I’m curious about this forum’s thoughts on evolution, specifically whether it is driven fully by random mutation and natural selection, or whether there is some sort of ‘intelligence’ or other force guiding it.
In BAM and elsewhere there are examples of animal behavior that could be claimed to be inexplicable by the former view. These include seemingly pointless acts of reveling, self-destructive or line-ending acts, and extremely specific instincts that seemingly couldn’t have arisen incrementally.
One could propose that the fact that insects have had a much longer time to evolve is the reason they can have such specific and complex instincts. Small rodents also fit this criterion to a lesser degree.
The self-destructive acts could be explained away as a malfunctioning due to an environment/situation different to the ones evolved under. The reveling perhaps as drives misfiring in benign ways.
Interestingly, ‘Higher’ animals tend to have more vague instincts and more learned behaviors…
One questions why more complex life would arise at all when simple life is so good at reproducing. Of course, if it didn’t, we wouldn’t be here to speak of it, so one could accuse this question of a sort of confirmation bias…
Overall, what I know of animal behavior leads me to sympathize with the view that there is more going on than chance mutation and natural selection.
But I’m curious what others think. Maybe some want to argue for involution as well.
(03-24-2022, 09:17 AM)Trep Wrote: The self-destructive acts could be explained away as a malfunctioning due to an environment/situation different to the ones evolved under. The reveling perhaps as drives misfiring in benign ways.
This doesn't really make sense when the highest aim of Darwinian evolution is survival ("chance mutation and natural selection" as you put it even to this extent genetic mutation itself would hardly be favourable for reproduction, atleast beyond the minimum requirements of the Environment). Survival would be the priority under any cicumstance, a change in environment wouldn't bring about explicitly self-destructive behaviour but instead maybe a failure to meet the requirements of the environment. BAP's example of animals refusing to breed in captivity wouldn't make sense in that veiw, and I think this was precisely Nietzsche's criticism of Darwin.
Yes genetic mutation is not favorable the vast majority of the time but it is still a necessity for evolution.
I can envisage an animal who evolves breeding one way, and when put in a different situation (i.e. captivity), 'short circuits' and goes -mating season not detected- or -not enough room- or something because the species evolved natural tendencies of population control to avoid malthusian catastrophe, which in the wild is better for longevity of the species, or some similar explanation.
Here is an article explaining some criticisms of Nietzsche’s view on Darwin (BAP’s criticism come mainly from Nietzsche yes): https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/nietzsche-s-new-darwinism/
“The central motif in Nietzsche's criticism of Darwin seems to be that Darwin lays too much stress on survival, and too little on power [18]. But in offering this criticism, Nietzsche "misidentifies the selective criterion in Darwinism," which is not survival, but reproduction. Moreover, "Nietzsche seems to misread Darwinian survival as an 'end' in too literal a sense: as the aim of a will or drive or instinct" in the individual [22]. It looks as if Nietzsche has missed something important about Darwinism -- namely, that it is not hopelessly teleological, but manages to handle the idea of 'ends' or 'aims' in an entirely naturalistic way. If this is the case, however, it appears that Nietzsche's hostile reaction to Darwin and his subsequent 'correction' of Darwinism are grounded in error”
I don’t think the first criticism is very relevant or good. The second is what BAP calls the bait and switch where the Darwinist walks back the teleology they had previously implied. Even still it’s a decent criticism.
It is the case that it seems other drives take precedence and for example there are studies showing even a very simple animal like a flatworm (capable of sexually or asexually reproducing) will resign itself to death if it is overly ‘bored’ or ‘cramped’ (feeling words are for analogy, but lack of challenge/stimulation/space) in an experiment. There are also situations where stress induces it to divide.
Nietzsche saw life as a struggle not just for existence but for greater complexity, beauty, etc. It is the case that in humans currently the lower outbreed the higher, but of course the higher could still be said to be ‘better at existing’ in a certain way (theoretically militarily stronger, more self sufficient). Those standards perhaps partially only make sense in a non-darwinian way of looking at things.. not that I would be expected to have internalized Darwinian standards even in a Darwinian world. This lower-higher fitness difference is seen even more clearly in non-human animals, though one could wonder if one only sees the higher as higher because they are closer to us, and in fact there are no such categorizations.
There are two approaches to science, one of them is mechanistic and is best exemplified by Newton, the other is teleological and is exemplified by Kepler and later Goethe. Both have their foundations in Aristotle. Other frameworks- "vitalism," "organicism"- are dilutions of these two fundamental approaches and aren't worth taking seriously. The mechanistic approach lends itself well to simple and fundamental systems, those that don't deviate far from basic laws and can be modeled mathematically. In contrast, as BAP (and Kant) note, it is impossible to meaningfully speak of biology in mechanistic terms, and this is even more obviously true of psychology, politics, economics, etc. This would be true even if everything does in fact reduce to the play of particles and forces- we understand the world by way of concepts, and the only concepts that make the behavior of a living being intelligible to us are those that presuppose an end. This might be called the "weak teleological argument," and it's almost certainly correct. Note these two approaches aren't in necessary conflict with one another and only become so if one extends beyond the realm in which it's useful.
The "strong teleological argument," and what BAP probably believes, would be that there actually are "creative" forces operative at the level of biology or psychology or politics that are not operative, or operative in the same way, in physics, e.g. there is some sort of "morphogenic" force that assembles cells and proteins in such a way that a plant is formed that can't be further reduced or explained in terms of other forces. I don't know of any evidence for this but I'm not particularly literate in any of the areas of modern science. One other hypothesis I haven't thought through the implications of would be that all of physics reduces to a continuous manifold of "will-to-power" which has a creative character, in other words reality is creative on the most fundamental level and all teleology can be explained in terms of that while still being mechanistic and subject to discoverable laws. I think this only makes sense if the universe is eternal, though.
Who can disagree with evolution on a small time scale? But it's obvious that the so-called modern synthesis is bullshit. The idea that all life on Earth developed by totally random chance out of a primordial soup is laughable. The evolution of the eye is frequently raised by creationists and is a very strong counterpoint. I remember being skeptical of the conventional explanation when I learned about this stuff in skrewl. It's just not plausible.
Another funny thing about biologists is their claim to have disproved the existence of a life force. They can't identify the specific difference between living and non-living matter, and they are unable to turn non-living matter into living matter, but they treat the idea of a life force as some kind of boorish folk belief that only a moron would entertain. If you really want a laugh, press a biologist on this subject.
Evolutionists are religious in their commitment to their metaphysics but they totally lack practical commitment to it. One particular thing that interests me, due to my own hobbies, is the ecological balance in the wild as it concerns the foundation of the food chain. In botany, specialist insects are said to have co-evolved with plants in these complex behavioral patterns and delicate relationships over X number of assumed aeons. But botanists are demonstrably unfaithful that any of these insects can, say, develop a taste for the invasive Japanese barberry, the means for which would require that a few genetic mutations should spread through the population. They all act as if species were in fact created by God to be a certain way, and are incapable of evolving. And it's hardly a jump from plants to humans, namely the abilities of the races and their ecological place in certain regions and biomes.
04-05-2024, 11:43 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-06-2024, 12:32 AM by Chud.)
Trevor Bauer Wrote:One particular thing that interests me, due to my own hobbies, is the ecological balance in the wild as it concerns the foundation of the food chain. In botany, specialist insects are said to have co-evolved with plants in these complex behavioral patterns and delicate relationships over X number of assumed aeons. But botanists are demonstrably unfaithful that any of these insects can, say, develop a taste for the invasive Japanese barberry, the means for which would require that a few genetic mutations should spread through the population.
The historical pattern is that specialists are dead ends and specialist herbivores the deadest ends; the "bleeding edge" of macroevolution being in omnivore generalists from which specialists radiate, die out, and are succeeded by their forebears. Living off plant matter requires a more sophisticated digestive system (-> more necessary adaptations in sequence) than meat, this makes herbivores more tightly coupled to their time and place than carnivores, which proliferate anywhere they can kill enough to survive. Hence the apex of biodiversity in the tropics where a single plant species can grow year-round and form a niche for a specialist herbivore.
The koala bear sleeps twenty hours a day and feeds its shit to its children because its entire biological machinery is spec'd into digesting toxic, calorie-sparse eucalyptus leaves that no other animal will touch (BECAUSE no other animal will touch them) - if all the eucalyptus trees were replaced with apple trees overnight, the koala wouldn't flourish with the sudden surplus of nutrition, it would be outcompeted and displaced by species with more general faculties and die out within a generation or two.
Trevor Bauer Wrote:They all act as if species were in fact created by God to be a certain way, and are incapable of evolving. And it's hardly a jump from plants to humans, namely the abilities of the races and their ecological place in certain regions and biomes.
Darwin's claims are in perfect concordance with the Teuton inventing straw hats and quinine and beating back hordes of starving nogs and boongs, libtards are well aware of this, which is why their cases for both human- and bio-diversity are essentially moral and phrased in contradiction to Darwinism (this doesn't make them wrong, I'm deeply sympathetic to conservation and would like to fumigate several continents and archipelagos to achieve it) - that explicit measures are needed to protect diversity is proof enough of this. The only ones who seriously, positively evoke the perfect adaptation of races to their native environments are are countercurrents chungalists and niggers crytyping about how whitey gehh sunbuhhn n shieeeet.
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