AIDS denial and creationism--common thread of bad statistics

This is just to point out that, although Mark Chu-Carroll's and Tara's elucidation of probabilistic fallacies by creationists and by HIV denialists are OK, both fail to mention earlier treatments of probabilities wherein all these fallacies of creationists' quasi-probabilistic reasoning were revealed in detail. It is available online here and here (1999), as well as in my book Unintelligent Design (2003).

Correction: the references to online posts in my previous comment 126050 are to be amended: here and here.

Peter Duesberg promotes the 'chemical AIDS hypothesis'which he believes explains all aspects of AIDS in the USA, Europe and Africa. In short, Duesberg is a proponent of the notion that anti-retroviral drugs actually cause, through toxicity, a condition which is generally defined as AIDS. He maintains that the HI virus is merely a bystander.

Despite the fact that Duesberg and his colleagues, David Rasnick and Robert Giraldo, complain that their views are supressed and sidelined by the mainstream scientific community, they carry inordinate political influence in South Africa, where they are members of the Presidential Aids Advisory Panel, a body heavily weighted in favour of denialists.

This panel is intended to "assist the government in its informed response to the HIV/AIDS catastrophe" in South Africa.

The result has been a president who does not believe that there is a link between the HI virus and AIDS, and a minister of health that recommends garlic, beetroot, lemons, olive oil and other 'traditional medicines' as a better alternative to anti-retroviral drug therapy.

According to the Actuarial Society of South Africa, there are approximately 7 million HIV+ individuals in South Africa, with about 600 to 800 deaths per day directly caused by AIDS related infections. As yet the government's response to this pandemic has been pitifully slow.

Besides being guilty of poor science, Duesberg and his fellow travellers carry a moral responsibility for the catastrophe engulfing millions of South Africans.

"Leaving aside the issue of independent events, which is too extensive to discuss here, I note that there are always a fantastically huge number of evolutionary paths that might be taken by an organism (or a process) over time. I also note that there is only one that actually will be taken."

Actually there seems to be evidence that there aren't always a fantastically large number of paths that might be taken by an organism. http://news.com.com/Is+evolution+predictable/2100-11395_3-6074543.html?tag=nefd.top

The AIDs statistics seems to have been abused by Duesberg, but I don't think the Creationist probability is completely invalid.

I don't think the Creationist probability is completely invalid.

I don't think the Creationist probability is completely invalid.

Wing|ess wrote: I don't think the Creationist probability is completely invalid

"Since you are apparently about to lay the foundations of an exciting new branch of math, you have an attentive audience here. Please explain just exactly what you feel all the critics of CP are getting wrong. Please be as specific as possible, so we may discuss the point like adults."

I didn't say it is valid, but I instead said that they aren't completely wrong - it does seem impossible, just not as impossible as some of the math they use suggests. The question I find myself asking is:

If it can be proven that there are limited molecular pathways for evolution today - that is, that very few responses are available to the same envionmental duress - what are the environmental conditions required for evolution? And if there only exists limited paths for evolution to take, how do we account for the variety of species observed in the fossil record that are now extinct?

It's a known fact that species go extinct faster than new species are created today, - no matter how the word species is defined - and natural selection seems more adept at eliminating new species than producing them, as the evolution of dogs seems to show. Perhaps earth was more hospitable in the past, preventing the mechanism of natural selection from eliminating new species. However if the mechanism of natural slection is absent - how then does new information arise except via random mutation? Creationists use probability to illustrate the impossiblity of obtaining specified information via randomness alone.

To proven Creationsts' probabilty wrong - you have to prove that information is not specified. The more pathways for evolution, the better. I've not seen enough proof of this yet - in fact I've seen evidence that there are only limited pathways for evolution to take - thus I say that Creationists aren't completely wrong.

To prove that Creationists aren't using correct probability calculations to support their arguments, all we have to do is demonstrate that their calculations and arguments simply don't apply to the real world in any workable way. This has been done ad nauseam. It's effectively saying that flipping a coin is a good model for predicting the climate over a ten year period.

Eric G.: Let's hope that South Africa can shake HIV Denialism more quickly and completely than the USSR's disposal of Lysenkoism.

Actually there seems to be evidence that there aren't always a fantastically large number of paths that might be taken by an organism.

If it can be proven that there are limited molecular pathways for evolution today - that is, that very few responses are available to the same envionmental duress - what are the environmental conditions required for evolution? And if there only exists limited paths for evolution to take, how do we account for the variety of species observed in the fossil record that are now extinct?

Wing|ess: If it can be proven that there are limited molecular pathways for evolution today - that is, that very few responses are available to the same envionmental duress - what are the environmental conditions required for evolution? And if there only exists limited paths for evolution to take, how do we account for the variety of species observed in the fossil record that are now extinct? Environmental conditions are constantly changing. In particular, the other organisms in the environment change; thus, there are constantly new challenges and opportunities. That there are limited pathways under identical conditions is oh so very irrelevant.

— Popper

Wing|ess suggests same environmental duress and your translation as 'identifical' seems to avoid a very relevant question.

If you would READ the article he cited, which I QUOTED in #126298, it uses the word "identical".

Sigh. I won't play your game here either.

Actually there seems to be evidence that there aren't always a fantastically large number of paths that might be taken by an organism. http://news.com.com/Is+evolution+predictable/210... The AIDs statistics seems to have been abused by Duesberg, but I don't think the Creationist probability is completely invalid.

— Wing|esS

Sigh. I won't play your game here either.

— Popper's Ghost

I didn't say it is valid, but I instead said that they aren't completely wrong - it does seem impossible, just not as impossible as some of the math they use suggests.

— Wing|ess

If it can be proven that there are limited molecular pathways for evolution today - that is, that very few responses are available to the same envionmental duress - what are the environmental conditions required for evolution?

And if there only exists limited paths for evolution to take, how do we account for the variety of species observed in the fossil record that are now extinct?

If it can be proven that there are limited molecular pathways for evolution today - that is, that very few responses are available to the same environmental duress - what are the environmental conditions required for evolution?

If ... what are the environmental conditions required for evolution?

Sigh. I won't play your game here either.

Duesberg also evolutionary/creationist arguments against HIV.

It is now claimed that there are at least two new retroviruses capable of causing AIDS, HIV-1 and HIV-2 (3, 7, 12-14), which differ about 60% in their nucleic acid sequences (148). Both allegedly evolved only 20 to < 100 years ago (12). Since viruses, like cells, are the products of gradual evolution, the proposition that, within a very short evolutionary time, two different viruses capable of causing AIDS would have evolved or crossed over from another species is highly improbable (56, 64, 159). It is also improbable that viruses evolved that kill their only natural host with efficiencies of 50-100% as is claimed for the HIVs (7, 33-38).

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 86, pp. 755-764, February 1989

The three references that Duesberg gives for the improbability of this happening are an article in the NY Native by a lay journalist John Lauritsen, a book by John Rappaport titled AIDS INC and a doctor Joseph Sonnabend.

Nowhere does Duesberg actually state why such an event is improbable.

One could also ask what the probability of different polymorphisms of influenza hemagglutinin and neuraminidase evolving over a few hundred years.

Finally is the similarity between the arguments of HIV "rethinkers" and evolution "rethinkers" just coincidence? Is it evidence of design?

Probably it's the result of starting with your conclusion and then constructing arguments that support it regardless of their validity.

If several groups of organisms react to the same change the same way it doesn't necessarily imply that there's any particular "design" involved, just the efficiency of one similar solution.

— Stevaroni

One may ask what role does teleology circular arguement (still) play in evolution and why this role need not be supportive of ID?

Wing|esS said:

"what are the environmental conditions required for evolution?"

Am I reading this right - In other words - "Evolution is wrong until abiogenesis can be explained"? (sigh)

"To proven Creationsts' probabilty wrong - you have to prove that information is not specified."

No, creationists have to prove to us that information IS specified. By what. When. Where. How.

However, once again, I fear this is getting off the topic of AIDS denialism. Please don't tell me you're an AIDS denier too?

Sorry for asking to support your claims. Won't happen agin.

I think that the concept of convergent evolution requires some answers such as how does evolutionary theory explain this?

What if a 'particular design' follows from the constraints posed by for instance development or physics?

Could that be a reason why different species may reach similar solutions given similar circumstances?

Ruse has some interesting thoughts on this, check out "Darwin and Design: Does Evolution Have a Purpose?".

The current debate over "intelligent design theory" is only the latest phase in the perennial debate over the question of design in nature. Beginning with Aristotle's "final cause," this idea was the dominant explanation for biological adaptation in nature until the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. Darwin's work united the biological sciences with the other natural sciences by providing a non-teleological explanation for the origin of adaptation. However, Darwin's theory has been repeatedly challenged by theories invoking design in nature.

One may ask what role does teleology (still) play in evolution and why this role need not be supportive of ID?

It's off topic for AIDS/HIV, and I swore to myself that I would enjoy the arguments on PT without getting personally involved, BUT... there are an incredible number of errors in Wingless' paragraph:

"It's a known fact that species go extinct faster than new species are created today, - no matter how the word species is defined - and natural selection seems more adept at eliminating new species than producing them, as the evolution of dogs seems to show. Perhaps earth was more hospitable in the past, preventing the mechanism of natural selection from eliminating new species. However if the mechanism of natural selection is absent - how then does new information arise except via random mutation? Creationists use probability to illustrate the impossibility of obtaining specified information via randomness alone."

1) Extinction is an event, speciation is a process. Thus, the two are difficult to compare in terms of frequency. I think it's safe to conjecture, however, that even in this time of an explosion in extinctions, there are many more populations in the process of speciation than there are species going extinct. Though, of course, not all those populations will evolve into species.

2) Natural selection is as much involved in speciation as extinction.

3) How does the incredible diversification in domestic dogs support your thesis?

4) The mechanism of natural selection is not absent, nor has it been absent since life arose.

5) Random mutation isn't the only way new information is gained in living things, but it is a very important way.

Information is transferred from the environment via modification plus selection. The genome encodes information from the sequence of environments of the organism's predecessors. Just consider your own body and how much it reflects the circumstances of your vast chain of ancestors. It's a bit sad that creationists want to deny this legacy.

I wrote: If several groups of organisms react to the same change the same way it doesn't necessarily imply that there's any particular "design" involved, just the efficiency of one similar solution.

PvM replied: Nor does the efficiency of one similar solution necessarily imply that there is no particular design involved.

Information is transferred from the environment via modification plus selection.

Information is transferred from the environment via modification plus selection. The genome encodes information from the sequence of environments of the organism's predecessors. Just consider your own body and how much it reflects the circumstances of your vast chain of ancestors. It's a bit sad that creationists want to deny this legacy.

— Popper

In order to make a case for or against a trend in the evolution of complexity in biological evolution, complexity needs to be both rigorously defined and measurable. A recent information-theoretic (but intuitively evident) definition identifies genomic complexity with the amount of information a sequence stores about its environment. We investigate the evolution of genomic complexity in populations of digital organisms and monitor in detail the evolutionary transitions that increase complexity. We show that because natural selection forces genomes to behave as a natural ``Maxwell Demon'', within a fixed environment genomic complexity is forced to increase.

The ToE has no problem with convergent evolution; in fact, it predicts it. The same peak can be reached from different starting points. For instance, Darwin's logical proposal for the development of the eye was not specific to any one organism; there's no reason why it shouldn't arise more than once. The same is true of, say, penises.

— Popper

PvML What if a 'particular design' follows from the constraints posed by for instance development or physics? The constraints are part of the fitness function, so certainly the locations of the peaks "follows from" them.

— Popper

PvM: Could that be a reason why different species may reach similar solutions given similar circumstances? Hill climbing from different starting points will get to the same peak if it's reachable.

PvM Ruse has some interesting thoughts on this, check out "Darwin and Design: Does Evolution Have a Purpose?". Allen MacNeill, who covered Ruse among others in his seminar, wrote in the course description:

The current debate over "intelligent design theory" is only the latest phase in the perennial debate over the question of design in nature. Beginning with Aristotle's "final cause," this idea was the dominant explanation for biological adaptation in nature until the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. Darwin's work united the biological sciences with the other natural sciences by providing a non-teleological explanation for the origin of adaptation. However, Darwin's theory has been repeatedly challenged by theories invoking design in nature.

— Popper

Back to PvM: PvM: One may ask what role does teleology (still) play in evolution and why this role need not be supportive of ID? Teleology in evolution is a misleading metaphor best dispensed with. Instead of talking about, say, the purpose of a bird's wing, we should talk about the capabilities a bird's wing provides; this lets us understand its adaptive value, how it lends to fitness. As for why something need not be supportive of something else, that would be the default position in the absence of any reason to think it is supportive. And it's up to the IDists to give an argument that something is supportive of ID. But, if you want to be a proxy for IDists and you have such an argument, you should give it.

Ruse/Darwin and Design (plus papers on teleology in biology by Ayala, Mayr, and Nagel): Both ID supporters and evolution supporters quickly agreed that all of these authors make a convincing case for the legitimacy of inferring teleology (or what Mayr and others call "teleonomy") in evolutionary adaptations. That is, adaptations can legitimately be said to have "functions," and that the genomes of organisms constitute "designs" for their actualization, which is accomplished via organisms' developmental biology interacting with their environments.

Those genes contain information (in the colloquial sense, not the Shannon sense) about which adaptations work in the environment. The answer they specify is better suited to the environment because it's been sorted by the environment, much the same way that flowing rivers sort gravel from sand. That's where the "extra information" comes from, apparently in violation of the much tortured "laws of entropy". You might be onto a good argument here.

And yet, teleology or metaphorical language is persistent in biology. Rather than dispensing with it, one may explore why teleology is so persistent in evolution. In fact, that's exactly what Mayr, Nagel, Ayala and Ruse have done. They have shown that rather than rejecting teleology, it makes far more sense to include teleology in evolution as a necessary and inevitable outcome of natural selection.

The ToE has no problem with convergent evolution; in fact, it predicts it. The same peak can be reached from different starting points. For instance, Darwin's logical proposal for the development of the eye was not specific to any one organism; there's no reason why it shouldn't arise more than once. The same is true of, say, penises.

— PvM

What if the evidence shows that the eye is mono-phyletic? Did evolutionary theory predict this as well?

The problem, at least from an IDer's perspective, is that evolutionary theory can predict either case.

— PvM

Without additional data, it seems that evolutionary theory is very accomodating in its explanations.

— PvM

Given this opportunity where evolutionary theory lacks sufficient data to show what happened, ID tries to insert its own explanations.

— PvM

What if a 'particular design' follows from the constraints posed by for instance development or physics? The constraints are part of the fitness function, so certainly the locations of the peaks "follows from" them.

— PvM

Indeed. Design constrained by certain requirements or physical constraints... No wonder that ID sees opportunities here.

And yet, teleology or metaphorical language is persistent in biology. Rather than dispensing with it, one may explore why teleology is so persistent in evolution. In fact, that's exactly what Mayr, Nagel, Ayala and Ruse have done. They have shown that rather than rejecting teleology, it makes far more sense to include teleology in evolution as a necessary and inevitable outcome of natural selection.

Although in Mayr's words teleonomy is "perhaps the most characteristic feature of the world of living organisms," it seems to be viewed strictly as a system-dependent process, not a general principle. This allows its application in ecology and organismic biology (e.g., migration, courtship, ontogeny, and numerous other goal-directed processes) but prevents its application in evolution theory (which would generalize it to cosmic dimensions). Mayr, reflecting the traditional worldview, states: "It is illegitimate to describe evolutionary progress or trends as goal directed (teleological). Selection rewards past phenomena ... but does not plan for the future." Biologists thus generally deny any form of evolutionary "progress" that might be motivated by a goal, or imply "final cause" (Futuyma, 1979). Trends in evolution, then, must be due to either chance occurrences, (e.g., disturbance, migration, environmental change, and so forth) or teleomatic end results (e.g., adaptation, niche segregation, optimization, and others).

Actually genes also contain information in the Shannon sense.

Actually genes also contain information in the Shannon sense.

They have shown that rather than rejecting teleology, it makes far more sense to include teleology in evolution as a necessary and inevitable outcome of natural selection.

I thought maybe I should add a bit about evolution, convergence, and divergence.

What we receive from an actual causal (classical sense) evolutionary theory is the ability to understand what is predicted for convergence, and what is predicted for divergence. Both are allowed within an evolutionary framework, however convergence to the same developmental processes and structural frameworks in organs which were originally highly different, is impossible or would at least take a very long time.

What evolution predicts is that convergence will not wipe out homologies, not in any recently (millions of years) converged organ, anyway. Evolution proceeds within limits, so that a penguin flipper is predicted to almost certainly demonstrate homologies with other birds' wings, if it indeed did evolutionarily converge with the flippers of turtles, say.

Here is where ID turns especially egregious. They want to claim that the "common designer" is responsible for homologies and analogies, and yet they can't give us any reasonable answer as to why the penguin flipper should share similarities with bird wings which it does not share with sea turtles.

It has to be "God wanted it that way", or maybe more sadly, "we don't know the purposes of the designer". Well, can any designer be reasonably invoked, without evidence for its existence, which wishes to produce by design the results predicted in evolutionary convergences? No, it is not a plausible designer, it is a "designer" that really does produce whatever we see.

Or to put it another way, the constrained model which explains the phenomenon is preferred over any unconstrained model that "predicts" anything at all ("God can do anything").

Organisms that have evolved within the limits of an understood evolutionary process have to evolve in certain ways, namely through derivation from pre-existing organs, systems, appendages, etc. There may be some few exceptions of de novo development not sensibly modifying other organs, systems, etc., but these truly novel traits are rare.

And because we know that both divergences and convergences must almost always be derived from previously existing forms, we are able to identify the homologies underlying the analogies as reflecting the original organ from which the analogous organ was derived. It really is a consistent prediction of present-day evolutionary theory that a convergence will reveal modification from differing sources of genetic material, a prediction that we use to identify analogy and homology.

Now there is nothing new about differentiating between analogy and homology. The creationist Owen, IIRC, systematically determined homologies and analogies. Yet he couldn't put these into a causal framework, he didn't have a theory to provide entailed predictions of what to expect from homology and what to expect from analogy.

A causal evolutionary theory filled in the gap, providing a consistent theory which explained why analogies are underlain by "designs" which are often quite different from the "final designs". The simultaneous convergence of two unrelated organisms and divergence from their respective ancestors became an integrated story in the causal evolutionary model. The piecemeal, unpredictive notion that "God must have wanted it that way," was supplanted by a theory that explained the phenomenon of simultaneous convergence (to flippers) and divergence (from wings and feet) in the flippers of penguins and turtles.

IDists don't look for the meaningful predictions of evolution, rather they demand the predictions that are not possible. Evolutionary predictions involving convergence/divergence are entailed by known evolutionary mechanisms, while ID has nothing anywhere at all that can match the diagnostic predictions of evolutionary theory.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm

What if the evidence shows that the eye is mono-phyletic?

Did evolutionary theory predict this as well?

The problem, at least from an IDer's perspective, is that evolutionary theory can predict either case. Without additional data, it seems that evolutionary theory is very accomodating in its explanations. Given this opportunity where evolutionary theory lacks sufficient data to show what happened, ID tries to insert its own explanations.

Or to put it another way, the constrained model which explains the phenomenon is preferred over any unconstrained model that "predicts" anything at all ("God can do anything").

he couldn't put these into a causal framework

Mayr, reflecting the traditional worldview, states: "It is illegitimate to describe evolutionary progress or trends as goal directed (teleological). Selection rewards past phenomena ... but does not plan for the future."

Actually genes also contain information in the Shannon sense.

And it should be clear how that relates to my comment about information (in the less formal sense) being transferred from the environment; the genome becomes less uncertain about the environment over time.

Uncertainty and Information: Foundations of Generalized Information Theory contains comprehensive and up-to-date coverage of results that have emerged from a research program begun by the author in the early 1990s under the name "generalized information theory" (GIT). This ongoing research program aims to develop a formal mathematical treatment of the interrelated concepts of uncertainty and information in all their varieties. In GIT, as in classical information theory, uncertainty (predictive, retrodictive, diagnostic, prescriptive, and the like) is viewed as a manifestation of information deficiency, while information is viewed as anything capable of reducing the uncertainty.

Popper, must you turn EVERY goddamn thread into a playground fight?

Geez.

Lenny, must your every comment be a moronic ad hominem?

Excuse me, I should have said "clueless". You rarely demonstrate any comprehension of what is being discussed.

Michael D. Vose, "The Simple Genetic Algorithm: Foundations and Theory", The MIT Press, 1999, treats thoroughly the hill-climbing aspects of SGA. While actual biological genetics evolves in many ways more interesting than SGA, still the book offers certain insights not available elsewhere, AFAIK.

And there is no teleology anywhere in sight...

(sigh)

Go ahead, Lenny, say something intelligent about teleology, convergence, hill climbing, explanation ... even if it's something you wrote years ago and have posted to PT a thousand times. Answer PvM's question "what role does teleology (still) play in evolution and why this role need not be supportive of ID?" Surely you're capable of saying something intelligent and substantive?

Re "What if the evidence shows that the eye is mono-phyletic? Did evolutionary theory predict this as well? The problem, at least from an IDer's perspective, is that evolutionary theory can predict either case."

Evolution is consistent with either case, which means that it doesn't predict either one over the other.

Henry

Re "What if the evidence shows that the eye is mono-phyletic? Did evolutionary theory predict this as well? The problem, at least from an IDer's perspective, is that evolutionary theory can predict either case."

Evolution is consistent with either case, which means that it doesn't predict either one over the other.

Henry

Do ya suppose if I posted that a third time I might get the right tag format for italics in it? Nah, probably not.

But anything and everything is consistent with "unknown aliens made it that way for unknown reasons"; the ToE goes beyond that. We expect to see cases where different lines occupying similar niches produce similar structures that provide similar faculties; the constraints of the environment and of the evolutionary process provide only limited degrees of freedom. And for the same reason, we expect to see cases where a faculty is so specialized and is the result of such a long and detailed evolutionary history that it only arose once. Species can't acquire faculties just because they would be useful -- not through evolution. It would be no problem (AFAWK) for the aliens to throw in a faculty wherever it would be useful, but there's no evidence of that; everywhere we look, there are traces of evolutionary pathways; no "skyhooks" are to be seen, only "cranes". And where we haven't found the cranes, they have a habit of showing up eventually, such as the microscopic fossils of the Precambrian or the homologies between Bacterial flagella and secretory systems. But the IDists take failure (so far) to detect cranes as a reason to infer skyhooks -- by way of argumentum ad ignorantiam.

Actually, box jellyfish eyes do look, from my perspective of limited knowledge, like a faculty tacked on by aliens; the damned things don't even have a central nervous system! I don't have any idea of the evolutionary pathway of those eyes, if there is one. But I do know that argumentum ad ignorantiam is a fallacy.

Still can't make an actual case for teleology in biology, I see. It's the old word games of IDists, and argumentums ad hominems, that you use for your "argument", rather than deigning to provide what science requires, evidence.

— Glen Davidson

Ayala next develops a complex conception of teleology. An object or behavior is teleological when it gives evidence of design or appears to be directed toward certain ends. Features of organisms, such as the wings of a bird, are teleological when they are adaptations which originate by natural selection and when they function to increase the reproductive success of their carriers. Inanimate objects and processes, such as a salt molecule or a mountain, are not teleological since they are not directed towards specific ends. Teleological explanations, in turn, account for the existence of teleological features. Ayala then distinguishes between those actions or objects which are purposeful and those which are not. The former exhibit artificial or external teleology. Those resulting from actions which are not purposeful exhibit natural or internal teleology. Bounded natural teleology, in turn, describes an end-state reached in spite of environmental fluctuations, whereas unbounded teleology refers to an end-state that is not specifically predetermined, but results from one of several available alternatives. The adaptations of organisms are teleological in this indeterminate sense. Finally, teleological explanations are fully compatible with efficient causal explanations, and in some cases both are required.

Shannon information is a mathematical abstraction --- specifically, it's a measure of the decrease of uncertainty at a receiver. It's not meaningful to talk of a physical object "containing" information in this sense.

— Popper

Still can't make an actual case for teleology in biology, I see. It's the old word games of IDists, and argumentums ad hominems, that you use for your "argument", rather than deigning to provide what science requires, evidence.

— Glen Davidson

Ayala next develops a complex conception of teleology. An object or behavior is teleological when it gives evidence of design or appears to be directed toward certain ends. Features of organisms, such as the wings of a bird, are teleological when they are adaptations which originate by natural selection and when they function to increase the reproductive success of their carriers. Inanimate objects and processes, such as a salt molecule or a mountain, are not teleological since they are not directed towards specific ends. Teleological explanations, in turn, account for the existence of teleological features. Ayala then distinguishes between those actions or objects which are purposeful and those which are not. The former exhibit artificial or external teleology. Those resulting from actions which are not purposeful exhibit natural or internal teleology. Bounded natural teleology, in turn, describes an end-state reached in spite of environmental fluctuations, whereas unbounded teleology refers to an end-state that is not specifically predetermined, but results from one of several available alternatives. The adaptations of organisms are teleological in this indeterminate sense. Finally, teleological explanations are fully compatible with efficient causal explanations, and in some cases both are required.

Abstract --- When studying information, biologists and behavioral scientists often eschew Shannon entropy. Instead, they commonly use a decision-theoretic measure of the value of information, on the grounds that Shannon's measure draws no distinction between useful and useless information. Here we show that these two measures are intimately related in the context of biological evolution. We present a sim- ple model of evolution in an uncertain environment, and calculate the increase in Darwinian fitness that is made possible by information about the environmental state. This fitness increase --- the fitness value of information --- is a composite of both the Shannon entropy and the decision-theoretic measure of information value. Furthermore, the Shannon entropy of the environment, which seemingly fails to take anything about Darwinian fitness into account, nonetheless imposes an upper bound on the fitness value of information.

Answer PvM's question "what role does teleology (still) play in evolution and why this role need not be supportive of ID?" Surely you're capable of saying something intelligent and substantive?

— Popper

Posted by Popper's ghost on September 6, 2006 07:01 PM Lenny, must your every comment be a moronic ad hominem?

What if the evidence shows that the eye is mono-phyletic? What if it is? Even if vertebrate and box jellyfish eyes both utilize the same proteins, or variations of the same ancient gene, that doesn't mean that their eyes didn't arise separately. Hell, all these organisms utilize DNA; does that show that their eyes or other simiar features aren't examples of convergent evolution?

The problem, at least from an IDer's perspective, is that evolutionary theory can predict either case. Without additional data, it seems that evolutionary theory is very accomodating in its explanations. Given this opportunity where evolutionary theory lacks sufficient data to show what happened, ID tries to insert its own explanations.

— PvM

But the problem is that the ID camp tends to conflate the colloquial meaning of information as meaning, with the Shannon sense of available data in the transmission medium. The ID "no new information from a mutation" argument illustrates this. There is no Shannon objection at all. I work with binary data streams all day long and it makes perfect sense to me.

— Stevaroni

But try to explain that to someone's who's looking to answer the commonsense problem of a new, more specified piece of meaning being created. Information from the environment is a good way of summarizing the driving function.

PvM: Actually genes also contain information in the Shannon sense. What percentage of the population would understand that, that statement uses the word 'information' as a quantifiable abstract description of an object that can be measured and used to make predictions; rather than ID pseudo science use of the word, which is used as pure obscurantism in the form 'information' contains 'a message' from you know who. Maybe less than 1/10 of a percent or 1 in a thousand?

— KE

It's worth noting that when PvM says "ID tries to insert its own explanations", he, like they, is misusing the word. "It was designed" is no more an explanation than "It happened by magic".

— Popper

It would be the same if, when asked to explain why humans and box jellyfish both have eyes, a biologist answered "they converged". That's not an explanation, it's just a restatement of what we are seeking an explanation for.

ToE predicts that we will see cases of convergence, and that we will see cases of so-called "apparent design" --- of features that provide some capacity or facility to the organism. The prediction follows from the explanation, which can be given in terms of natural selection at one level and hill climbing at another. And an explanation of the development of the eye can be given at one level in such terms as Darwin's developmental sequence, and at another in terms of genes that provide the proteins utilized in the eye.

But don't expect PvM to start using that Mayr quote when he mentions teleology; that would require intellectual honesty.

Mayr, reflecting the traditional worldview, states: "It is illegitimate to describe evolutionary progress or trends as goal directed (teleological). Selection rewards past phenomena ... but does not plan for the future." Biologists thus generally deny any form of evolutionary "progress" that might be motivated by a goal, or imply "final cause" (Futuyma, 1979). Trends in evolution, then, must be due to either chance occurrences, (e.g., disturbance, migration, environmental change, and so forth) or teleomatic end results (e.g., adaptation, niche segregation, optimization, and others).

As Ernst Mayr pointed out in his 1974 paper ("Teleological and Teleonomic: A New Analysis." In Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Volume XIV, pages 91 -117), it may be legitimate for evolutionary biologists to refer to adaptations as teleological. However, such adaptations have evolved by natural selection, which itself is NOT a purposeful process. Therefore, we have a fascinating paradox: purposefulness can evolve (as an emergent property) from non-purposeful matter (and energy, of course) via a process that is itself purposeless (as far as we can tell). This immediately suggests the following questions: * Is there design or purpose anywhere in nature? * If so, are there objective empirical means by which it can be detected and its existence explained? * Can the foregoing questions be answered using methodological naturalism as an a priori assumption? * What implications do the answers to these questions have for science in general and evolutionary biology in particular?

Ernst Mayr (Mayr, E. (1974) "Teleological and Teleonomic: A New Analysis." Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Volume XIV, pages 91 -117), distinquished between two different kinds of natural processes that result in what appears to be a "goal": Teleomatic processes: Processes that simply follow natural laws, i.e. lead to a result consequential to concomitant physical forces, and the reaching of their end state is not controlled by a built-in program. The law of gravity and the second law of thermodynamics are among the natural laws which most frequently govern teleomatic processes. Examples include the cooling of a red hot bar of iron and the falling of a rock to the ground. Teleonomic processes: Processes that owe their goal-directedness to the operation of a program. The term teleonomic implies goal-direction. This, in turn, implies a dynamic process rather than a static condition, as represented by a system. Examples include the development of an adult organism from a fertilized zygote and the building of a dam by beavers. Mayr argues very strongly that the common use of teleological language by biologists is not illegitimate, but rather recognizes the goal-directedness of biological processes. He also stresses that, although many biological processes (such as ontogeny) are clearly goal-directed, they owe their goal-directedness to the operation of programs, such as the genetic program encoded in the DNA. He concludes that although such programs are goal-directed (i.e. purposeful), the process by which such programs have come into being --- evolution by natural selection --- is NOT itself goal directed. [ I would state this slightly differently: that there is no observable evidence that the evolutionary processes by which such programs come into being are goal-directed (i.e. "designed" or "purposeful"). Therefore, although such purposes may exist, they are on principle invisible to us and therefore irrelevent to scientific explanations of natural phenomena.] Mayr concludes: * The use of so-called teleological language by biologists is legitimate, it neither implies a rejection of physico-chemical explanation nor does it imply non-causal explanation * At the same time, 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, second law of thermodynamics) but not by a program may be designated as teleomatic * Programs [of the type described above] are in part or entirely the product of natural selection * Teleonomic (i.e. programmed) behavior occurs only in organisms (and man-made machines) and constitutes a clear-cut difference between the levels of complexity in living and in inanimate nature [i.e. they are "emergent properties" of living systems, not present in the non-living materials of which living organisms are composed] * Teleonomic explanations are strictly causal and mechanistic. They give no comfort to adherents of vitalistic concepts [including supporters of "intelligent design," if such supporters believe that the kinds of programs desctibed above come into existence as the result of a purposeful process (i.e. "intelligent design")] * The heuristic value of the teleological Fragestellung makes it a powerful tool in biological analysis, from the study of the structural configuration of macromolecules up to the study of cooperative behavior in social systems.

Or, what is the relation between Darwin and teleology? David Hull (1973) has recently stated "evolutionary theory did away with teleology and that is that", yet a few years earlier McLeod (1957) had pronounced "what is most challenging about Darwin, is his reintroduction of purpose into the natural world". Obviously, the two authors must mean very different things.

Do you perhaps mean argument from authority instead of argumentums ad hominems? Perhaps Glen may disagree with me making an actual case for teleology in biology but that does not mean that I did not make such a case.

The work by Mayr, Nagel, Ayala and Ruse show how the use of teleology in biology is an inevitable outcome of the mechanisms of evolution, namely natural selection. Mayr, in order to be able to differentiate between end-directed teleology, refers to this as teleonomy (Wikipedia: The apparent 'end' or 'purpose' of processes, such as those in history or biology. The more well known word, teleology, is similar but is often connotes that the end is known and striven for by a divine agent.)

None of these concepts give much credibility to ID's concept of teleology but rather than deny teleology in biology, these authors have argued that teleology is an inevitable part of biology. Historically, teleology has played a major role in biology and in fact, teleological language is quite persistent in evolutionary/biological research.

The doctrine or study of ends or final causes, esp. as related to the evidences of design or purpose in nature; also transf. such design as exhibited in natural objects or phenomena. [1728 Wolf Logica 85 Datur...praeter eas adhuc philosophiae naturalis pars, quae fines rerum explicat, nomine adhuc destituta, etsi amplissima sit et utillissima. Dici posset Teleologia.] 1740 Zollman (tr. Fr. French) in Phil. Trans. XLI. 299 Teleology is one of those Parts of Philosophy, in which there has been but little Progress made. 1807 Edin. Rev. X. 151 The subject of Teleology, or the doctrine of final causes, was one which occupied the thoughts of Le Sage. 1868 F. Buckland in Bompas Life x. (1885) 224 This is the doctrine of Teleology: i.e. the doctrine that every organ is adapted to a special use. 1881 G. J. Romanes in Nature 27 Oct. 604/2 Teleology in this larger sense, or the doctrine that behind all the facts open to scientific enquiry..there is 'Mind and Will' as the ultimate cause of all things..does not fall within the scope of the scientific method. 1893 H. Drummond in Barrows Parl. Relig. 1322 Darwin has not written a chapter that is not full of teleology.

Teleology traditionally is contrasted with philosophical naturalism, which views nature as lacking design or purpose. For example, naturalism would say that a person has sight simply because they have eyes. In other words, function follows form (eyesight follows from having eyes). Teleology is the reverse of this position: a person has eyes because they have the need of eyesight. In this case, form follows function (eyes follow from having the need for eyesight).

Amid a flurry of multiple posts, PvM wrote:

You see, in some cases there seems to be some similarity between ID and science. Science: Evolution explains it. ID: Design explains it. ID to evolution: Show us the details. Science to ID: Show us the details. Evolution to ID: Known evolutionary methods can in principle explain it. ID to evolution: Known design methods can in principle explain it. Popper to ID: You silly people... You do not understand science.

Yeah, sure, there's similarities, if you ignore the differences: a) science shows us details and ID explicitly refuses to do so; and b) science describes "known evolutionary methods" while ID says "Poof-goddidit, that's the known design method; further inquiry is forbidden."

It now seems that PvM, having given up on winning the argument (whatever the original argument was), has now fallen back on a standard propagandist trick: pretending the argument he lost is really nothing but noise and neither side is right. Karl Rove did it in the national political dialogue, and the creationists are following suit. Actually, Rove may be following the creationists' example...and the USSR's...

Also, I like Wing|esS's dodge, where she neither asserts nor denies that some aspect of ID "thought" is valid, and changes the subject to something else. She's more graceful than Carol Clouser and Ann Coulter put together.

What if the evidence shows that the eye is mono-phyletic?

— PvM

What if it is? Even if vertebrate and box jellyfish eyes both utilize the same proteins, or variations of the same ancient gene, that doesn't mean that their eyes didn't arise separately. Hell, all these organisms utilize DNA; does that show that their eyes or other simiar features aren't examples of convergent evolution?

Thus when I stated the following PvM wrote: The problem, at least from an IDer's perspective, is that evolutionary theory can predict either case. Without additional data, it seems that evolutionary theory is very accomodating in its explanations. Given this opportunity where evolutionary theory lacks sufficient data to show what happened, ID tries to insert its own explanations. Popper replied with the ad hominem and personal insults: IDers play silly word games and don't understand how science or logic work --- just like you.

— PvM

So what response is more convincing/relevant? Aruing that IDers play silly word games and don;t understand science or logic? Or the argument that IDers are right when they point out that evolution does not predict convergence or mono-phyletic origins for the eye or any particular system, but in fact can explain both? In other words, lacking details, arguing that a system converged and that this is explained or can be explained by evolutionary theory is relevant only to the extent that it can be explained by evolutionary theory. But then again, it can also be explained by for instance 'design'. Both 'explanations' can explain convergence/divergence.

— PvM

Of course, design always remains an 'explanation' but unless the designer can be constrained it can explain anything and thus nothing. So how do we restrict the evolutionary 'designer'?

— PvM

Glen Davidson provided some good explanations on what is expected and what not from an evolutionary perspective. So why not address the gap created by convergence, allowing ID to insert its explanations?

— PvM

For instance, take the eye: if the eye can be mono and poly-phyletic in its origin(s), and if evolutionary theory can 'explain' either, how does one establish IF evolution in fact happened here?

— PvM

One cannot reject such a question as just silly... Well, one can of course, but the question remains one which is in need of an answer.

— PvM

Popper wrote:

It's worth noting that when PvM says "ID tries to insert its own explanations", he, like they, is misusing the word. "It was designed" is no more an explanation than "It happened by magic".

— PvM

Or it happened by evolution? You see, in some cases there seems to be some similarity between ID and science. Science: Evolution explains it.

ID: Design explains it. ID to evolution: Show us the details. Science to ID: Show us the details. Evolution to ID: Known evolutionary methods can in principle explain it. ID to evolution: Known design methods can in principle explain it. Popper to ID: You silly people... You do not understand science. :-)

— PvM

It would be the same if, when asked to explain why humans and box jellyfish both have eyes, a biologist answered "they converged". That's not an explanation, it's just a restatement of what we are seeking an explanation for. Very good.

— PvM

ToE predicts that we will see cases of convergence, and that we will see cases of so-called "apparent design" --- of features that provide some capacity or facility to the organism. The prediction follows from the explanation, which can be given in terms of natural selection at one level and hill climbing at another. And an explanation of the development of the eye can be given at one level in such terms as Darwin's developmental sequence, and at another in terms of genes that provide the proteins utilized in the eye.

— PvM

Very good, but this does not make ID's explanation less relevant.

Does ID have an explanation? They surely claim they do, so how does science establish if this explanation has any scientific relevance?

— PvM

They as questions such as how does ID explains it? ID argues that designers can reuse existing modules as well as 'create' similar modules for similar solutions.

— PvM

We already know this to be the case for human designers.

— PvM

In fact, at a superficial level there may not be much difference between the two claims other than that there is solid evidence that evolutionary mechanisms actually exist and play a role in evolution (mutation, selection, duplication etc).

— PvM

So far there exists no evidence of intelligent design in biology beyond the 'evolution does not (fully) explain it thus design remains a logical possibility.

— PvM

Of course, I'd argue that design always remains a logical possibility, even if evolutionary mechanisms fully explain it since one can always resort to the concept of front loading, all the way to the Big Bang. But this also makes ID fully scientifically irrelevant.

— PvM

So when ID argues that the bacterial flagella (yes plural...) are designed, they also refuse to give any details as to how, while at the same time insisting that science provides sufficiently detailed pathways which almost border on the impossible. It's the lack of much of anything relevant which makes science so scientifically vacuous. Nevertheless, it's the existence of gaps which allows ID to insert its own explanations.

— PvM

Popper:

But don't expect PvM to start using that Mayr quote when he mentions teleology; that would require intellectual honesty.

— PvM

And yet I references Mayr's position as well as some of his papers, provided by Allen MacNeill.

Silly me... Of course, a single quote may be insufficient to establish the position of Mayr on this topic, hence my reference to the papers.

— PvM

Mayr, to avoid the confusion when discussing teleology, has defined various new forms of teleology: Teleology proper: Teleology (telos: end, purpose) is the philosophical study of design, purpose, directive principle, or finality in nature or human creations. (Wikipedia)

— PvM

Teleology in evolution is a misleading metaphor best dispensed with. Instead of talking about, say, the purpose of a bird's wing, we should talk about the capabilities a bird's wing provides; this lets us understand its adaptive value, how it lends to fitness. As for why something need not be supportive of something else, that would be the default position in the absence of any reason to think it is supportive. And it's up to the IDists to give an argument that something is supportive of ID. But, if you want to be a proxy for IDists and you have such an argument, you should give it.

— PvM

And yet, teleology or metaphorical language is persistent in biology. Rather than dispensing with it, one may explore why teleology is so persistent in evolution. In fact, that's exactly what Mayr, Nagel, Ayala and Ruse have done. They have shown that rather than rejecting teleology, it makes far more sense to include teleology in evolution as a necessary and inevitable outcome of natural selection. So, contrary to the fears of Popper, such an argument does not serve as a proxy for ID, but rather effectively rejects ID's claims about teleology and the use of teleological language in biology. Allen MacNeill's seminar provides excellent papers that describe these arguments. As Allen wrote Ruse/Darwin and Design (plus papers on teleology in biology by Ayala, Mayr, and Nagel): Both ID supporters and evolution supporters quickly agreed that all of these authors make a convincing case for the legitimacy of inferring teleology (or what Mayr and others call "teleonomy") in evolutionary adaptations. That is, adaptations can legitimately be said to have "functions," and that the genomes of organisms constitute "designs" for their actualization, which is accomplished via organisms' developmental biology interacting with their environments.

The concept of teleology in biology is complex, also because of the various different ways the word 'teleology' can be used.

Perhaps Glen may disagree with me making an actual case for teleology in biology but that does not mean that I did not make such a case.

teleonomy: The apparent 'end' or 'purpose' of processes, such as those in history or biology. The more well known word, teleology, is similar but is often connotes that the end is known and striven for by a divine agent. (Wikipedia)

— PvM

See also Teleology in biology at Stanford or this meeting.

— PvM

So perhaps rather than making personal insults and create strawmen, Popper should do better to focus on what was argued.

— PvM

Wowser! After a brief pause to pant, here we are, going pall mall over hill and down dale, this time on yet another thread.

Not so fast! I can't keep up! ;-)

Re "and if evolutionary theory can 'explain' either, how does one establish IF evolution in fact happened here? "

Maybe by analyzing all the relevant data, rather than looking at this one piece?

Henry

And yet, teleology or metaphorical language is persistent in biology

Perhaps being over-charitable, I was willing to grant that PvM had made out a faint strategic case--on the infamous "innate design" trainwreck thread--for his "let's pretend ID poses 'scientific' questions" approach.

Something like, if you try to drag the sincere, misled, or ignorant but committed IDist/creationist through a door prominently-labeled "ID IS PSUEDO-SCIENTIFIC APOLOGETICS," you're not very likely to get very far in weaning said IDist from IDiocy. Better by far to politely usher said person through a door labeled "TESTING ID SCIENCE" and then lower the reality-boom.

How tenable such a strategy actually is--or was, in Prof. MacNeill's seminar--may remain a topic of legitimate debate. But, it seems to me, one may legitimately wonder how many such "sincere" IDists really exist who might also be amenable to changing their minds based on logic and science even if you were successful in finessing them through PvM's more-enticing door.

(One may also wonder if the harm done to science by stretching its usually-acknowledged boundaries to encompass ID's claims is worth the candle...)

Despite a good deal of attempted deflection in the direction of "Panda's Thumb's commentary is uncivil," "ad hominem this," "PG is an asshat," and "ad hominem that," I had thought we eventually managed to at least stake out the terms of a sensible debate in that earlier thread.

But here, somewhat to my surprise, PvM seems to be defending his claims--that there is some valid sense in which we should be initially treating ID's claims as science, and that there is some valid overlap between ID's teleological claims (design/purpose/intent) and biology's "teleological" metaphors (teleonomy, et al.)--on a naked, stand-alone basis. That is, without any appeal to a strategic justification.

And with less--though far from none--of the entertaining ad hominem, boo hoo, deflecting.

So far, without whatever little traction the strategy claim afforded, my assessment is that PvM is making little, if any, headway.

But keep plugging away, Pim. I don't for a second believe that you are any kind of stealth IDist--present appearances to the contrary--so you might still get us to wherever it is that you think you're going.

Davidson quotes from Mayr secondhand

— PvM

Mayr, reflecting the traditional worldview, states: "It is illegitimate to describe evolutionary progress or trends as goal directed (teleological). Selection rewards past phenomena ... but does not plan for the future." Biologists thus generally deny any form of evolutionary "progress" that might be motivated by a goal, or imply "final cause" (Futuyma, 1979). Trends in evolution, then, must be due to either chance occurrences, (e.g., disturbance, migration, environmental change, and so forth) or teleomatic end results (e.g., adaptation, niche segregation, optimization, and others).

— PvM

MacNeill provides a better context for Mayr's perspective

— PvM

As Ernst Mayr pointed out in his 1974 paper ("Teleological and Teleonomic: A New Analysis." In Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Volume XIV, pages 91 -117), it may be legitimate for evolutionary biologists to refer to adaptations as teleological. However, such adaptations have evolved by natural selection, which itself is NOT a purposeful process. Therefore, we have a fascinating paradox: purposefulness can evolve (as an emergent property) from non-purposeful matter (and energy, of course) via a process that is itself purposeless (as far as we can tell). This immediately suggests the following questions: * Is there design or purpose anywhere in nature? * If so, are there objective empirical means by which it can be detected and its existence explained? * Can the foregoing questions be answered using methodological naturalism as an a priori assumption? * What implications do the answers to these questions have for science in general and evolutionary biology in particular?

— PvM

MacNeill expands on Mayr (including the quote provided by Davidson)

Ernst Mayr (Mayr, E. (1974) "Teleological and Teleonomic: A New Analysis." Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Volume XIV, pages 91 -117), distinquished between two different kinds of natural processes that result in what appears to be a "goal": Teleomatic processes: Processes that simply follow natural laws, i.e. lead to a result consequential to concomitant physical forces, and the reaching of their end state is not controlled by a built-in program. The law of gravity and the second law of thermodynamics are among the natural laws which most frequently govern teleomatic processes. Examples include the cooling of a red hot bar of iron and the falling of a rock to the ground. Teleonomic processes: Processes that owe their goal-directedness to the operation of a program. The term teleonomic implies goal-direction. This, in turn, implies a dynamic process rather than a static condition, as represented by a system. Examples include the development of an adult organism from a fertilized zygote and the building of a dam by beavers. Mayr argues very strongly that the common use of teleological language by biologists is not illegitimate, but rather recognizes the goal-directedness of biological processes.

— PvM

He also stresses that, although many biological processes (such as ontogeny) are clearly goal-directed, they owe their goal-directedness to the operation of programs, such as the genetic program encoded in the DNA. He concludes that although such programs are goal-directed (i.e. purposeful), the process by which such programs have come into being --- evolution by natural selection --- is NOT itself goal directed.

— PvM

[ I would state this slightly differently: that there is no observable evidence that the evolutionary processes by which such programs come into being are goal-directed (i.e. "designed" or "purposeful"). Therefore, although such purposes may exist, they are on principle invisible to us and therefore irrelevent to scientific explanations of natural phenomena.]

— PvM

Mayr concludes:

* The use of so-called teleological language by biologists is legitimate, it neither implies a rejection of physico-chemical explanation nor does it imply non-causal explanation * At the same time, 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

— PvM

* 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, second law of thermodynamics) but not by a program may be designated as teleomatic * Programs [of the type described above] are in part or entirely the product of natural selection * Teleonomic (i.e. programmed) behavior occurs only in organisms (and man-made machines) and constitutes a clear-cut difference between the levels of complexity in living and in inanimate nature [i.e. they are "emergent properties" of living systems, not present in the non-living materials of which living organisms are composed] * Teleonomic explanations are strictly causal and mechanistic. They give no comfort to adherents of vitalistic concepts [including supporters of "intelligent design," if such supporters believe that the kinds of programs desctibed above come into existence as the result of a purposeful process (i.e. "intelligent design")] * The heuristic value of the teleological Fragestellung makes it a powerful tool in biological analysis, from the study of the structural configuration of macromolecules up to the study of cooperative behavior in social systems.

— PvM

The concept of teleology in biology is complex, also because of the various different ways the word 'teleology' can be used.

— PvM

Darwin's refutation of Aristotle's fourth cause, teleology, was, according to the philosopher Willard Quine, Darwin's greatest contribution to philosophy.

Evolution is not purposeive A--there is not teleology in phylogeny

It was also the French who propsed replacing the term teleology with teleonomy A--a wolf in sheep's clothing with a sheep in sheep's clothing

A good example is given by Mayr himself in his Mayr, Ernst (1974) Teleological and Teleonomic: A New Analysis. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Volume XIV, pp 91 -117

Or, what is the relation between Darwin and teleology? David Hull (1973) has recently stated "evolutionary theory did away with teleology and that is that", yet a few years earlier McLeod (1957) had pronounced "what is most challenging about Darwin, is his reintroduction of purpose into the natural world". Obviously, the two authors must mean very different things.

— PvM

What if the evidence shows that the eye is mono-phyletic?

What if it is? Even if vertebrate and box jellyfish eyes both utilize the same proteins, or variations of the same ancient gene, that doesn't mean that their eyes didn't arise separately. Hell, all these organisms utilize DNA; does that show that their eyes or other simiar features aren't examples of convergent evolution?

— PvM

That's quite a non-sequitur.

My statement was in response of your statement about the eye.

If evolution can handle mono-phyletic as well as convergent explanations for the eye then how does this qualify as an 'explanation'

Popper replied with the ad hominem and personal insults: IDers play silly word games and don't understand how science or logic work --- just like you.

So what response is more convincing/relevant? Aruing that IDers play silly word games and don;t understand science or logic? Or the argument that IDers are right when they point out that evolution does not predict convergence or mono-phyletic origins for the eye or any particular system, but in fact can explain both?

In other words, lacking details, arguing that a system converged and that this is explained or can be explained by evolutionary theory is relevant only to the extent that it can be explained by evolutionary theory. But then again, it can also be explained by for instance 'design'.

So why not address the gap created by convergence

allowing ID to insert its explanations

For instance, take the eye: if the eye can be mono and poly-phyletic in its origin(s), and if evolutionary theory can 'explain' either, how does one establish IF evolution in fact happened here?

One cannot reject such a question as just silly... Well, one can of course, but the question remains one which is in need of an answer.

I don't for a second believe that you are any kind of stealth IDist---present appearances to the contrary

It must feel good to be out of the closet.

And, by all means, check this thread later today for Thursday's edition of---

Lenny's Informed Commentary.

(Featuring today's Special Guest, Herb-Man, jah Jamaican Herpetologist.)

And yet, teleology or metaphorical language is persistent in biology. Rather than dispensing with it, one may explore why teleology is so persistent in evolution.

Stevie and PG appear to be in potential disagreement here.

Whew! The trains manage to slide by without colliding...! Thank civilitas!

While near-misses masy not make for the kind of exciting internet commentary that trainwrecks do, that's no reason not to STAY TUNED fooorrrr--

Lenny's Herb Guy!!

Therefore, we have a fascinating paradox: purposefulness can evolve (as an emergent property) from non-purposeful matter (and energy, of course) via a process that is itself purposeless (as far as we can tell).

This immediately suggests the following questions: * Is there design or purpose anywhere in nature?

Any statement, however guarded, is likely to be misused by Creationists or ID people. We ought to be used to that by now. There's no point in avoiding talk about purpose in living things. The point is to explain what we mean by purpose in nature and make clear that the use of teleological language does not imply an external creator of any kind. Far from it.

Aristotle, who Darwin respected very much, inaugurated serious thought about living things by noticing that the parts of animals work together to maintain and reproduce life. In other words, he came up with functional explanations of the organs. This way of speaking doesn't imply that the world was created by a designer. Since Aristotle thought the world was eternal, he didn't believe it had a creator. The God of his system has a different role.

Kant, who also did not buy the argument from design, thought that the notion of the organic unity of living things was what he called an Idea of Reason, i.e. a heuristic that guides our attempts to understand how nature works but can never be proven. Kant recognized, as ID types never seem to, that the functional unity of living things is crucially different than what one finds in tools or the famous Paleyian watch because living things display "purposiveness without a purpose." Cats aren't tools. They are in it for themselves.

I mention these two philosophers because of their enormous historical importance, but analogous points have been made by various contemporary biologists. I don't see what we gain by shushing serious thought in favor of slogans and insults. I don't know why so many Americans find philistinism a postive value. No wonder we elected Bush. We like stupid.

Maybe someone should drop a biologist a note to clear up the notion of teleology in biology, or at least John Wilkins. He has BTW written an old (1997) essay about it on Talkorigin. ( http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolphil/teleology.html )

"Biological systems are historical in two ways: they are the result of irreversible processes (i.e., they grow and die), and they are contingent. The second point is important if you are thinking about what is science in biology. You can't often repeat an event in biology like speciation (some hybrids can be reformed repeatedly in the lab) and get the same results. What's more, the view called teleology has been dropped by biologists: explanations of what something is for don't say that they are there in order to achieve an end result. It is enough that they are the result of selection.

Or is it? Teleology, too, is making a minor comeback. In science, teleology is a way of modelling a system's behaviour by referring to its end-state, or goal. It is an answer to a question about function and purpose. Why do vertebrates have hearts? In order to pump blood around the body to distribute oxygen and nutrients, etc. This is a functional explanation. The function of hearts is to pump blood. In evolution, the question 'why do organisms exhibit adaptation?' is not answered teleologically with 'in order to survive', but historically - 'because those that were less adaptive didn't survive'. However, some forms of teleology are still used, on the understanding that they reduce to historical explanations.
...
There are two forms of teleological explanation (Lennox 1992). External teleological explanation derives from Plato - a goal is imposed by an agent, a mind, which has intentions and purpose. Internal teleological explanation derives from Aristotle, and is a functional notion.
...
External teleology is dead in biology, but there is a further important distinction to be made. Mayr [1982: 47-51] distinguished four kinds of explanations that are sometimes called teleology: telenomic (goal-seeking, Aristotle's final causes, 'for-the-sake-of-which' explanations); teleomatic (lawlike behaviour that is not goal-seeking); adapted systems (which are not goal seeking at all, but exist just because they survived); and cosmic teleology (end-directed systems) [cf O'Grady and Brooks 1988]. Only systems that are actively directed by a goal are truly teleological. Most are just teleomatic, and some (e.g., genetic programs) are teleonomic (internal teleology), because they seek an end.

Many criticisms of Darwinism rest on a misunderstanding of the nature of teleology. Systems of biology that are end-seeking are thought to be end-directed, something that Darwinism makes no use of in its models. Outside biology - indeed, outside science - you can use external teleology all you like, but it does not work as an explanation of any phenomena other than those that are in fact the outcomes of agents like stock brokers. And even there, teleology is not always useful, for which stock brokers (or cabal of stockbrokers) desired the goal of the 1987 crash, or the 1930 depression? External teleology is useless in science, and any science that attempts to be teleological will shortly become mysticism."

I don't see that teleology is necessary in any explanations. Based on Wilkins and Mayrs analysis one sees that terms like teleonomy is instead used to conveniently describe the history of adapted systems ( http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolphil/teleolpic.gif ). Teleology isn't used at all.

He also stresses that, although many biological processes (such as ontogeny) are clearly goal-directed, they owe their goal-directedness to the operation of programs, such as the genetic program encoded in the DNA. He concludes that although such programs are goal-directed (i.e. purposeful)

* Teleonomic (i.e. programmed) behavior occurs only in organisms (and man-made machines) and constitutes a clear-cut difference between the levels of complexity in living and in inanimate nature [i.e. they are "emergent properties" of living systems, not present in the non-living materials of which living organisms are composed]

And discussing old philosophers: ideas of purpose and cause must be motivated in science, since analogous terms are derived.

"In particular, we should emphasize that there is no place in this view for common philosophical concepts such as ''cause and effect'' or ''purpose.'' From the perspective of modern science, events don't have purposes or causes; they simply conform to the laws of nature. In particular, there is no need to invoke any mechanism to ''sustain'' a physical system or to keep it going; it would require an additional layer of complexity for a system to cease following its patterns than for it to simply continue to do so.

Believing otherwise is a relic of a certain metaphysical way of thinking; these notions are useful in an informal way for human beings, but are not a part of the rigorous scientific description of the world. Of course scientists do talk about ''causality,'' but this is a description of the relationship between patterns and boundary conditions; it is a derived concept, not a fundamental one." ( http://pancake.uchicago.edu/~carroll/nd-paper.html )

"Neither evolution nor ontogeny are organisms or man-made machines."

Exactly! According to Wilkins and Mayr they are adapted systems: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolphil/teleolpic.gif .

It's worth noting that when PvM says "ID tries to insert its own explanations", he, like they, is misusing the word. "It was designed" is no more an explanation than "It happened by magic".

— PvM

Or it happened by evolution? You see, in some cases there seems to be some similarity between ID and science. Science: Evolution explains it.

It would be the same if, when asked to explain why humans and box jellyfish both have eyes, a biologist answered "they converged". That's not an explanation, it's just a restatement of what we are seeking an explanation for. Very good.

— PvM

Of course it's not an explanation. PG originally was only pointing out that evolution predicts convergence, against the dolts who hold up convergence as if it somehow voided "Darwinism".

Who is this "Herb"?

And what happened to my Pizza Guy?

And where is my kayak?

But here, somewhat to my surprise, PvM seems to be defending his claims---that there is some valid sense in which we should be initially treating ID's claims as science, and that there is some valid overlap between ID's teleological claims (design/purpose/intent) and biology's "teleological" metaphors (teleonomy, et al.)---on a naked, stand-alone basis. That is, without any appeal to a strategic justification.

Lenny, as your ought to remember, Herb and your Pizza Guy are paddling your kayak so that I can sit in the middle to keep up with all this.

Use your bicycle! It's telEo-whatchamacallit enough for you to keep up!

Any statement, however guarded, is likely to be misused by Creationists or ID people. We ought to be used to that by now. There's no point in avoiding talk about purpose in living things.

Aristotle, who Darwin respected very much

For there are many who think that the brain itself consists of marrow, and that it forms the commencement of that substance, because they see that the spinal marrow is continuous with it. In reality the two may be said to be utterly opposite to each other in character. For of all the parts of the body there is none so cold as the brain; whereas the marrow is of a hot nature, as is plainly shown by its fat and unctuous character. Indeed this is the very reason why the brain and spinal marrow are continuous with each other. For, wherever the action of any part is in excess, nature so contrives as to set by it another part with an excess of contrary action, so that the excesses of the two may counterbalance each other. Now that the marrow is hot is clearly shown by many indications. The coldness of the brain is also manifest enough. For in the first place it is cold even to the touch; and, secondly, of all the fluid parts of the body it is the driest and the one that has the least blood; for in fact it has no blood at all in its proper substance. This brain is not residual matter, nor yet is it one of the parts which are anatomically continuous with each other; but it has a character peculiar to itself, as might indeed be expected. That it has no continuity with the organs of sense is plain from simple inspection, and is still more clearly shown by the fact, that, when it is touched, no sensation is produced; in which respect it resembles the blood of animals and their excrement. The purpose of its presence in animals is no less than the preservation of the whole body. For some writers assert that the soul is fire or some such force. This, however, is but a rough and inaccurate assertion; and it would perhaps be better to say that the soul is incorporate in some substance of a fiery character. The reason for this being so is that of all substances there is none so suitable for ministering to the operations of the soul as that which is possessed of heat. For nutrition and the imparting of motion are offices of the soul, and it is by heat that these are most readily effected. To say then that the soul is fire is much the same thing as to confound the auger or the saw with the carpenter or his craft, simply because the work is wrought by the two in conjunction. So far then this much is plain, that all animals must necessarily have a certain amount of heat. But as all influences require to be counterbalanced, so that they may be reduced to moderation and brought to the mean (for in the mean, and not in either extreme, lies the true and rational position), nature has contrived the brain as a counterpoise to the region of the heart with its contained heat, and has given it to animals to moderate the latter, combining in it the properties of earth and water. For this reason it is, that every sanguineous animal has a brain; whereas no bloodless creature has such an organ, unless indeed it be, as the Poulp, by analogy. For where there is no blood, there in consequence there is but little heat. The brain, then, tempers the heat and seething of the heart. In order, however, that it may not itself be absolutely without heat, but may have a moderate amount, branches run from both blood-vessels, that is to say from the great vessel and from what is called the aorta, and end in the membrane which surrounds the brain; while at the same time, in order to prevent any injury from the heat, these encompassing vessels, instead of being few and large, are numerous and small, and their blood scanty and clear, instead of being abundant and thick. We can now understand why defluxions have their origin in the head, and occur whenever the parts about the brain have more than a due proportion of coldness. For when the nutriment steams upwards through the blood-vessels, its refuse portion is chilled by the influence of this region, and forms defluxions of phlegm and serum. We must suppose, to compare small things with great, that the like happens here as occurs in the production of showers. For when vapour steams up from the earth and is carried by the heat into the upper regions, so soon as it reaches the cold air that is above the earth, it condenses again into water owing to the refrigeration, and falls back to the earth as rain. These, however, are matters which may be suitably considered in the Principles of Diseases, so far as natural philosophy has anything to say to them.

Actually, the brain may well cool the blood, but if so, that's not a particularly relevant effect of the brain on the functioning (which is nothing like "purpose") of the organism.

There's a tendency to think that scientists would get the right answer if they were just virtuous enough. Alas, you gotta look and see; and even then you may turn out to wrong. It wasn't always a dumb idea to think that nature had been designed by a designer, it just turned out to wrong. And the fact that Aristotle was wrong about the brain and umpteen other things for that matter, don't change the fact that he was the one who started the whole goddam game.

Or it happened by evolution? You see, in some cases there seems to be some similarity between ID and science. Science: Evolution explains it.

Popper's ghost --- The brain does cool the blood. Quite a bit. "If your feet are cold, cover your head." --- Standard winter hiker's saying...

And the fact that Aristotle was wrong about the brain and umpteen other things for that matter, don't change the fact that he was the one who started the whole goddam game.

Sheesh, Lenny, I don't know what's going on with your Pizza Delivery Guy. He hasn't talked to me in months (since, I strictly-in-fun "pretended" to be him in the body of one post, without even changing my screen name--which I certainly would've done if I'd been seriously trying to "sock puppet" him, but I think he's still miffed).

Mr. Benson seems to know where your whole crew is--well, he didn't mention Pizza Woman!--so you're probably better off talking to him.

And like we're seriously going to believe that you don't know who Herb-the-Jamaican-herpetologist is?

C'mon, Lenny, next you'll be trying to tell us that you don't know what the Jamaican "herb" is, in the first place, mon...

And then you'll be trying to tell us that Dr. Dino is an upstanding tax-paying Uhmericun dude.

Popper's ghost --- The brain does cool the blood. Quite a bit.

"If your feet are cold, cover your head." --- Standard winter hiker's saying...

Popper's ghost --- Relax a little. It is certainly relevant if you are out winter hiking and camping.

Maybe more to the point is that it does not happen at all, at all, the way Aristotle said. Took centuries to determine what just actually occurs. Called establishing some sensible rules for determining solid truths. Called empirical verifications, etc.

Called the scientific method. Which IDiocy does not even begin to follow. PvM has exactly zero legs left to stand on at this point.

I guess I'll have to lend him Lenny's kayak so that Herb and the Pizza Guy can get him back home. Poor man...

Oh, cool, winter hiking!

Here I am sitting in a modern office building, with western exposure, late afternoon, and the landlord's staff calls to tell us that the City accidentally snipped one of the building power cables, so the building has turned off all "non-essential" heat pumps (whew!), which apparently means all heat pumps not directly impacting dedicated server-farm rooms--

--so, sure, I'd love to talk about winter hiking. Hit me with that snowball! Slam me with that blizzard! Bury me in that avalanche.

We can dig survival snow-caves, eat pizza (LPG does do the North Cascades, right?), and talk about AIDS denial all winter long...!

Popper's ghost --- Relax a little. It is certainly relevant if you are out winter hiking and camping.

And on the matter of relevance, let me point to the main role that the brain plays in the fact that hats end up on the heads of hikers ...

Cover the head and ears with a hat or scarf since much heat-carrying blood flows through the many blood vessels of the scalp and ears and an uncovered head radiates heat rapidly.

Glen got the quoting wrong here; I wrote "that's not an explanation". As Glen says, "of course". And PvM says "very good". And yet he treats "it was designed" as if it were an explanation --- on a par with scientific explanations; something that the IDers "fill the gaps" with.

And discussing old philosophers: ideas of purpose and cause must be motivated in science, since analogous terms are derived. "In particular, we should emphasize that there is no place in this view for common philosophical concepts such as "cause and effect" or "purpose." From the perspective of modern science, events don't have purposes or causes; they simply conform to the laws of nature. In particular, there is no need to invoke any mechanism to "sustain" a physical system or to keep it going; it would require an additional layer of complexity for a system to cease following its patterns than for it to simply continue to do so. Believing otherwise is a relic of a certain metaphysical way of thinking; these notions are useful in an informal way for human beings, but are not a part of the rigorous scientific description of the world. Of course scientists do talk about "causality," but this is a description of the relationship between patterns and boundary conditions; it is a derived concept, not a fundamental one."

Essay Nature 435, 743 (9 June 2005) | doi: 10.1038/435743a Physics, complexity and causality George F. R. Ellis1 George F. R. Ellis is at the Mathematics Department, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, Cape Town 7701, South Africa. Top of pageAbstractAlthough the laws of physics explain much of the world around us, we still do not have a realistic description of causality in truly complex hierarchical structures.... If this is the case, the challenge to physics is to develop a realistic description of causality in truly complex hierarchical structures, where top-down causation and memory effects allow autonomous higher levels of order to emerge with genuine causal powers. So far, attempts to relate physics to com-plexity --- such as the reaction−diffusion equation, chaos theory, the renormalization group, complexity theory --- take us only a small step on this road.

We invented the concept 'purpose': In reality purpose is lacking...One is necessary, one is a piece of fate, one belongs to the whole, one is in the whole

A 1920ish philosophy of science may be useful as a club to hit the ID folks over the head with, but it does have the disadvantage of being wrong. It's close to commonsense, though, which means that it is rhetorically useful.

It would be extremely convenient if there were a cut and dried method that was guaranteed to get results when applied to the "facts." In particular, it would provide a one-time does it solution to the so-called demarcation problem. Unfortunately, as the critics of positivism and later of Popper correctly pointed out, there is no a priori way of determing what method should be followed. Indeed, if you're an empiricist, you ought to be mighty suspcious of people who think they can define such a method by pulling it out of their ass.

There's actually a second problem with the sort of scientism that gets retailed so often in these parts, namely that it assumes that a science can be defined by its methods alone without consideration of the subject matter. I don't think that washes either because some sort of concept of the subject is needed to define what you're doing and even more because you can't find more order in nature than is present in the part of nature you're studying. Which is why social psychology is never going to be very much like quantum mechanics or even psychophysics. There has to be a there there.

I mention Aristotle about these issues, not because I rely on his authority; but because he is often very clear on complicated issues and deserves some of the credit for figuring various things out, including, crucially, that living things are functional wholes. Nobody much buys his explanation for the unity of animals and plants--entelechies are as obsolete as the notion that the brain is fundamentally a refrigerator--but something like function remains an indespensible concept, albeit we now explain function by reference to the effects of natural selection working on mutations. There's nothing mystic about it.

Essentially it's the same outcome either way, though, since you had been responding to IDiot claims that convergence is contrary to "Darwinism", PvM keeps saying that "evolution" isn't an explanation for a particular outcome, and you hadn't even suggested that it was.

— Glen Davidson

Yet he states on this thread that ID lacks "anything relevant". He seems to be floundering, trying to work through what he picked up from ID sources, as well as the lack of substance in ID. So sometimes he sounds like an IDist (and picks on "ID critics" by that label), sometimes like an ID critic.

Damn, I got that backward. In response to my saying that "it was designed" isn't an explanation he wrote "Or it happened by evolution?", and in response to my saying that "they converged" isn't an explanation -- which was intended to head off that very strawman comment -- he merely wrote "very good". But there is no argument so powerful that it cannot be overcome with bad faith.

From the perspective of modern science, events don't have purposes or causes; they simply conform to the laws of nature.

Popper's ghost --- Relax a little.

---so, sure, I'd love to talk about winter hiking. Hit me with that snowball! Slam me with that blizzard! Bury me in that avalanche. We can dig survival snow-caves, eat pizza (LPG does do the North Cascades, right?), and talk about AIDS denial all winter long...!

All right, already: winter hiking is going to mean different things to different folks.

It's a good thing that we can all agree on pizza.

(Holds breath, awaiting inevitable dissension.)

build a chickee

That's very good advice.

Popper, your martyr complex rivals that of the fundies. You must have been a Trot in a previous lifetime.

Now, as to a "chickee" --- it is an open-sided roofed platform shelter, made of sticks lasked together, that the Seminoles used for sleeping. It allows shade and a nice breeze to keep cool (and blow away the bugs) and keeps one off the ground, so one stays dry and avoids all the creeping or crawling swamp critters.

Most of the time when I go camping, I use a jungle hammock, the kind with the bug netting built in. I actually started using hammocks while living in Pennsylvania --- the PA portions of the Appalachian Trail are extremely rocky and it's damn hard to find a good tenting spot. But with a hammock, all I needed were two convenient trees, and I was comfty all night long.

When I moved to Florida, I found that hammocks are just as convenient in swamps. I've often paddled my kayak to some convenient trees, slung up a hammock between them, tied my boat securely to one of them, and spent the night gently swinging in the breeze above the water. Ahhhhhhhhh.

:)

Flank, you're a buffoon and an idiot.

It's "Rev Dr" Flank to you, Popper.

You make my point.

Popper's ghost --- I am glad that you finally managed to laugh. I am still chuckling over the way you let your leg get pulled...

Glen:

Carroll defines causality and distinguishes it from cause-effect and purpose descriptions. "Of course scientists do talk about ''causality,'' but this is a description of the relationship between patterns and boundary conditions; it is a derived concept, not a fundamental one. If we know the state of a system at one time, and the laws governing its dynamics, we can calculate the state of the system at some later time."

One particularly simple and general example of a causal system that fulfills the definition and has been motivated by experiments are lightcone causality for propagating signals, which follows from locality and lorentz invariance. This causality is oredicted or observed for all such systems whether fundamental, described by effective theories such as our quantum field theories, or other emergent ones.

But I think Ellis and Carroll agrees in that examples of use of causality isn't always evident. Chaos somewhat defies describing "the state of the system at some later time" due to its exponential divergenies and so demand for infinite resolution of initial (boundary) conditions. And don't get me started on black holes...

Nietzsche had chutzpah, I like that.

Jim:
"I don't think that washes either because some sort of concept of the subject is needed to define what you're doing"

Yes, contingency is a problem, but already the methods are hard to describe and demarcate, and the subject is openended. So we use models that captures some parts of what we discuss, not all.

Popper:
Carroll doesn't deny derived concepts, he explains why they are derived from laws of nature, and that we in principle can calculate the state of the system at some later time. Unfortunately it isn't easy or guaranteed.

Agents are sometimes a good derived description, but the system you describe can be modelled differently too, statistically for example. The statistical model is probably both simpler and more accurate here.

Popper's ghost --- I am glad that you finally managed to laugh. I am still chuckling over the way you let your leg get pulled...

Agents are sometimes a good derived description, but the system you describe can be modelled differently too

statistically for example. The statistical model is probably both simpler and more accurate here.

Popper:
""Agents are sometimes a good derived description, but the system you describe can be modelled differently too"

Of course it can; as I said there are different valid levels of description."

I was responding to your claim: "There is more than one valid level of description and explanation, and there are levels at which agents are indispensable." I believe my model complicated your claim of indispensability.

""statistically for example. The statistical model is probably both simpler and more accurate here."

No, really, it isn't simpler at all;"

I don't understand your reasoning here.

You said that your agent model needed "describing the situation in terms of agents with knowledge of traffic rules, the behavior of other drivers and a host of other factors".

From your description of the problem I believe a statistical model needs to describe one distribution for reaction times of a driver at green light. (Different groups of drivers may complicate things, and so will the description of other drivers behaviour and its correlation to the driver we observe, but not more than your agent model.)

"that's an absurd claim that seems to be based on an ideological commitment to naive reductionism."

I don't commit to any one philosophy. But I do subscribe to science, which seems to incorporate both reductionism (fundamental theories) and emergentism (effective theories). It doesn't seem to me any single philosophy describes science and its methods at the current time.

Be that it may, we will not resolve the question of agents and purpose here. For one thing, I haven't studied these questions at all.