FrankQuietly

Thanks for clarifying Marqq, I am still struggling to grasp what you are arguing for. Is it that compatibilism is true, we have a determined universe and peoples free will is expressed as behaviour modification? The analogy you make to learning about hot things the hard way doesn't seem to support your claim. As learning the hard way does not require free will. So how do you support your claim that we do choose? And how / why is this choosing not causally bound to the universe? I am still struggling guys to hear any compatibilist argument that allows free choice within a determined universe.

Marqq, I am struggling to follow your lgoic. A deterministic universe without free will contains ethically driven behaviour modification of humans? How can behaviour modification occur if people are not choosing between alternative actions? It is often said that determinism destroys ethics, but I'm not so sure. In a universe with free will it is clear that punishment and removing certain people from society can lead to behaviour modification and ethical progress. But if the universe is deterministic then history shows that the determined universe develops ethical and social structures that remove certain people from society anyway. So does it really matter either way?

Does this regress the problem one step to the left, what is the origin story for these panspermia life forms from space?

Questionposter, would you consider the evolution of evolvability planning? Not planning to a specific end , ala teleology, but planning to adapt best to unknown future circumstances. I'm not sure if this has been rebutted, but I remember hearing of research into organisms increasing their mutation rate as the environment becomes stressed. And it was shown that the mutations were not increasing due to direct damage from the environmental stresses but by the down regulation of the genome supervision and repair systems. Assuming this was sound research is this planning?

What do you mean by epistemically open options ? If the action taken has a sufficient cause and is determined doesnt that make these options impossible? Randomness, true randomness that is, an effect without a sufficient cause, suggests we dont have a deterministic world, so the question is meaningless as there is nothing to be compatible with?

From what I have read compatibilist positions describe the ability to choose within a deterministic world using manipulations of language, or regressive arguments. I havent seen a convincing account for how choice can exist in a truly deterministic world. The two things seem to lead to instant contradiction. Although I must confess I have not read very many compatibilist arguments, I havent liked any of the ones I have read. The cop out comes from the desperation I sense in those that are concerned the free will problem destroys their beautiful ethics, and they clamour against contradiction to defend the ability to choose in a clearly deterministic universe.

There is usually a third category you missed out, compatibilism. The idea that you can have free will and determinism. I thinks its a load of cods wallop myself, a complete cop out fence sitting position. But it is often argued for by the great and the good so should really be included in your poll.

I am tending to agree with you that complexity is not a good avenue to argue for direction in evolution as initially asked here. Although I think it is blatantly obvious that complexity has increased over time, i.e. from no life to life, from simple ecosystems to complex ecosystems. And you could argue that once evolving systems begin they will tend to these more integrated ecosystems, but this is not a directed evolution as intended by the original poster. The original post was a question about the teleological direction in evolution, as if it had an end it worked toward. So complexity is not something it would strive to be, but it may be an inevitable outcome. I think the analogy of a pre determined plan, although a very religious concept that tends toward Paleys watchmaker and the argument from design, is still a valid scientific hypothesis. I have never seen anything that even hints at accepting it as true, and many good arguments against it. But nonetheless it is conceivable that future science could uncover an inevitability to the evolution process that is present from the laws of nature and physics etc. Many would no doubt want human cognition to be at the pinnacle but I wouldnt want to give any special mention to us humans just yet. If it turns out us humans can develop a method of creating universes then I may pay more attention as this would suggest that an evolutionary / developmental model for our own universe is more valid. Some people have explored this from a thermodynamic perspective developing theories based on the maximisation of energy dissipation as a direction to evolving systems. Seems a bit lame to me and just riding on the back of the universality of thermodynamic laws. frank

I appreciate that cherry picking and comparing certain aspects may be poor argument. Do you think the evolutionary history on earth shows an increase in complexity? What is your take on the complexity trend of biosphere in its totality? And what about the idea that identifying a trend and predicting its future direction to continue is a potential argument for an in built tendency of the biosphere to increase in complexity, something not derived from evolution but a driving force of it?

I think I agree with you entirely in principle Ironman. No two things can be identical to each other due to spatio temporal relations, and nothing holds an identical identity with itself through its changes. This leads us to that awkward point that you describe where we realise that our knowledge and reason is on shaky foundations. But does it really matter? We can still build pragmatic and useful arguments and theories despite the lack of strict identity. We can still identify objects with themselves for practical purposes, some things like solar systems and people have such a strong long lasting identity that it is not really a concern. So I agree with you I think, but I dont find many problems with it. And it doesnt seem to inhibit rationality and science. It is for sure a worrying point for those philosophers that would wish they can have that wonder theory that describes it all!

the system you describe does not have an energy flow, it is a thermodynamically closed system. It would at least need to be spinning in the goldilocks zone as has been said so that energy flows through the system

Hi CharonY, Yes that assertion is not very precise or well worded. In fact the term chemical complexity is poorly chosen. But the intention behind it is that the evolution of compartmentalised cells, multicellularity and integrated ecosystems is an increase in complexity. Perhaps not chemical complexity, but complexity nonetheless. What do you think?

A solution of lysed human cells contains all of the necessary components that viruses need to replicate themselves. This is clear from the fact that un-lysed human cells contain all of the necessary components that viruses need to replicate themselves. Lysing them makes no difference. SO I am afraid guys this is not a case of true self assembly, it is just a subtle variation on the normal virus replication cycle. And another thing, you could call it bug bear of mine. The argument that viruses cannot replicate without a host means they are not alive is really not a very good argument. This is clear from the fact that humans also cannot replicate without a suitable host, namely a member of the opposite sex. (lets leave out all the modern science test tube baby stuff for arguments sake). Unless the last man standing is indeed considered not alive? It is more sound to argue the lack of metabolism route. And although I do not know of any other organisms that lacks metabolism functions. The consensus on evolutionary history is that eukaryotic cells formed a symbiotic relationship with mitochondria at some point. And since mitochondria are the metabolic centres within cells it suggests that the first cells lacked metabolism and therefore couldnt be alive. Which sounds like a nonsense. frank

The original post from kitkat is a thought provoking one, and I mean from a scientific perspective. Most of the replies have disagreed with kitkats intuition by describing the ability to evolve adaptability. What has been called the evolution of evolvability. So organisms over time evolve systems and processes that improve their ability to evolve to unknown future environmental changes. Kitkat, if I understand your intuition to be that organisms appear to have a built-in ability to evolve in a certain direction, as if toward something. Or they appear to have some mechanisms that help them to adapt and evolve over time, then your intuition is actually a scientifically valid hypothesis, it is testable, and it makes predictions. Prediction such as the directional changes that have been witnessed in evolution so far should continue in the same direction. For example, take the observation that the chemical complexity of organisms has increased over time, we could predict that it would continue to do so. And as a supporting analogy, consider when a fertilised egg develops into a frog, it proceeds along a directed pathway from tadpole to the frog. This is mostly pre-determined by the fertilised egg's genetics with some environmental influence along the way. Now imagine that the universe itself proceeds along a directed pathway, i.e. the laws of the universe / physics are such that certain evolutionary pathways are to be expected. Then your intuition would be correct and there is a directing force to evolution that is outside the basic evolution system and any evolved evolvability. So I genuinely believe Kitkat that your intuition is actually a scientific hypothesis and a very interesting and thought provoking one to investigate. The trouble I fear you will have in developing arguments to support your hypothesis is that most of the evidence will be the same evidence that supports the currently accepted theories of evolvability etc. So you would really have to think outside the box to begin finding certain processes that seem to direct evolution but do not appear to be derived from evolution itself. Frank