Does Evolution Have An Objective?

Since there are not a selection of options available to the chooser, there is no choice.The engineer's response might be '0.8', which would be a choice and would satisfy between 1 and 1 for low values of 1 No, I would not. The spreadsheet didn't make a choice 'determined by psychological factors', it made a choice that was determined by programming factors. I can't speak for the nematode, but we could say it made a choice determined by 'biological factors'. All choices are determined by something.abe: I would agree that 'determined by bio/psychological factors' is a much more interesting case than the simple decision engine of a spreadsheet. I don't think anyone else in the history of the world has had any problem considering that choosing the blue shirt in the morning is a choice. We all know what a choosing is, we can all point to a person who has made a choice and say 'they chose this'.There was a selection of options available, and they picked one. It doesn't matter if they were determined to pick that one, if it was a truly random event or if some noncausal agent noncausally made the selection. It was still something that is called a 'choice'. Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Why do you just assume the universe is completely deterministic?In this thread, we've been questioning whether it is or not, you don't debate by just assuming your position is correct. What we've been trying to get you to understand about our position, is that we're taking them as not exactly the same thing.

Yes, the imperfect replication is imperfect in a manner that is random with respect to fitness and is not influenced by how closely it matches some future concept. I'm not sure how this is a 'but' to what I said. If anything it is an 'and'. Only in the trivial sense that there is an arrow of time, in which case everything has direction. An egg has the objective of being cooked or hatching or smashing on the floor etc.

Because that's the premise we're discussing. I actually think that the universe is probabilistic at heart, although - as I've pointed out - I consider that irrelevant to the question at hand. Yeah, I've been discussing whether choice and freewill exist in a deterministic universe; I'm not going to get into whether the universe actually is or not in this thread. That's interesting. Perhaps you'd like to make an argument in support of that position then?(Edit: to clarify in my post to which you responded the 'we' I was talking about was me and the hypothetical person saying 'I chose the pink shirt' not we as in the people arguing in this thread)Edited by Mr Jack, : No reason given.Edited by Mr Jack, : Added clarification

'Thunderstorms are created by Thor at his whim''No, thunderstorms are caused by a certain confluence of natural meterological phenomena which, while difficult to predict exactly are nevertheless deterministic systems.''Those are mere electrical storms, not the thunderstorms I'm talking about, which are created by Thor''We're talking about the exact same thing''No, thunderstorms are created by Thor, that's the position''But we are talking about the same thing, we just disagree as to whether they are caused by theistic whimsy or are deterministic systems'We are talking about the same thing, even if we disagree as to what's going on behind the scenes with that thing. A choice is a choice, we all know what we are talking about when someone has a choice, they decide on something, thereby choosing it. Yup, we say, that person chose x.But what does it mean when we say 'that person chose x'? What exactly is 'that person'? Is 'that person' a non causal entity of some kind, as it sometimes feels that it is for us to be a person, or is 'that person' a complex decision making system based on an obfuscated deterministic system of rules?That's the disagreement. Not whether or not deciding to wear the green shirt should be called making a choice or not. It is, we both agree, making a choice. They refer to the same thing in the physical world. You might think choosing is a different process than I do, but we both agree choosing is going on.

That would be a very strange use of the words indeed.I agree that (in a deterministic universe*) evolution has a direction in the same way, say, an asteroid tumbling through space has a velocity and thus a direction. But when we talk about evolution having a direction, we are not usually merely noting that things that evolve will end up somewhere, we're talking about whether there are meaningful trends that can be identified and whether particular features are inevitable given the process; not merely determined by the random values that happen to turn up.And it would be bizarre indeed to talk of that as an objective.* - I'd note that, if quantum mechanics are really probabilistic, then the level at which mutations occur is probably close enough to the quantum to be non-deterministic and thus it's quite plausible that, in the real universe, random mutations are not determined at all.

The atoms, molecules in combination with physics and chemistry; manifested your choice for tea at the moment of the big bang. A choice for tea 14 billion years in the making.

No, they really didn't. That's complete nonsense.Why do people come over all funny about this when talking about 'choice'? We don't talk about trees having grown at the big bang, or solar flares happening at the big bang. In the normal scheme of things we have no problem with determistic events being the causes for other things or happening at different times, why should choice be such a problem?

This is most certainly the case for many mutations, if not all. One of the best examples is mutations caused by radiation, and more specifically high energy photons (e.g. UV radiation). The double slit experiment is one of the classic QM experiments, and these same photons with wave probabilities are causing mutations.Even at the level of DNA replication there are quantum effects. For example, in this paper the authors describe how mutations are due to a loose fit between free nucleotides and the active site of polymerases (enzymes that replicate DNA). They describe the results in probabilities, the same as you would for any quantum or thermodynamic event.There are also larger molecular interactions that would probably not be described in terms of QM. For example, the insertion of transposons occurs between very large macromolecules. However, these events are again only describable in terms of probability. The same transposon will insert in many different places, even in genetically identical organisms in the exact same environment. I know this from my personal experience with random transposon mutagenesis in bacteria.With evolution, we are looking at a system that is very, very susceptible to the "Butterfly Effect". Small changes in the beginning conditions can produce very large changes in the results. Something as simple as a low pressure system moving 10 miles south instead of north can result in a hurricane. This hurricane can result in flooding in a specific lake system causing large standing areas of stagnant water. Within these stagnant pools you can have algal blooms that would have otherwise not occured. This increase in algae allows for a massive increase in genetic diversity that would have otherwise not occurred, possibly resulting in an algae population that is capable of producing a new neurotoxin that would have otherwise not existed if that low pressure system had moved north 10 miles instead of south. . . just as one example.

Here is the relevant extract from the source already quoted at you more fully previously

quote:

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Roughly 95 percent of respondents describe the second universe (the one in which human decision making was indeterministic) as the one most like ours.

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What the experimental data appear to show is that we really do imagine ourselves to be agents with genuine, metaphysically robust alternative possibilities, and we really do, at least in moments of cool, abstract consideration, tend to favor an alternative possibilities requirement on moral responsibility. So, the experimental data seem to be something of a victory for incompatibilist diagnoses of commonsense.

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LinkYour use of the word "choice" in the context of freewill isn't compatible with 95% of the respondents in the above experiment is it?You seem to have reached the point where you are actually denying evidence. "Other people" being 95% of the population if the experiment above is indicative.

If this thread demonstrates anything it is that we don't all mean the same thing conceptually when we use the term "choice".For some it seems that "could have done otherwise" in the sense of there being "genuine, metaphysically robust alternative possibilities" is rather key to the concept of choice as they mean it.

Absolutely. Haven't you ever seen the movie,
The Matrix? That is what it is all about Mr. Jack. We get all funny about choice because as sentient, feeling and emotional creatures we like to think we/us/self are in control/choice/chooses/dictates/ our reality. "Choice is an illusion, created between those with power, and those without.
Please, ma cherie, I told you, we are all victims of causality. I drank too much wine. Now I must take a piss.
Humans typically like the idea of control. It is comforting to us. We also like the idea of being responsible for our actions and choices. On the grand scheme of things we have very little control over the deterministic actions of how the universe unfolds. But just thinking we can somehow shape our future by making good/well informed/morally right choice give us a warm fuzzy.

Right, and 'created by Thor' was a really important characteristics of thunderstorms in my example so thunderstorms were thought of conceptually differently. But we can both point to thunderstorms and when we do, we point at the same thing. The interesting question is 'what is making the choice?', and then there is a separation: either to some metaphysical choice maker or a physical choice maker. Wrangling over whether a physical choice maker is making choices in the same way a metaphyisical choice maker does and how this demerits the true meaning of choice is just a distraction to this actually interesting discussion about how we make the things that we point to and call 'choices'.

The fact that you felt the need to write a post telling us why we all mean the same thing by the term "choice" is (ironically) testament to the fact that we quite evidently don't. And when we point to the physical outcome of a "choice" we mean the same thing as well. But if the actual term "choice" as actually used by real people conceptually entails more than the physical outcome and includes meaning related to "could have done otherwise" in the sense of there being "genuine, metaphysically robust alternative possibilities" why do you think the term "choice" doesn't include that meaning? OK. But this thread has thus far been about whether or not free-will and determinism are compatible as opposed to whether or not some form of determinism is correct. No. It is fundamental to the discussion at hand. We all seem to agree that freewill necessarily depends on "choice". So the question here ultimately boils down to whether or not "choice" is simply a matter of doing what one wants even if what one wants is itself entirely causally determined by events over which we have no control Vs a genuine ability to "could have done otherwise" in the sense of there being "genuine, metaphysically robust alternative possibilities"."Choice" is the battleground of this thread.

Erm, no. I felt the need to write a post because we all do point to the same phenomena when we are talking about 'choice'. The difference of opinion is not whether choice exists, since everybody agrees that it does - the difference is over the nature of choice.Like with the thunderstorms. We are in agreement there are thunderstorms, even if we all disagree on their nature. And we can both point to a guy picking out a shirt and identify that he chose the green one and we both point at him and say 'he has made a choice'. And if you think that thunderstorms necessarily mean 'created by Thor' that doesn't mean we aren't talking about the same thing. Sure, you conceive of a thunderstorm in a different way than I do, but we both agree they exist and we both know what we mean when we use the term.Likewise with choice. You can conceive of choice differently than me, but we can both identify people making choices. I was pointing out that the question regarding choice is really about the entity that makes the choice. Do 'we' make the choice in a way that is free from causality, or are 'we' making the choice in accordance with determinism?The fact that we are making a choice remains. No, it is what is making the choice. Is it deterministic decision machine or a non-deterministic one somehow 'free' from the boundaries of determinism.If the decision maker is free from determinism then there exists "genuine, metaphysically robust alternative possibilities". If it is not, there are not. But we still make decisions which are called choices, whatever concepts we have about how those choices are made.