, Human cultural activity isn't blind, but the system as a whole is blind and headless. The process is more convoluted, and the details of that shouldn't be just ignored, but the sum of it, the more than the sum of it, is that it is an evolutionary process as opposed to the jello molds of the gods.

We have a cultural habit of setting mind apart from benavior. Even in science we try to play the objective, univolved, observer. We tend to absolutize mind. It's a legacy ot the Greek/Platonic roots of Western thought. This is what makes Southwind17's analogy problematical: the conception of mind as an metaphysical or outside tinkerer. When it's seen as organic and integral to process, the analogy makes more intuitive sense.

But try saying this to a Creationist who has never gotten a grasp of anything but the top down paradigm of the Decider or the Authority, is way rough going. That's why I think in their case a good explication of how biological evolution works is the better place to begin. as I said before, start with the "Blind Watchmaker," before moving on to the "Headless Watchmaker."
 
I was pointing out that you need self-replication for natural selection otherwise you need to impose selection.
Click to expand...

You still haven't explained why this is so given my previous objections to this - namely that I fail to see how self-replication is in any way relevant to selection at all.
 
jimbob said:
Likening evolution to technological development in general, as in the OP is misguided, as in general technical develompent has not used a process akin to evolution.
Click to expand...

Jimbob, you surely cannot write this with hand on heart and mean it.

Let's accept for a moment that technological development involves "intelligent" design and biological evolution doesn't. Even so, both processes, in general, are primarily concerned with beneficial change over time, such beneficial changes being effected by incrementally varying a previous "design" and accepting the improvements and rejecting the degradations by a selection process. The fact that one improvement process might be "guided" because humans have simply evolved to learn how to guide the process and the other is not does not change the fact that both processes start from the very same humble beginnings and, in many cases, in both cases, lead to increased complexity over time. To my mind, putting aside the arguable meanings and relevance of "intelligence" for a moment, the engineer simply acts as an "artificial mutation agent", conveniently side-stepping the randomness, and hence potential diminution, that inevitably arises from time to time in biological evolution, and as an "artificial selection agent", conveniently side-stepping the need to allow only the environment to reveal the improvements and degradations becasue they can be foreseen or predicted in advance (although not always!).

Whatever your objections might be to the OP analogy, technological development must surely be worthy of being described as "evolutionary". Indeed, many manufacturers refer to their product development over time as "evolutionary". Surely the fact that technological development necessarily takes time, and generally follows a path of incremental change to information, selecting what works and building on it and rejecting what doesn't, then repeating the process, essentially categorizes it as "evolutionary".
 
Apathia said:
Speaking now as a skeptic, there's another pont to be made about analogies. Using one as the basis of an argument or reasoning from one is a road to nowhere, except if you are hoping to score a point in a debate where the win doesn't go to fact but to presentation.
Click to expand...


Thank you for saying this, Apathia. I will illustrate with an example:


President Bush said:
If no one arguing against the "analogy" is arguing for "God"...
Click to expand...
cyborg said:
Oh, they are. They just don't get why.
Click to expand...


And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
 
cyborg said:
You still haven't explained why this is so given my previous objections to this - namely that I fail to see how self-replication is in any way relevant to selection at all.
Click to expand...

I believe that jimbob is claiming that unless replication is "self-replication", i.e. automatic (although not inevitable), then selection MUST be artificial, at least to a degree. I disagree with this, though. Provided the selection criteria are not specified in advance, but are inherently revealed by the success or otherwise of the entity in its exposed environment, then it matters not whether replication is automatic or induced externally. My example of the car showroom, whereby a registered sale provides a signal that the car is 'successful', i.e. has been selected, thereby triggering reproduction of another, makes the point. There are no specified selection criteria; the "environment" "decides".
 
President Bush said:
And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
Click to expand...

I'd prefer if you interrupted with a special broadcast saying that you finally get it.

Southwind said:
I believe that jimbob is claiming that unless replication is "self-replication", i.e. automatic (although not inevitable), then selection MUST be artificial, at least to a degree. I disagree with this, though.
Click to expand...

I don't get jimbob's point on this. Why is "self"-replication so important ? What IS self-replication, anyway ? Nothing replicates itself.
 
Belz... said:
I don't get jimbob's point on this. Why is "self"-replication so important ? What IS self-replication, anyway ? Nothing replicates itself.
Click to expand...

I can see a difference between replication occurring essentially automatically (self-replication) provided certain criteria (selection criteria) are met (survival to breeding maturity (and finding a mate, of course)) and occurrence by an external trigger (artificial replication) when either the same or other criteria are met. When the selection criteria are the same I see little or no relevance whether the replication is "self" or "artificial". If they are different then that seems clearly relevant to the comparison.
 
The title of this thread is intelligent evolution?
If that is so, what the hell does the appendix serve, cancer, and other inherited diseases that plague mankind. What does a fly serve? Or mosquitoes and viruses that can kill.
The majority of mankind suffers back pain sometime in his life. A clear sign of our ancestry when we walked on all fours. Our spine is not yet fully evolved to an upright position. All evidence, that far from intelligent evolution, we have evolved to the conditions prevailing and environment.
 
You propose an anthropomorphic god. Perhaps the designer, should such exist, did not have Terran lifes' convenience as a criteria? :)
 
Just like the bugs in our technology and obsolescence.

Jimbob is also one of those people who will never say-- "Oh, I get it now". He wants to believe he has expertise in the subject of evolution, but no one understands him quite the way he understands himself. I think he has a need NOT to get it... just like he has a need to think he defines evolution better than Dawkins and actual scientists and those who teach evolution to others. I don't know why that is. I think it's weird. His goal isn't understanding or having a dialogue... it's to prove to himself that the analogy sucks by arguing the point ad infinitum. I think it's funny. But fruitless. As long as you respond, he will aim for the last word... it's necessary to prove to himself in his head that he is right. Strange but true.
 
Southwind17 said:
I believe that jimbob is claiming that unless replication is "self-replication", i.e. automatic (although not inevitable), then selection MUST be artificial, at least to a degree.
Click to expand...

That's all very nice but since replication isn't required for selection I don't see what the point is.

The only sensible differentiation between artificial and natural selection I can see is whether or not the selection is within or without the system - i.e. natural selection is objects self-selecting.
 
Southwind17 said:
I can see a difference between replication occurring essentially automatically (self-replication) provided certain criteria (selection criteria) are met (survival to breeding maturity (and finding a mate, of course)) and occurrence by an external trigger (artificial replication) when either the same or other criteria are met. When the selection criteria are the same I see little or no relevance whether the replication is "self" or "artificial". If they are different then that seems clearly relevant to the comparison.
Click to expand...

But replication of DNA is not done by the DNA itself. The information uses enzymes, cells, and yes, intelligence, to get itself replicated. That's why the "self-" part is no more relevant than the "intelligence" argument.
 
cyborg said:
That's all very nice but since replication isn't required for selection I don't see what the point is.

The only sensible differentiation between artificial and natural selection I can see is whether or not the selection is within or without the system - i.e. natural selection is objects self-selecting.
Click to expand...
What in the universe is a "self-selecting object"?
 
cyborg said:
deus ex machina.
Click to expand...

I believe the the phrase closer to your intent here is "the ghost in the machine." "Deus Ex Machina" as your sig defines is a literary device where something that isn't integral to the story line or character development appears to save the day.

But I see the point you are trying to make with it. A metaphysical inteligence is not integral to Human behavior.

There isn't a ghost, and there isn't a machine. There is dynamic process.

Now I don't think that Jimbob believes in a metaphysical mind or soul, just because he has pointed out some differences in the way information is processed in Human activity in contrast to animal activity at large. (this is still a someone black and white distincton though. Humans may be more clever, but they don't have the monopoly on clever solutions to situations.)
It's his all or nothing approach that dismisses the Analogy entirely that makes it seem he's much closer to the ID camp. As the ID advocate, he seems to have a little difficulty seeing Human behavior as an evolutionary process.
Or maybe he just doesn't like the attempted polemic of the Analogy for it's supposed target audience of Creationists. But whatever, I haven't seen him advocate the Designer with the big D.

But I should let him declare himself and make his own qualifications.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom