> On 26 Sept, Brian King wrote that the meaning of life is to increase fitness
> and that the human gene pool is the basic unit of life, not the individual.
> Francis replied that we should take a "multilevel view of natural selection".
Dawkins takes the view that a question to what the meaning of life is
, is a question from the time before Darwin, and it is utterly
usefull. I totally agree.
Meaning has to be given by humans to things. It is a tricky word
referring heavily on what humans feel. Biological evolution is an
explanation abiout how life evolved, and can be used to extrapolate
to social, conceptual evolution, etc. Along with it, evolutionary
epistemology has taken the view that there is no meaning beyond the
meaning we give ourself to things. Giving meaning, and the connected
feeling has somewhere evolved in our history, and is thereby
theoretically explained. Of course you can question if that
explanation is valid, as with all theories.
>
> A few days of thinking over this question have brought me to the conclusion
> that there is something contradictory in this. If the meaning of BIOLOGICAL
> life is to increase the fitness of the gene pool, what do we do with
> cognitive interaction, exchange of symbols among cognitive carriers able to
> interpret them ? In our times, the "fitness" of a human being is defined
> much more in terms of his ability to interpret social symbols and behave
> accordingly, rather than his biological fitness to resist diseases and find
> food.
You mean that to be succesful [not in the sense to survive as meaning
not to die], is a social thing to humans.
Life has evolved beyond biological survival and has entered a phase of
> "semiotic survival", for which humans may be ill-fit compared to computers.
> If the Post-Human manifesto guys are right, the human gene pool will become
> useless for survival and life will pass on to what we call "artificial"
> forms.
It may be usefull for the forfilling of functions, but if humans are
not there it will have no meaning [unless the artificial can feel].
This fits into Francis' view of multilevel selection, but goes
> clearly beyond the narrow biological view that focuses on genetic selection.
> Denett, in his latest book on "Darwin and the meaning of life", also refers
> to this evolution in the views on evolution.
> On the other hand, if the evolution process has indeed switched to "semiotic
> fitness" criteria, rather than (biological) genetic criteria, we may be in
> the process of breeding semiotically fit but biologically unfit humans, bound
> to disappear because of the latter unfitness.
At what time-lenght? We will probably have destructed humans and
artificial evolution by pollution, etc long before the species Homo
sapiens degradates because of genetic failures. Unfitness for a
species can only result if you cutt of the basic needs like food,
etc. So we will only dissappear by selection if the artificial things
cut that of. Sounds very science fiction to me.
> Keeping in mind that contradictions are the only truths, I think it's worth
> exploring this a bit further. Are there any biologists on the PRNCYB-L who
> could react to this ?
I just did:-)
Theories come and go, the frog stays [F. Jacob]
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