While many ID proposals are based on introducing teleonomy into evolution, I wanted to ask the question as to whether or not evolution, even by a Darwinian definition (i.e., natural selection and materialism) was already teleonomic.
The reason I ask this is because all sorts of things that Darwinian evolution has trouble explaining gets thrown into the basket of “sexual selection”. Basically, the reason why an organism evolved feature X was because that feature was selected by mating. In other words, the other organisms appreciated feature X, and therefore copulated and reproduced more with organisms showing more and more of feature X.
I find this interesting, because, especially if taken materialistically, this gives a teleonomic direction to selection, something that Mayr attempted to rule out.
Think of it this way. If one is a materialist, then what is determining the desires of the organism? It is the organism’s genetics! If the organism is desiring a mate, that’s because its genetics is telling it to do so. If an organism sees mates with feature X as being more desirable, that means its genetics are telling it to do so. Therefore, the organism’s genes are, in a very direct way, directing the selection process themselves.
Mate selection, under materialism, seems to me to definitely fall under the umbrella of teleonomy. And, since it governs a large component of the evolutionary process, it seems that one must then say that to a large extent the evolutionary process is teleonomic, even under Darwinian terms.
I’m curious to your thoughts on this. I am not aware of this idea being discussed in the literature, but if someone has papers or links to other discussions of this, I would love to see them.
Last time this came up you said ID has no pre-planned goals.
So which is it FrankenJoe? ID has goals or no pre-planned goals?
Adapa,
The organisms do not have pre-planned goals. They are free to innovate as they need. Do try to understand what I post.
I posted this link earlier, I think it’s worth reading the paper, so re-posting:
The Misappropriation of Teleonomy (pdf)
Especially the distinction it makes between description and explanation and not engaging in circular reasoning.
I’ve never been comfortable with the distinction between teleology and teleonomy. I worry that this distinction relies on two huge assumptions, both of which are highly questionable.
The first assumption is a basically Epicurean metaphysics, where reality is described in terms of “matter” (atoms) that move through empty space according to laws (“necessity”) and randomness (“chance”). Hence it is a metaphysics of “chance and necessity”.
The second assumption is a basically Humean picture of causation, in which causes and effects are temporally ordered events: for any two events, E1 and E2, we designate E1 as “the cause” and E2 as “the effect” if and only if we always experience E1 as prior to E2.
If we put these assumptions together, it can seem “natural” that there just can’t be any real teleology, because there can’t be any “final causation”. All causation has to be a pushing, not a pulling, because — once these assumptions are in place — teleology is conceptualized as the future effecting the past. And that violates the arrow of time and the second law of thermodynamics.
However, it seems to me that it would be far more productive to reject the distinction between teleology and teleonomy by rejecting the Humean picture of causation on which it rests. And we can do that as scientific realists once we notice that causation is always a model-specific, context-dependent notion. We identify causes (and effects) in terms of which aspects of a system we are modeling as variables and which aspects of a system are fixed as invariants by reality.
We don’t need to give up on scientific realism simply by recognizing that causation is a model-dependent notion. We should also recognize that causation is specified in quite different ways in sciences as different as fluid dynamics, macroeconomics, ecosystem ecology, molecular biology, and archaeology. It’s not a one-size-fits-all concept, as the Humeans would have you believe.
And once we reject Humeanism about causation and Epicureanism about matter, we can call into question the basis on which the distinction between teleology and teleonomy is drawn. Far from it being the case that real purposiveness immanent to organisms contradicts the second law of thermodynamics, we can instead use the thermodynamics of open, far-from-equilibrium systems to explain the underlying mechanisms of real purposiveness.
Two of the questions in contemporary philosophy of biology that interest me the most are the pressing need for an extended synthesis that incorporates “evo-devo” and niche construction and the various forms of teleological explanations that can be found in recent work by Larry Wright, Ruth Millikan, and Mark Okrent. I find that both are fertile intersections with the idea of “purposiveness without purpose” in the German Naturphilosophie tradition from Kant through Hans Jonas and Francisco Varela.
It has long seemed to me that it is a case of having your cake and eating it too.
For some reason, people are uncomfortable talking about teleology. But they cannot discuss biology without it. So the have invented “teleonomy” which allows them to talk about teleology while deceiving themselves into thinking that they aren’t.
LOL!
The fact that the bottle is standing on it’s head. But I think you knew that.
Purposeful?
JohnnyB,
I’d prefer not to call evolution necessarily Darwinian.
Consider that kids of the same parent all look different. The random shuffling of genes serves a purpose in order to help avoid problems with Muller’s ratchet. At TSZ we have the very guy who even coined the phrase “Muller’s ratchet.”
It is hard to look at the Mendelian mechanisms and not think “this is purposeful.” The Mendelian model can only be referred to as being in the Darwinian framework in a forced way, yet Mendelian mecahisms are surely evolutionary in their influence.
If we define “evolution is change over time” vs. “change in allele frequencies”, then the epigenetic changes and whatever causes developmental plasticity in response to the environment (mechanisms not well understood), then evolution is also teleonomic in that case.
And I really might want to point out, one can say “self-destructive” behaviors are not necessarily anti-teleological or anit-teleonomic.
If we consider the caterpillar sacrificing itself to protect and feed wasp larvae, that looks highly purposeful to me — albeit the wasp larvae have seized and reprogrammed the caterpillar to serve the wasps ends, bwahaha:
See the caterpillar driving off would-be predators of the wasp larvae after the wasp have be terribly abusing the poor caterpillar:
It seemed the wasps definitely evolved a strategy. How did they learn this? Mary Jane West-Eberhard has a looser definition of “epigenetic” to also included learned behaviors.
I should point out, the collective “technology” that species acquires affects its absolute fitness. So evolution of behaviors, not just alleles affects fitness, so inherited behaviors are teleonomic, and the behaviors evolve as well. Seriously, what if the wasp larvae did not figure out this behavior?
I could not say with out some background information
But I think you knew that
peace
It’s an ordinary bottle containing OTC vitamin D3 gels, standing on its head on my kitchen floor.
What sort of additional background information do you think you would need to decide?
Things like
Do you often engage in playing with your vitamins?
How far are they normally stored from the location they were found in?
Any other objects on the floor?
etc etc
stuff like that
peace
OK,
– No, I don’t often play with my vitamins. I do take one B3 daily, as advised by my doctor.
– They are stored about three feet from the location depicted in the photo.
– Yes – a couple of kitchen chairs and the kitchen table, a mop and a broom standing in a corner, a couple bottles of wine. Nothing out of the ordinary, however.
Do you practice transcendental meditation?
peace
I formerly meditated quite a bit. It wasn’t TM, specifically. Not often any more.
I would say undetermined as of now but leaning to purposeful.
I would not bet my life on it but I might bet a quarter 😉
peace
Any thoughts on possible purposes?
nothing concrete.
I know folks who place stuff in the center of the kitchen floor to act as a silent signal to others in the household. From my experience it sometimes means that someone does not want to be disturbed, perhaps because they are mediating
Again this is just speculation
peace
Neil Rickert,
Neil,
You often advocate for a type of teleology in nature, do you not? I don’t know why in the world you tried to deny that when I said you walk a fine line between guided and unguided which is hard to justify through a materialist worldview.
If you won’t even fess up to this one point, as if no one has ever read your posts before, then it is you who is trying to have your cake and eat it too Neil.
Really?
yep.
I remember growing up it was a sign for us rowdy neighborhood kids to keep quiet and get out of the house and leave the adults alone. I’m not saying that is what is at play here but it all is just a tad familiar
peace
Wow. What object would they leave?
I agree that there is teleology in nature. I’m not sure that “advocate for” is the right description.
I try to avoid that “guided” or “unguided” talk, because I see it as confusing and misleading.
Neil Rickert,
But Neil, THAT is exactly the fine line you walk, which I said you often espouse here, and you denied you EVER do. It was such a ridiculous denial on your part.
Of course you try to avoid using the term guided or unguided, because you are playing a semantic game, even if you don’t know you are. But so what if YOU try avoid using that term, you still have no explanation for how or why that teleology exists. So indeed you want you cake and to eat it too. Teleology, but its an accidental teleology. Its just an equivocation.
stcordova,
Then you should also point out that luck affects a species absolute fitness. After all, if ones experiences affect fitness, isn’t luck part of one’s experiences? Which of course makes the whole point of absolute fitness in a Darwinian model completely useless.
But you won’t of course, because you would need to understand this point, which you don’t.
If I remember correctly It was a dish-soap bottle from the sink about three feet a way.
peace
Do you now admit that this was a very dishonest statement on your part Neil? For crying out loud.
FMM:
Confronted with the same question, I would first recognize (as did you) that it can’t be determined by examining the bottle itself whether or not it was purposely placed in that position at that location, or it came to be there through some other non-purposeful chain of events or perhaps as an unplanned consequence of other purposeful actions.
So some hypothesis testing might be in order, and further information becomes crucial to deciding the question. Whether that information is available is another question. (It is, in this instance.)
For example, if you hypothesize purpose, then the presence of someone capable of purposing would be entailed. The particular purpose you suggest entails more than one person. That might be something you could learn (again, it is, in this instance).
But you described me as using those terms. That’s what I was denying.
I try to be reasonably precise and clear in what I say. That is not playing a semantic game. I frequently see ID proponents attacking “unguided evolution”. They are using that imprecise and ambiguous terminology. So they are playing a semantic game. I have avoided participating in that “semantic game.” And now you falsely accuse of playing semantic games.
Not at all. You falsely accuse me of using “guided” and “unguided” so of course I deny that.
Neil Rickert,
It is not imprecise to refer to evolution as either guided or unguided. Its the obvious question that one should want to understand about life.
Its it certainly not less precise than saying evolutionary has natural teleology (what the heck does that mean?).
phoodoo,
Fitness is the expected value of offspring number. It’s the mean of a probability distribution, and hence chance affecting individual lives is included, by the very fact that it is probabilistic not deterministic. Your seem to say that because every individual of a given type does not produce exactly the same number of offspring, the concept is useless. It should be clear that a consistent difference in mean offspring number will still have a causal effect on future proportions.
He’s not alone.
I agree,
If my life depended on the “purposeful” question I can assure you that I would do some more research
As I am only willing to bet a quarter I have no problem going out on a limb with limited information 😉
peace
Allan Miller,
Fitness is not simply the expected value of offspring number. If that were the case you would have offspring which have survived have reproduced, which display zero fitness, because they were not expected.
Furthermore, just because a genotype is rare, that does not mean that it is less fit. There are lots of rare genotypes which protect from certain illnesses, but that does not make they are less fit based on numbers. In fact by your definition, EVERY new genotype is not fit, because until it becomes expected it has no fitness. It makes it literally impossible for a new mutation to be beneficial. Oops.
You make plenty of assertions about what fitness is, but that in no way means it is real.
Neil Rickert,
Is evolution guided or unguided?
What’s the difference?
dazz,
One is guided and one isn’t.
What I want to know is what’s the difference in terms of explanatory power from both. Are they the same theory of evolution except that one of them has this extra element of “guidance”?
phoodoo,
Jesus. I provided a link to a technical piece on ‘expected value’ as it applies to probability. Read it. Don’t just jump to a conclusion on what ‘expected’ means. If individuals die without having any offspring, that is hardly unexpected!
Who mentioned rarity? If individuals of type A have an expected value (mean of the probability distribution) of 2.35, and those of Type B have an expected value of 2.55, it does not matter if there is only a single A individual, one B, or all points in between, those are the expected values. You continue to confuse yourself thus.
You will note that no individual can produce fractional offspring. A die has an ‘expected value’ (3.5) of outcomes before it is rolled even once. Even a biased one (which might not be 3.5). But the expected value is not necessarily an integer – all real values may depart from the ‘expected’ one. Because it’s an average, or mean.
I am telling you how it is defined. Fitness is the mean number of offspring produced by individuals of a given genotype (in an idealised scenario, NOT after measuring actual frequencies in a current population). You seem to think having different mean offspring numbers will not result in any change of genotype frequencies in a real population. I think that is a ridiculous position to take.
Allan Miller,
Fitness is not a value Allan, it is a concept.
What is the expected value of a genotype that has not appeared yet Allan?
phoodoo,
And the concept is that it is an expected value of offspring number. All individuals must produce a number of offspring. Even if that number is zero. This is a random variable, which forms a distribution from individuals with 0, 1, 2, 3 ….
You seem troubled by the fact that we cannot necessarily know what that number is. Or rather, you think other people should be troubled about it like you are.
To say ‘fitness is not real’ is to say ‘organisms don’t have a number of offspring (including zero)’. You can see why I’m not troubled by that.
What is the expected value of a weighted die that has not yet been rolled? You don’t have to know something before it can have causal power. If there is a difference in expected value, evolution happens. If there is no difference in expected value, evolution still happens (genetic drift). I was mocked by Mung for this, but bollocks to ‘im, the following covers the entire spectrum of possibilities for two competing types, even before either has reproduced even once:
1) There is a differential in the mean
2) There is no differential in the mean.
1) is selection+drift, 2) is drift. Either way, there is no situation covering your ground where evolution cannot happen simply because you don’t know whether or not there is a selective differential between two types – a difference in their means, or expected values. You don’t need an ‘expecter’ to have an expected value.
For all I know:
If fitness is relative to the environment, and the environment changes with changing genotypes (because organisms are part of the environment and fitness of one organism is also relative to the fitness of other organisms), and genotypes are partially the product of random variation, then the environment changes randomly too, which means that natural selection can’t be teleological or goal directed. It can’t be a search and whether it “looks” like it’s teleological or teleonomic is irrelevant and a waste of time.
Thoughts?
If you think that, then you do not understand evolution. It moves in many different directions. In which direction is it guided?
Neither “guided” nor “unguided” fits very well without further clarification.
I don’t say that either. And no, I’m not sure what it is supposed to mean.
“Teleology” is a term from the past. It does not fit well with modern science. Teleology is not a mystical explanation of anything. Rather, instances of teleology are in need of scientific explanation.
Laughably absurd.
Do pay attention.
dazz,
Essentially, genomes track a moving, unknown ‘target’, buffeted by randomness from genetic, drift-related and environmentally varying factors.
But it would be easy enough to write a GA to do this – one whose ‘goal’ was to be as evolution-like as possible, complete with random, moving and unchosen ‘target(s)’. GAs typically have a static target, or a particular solution criterion. But it’s a red herring to say that GAs don’t model evolution because they have goals. They use evolution for a purpose, just as we might use a stick for reasons unrelated to its role in the tree.
I don’t find that the terms ‘teleological’ or ‘teleonomic’ give anything much, except in the negative – when teaching, trying to avoid the notion that organisms ‘strive’ to adapt, because that appears to misrepresent the process.
Moving goals is a concept that should appeal to our creationist friends here. Hope we can all find a point of confluence there :p
Allan Miller,
Is there an expected value for a genotype that has never existed before?
Should be a simple question to answer.
“The March of Progress” by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_March_of_Progress.jpg#/media/File:The_March_of_Progress.jpg
phoodoo,
The simple answer is YES. That should have been apparent from the fact that I said it does not matter if none of the individuals has actually reproduced yet. The current frequency of a genotype in a population does not generally have a bearing on its expected value of fitness (it can, but let’s learn to walk first eh?).
A genotype that has never reproduced still has an expected value for its compounded effect in terms of net offspring numbers.
Did you read or understand the linked article on the concept of ‘expected value’? It seems rather unlikely, based on your responses.
I’ll wait while you now do so. [whistle …]
Righto, is there an expected value for a weighted die that has never been rolled before? Should be a simple question to answer, now that you fully understand the concept of ‘expected value’, having read up on it and all.
Allan Miller,
Did you read what I wrote?? I said a genotype that doesn’t exist yet. Not one that already exists but hasn’t reproduced yet.
phoodoo,
Are you referring to LUCA?
Is this going to be a descent into semantics? After you’ve been impressing me with some well-thought and well-expressed comments recently?
Genotypes that don’t exist can’t be expected to reproduce, I guess.