Hrvoje1

This is neither my opinion nor ambition. My only ambition was to be thought provoking, but if people feel more like defending established mantras and dogmas, instead of attacking them to see what's wrong with them, then you are right, there is no point. I proposed that alternatives are "Environmental Selection", or simply "Selection". There is not much dispute about what is the meaning of the word "artificial" (from dictionary): 1. man made or produced as opposed to something that isn't 2. feigned, insincere, false, affected, mannered, unnatural, stilted, contrived, pretended, put-on, exaggerated, actorly, overdone, overripe, forced, laboured, strained, hollow, spurious; informalpretend, phoney, fakey, hammy, ham, campy And I could not provide this list without some help from the dictionary, considering the fact that I'm not native in English. So, no, AI is not wrong terminology, it denotes devices in which intelligence is implemented artificially. But, "artificial selection" in the context of evolution, is artificial terminology, result of Darwin's anthropocentrism, because the distinction between people and "other animals" is arbitrary and artificial. @studiot So, was he satisfied with his working definition of species? That looks like a fundamental notion of his theory, at least one of them. "This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations" isn't that point of any selection: preserve favourable, and reject harmful? I mean, I don't see that emphasizes the difference between natural and artificial.

I don't know, you tell me: these organisms, do they evolve as a result of selective breeding? If they do, then this is still not correct, since we agree on the fact that there is a goal in selective breeding. And this is far from being the only weakness in your logic. Every species and every entity during its life places certain selective pressure towards certain others, species and entities, and as well gets under selective pressure from others, through both interspecific and intraspecific competition, in the struggle for life, with the ultimate goal of its own survival. That's how evolution works with respect to selection. Now you tell me, does evolution "have a goal"? So, it's far from the truth that only selective breeding has goal, that's totally arbitrary conclusion. The fact that a farmer and a hunter do not produce selective pressure in the same way, is totally irrelevant, they both have goals. It is true that selective pressure can be a result of conditions produced by non-living agents, that are goalless, but obviously if some process is caused by some agents that have goal, and some that don't, I would not characterize it goalless as a result. I'm criticizing both, content and style, because both is important.

So, people are part of nature, and they have goals, but nature has no goals. Monkeys are part of nature, and they have goals, but nature has no goals. Dogs are part of nature, and they have goals, ... you can continue that line of reasoning to understand just how sensible is that what you are saying. "Normal everyday environment" for domesticated species means that people make their selection, which by this definition would be "Natural" for them, but I bet that you consider that "artificial selection". So yeah, "it should be clear and possibly unambiguous what is meant", but it is not. No, I did not. I posted a general statement about style in science. That syntagm is redundant if you say it in Latin, too. This really has nothing to do with English, or any other language. So, you dropped by to express your low opinion about philosophy community and their relevance, here, in General Philosophy forum? I can't say that I find that particularly interesting.

Of course that I didn't. I have better things to do in my life, like, for example, discussing it, commenting on it, sharing with you my opinion about it, things like that. And writing my own most readable scientific treatises of all time. Have you read them? They are already reckoned as such by some people, notably my girlfriend...and her sister.

@studiot No, I don't think I have fallen into any old trap of "assuming binary choices (either ...or...), if it is not 'this' it must be 'that'". If you use some qualifier, then there must be something else, that is outside of its scope, and is not pointless at the same time. I gave two options that I could think of, which both don't have much sense to me, so I concluded that the qualifier is redundant. And "self selection" never occurred to me, as the whole point is that environment selects you, if self selection would be the case, everyone would choose to survive. Right? I mean, it is not like everyone doesn't try to impact the environment in order to make it let them survive, but eventually, the environment is the one that selects you. Unless you don't talk about suicide here? @Sensei First of all, you are responding as if I didn't mention artificial selection at all, and then if you think that for some reason this should be separated from "natural selection", then you don't believe homo sapiens is a part of nature, ie as natural agent as, well, everything else that exists in the nature. The only answer given here, that I would tentatively and partially accept, was by John Cuthber, when he said that for historical reasons, one should continue to use that syntagm, as in the start it was used to denote the difference from "unnatural", or "supernatural" causes, ie not that part about Green party activists. And what about philosophy community? Apparently you can speak in its name too.

Is it usually just a bad style, redundant, instead of concise and precise, or is it usually a sign that a content is also lacking quality? I can give you one example (that I think it's an example, you may not agree with me), for which I think it is just a bad style. The syntagm "Natural Selection" in Darwin's theory is redundant in a sense that the word "Natural" could/should be omitted, as there is no alternative to nature when we talk about reality, ie not imaginary processes but real processes. As a naturalist, I reject existence of supernatural processes that may influence natural processes, and as an evolutionist I reject existence of artificial processes, that are somehow separate from natural processes. What criteria could we establish to distinguish between them (at least in the context of evolution)? If we define artificiality as a human intervention into nature, then this is also too anthropocentric for me, and any true evolutionist should disregard that definition, because homo sapiens is just one natural species among many of them. The other alternative is to talk about "Environmental Selection" process, as it has more sense, as environment is that agent that is acting selectively.

Besides those things that I mentioned in the original post, I may add a few more. For example, constructor theory of life doesn't mention the role of intelligence in evolution, probably because the authors think it plays no role. Another omitted thing that can be fundamental characteristic of life, besides intelligence, is conciousness. That theory is focused solely on accurate self-reproduction with possible adaptations, which is just one characteristic of life. The problem is how to describe all characteristics of life in general and abstract way, with mathematical precision and exactness. I don't think that theory does that.

Here you are: http://constructortheory.org/portfolio/the-philosophy-of-constructor-theory/ http://constructortheory.org/portfolio/the-constructor-theory-of-information/ http://constructortheory.org/portfolio/the-constructor-theory-of-life/ ... and other constructor theory research papers, that can easily be found on the constructortheory.org website, as well as their contacts. In fact, I plan to contact mr Deutsch, via email, and ask him to comment it, if and when he finds time.

I am questioning the position that information and life are more fundamental natural notions than intelligence. One naturalistic view is that intelligence is an emergent quality that arises in living entities, which arose from inanimate matter during abiogenesis, and information is a physical notion that exists in a non living world, and can be instantiated in it without any intelligent agent causing its instantiation. The proof for this is his mathematical/physical theory which doesn't refer to intelligent agents in any way, nor does it deal in any way with them. Although, it implicitly posits the fact that intelligence emerges from information instantiated in living organisms, and not the other way around, which then seems as pseudoscientific jumping to conclusion, made by proponents of ID (Intelligent Design) movement, to which I don't belong. Still, that theory has some moot points, at least to me, probably because I didn't study it properly (but I don't know anyone who did, as it still is not a mainstream physics, it's still kind of new). One of them being usage of the term "natural" extensively, which is kind of odd in physical papers, considering the fact that physics is not supposed to deal with anything beyond nature. Or, if it has to deal with something that is, for example, "artificial", as a contrast to "natural", then it has to be defined what does that word actually mean in context of that theory. When I used that term in my essay "The origin of Information", to characterize the "artificial life", I had very precise and specific, anthropocentric meaning of that word in mind, which makes the distinction between "natural life", and "artificial life" that human kind has an ambition to produce in its laboratory (ie, not that what we do when we reproduce, as any other species do). I wonder how his great physical theory can explain the fact that homo sapiens is the only biologial specie that has remote chances of doing that, without taking intelligence into account. And he cannot have the same meaning in mind, because he doesn't deal with intelligence, that's why he doesn't deal with artificiality too, he just uses the word natural too much without any reason, need, and counterpart. The same thing is with the term "spontaneity" in his theory, he mathematically defined just about everything, except for this term. So I must ask him publicly, mr Deutsch, how do you respond to these questions?

And why would mods not allow the discussion? Some of them already told me to go elsewhere to blog. So I did it. But it doesn't mean I cannot discuss it here. As for the definition of information, there are some here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information There are also theories about that subject, and I referred to them in these essays. Well, I know more than I knew before I did the investigation.

Here you are: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/grammar/countable-nouns This is oxforddictionaries, is that authentic enough for you?

No, what I meant is that someone may think he/she knows all the stuff that scientists know, but he/she doesn't. I know I didn't. So I investigated it a bit, and came up with these essays.

Maybe it has some answers, but not all? Maybe not all scientists agree all the time on all points? Maybe you still have to figure out what scientists know, and you think you know too, but it's far from the truth? Buzz off. Did I spell that right for you?

Look, if philosophy was good for Newton, it should be good for us too. He didn't bother to make sharp distinction between philosophy and science, so why should we?

So, if science has answers, it's not anymore philosophical subject, right?

I woke up one morning, and realized that I don't have an answer to questions such as how life started on earth, and how it evolves. I had nothing better to do, so I started to investigate it a bit, wrote 4 short essays, and published it on a blogger platform. Here they are: https://hrvojedj.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-origin-of-information.html https://hrvojedj.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-revision-of-origin-of-information.html https://hrvojedj.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-connection-between-thermal-food.html https://hrvojedj.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-game.html They also present my naturalistic philosofical views. If you feel like it, give me some feedback, positive or negative, I don't care. Or, better to say, I can stand it. If I really didn't care at all, I wouldn't bother to write.

As I wasn't satisfied with how this discussion ended, I wrote a blog about The origin of information , that explains some doubts that I have with respect to the central dogma of molecular biology. It is also not clear to me in Endy0816's post, what does spontaneous occuring of changes have to do with its possibility to get itself into the germline. Probably for a change to be effective in the same entity in which occured, it must be somatic mutation, which then doesn't get passed to offspring, while germline mutations are passed to offspring, but they don't effect the entity in which they occured, but if stem cell mutates, and divides to spread the change to other stem cells, which later can become specialized both ways, then the change can effect both the same entity and its offspring. Is that possible? I don't know, as I am not professional in the field, but it interests me as a hobby. But what difference does it make if the change was spontaneous and what does it mean at all? Does it mean it was a mutation caused by agents such as radiation, chemicals (cigarette smoke, pesticides, asbestos,...), or viruses, as opposed to a not random change that occurs as natural genetic engineering? ! Moderator Note Link is removed, if the content of the blog is relevant, please post them here (we do allow link to blogs in the profile, however).

Yes, it occurs normally in healing, abnormally in cancers, and vasculogenesis normally occurs prenatally, neovascularization also has its distinctive meaning as Wikipedia says... it is nice to be informed about the terminology, sometimes very important. There are some professionals in this field here on this forum, probably not very interested in this topic, and I don't blame them for that. And I agree this sounds very strange as this flow of information contradicts the central dogma of molecular biology.

I was partly demotivated to continue this thread by misunderstandings that appeared during this discussion, partly drawn away by other interests, but this post deserved an answer. I can only second that opinion. When and how did it happen? For this important event in african lungfish evolution to happen, not only alveoli and bronchioli should have been developed, but also the new circulatory network that supports their function, besides the original, that was retained in a tissue from which the lung was formed. How do we know that? Well, unlike the first diagram posted here, that is perfectly fine, double circulatory system diagrams, which are probably the most popular circulatory system diagrams on the internet, usually have slight deficiency, when they are not followed by an explanation of the fact that heart and lung tissues are supplied with oxygenated blood by systemic circuit capillaries too. While for heart it may be clear that although it receives massive input flow of blood through largest vessels in a body, it cannot utilize it for its own needs, it still needs tiny capillaries to exchange CO2 for O2, and these are of course part of systemic circuit, for lungs one might think they can utilize pulmonary circuit for both functions, to oxygenate blood for the needs of the whole organism, and to use some of that oxygen for themselves, so that they don't need systemic circuit at all, but the fact is that systemic circuit is evolutionary "older", it is descendant of the ancient single circuit, while the pulmonary circuit is evolutionary "newer", developed for the respiratory function of lungs, and the tissues from which the lung was shaped obviously needed blood supply before pulmonary circuit was developed, so that they still have it in a form of bronchial circulation, that is part of systemic circulation. In other words, old vessels didn't disappear, but the new ones appeared, that were meant from the start to connect lungs to heart in a new way, and to support the new function of lungs. However, we see that genome is capable to produce tumors, and to develop completely new vessel network for their needs, during the lifespan of a single organism. What if it is also capable to produce the complete and novel beneficial remodelling of blood circuitry in one organism, and write down that change in its code to pass it to further generations? I mean, people see that organisms changed throughout history, we can roughly estimate when some changes occured, but we are obviously clueless about the dynamics of these changes. Who can say if lungs appeared during the lifespan of one, thousand, or million generations? Only time. Another thing that postponed participation for some time was a weird obstacle that I have when I try to sign in with Facebook authentication. It displays a message: >>App Not Setup: This app is still in development mode, and you don't have access to it. Switch to a registered test user or ask an app admin for permissions. << I wonder am I the only one who received that? I wrote to forum staff about the issue, but received no response. So I decided to create a new account to continue my participation until the issue is resolved.