Does Evolution Have An Objective?

I don't agree that sentience is required for objectives.For a system to follow an objective requires that (a) the system identifies the objective and (b) takes steps to achieve it based on that objective. Thus a bee involved in nectar foraging behaviour can be said to have an objective, a computer AI can be said to have an objective (sometimes) and we can be said to have objectives but a puddle has no objective because it is not acting to achieve anything. Evolution meets neither criteria so it has no objective.Or, alternatively: only entities can have objectives. Neither a puddle nor evolution are entities so neither can have an objective.

This does not follow. The universe could be completely deterministic, and we would still have free will and be making choices.

Why?

No, a gene has no concept of that objective, and takes no steps based on that concept to achieve it. What would hold that objective? What steps would it be taking in response to that objective?

Why would that be relevant?We have free will if our actions cannot be predicted without knowledge of our internal state. We choose because our nervous systems are responsible for our actions. It matters not a jot whether those nervous systems are deterministic or not.

Well, no, it didn't. It could be predicted with total knowledge, but that's not quite the same thing.And that ability to predict has no baring on whether or not we have free will.

I have no idea why people think the unconscious mind is not also them.

Of course you're still making choices, why wouldn't you be?I can write a computer program that makes choices.

No, I decide what choices it can make not what choices it will make. In fact, I could go further and write a completely deterministic program that makes choices I don't know what are but that's by the by.

I don't see how the possibility of alternative choices matters. We have freewill because we decide; how we decide is irrelevant.

Yes, it is. The response depends on the inputs. Consider a chess playing AI, I would determine how it chooses it moves but not how it would respond to a particular move from its opponent. Any learning algorithm will do this.

No, I'm suggesting that a choice was still made even if given complete knowledge you could predict the choice. The different paths things that could have been chosen. That your means of doing that is deterministic does not effect that.Think of it like this:Environmental inputs -> you -> outcomesWe're making the choice because it's the you in that sequence that is key to which outcome occurs. It makes no difference whether that you is deterministic, probabilistic or mystically something else.

I disagree. I think it's the closest possible meaning to the colloquial sense. The colloquial sense being, of course, nonsense. No, you're really choosing.

No, it's not. It's your choice that determines the path.

Brownian motion is deterministic, it's merely chaotic. In any case, the presence of random/probabilistic/stochastic doesn't provide any better a basis for choice or free will than determinism. By what mechanism do you suppose we make choices, if you reject the notion of deterministic things making choices?