At 09:07 AM 9/2/98 -0400, you wrote:
>>Could you explain your agreement in more detail? To be honest, as a
biologist I
>>agree with Dawkins, Gould, and most other biologists that natural
selection is
>>nothing more than a blind seive, without teleology, and the above sounds
like
>>blasphemy or scientific nonsense! And what do you mean by free will? It
>does not
>>really exist.I would like to understand what good reasons you have to
agree on
>>the opposite of the current paradigm.
>
>Mario, you can find the discussion of this in Jesper Hoffmeyer's
>book "Signs of Meaning in the Universe" 1996.
>In short, there is no "blind seive". Any seive is an instrument
>and somebody makes use of it, otherwise it is not a seive. What
>we call "natural selection" (a very confusing term!) is a mechanism
>by which the population probes the environment and selects which
>organisms should reproduce and which should not. Unfortunately,
>many biologists like Gould can think only of individual adaptations
>and dismiss ideas of adaptations at higher hierarchical levels
>(e.g., populations). In order to make use of "natural selection", a
>population must "remember" which organisms performed best; thus, it
>needs inheritance which is population's memory. Also, it needs some
>sort of a search engine which generates variability. This engine
>includes mutations, recombinations. Epigenetic constraints are used
>to prevent blind repeating of previous mistakes. All these mechanisms
>are adaptations at the population level which were selected at a
>higher level of "natural selection". There is a hierarchy of
>"natural selections" that correspond to different time scales.
>Michael Conrad wrote a book "Adaptability" in which he explains this
>hierarchy of natural selections.
Yes. This is one way of describing it. I would point out that selection at
the "population" level is necessarily involving variability at the
phenotypic level vs. individual/species selection theory which involves the
phenotpye only as an expression of genetic content and thus does not
consider individual behavior and variability as an independent factor. At
the population selection / phynotypic variability level, "free-will" would
introduce an independent driver including the semantics you imply here. The
method of inheritance, being non-Lamarkian, must therefore be through
encoding with the environment.
>
>However, it is impossible to consider natural selection at all
>infinite levels. Thus, for practical purposes, we cut it at some
>level and call everything that is above "physics".
Well, in this case its being called (inapropriately) religion and non-science.
>For example, we
>can consider selection of individuals without thinking of adaptations
>at the population level. This is like an 8-digit calculator that cuts
>off extra information. But people like Gould think that the 8-th digit
>is the last one and there is nothing beyond.
>
Exactly.
>The term "freedom" has a lot of connotation. But for scientific
>purposes we can view freedom as making use of variability. Obviously,
>it is outside of physics because physics does not study usefulness.
Well, small quibble here, physics has advanced beyond classical physics,
even though it hasn't abandoned the classical part. When you consider the
causes for quantum uncertainty, physics really goes beyond physics too.
That's why I don't see quantum ontologies as being "reductionistic." The
idea of "usefulness" is not so far from the observership problem, which at
least a branch of physics does consider. Nevertheless, I agree with your
meaning if it's "classical" physics.
>But biology studies adaptation which is the same as usefulness. Thus,
>freedom can be studied within biological sciences. The most simple
>example of freedom is mutation.
Absolutely, and a more controversial aspect of freedom is phynotypic
decisions involved in the self-definition of "function" or "usefulness" as
you call it.
>
>>Why should we need QM all of a sudden to explain consciousness, while we
could
>> do
>>without to explain the rest of evolution? This is a bit like pretending
>that, to
>>explain human existence, you need some kind of deus ex machina solution.
>
>Here I agree with you completely!
Perhaps you are overstating this agreement?? I think you would also agree
that we cannot do without the concept of freedom to explain "the rest of
evolution" -- that this cannot be explained mechanically. Whether one links
the source of this freedom to quantum phenomena, YES, is an independent
matter, but still an interesting one.
>There is no need for QM to explain
>variability. In most cases we simply don't need to explain variability,
>we simply postulate it (the same 8-digit calculator!). I don't mean to
>forbid using QM for explaining evolution or free will. I just say that
>we can understand a lot about evolution and free will even without QM.
>May be eventually QM or some other physical theory will be able to add
>some details, but now we are not talking about details.
>
YES!! Very well said and precisely my meaning as well. The only reason I
harp on the quantum case is because of the epistemological arguements --
to argue that these considerations cannot reasonably be called
"non-science." Beyond that, an actual bio-quantum connection is an
intriguing possibility, but not the only one.
>-Alexei
>-------------------------------------------------
>Alexei Sharov Research Scientist
>Dept. of Entomology, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061
>Tel. (540) 231-7316; FAX (540) 231-9131; e-mail sharov@vt.edu
>Home page: http://www.gypsymoth.ento.vt.edu/~sharov/alexei.html
>
>
-----------------------------------------------
John J. Kineman, Physical Scientist/Ecologist
National Geophysical Data Center
325 Broadway E/GC1 (3100 Marine St. Rm: A-152)
Boulder, Colorado 80303 USA
(303) 497-6900 (phone)
(303) 497-6513 (fax)
jjk@ngdc.noaa.gov (email)