Hi,
I had a little sojourn. Here are my little inputs.
> The outcome appears to be that Darwin is vindicated
> - evolution by mutation
> and selection is a viable explanation for biological
> speciation. As far as
> conventional biology is concerned, it is the best
> explanation anyone has
> come up with so far.
>
> What we are left with is the argument about
> teleology and purpose.
I think the question is loaded. A more fundamental
question, for me, is why think up the question "Does
life have a purpose?". Individuals may opt out of the
idea that they are causes for unknown ends, and exist
as humans being, rather than humans doing.
Are people aware of the essence prior to existance
phenomenon relating to purpose?
> My
> question "does teleology have a purpose?" was
> supposed to be
> tongue-in-cheek, but generated some serious answers.
> I also answered Platt's
> great question:
> PLATT
> >Is it possible to measure and quantify the desire
> on the
> >part of organisms to live?
Living is not contigent on the desire to do so.
However, you can ask a potential suicide case "Rate
your will to live on a scale of 1 to 10"
For animals, there mere animation (or not) may be the
answer.
>
> Platt, are you asking what the purpose of survival
> is? I've gone on more
> than once about what I consider to be "the purpose
> platypus". My own take on
> this is that we can only know purpose or desire as
> conscious intention when
> it is our own intention. Attributing desire to
> anything else is unscientific
> conjecture. As for "unconscious" intention, that
> would be either an
> oxymoron, or another expression for tendency. To put
> it another way, I don't
> know if positive and negative charges "desire" to
> move towards each other
> (in a purposeful sense), but I do know that they
> TEND to move together.
>
> Platt's question, therefore seems to be about
> whether we can measure the
> TENDENCY of organisms to survive. The answer is
> trivial - we measure it by
> observing their survival. Creatures that have a
> strong tendency to survive
> tend to survive. Creatures that don't, tend not to
> survive. I think that
> this is the MoQ way to tackle the question, and as
> so often happens, the
> answer is a tautology - a simple truism.
>
> Jonathan
>
> PS.
> IMO, "tendency to survive" can be equated with
> quality, i.e. quality is what
> tends to survive. I'm not sure if that is ALL of
> quality or just the static
> (survivable) part.
>
>
>
>
>
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