David's theory of evolution: More Stephen Talbott's view IV (Evolution)

by David Turell , Sunday, March 14, 2021, 15:29 (1138 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTES: "And yet, anyone who considers the core logic of natural selection, as discussed in Chapter 17, can hardly help noticing that the logic relies centrally upon organisms being capable of carrying out all the activities necessary to their life and “struggle for survival”. It also requires organisms capable of reproducing and preparing an inheritance for their offspring. In other words, it requires living beings with precisely those features that presented us with the problem of purposive activity in the first place.

"But if natural selection, in order to operate, must take for granted all the familiar forms of living activity — and who does not see this? — then to say selection explains biological purposiveness looks very much like question-begging.”

dhw: This sums it all up. Firstly, natural selection does not explain purposefulness, and I really don’t know why this dead horse is still being flogged. Natural selection only explains why some life forms, strategies, lifestyles survive and others don’t. Nobody can explain how life forms, plus the ability to reproduce and to evolve, originated, or how speciation actually happens. But what is crystal clear is that these abilities are present and they are used for the purpose of survival or improving chances of survival. This is the moment when Talbott could ask what is the basic nature of these abilities, and you have quoted him in your Part Two:

TALBOTT: If, as many do today, we acknowledge a kind of cognition in cells sensing and responding to each other, how much more should we acknowledge the causal (not to mention the intentional) connections between all those organisms possessing specialized sense organs!

dhw: Yes indeed, those organisms consist of cell communities, and their specialized sense organs consist of cell communities, and the cells and their communities sense and respond to one another. It’s good to hear that many people today acknowledge a kind of cognition. Time to bring in Shapiro’s theory that cognitive cells are the producers of "evolutionary novelty".

TALBOTT: "Only when we ignore the living powers required for such transformations can we subconsciously transfer our ineradicable sense of these powers to the working of a blind evolutionary algorithm."

dhw: So let us not ignore them. The pattern that emerges from this article could hardly be clearer: that the purpose behind all the cellular activity is survival (to which I would add the all-important factor of improving chances of survival – hence innovation), and there is no blind evolutionary algorithm but a continual process of intelligent organisms (cells) deliberately seeking their own ways of implementing their purpose. Nobody knows the origin of this intelligence, but Talbott, like Darwin, is focusing on Chapter Two of life.

DAVID: It is easy for me to see the necessity for a designing mind as the 'evolutionary algorithm'. Every Talbott insight leads me to God. I wonder where is leads Talbott?
And
DAVID: …all of this struggle to understand is easy if you realize a designing mind is behind all of it. Talbott is pure ID without being ID.

dhw: According to you, ID does not commit itself to your God as the designing mind. I would suggest that Talbott’s arguments should lead him to Shapiro’s theory, and the question of how life and cellular intelligence first came into existence can remain open.

ID just doesn't mention God but He is always understood as the designer. It is fun to check Talbott as He completes his book and continues to wonder. I don't think Shapiro's theory would satisfy Talbott in regard to the origin of purposeful activity in life.