Freethought & Rationalism Archive

galiel · 11-07-2002, 03:46 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Doubting Didymus:
You really think "we evolved conciousness" implys purpose? I don't think so. Giraffes evolved long necks, centipedes evolved partitioned embryology, and humans evolved brains. None of that implies lamarkism to me.

I didn't mean to say it was deliberately intended to imply, I said it could be easily misunderstood to imply. And, in particular, asking "Why" we evolved implies purpose. There is no real harm in pointing out that purpose plays no role, is there?

galiel · 11-07-2002, 03:49 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Clutch:
Galiel, if anyone's mixed up 'viz' and 'i.e.', please go into some detail about that too.

Why does everyone read implied criticism into everything? I wasn't accusing anyone on this thread of being mixed up, I was merely noting that we need to be careful about language, because the general public IS mixed up, as a result of poor education about evolution. Is that a controversial position worth derailing this thread over?

Doubting Didymus · 11-07-2002, 03:58 PM

Well, when we are talking about adaptations specifically, then yes, we can talk about purpose. What is the purpose of the neck of the giraffe? for example. Phrasing the question as 'why did giraffes evolve long necks' is therefore perfectly valid. They evolved long necks because... (it helped them reach higher food, spot predators, etc). The question "how did giraffes evolve long necks" is asking for a completely different set of answers (genetic mechanisms, point mutations, natural selection, etc).

'kay?

Gallimore · 11-08-2002, 10:01 AM

Yeah! Of course there's purposefulness of evolution.

pz · 11-08-2002, 11:01 AM

A very useful reference on this particular subject is Ernst Mayr's "The Multiple Meanings of Teleological" in his book, _Toward a New Philosophy of Biology_. I won't try to summarize this fairly long essay, since Mayr did it himself, at the end:

Quote:

<ol type="1">[*]The use of so-called teleological language by biologists is legitimate; it neither implies a rejection of physicochemical explanation nor does it imply noncausal explanation.[*]The terms teleology and teleological have been applied to highly diverse phenomena. An attempt is made by the author to group these into more or less homogeneous classes.[*]It is illegitimate to describe evolutionary processes or trends as goal-directed (teleological). Selection rewards past phenomena (mutation, recombination, etc.) but does not plan for the future, at least not in any specific way.[*]Processes (behavior) whose goal-directedness is controlled by a program may be referred to as teleonomic.[*]Processes which reach an end state caused by natural laws (e.g., gravity, first law of thermodynamics) but not by a program may be designated as teleomatic.[*]Programs are in part or entirely the product of natural selection.[*]The question of the legitimacy of applying the term teleological to stationary functional or adaptive systems requires further analysis.[*]Teleonomic (that is, programmed) behavior occurs only in organisms (and man-made machines) and constitutes a clear-cut difference between the levels of complexity in living and inanimate nature.[*]Teleonomic explanations are strictly causal and mechanistic. They give no comfort to adherents of vitalistic concepts.[*]The heuristic value of the teleological Fragestellung makes it a powerful tool in biological analysis, from the study of structural configuration of macromolecules up to the study of cooperative behavior in social systems.[/list=a]

I disagree strongly with (6) and think (8) is questionable, but Mayr has provided a nice framework for thinking about the problem, at least. The bottom line is that it is OK for biologists to phrase questions and explanations in terms that are colloquially used to imply teleology, because we're using the words in a discipline-specific way that specifically excludes the teleological implications.

lpetrich · 11-08-2002, 01:08 PM

One important question is what qualifies as "mind". In the broadest sense, it could be anything from a simple feedback loop to full-scale consciousness.

As to the emergence of consciousness, it may be some side effect instead of some direct adaptation. One great difficulty in studying it is the difficulty of identifying outwardly-observable features that are connected with it, and I mean by that features other than describing oneself as being consciousness.

Brain research may eventually locate differences in brain activity between conscious and unconscious states, but before that happy day, we must use less direct methods of identifying consciousness.

A reasonable possible method is testing for self-recognition. Human children learn to recognize themselves at around 2 years of age; this ability eventually disappears from those suffering from neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's disease.

Chimpanzees are known to have this ability, though it develops only in adolescence, and some chimps do not quite learn that that chimp in the mirror is themselves. There is evidence for it in orangutans, dolphins, and elephants, perhaps gorillas, but not in most other species. A rhesus monkey was once raised in an area with a mirror; though the monkey learned what a mirror does, it was unable to recognize itself in that mirror.

lpetrich · 11-08-2002, 01:38 PM

Consciousness may be a subset of another activity: mental modeling, which some others in this thread had mentioned.

Testing for this capability in the absence of self-description seems as difficult as testing for consciousness, but here also, there are types of behavior that may indicate its presence.

In particular, "insight learning" or "cognitive learning" may essentially be mental modeling in action. This term was coined by Wolfgang Koehler, who did some famous experiments in seeing how chimps could gain access to out-of-reach bananas with the help of items like crates and poles. He noticed that chimps would often pause and then implement a solution; this suggests that they had been modeling the solution in their minds.

There is evidence for it in a few other species, but not much.

One counterargument comes from experiments by H.G. Birch in 1945, <a href="http://sun.science.wayne.edu/~wpoff/cor/mem/cogninst.html" target="_blank">as described here</a>. He tried to repeat Koehler's experiments, and he found that chimps assemble poles to reach bananas only if they had had a chance to play with assemblable poles and become aware of that property of them. However, I doubt that that is a fatal counterargument.

What provoked the evolution of mental modeling is an important question; one possible cause is having to anticipate the behavior of one's fellow members of one's group.

Vanderzyden · 11-10-2002, 06:52 PM

Scigirl,

So, what conclusions are we to draw from these excerpts? I see nothing that is persuasive or engaging. Your final remarks seem to indicate that "science" is making "progress". But there is precious little in your citations that would support that contention.

Perhaps I am missing something, but it seems that the material you have relayed is inundated with little more than vacuous claims. There is no demonstration that chimps reason or employ language. Imitation, emulation, and correlation do not constitute intelligence. Also, if I remember correctly, you balked at my <a href="http://iidb.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=001315" target="_blank">previous questions</a> concerning reason and language: which came first?

Here is a particularly ridiculous assertion (in your fourth source):

Quote:

"...The minds of insects operate in the same way as that of man..."

As is typical of reductionist literature, there is a small amount of evidence/argumentation and a "whole lotta" grandstanding and unjustifiable belief.

If you want to provide something that might be persuasive, perhaps you could post excerpts from papers like this:

Quote:

taken from:

"Animal communication, animal minds, and animal language", by Sverker Johansson

...As long as we have no evidence of language acquisition among apes in the wild, the third possibility appears most likely. This means that if the existence of critical periods in apes is confirmed, the case for a Chomskian uniquely human language acquisition device
is weakened, whereas the competing hypothesis of language acquisition using a more general learning device would be strengthened. But the data available so far on ape language acquisition at different ages would be statistically insufficient even if it were uncontested.

-- Chapter 4.1, "Can non-humans be taught language? Chimpanzees and bonobos"

Very impressive results appear to have been achieved with the gorilla Koko (Patterson & Cohn, 1990; Patterson & Linden, 1981). Unfortunately, the story of Koko�s apparent language acquisition is not stringently documented and controlled, so the earlier criticisms of Terrace et al (1979) still apply (Tof, 1996). This lack of stringency is unfortunate, since remarkable abilities are reported for Koko, that would lead to very interesting conclusions if they could
be corroborated...

-- Chapter 4.2, "Gorillas"

Is our perception of being a self-aware mind (or soul) merely an epiphenomenon growing out of various brain activites, or does the mind have an existence beyond mere neuronal patterns in the brain? And if it does, what is its substance, and what is its connection with the material world? This is the essence of the �hard problem� of consciousness. The hard problem is beyond the scope of this thesis, and I will just briefly touch upon a few aspects of it that may be relevant to the phylogenetic origins of the mind.

Lindahl (1997) discusses the evolutionary implications of different views of the relation between the mind (or �mental events�) and the brain (�neural events�). �Mental events� are essentially
our conscious thoughts and decisions, as perceived by ourselves in introspection, and �neural events� are whatever is going on in the brain when a mental event occurs�for example, when I consciously decide to raise my right arm (a mental event), the corresponding neural event is the brain activity that ends up in motor commands going out from the brain to the arm muscles.

Lindahl (1997) distinguishes between three possible relations between mental and neural:

� Epiphenomenal. Neural events are real, and cause e.g. bodily actions. Our perception that mental events cause actions is an illusion. To the extent that mental events exist, they are caused by the neural events as a mere accidental byproduct.

� Interactional. Mental events are real, and interact with, and can cause, neural events and subsequent physical actions. The interactional view can be further subdivided (Vanderwolf, 1998):

� The Aristotelian view, in which the mind is primary. All functions of the body (and brain) are directly due to the mind.
� The Cartesian dualism, in which the mind and body form a symbiotic system, with bodily functions handled mechanically but higher functions (notably language) handled by the mind. In the Cartesian view, only humans have minds
� animals are mindless automata, purely mechanistic.

� Identity. Mental events are neural events. Our perception of consciousness is a neural pattern, and nothing else (Dennett, 2001).

Sampson (1999) presents a fourth alternative, that mind is a social construction, �distributed
among individuals, the texts they produce, the artifacts they create, and the institutions
they develop. (p 1). However, in my judgement her alternative does not add anything useful to
the present discussion.

LANGUAGE, MIND, AND CONSCIOUSNESS

Unfortunately, it is very difficult to get any empirical handles on these alternatives. Both Lindahl (1997) and Arhem & Liljenstrom (1997) attempt to apply evolutionary reasoning, with the followingbasic steps:

� Humans have minds (whatever they may be).
� Not all living things have minds, so minds must have evolved somewhere along the human family tree.
� Minds are complex features, the kind of features that don�t just turn up by accident in evolution, but must confer a selective advantage.
� Features that don�t do anything can�t give a selective advantage.
� The only alternative in which the mind does do something that may confer a selective advantage is the interactional perspective, in which the mind is real, and materially affects the brain and body. In the other alternatives, the mind does not affect anything else, and so cannot confer an advantage.

Both authors conclude that this argument makes a strong but not compelling case for the interactional view. What makes the argument inconclusive is that we cannot rule out the possibility that what is really selected for is a particular type of complex brain activity, of which our perception of having (being?) a mind is a mere byproduct, a spandrel.

[Chapter 5.1, "The hard problem"]

... there are vexing difficulties in correlating neural and mental events � neural events can be measured, but how do we know that a mental event has taken place in somebody else�s head? Vanderwolf (1998) discusses this problem at some length, concluding simply that we can�t know. We can only judge by external behavior (including verbal reports of purported mental events30), but this may not be sufficient � see the Chinese Room parable of Searle (1980) for an extended argument against inferring mental events from external behavior.

[Chapter 5.2, "The easy problem"]

It appears quite clear that a causal link from language to mind and consciousness is unlikely, as language in the full sense of symbolic communication appears to require both a mind and an awareness of mind in others, and is preceded ontogenetically by the first steps on the route towards awareness of self and others. A causal link from mind to language is indicated instead, which implies that mind can be expected to precede language in phylogenesis as well
as in ontogenesis.

Part of the lack of consensus concerns the standards of proof� evidence that would be sufficient to conclude that a child has a theory of mind, is not regarded as suffcient in the case of a chimpanzee (Griffin, 2001). This may be reasonable, as each one of us personally has first-hand evidence of a human child growing up to a being with a theory of mind, but lacks similar first-hand evidence for non-humans, but it places a very heavy, nearly impossible, burden
of proof on the proponents of ape minds....

Nevertheless, in the case of ape minds as well as ape language, the preponderance of the evidence appears to be on the side of the presence rather than absence of at least the rudiments of mind, self-awareness, and theory of mind in our nearest relatives....

[Chapter 6, "Conclusions"]

-- Sverker Johansson, "Animal communication, animal minds, and animal language"

<a href="http://www.ling.lu.se/education/essays/SverkerJohansson_C.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.ling.lu.se/education/essays/SverkerJohansson_C.pdf</a>

No doubt you will find some support for your contention in this paper. However, you will find it abundantly easy to note that the author is careful to be fair and objective by presenting the plethora of difficulties that beset the materialist.

In general, when you take the materialist position to its logical conclusion, you encounter a number of absurdities. One in particular requires serious consideration. I'd like your response to this:

If the human mind is nothing more than the physical matter comprising the brain, then how are we justified in placing any trust in it? How is it possible to pursue the truth?

If what seemingly distinguishes us from the remainder of the animal kingdom is the product of a series of accidental events (i.e. Darwinism), then it seems to be the height of nonsense to engage in reasoning and the pursuit of knowledge. Scientific endeavor ought to be considered wholly unreliable, and everything we experience is likely to be nothing more than a grand, elaborate illusion.

Now Scigirl, you say that you attempt to be objective, but there is so much scientific research that contradicts what you are implying in the OP. Just look up "cognitive science" on a web search, and you will see that you are making a gross oversimplification. You may not intend it, but your suggestions here seem very heavily biased and uncritical. Indeed, it seems as though you are attempting to "make your case" while conveniently dismissing entire fields of science.

Science would be an easy matter if the fundamental states of nature expressed themselves candidly and frankly in experience. In that case we could simply collect the truths lying ready before our eyes. In fact, however, nature is more reserved and shy, and its fundamental states often appear in masquerade. Put less metaphorically, there is no straightforward one-to-one correspondence between a theoretical and an empirical state. One of the reasons for the lack of such a tight connection is that distortions may enter into the relation between theory and evidence, and these distortions may alter the empirical manifestation of a theoretical state. As a result, it is in general a nontrivial task to excavate the underlying state from distorted evidence.

-- Martin Carrier, Physical Force or Geometrical Curvature?, in Philosophical Problems of the Internal and External Worlds

John

[ November 10, 2002: Message edited by: Vanderzyden ]

fleetmouse · 11-10-2002, 07:16 PM

Just a thought from a lurker: why not stop replying to Vander in other threads until he replies to the thread on beneficial mutations?

I mean, he started the thing.

pz · 11-10-2002, 07:23 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by fleetmouse:
Just a thought from a lurker: why not stop replying to Vander in other threads until he replies to the thread on beneficial mutations?

He doesn't make substantive replies in any of these threads, so if nothing else, the multi-pronged assault reveals his wide-ranging unresponsiveness.

Oh, and we did manage to squeeze a specific response out of him in the fetal circulation thread -- it was a hoot.

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11-07-2002, 03:58 PM	#13
Doubting Didymus Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: East Coast. Australia. Posts: 5,455	Well, when we are talking about adaptations specifically, then yes, we can talk about purpose. What is the purpose of the neck of the giraffe? for example. Phrasing the question as 'why did giraffes evolve long necks' is therefore perfectly valid. They evolved long necks because... (it helped them reach higher food, spot predators, etc). The question "how did giraffes evolve long necks" is asking for a completely different set of answers (genetic mechanisms, point mutations, natural selection, etc). 'kay?

11-08-2002, 10:01 AM	#14
Gallimore Junior Member Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Pasadena, CA Posts: 36	Yeah! Of course there's purposefulness of evolution.

11-08-2002, 01:08 PM	#16
lpetrich Contributor Join Date: Jul 2000 Location: Lebanon, OR, USA Posts: 16,829	One important question is what qualifies as "mind". In the broadest sense, it could be anything from a simple feedback loop to full-scale consciousness. As to the emergence of consciousness, it may be some side effect instead of some direct adaptation. One great difficulty in studying it is the difficulty of identifying outwardly-observable features that are connected with it, and I mean by that features other than describing oneself as being consciousness. Brain research may eventually locate differences in brain activity between conscious and unconscious states, but before that happy day, we must use less direct methods of identifying consciousness. A reasonable possible method is testing for self-recognition. Human children learn to recognize themselves at around 2 years of age; this ability eventually disappears from those suffering from neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's disease. Chimpanzees are known to have this ability, though it develops only in adolescence, and some chimps do not quite learn that that chimp in the mirror is themselves. There is evidence for it in orangutans, dolphins, and elephants, perhaps gorillas, but not in most other species. A rhesus monkey was once raised in an area with a mirror; though the monkey learned what a mirror does, it was unable to recognize itself in that mirror.

11-08-2002, 01:38 PM	#17
lpetrich Contributor Join Date: Jul 2000 Location: Lebanon, OR, USA Posts: 16,829	Consciousness may be a subset of another activity: mental modeling, which some others in this thread had mentioned. Testing for this capability in the absence of self-description seems as difficult as testing for consciousness, but here also, there are types of behavior that may indicate its presence. In particular, "insight learning" or "cognitive learning" may essentially be mental modeling in action. This term was coined by Wolfgang Koehler, who did some famous experiments in seeing how chimps could gain access to out-of-reach bananas with the help of items like crates and poles. He noticed that chimps would often pause and then implement a solution; this suggests that they had been modeling the solution in their minds. There is evidence for it in a few other species, but not much. One counterargument comes from experiments by H.G. Birch in 1945, <a href="http://sun.science.wayne.edu/~wpoff/cor/mem/cogninst.html" target="_blank">as described here</a>. He tried to repeat Koehler's experiments, and he found that chimps assemble poles to reach bananas only if they had had a chance to play with assemblable poles and become aware of that property of them. However, I doubt that that is a fatal counterargument. What provoked the evolution of mental modeling is an important question; one possible cause is having to anticipate the behavior of one's fellow members of one's group.

11-10-2002, 07:16 PM	#19
fleetmouse Junior Member Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: funkytown Posts: 97	Just a thought from a lurker: why not stop replying to Vander in other threads until he replies to the thread on beneficial mutations? I mean, he started the thing.

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