🚀 go-pugleaf

frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams) writes:

[...discussion relation of purpose to evolution deleted ...]
> 
> As an intelligent entity, I have a number of purposes, one of which is to
> survive.  Why should I single out this purpose as my purpose *as an
> organism*?
> 

      Because, if you didn't survive, you would no longer be an
organism. Put another way, if you didn't survive, all your other purposes
(which I would label as _derivative_ purposes) would become irrelevent.
Your primary nature as an organism is to continue to exist as an
organism. I'm suggesting that is the primary purpose of all systems:
to continue to exist as that system.


> And yet, Darwinian evolution, by its very mechanism, selects for survival.
> 

      Reproduction is part of the survival mechanism of systems. The
purpose of adaptation is again to further survival, i.e. stability of
the system -- clearly the individual organism is a subfunction of a
larger system, which has the same purpose on a larger scale: just as
a corporation has the same purpose as its employees -- on a larger
scale.

> I have no problem with saying that the purpose of the beak is to crack the
> harder type of nut.  But I will insist that this is *not* exactly the same
> meaning of the word purpose as I have when I say, for example, that my
> purpose in writing this is to get people to agree with me.  One "purpose"
> derives from the evolutionary dynamic; the other is inseparably part of the
> behavior of an intelligent entity.

     The "intelligent entity" is a product of your imagination. You
are first and foremost an organism. Secondly you are part of a larger
social structure which is also trying to survive, and your performance
as an intellectual (or whatever) is relevent to this social survival --
at least in principle. This then comes down to the social valuation of
your contribution, and ultimately feeds back into your ability to do
what in modern society is this complicated dance of forces, but which
in the final analysis is again just survival -- albeit we call it
status, wealth, power, influence, prominence etc. The development of
such attributes or skills is no different from the development of a
finch's beak. It's just a difference in the type of hard nuts you crack.


      John E. Snodgrass [snodgras@cyber.net]

--                    
INTERNET:  snodgras@netlink.cts.com (John Snodgrass)
UUCP:   ...!ryptyde!netlink!snodgras
NetLink Online Communications * Public Access in San Diego, CA (619) 453-1115