Does evolution have a purpose? (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, October 10, 2014, 01:56 (3484 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID (under “An inventive mechanism: Reviewing Talbott”): It occurred to me today that your review of Talbott mysteriously left out a comment on his huge section discussing fitness, and the inability to define it....
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> dhw:I skipped it because it was irrelevant to our discussion on an inventive mechanism, .....I like to focus on one subject at a time, which is why you and I sometimes talk at cross purposes!-I didn't know you were so blinkered in discussion! And fitness is not beside the point of deciding how an IM goes about its business. The fitness discussion relates directly to competition and survival, and as we delve into this subject, note that my idea of eventual humans as the goal is another way of looking at a mechanism for evolution, just as my proposal of a driving mechanism to complexity can be another mechanism for evolution. We are stuck with Darwin's approach because it is the dominant current theory, but I can offer substantial arguments, as I have in the past for a different padttern of factors and mechanisms.-> 
> dhw: This is a rich subject. I agree with you, although survival still has to be a fundamental element. As the two of us have repeatedly told each other, if survival was the sole aim, evolution need not have progressed beyond bacteria.-Here we are in agreement. -> dhw:And as Margulis emphasized, cooperation is at least as important as competition. None of us would be here if billions of cells/cell communities hadn't decided to work together! -We do not know whether cells agreed to cooperate or advancing abilities of DNA made them cooperate. I favor this approach. The genome must run the cells.-> dhw: An autonomous IM will go on inventing, and each invention will lead to further inventions, and each one will have its own “agenda”, as it either copes with or exploits new conditions. But this may be where you and I have to part company. Let's see.-We are not together. I still view an inventive mechanism as following guidelines and semi-autonomously inventing
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> dhw: Under “An inventive mechanism” we had the following exchange concerning the purpose of evolution:
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> Dhw: Previously you have always insisted that its purpose was the production of humans, which ran counter to the higgledy-piggledy nature of the evolutionary bush.
> DAVID: It is not counter to a bush, if the IM is somewhat on its own in originating changes 
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> I shall ignore “somewhat” as an unnecessary qualification! From the very start of this discussion, I have emphasized that the concept of an inventive mechanism explains the higgledy-piggledy bush, so it's gratifying to see you now using the same argument. However,let me repeat, the hypothesis that you had offered prior to your “conversion” was that evolution had been preprogrammed 3.7 billion years ago to fulfil the purpose of producing humans, and that does not fit into the higgledy-piggledy bush, unless you genuinely believe that rafting ants, silk-spinning spiders, myrmecophylous (I love that word!) beetles, trilobites and a billion other extinct organisms were essential for the production of you and me.-By semi-autonomous I mean I can see the IM branching off into all sorts of sidelines of live inventions-> dhw: Dabbling was your other option, but that conflicted with your belief that evolution happened. -No it doesn't. Dabbling simply meant guiding some of the evolutionary changes.-> dhw:The theistic version of the inventive mechanism, i.e. that your God created it, raises the question of his motives for the bush, whereas your anthropocentric 3.7-year-preprogramming - while failing to explain the higgledy-piggledy bush - gives you a tangible purpose to cling to. -Once again, you are making religion's mistake, awarding God with human thinking. He may have had no motives for a bush.-> dhw: It also ties in neatly with religion, since many religious people believe that God is interested in them, and loves them, and wants them to behave properly and be happy. Maybe they're right. Who knows?-That is just my point. Who knows God at all?