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Circularity: for Fred & Carey
I shouldn't meddle in their tiff...but.
Fred thinks that "selection" rests on circular definitions: "I think, therefore I am" kinds of reasonings. (Dawkins, The Extended Phenotype" as a neat chapter on five kinds of fitness, relevant because I think that it is and not because fitness as the same denotive problems as "selection"!) Anyhow, science often thrives on such things and "logic," the mother of mathematics, rests on tautologies. From Fred's view, "If it's alive, it was selected" has problems and he's correct. On the other hand, if it's alive, it may simply mean that nothing killed it. Or, if it's alive, it may have been created not by emergence but by an entity that shares core features with human awareness. Fred and I may part company here because I see intelligence and awareness as an almost inevitable outcome from emergent processes. Conway Morris took a similar creation in his latest book, (2003) Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe. NY: Cambridge University Press. That is, dolphins act as if they think and so do whales, elephants, and sometimes a teacher in our public schools. I'm glad you guys care enough to fend your very best! JimB |
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Re: Circularity: for Fred & Carey
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Re: Circularity: Science as the Culture of Change
Circularity is part of our common sense, of our faiths, and of empiricism. It's also a part of evolution...that is "repeat what works." And a critter knows what works because he's still alive!
Religions (and other kinds of cultures, perhaps including that of language) reinforce whatever works. Variation is suppressed except for very small steps and taken by deviants. Science is the weird culture...a deliberated exploration rather than one that occurs only by undirected trial and error. But even science starts with "replication": can I repeat what works and what are the range of circumstances and what are the strings and levers for systematic variation? But maybe, I'm a little full of caffeine and have tender knuckles right now, the costs of a delightful manic episode... JB |
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Re: Circularity: for Fred & Carey
From Wiki, “a tautology is a statement containing more than one sub-statement, that is true regardless of the truth values of its parts—for example, the statement "Either all crows are black, or not all of them are," is a tautology, because it is true no matter what color crows are.
Also noted in Wiki, “A circular definition is one that assumes a prior understanding of the term being defined—for instance, we can define "oak" as a tree which has catkins and grows from an acorn, and then define "acorn" as the nut produced by an oak tree . . the definition is fairly useless.†Natural selection is essentilly “survival of the fittest,†so long as “fitness†means the reproductive success of a genotype (and I suppose also with the implicit understanding that parlaying “survival of the fittest†into a “survival of the fittest†social Darwinism is obviously taboo). Over the years I’ve read many, many comprehensive explanations of natural selection (and all the related terminology) by many “experts,†and the circularity and/or tautological aspects are unavoidable—which is fine, but let’s have a little intellectual rigor and honesty, and/or let’s call an acorn an acorn. As I’ve noted elsewhere, Russell & Whitehead, at the beginning of the 20th century, attempted to establish that “math is tautology†in, among other things, their Principia Mathematica (ca. 1910), but their wet dream got a wakeup call from, among other things, Godel's Incompleteness Theorem (ca. 1930). So the objective truth of mathematics is neither circular nor a tautology, and neither is real science—e.g., Newton’s laws of motion & gravity and/or Einstein’s general relativity equations are not tautologies, but rather provide us with equations and utilize objective mathematical truths to give us a noncircular view of how things actually work—and b/c they aren’t circular/tautological, they actually are falsifiable, and that is why it later could be shown that in fact Newton’s law of gravity was incomplete and that Einstein’s general relativity provided us with a more complete/realistic understanding and picture of how the universe actually works. All that being said, I’d nevertheless agree that as surely as acorn trees come from acorn nuts, natural selection happens . . . although, frankly, if anyone thinks that tells us much, well, I’d say they’re nuts. Last edited by Fred H.; June 7th, 2006 at 09:58 AM.. |
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Re: Circularity: for Fred & Carey
I agree with your general principle here, Fred. It seems insane to expect a definition by itself to do much useful work toward understanding a topic. Having different definitions obviously impedes mutual understanding and coming up with good consensus definitions is a useful activity at times. But there is a lot more than that involved in understanding a topic in order to apply and learn from the underlying principles. It is just a first step to knowledge and understanding.
It seems very likely to me that complex subjects require us to accumulate fairly sizable domain-specific knowledge bases before we understand them, and can't be argued sensibly without that, even with a good grasp of the basic definitions and formulae and a lot of general knowledge and good thinking skills and talents. In addition, based on recent discoveries in learning theory, I think there is good reason to believe that gaining an understanding of the models in science often requires us to identify our intuitive concepts and bridge to new scientific concepts that are entirely different in explaining the same phenomena. There is both knowledge and skill involved in applying the concept of selection to natural history and recognizing how and what it explains form and function in the modern biological paradigm. All the fuss and nonsense that some like to brew over natural selection being a tautology seems to be something that most of us think about at some point and sometimes argue for a while, but eventually get over as we understand the topic better. Just like the bizarre notion that centrifugal force is an illusion, and so on. That usually gets argued for a while in a good freshman physics class, but eventually fi the lesson is successful, people learn to see the picture in a different way, even though they still have their intuitions. One of the things that makes science interesting to me is the way it challenges our intuitions for a while. Quote:
An intro to his thinking from the Wikipedia entry on Stove: Quote:
Last edited by ToddStark; June 7th, 2006 at 01:50 PM.. Reason: Added section on David Stove. No change to previous text. |
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Re: Circularity: for Fred & Carey
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Re: Circularity: for Fred & Carey
> Natural selection is essentilly “survival of the fittest,†so long as “fitness†means the reproductive success of a genotype (and I suppose also with the implicit understanding that parlaying “survival of the fittest†into a “survival of the fittestâ€
I thought... Natural selection was a process which resulted in 'survival of the fittest' sure, but the process was spelled out both in a natural language (3 or controversially 4 clauses on variation, heritability, mutation, and arguably differential fitness) and also in the math (which i'll leave to you). I had a psych lecturer who said it was unfortunate that people talked about 'survival of the fittest' as it was (according to him) more about 'elimination of the unsuccessful'. As you pointed out just because something is alive doesn't mean it is perfectly adapted, it just means that nothing has killed it. I do have sympathy for the circularity idea, however. Sometimes I think that explanation is just one big circle really and an ideal explanation just makes the circle so big that it is hard for beings with tiny little finite brains like ours to grasp it in one fell swoop. For instance... (I don't think we have sympathy for the reductionist program but lets humour them and see where it gets us) Mind can be reduced to Psychology Psychology can be reduced to Biology Biology can be reduced to Chemistry Chemistry can be reduced to Physics Physics requires an observer Which brings us back to Mind. ;-) |
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