Philosophy Now Forum

For any who may interested, here is the great blog debate between the biochemist Larry Moran (author of the above-linked paper) and Richard Dawkins — and a heated debate it is!

Harbal wrote: ↑Sat Sep 16, 2017 1:17 pm

Greta wrote: ↑Sat Sep 16, 2017 1:10 pm
I disagree with David there. If evolution was accidental then we would all still be microbes.

Doesn't he just mean that any mutation that occurs is accidental, rather than whether or not that mutation is selected in or out is accidental? Or is that what you disagree with?

Random mutations PLUS natural selection, taken together, is a nonrandom process. The mutation itself is “random” in the sense that it is not correlated with the environment. In the case of nylon-eating bacteria, the mutation that allowed the bacteria to eat the nylon just happened, by lucky chance (for the bacteria), to occur in the presence of large amounts of nylon. It did not happen because the nylon was lying around waiting to be eaten. Because of the lucky happenstance for the bacteria that nylon was lying around to be eaten, the mutation proved to be beneficial — the bacteria were fitter (left more progeny). The mutation was random, the selection in conjunction with the mutation was nonrandom.

Genetic drift is different. It’s just pure accidental changes in gene frequencies that are not acted upon by selection. Larry Moran and others argue that drift accounts for most evolution. Richard Dawkins argues that selection accounts for most of it. Others say that while drift accounts for most changes in gene frequencies over time (which is what evolution is), all the interesting stuff — changes in phenotypes over time, such as a land mammal evolving into a whale — is accounted for by selection and not by drift.

Harbal wrote: ↑Fri Sep 15, 2017 12:47 pm

Hobbes' Choice wrote: ↑Fri Sep 15, 2017 11:55 am The idea of a nation state; money; economic and political systems are all based on unrecognised mythologies

How are they based on mythology? Surely they are all based on pragmatism, they are just strategies for achieving something. If any of them fail to achieve their intended purpose or lead to undesirable consequences then it means the idea is based on a misconception rather than mythology, doesn't it?

Sorry I can't see the joke here?

Londoner wrote: ↑Sat Sep 16, 2017 5:29 pm

PauloL wrote: ↑Sat Sep 16, 2017 4:22 pm This (picture of a fly) is a mass of individual cells in the same place.

Indeed it is.

No individual cell in that fly thinks; 'I am part of a fly, my purpose in life is to keep this fly flying'.

neither does the fly.

Hobbes' Choice wrote: ↑Sat Sep 16, 2017 9:40 pm Sorry I can't see the joke here?

You can't see the joke when there is one so you don't stand much chance when there isn't one.

Harbal wrote: ↑Sat Sep 16, 2017 9:50 pm

Hobbes' Choice wrote: ↑Sat Sep 16, 2017 9:40 pm Sorry I can't see the joke here?

You can't see the joke when there is one so you don't stand much chance when there isn't one.

I don't get it. Where's the punchline?

Hobbes' Choice wrote: ↑Sat Sep 16, 2017 10:30 pm
I don't get it. Where's the punchline?

I asked you a perfectly reasonable question, Hobbes, but you just couldn't stop yourself from being an arse, could you? Okay, have it your way but you know you always come off worse.

Harbal wrote: ↑Sat Sep 16, 2017 10:37 pm

Hobbes' Choice wrote: ↑Sat Sep 16, 2017 10:30 pm
I don't get it. Where's the punchline?

I asked you a perfectly reasonable question, Hobbes, but you just couldn't stop yourself from being an arse, could you? Okay, have it your way but you know you always come off worse.

Nope, sorry, try again, your joke is too niche for me to understand.

David, sorry about earlier on. I didn't know that your comment about accidents was out of context.

Belinda wrote: ↑Sat Sep 16, 2017 3:22 pmLondoner wrote:

It isn't clear what is meant here. At what point do a collection of individual cells turn into a 'being'?

This merits a discussion all to itself. Not because individuation and intention are irrelevant in the context here, they are relevant, but because it's complex and quite important as to how we understand what we know and understand.

Yes, in a sense that question asks the difference between organisms and colonies. Colonies are interesting in that their members are incapable of surviving by themselves and operate functionally as cells.

Just as there exist simple unicellular and complex multicellular organisms, colonies too can either be simple and uniform or complex and varied. Microbes form simple, fairly homogeneous colonies or while colonial insects and humans form complex eusocial colonies with specialisation of roles. It's often noted that ant colonies operate as much as a individual entity than a colony of individuals. The line between colony and organism is more blurry than the taxonomy implies.

Consider sea sponges, officially animals (or more precisely parazoans). They are effectively a primitive example of eusocial organisation in microbe colonies. So when microbes form eusocial colonies we consider them to not be individuals but cells of a larger entity, which begs the question as to why we humans can be considered individuals and not cells of a more complex larger superorganism.

I guess we are like the sea sponges, with some qualities of colonies, such as the ability to grow a new colony from a small detached group of "cells", and some qualities of animals, such as most "cells" (individual components) as incapable of surviving outside of the colony as any of our cells.

There is a repeating pattern where the processes of aggregation, integration, specialisation and further integration resulting in emergences.

davidm wrote: ↑Sat Sep 16, 2017 4:54 pm

Dumb luck for an accident, creating multicellular life.

Unfortunately for us, in case of accident we'll most likely get cancer.

But mother Nature always has dumb luck and our [female] common ancestor (for which there's no fossil record, a geological imperfection, but as always Evolutionauts think it will come) instead of cancer in case of accident started lambing hordes of Homo sapiens-to be.

Hobbes' Choice wrote: ↑Sat Sep 16, 2017 9:43 pm

Well, it's really hard for you defining at once what a mass of cells is.

Hobbes' Choice wrote: ↑Sat Sep 16, 2017 10:46 pm Nope, sorry,

It's too late for apologies.

PauloL wrote: ↑Sat Sep 16, 2017 10:58 pm

davidm wrote: ↑Sat Sep 16, 2017 4:54 pm

Dumb luck for an accident, creating multicellular life.

Unfortunately for us, in case of accident we'll most likely get cancer.

But mother Nature always has dumb luck and our [female] common ancestor (for which there's no fossil record, a geological imperfection, but as always Evolutionauts think it will come) instead of cancer in case of accident started lambing hordes of Homo sapiens-to be.

Can anyone venture a guess what the above nonsense babble is supposed to mean?

davidm wrote: ↑Sat Sep 16, 2017 11:48 pm

I'll explain IOW:

You said:

"This is when multicellular organisms first emerged. That it took so staggeringly long for this to happen suggests that it was an extremely unlikely occurrence, and possibly purely an accident not involving selection."

That's what I commented. Lucky dumb accidents indeed, but at least multicellular life was created.

These days, an accident will mean most likely cancer.

I hope I made myself clear.

PauloL wrote: ↑Sun Sep 17, 2017 12:23 am

davidm wrote: ↑Sat Sep 16, 2017 11:48 pm

I'll explain IOW:

You said:

"This is when multicellular organisms first emerged. That it took so staggeringly long for this to happen suggests that it was an extremely unlikely occurrence, and possibly purely an accident not involving selection."

That's what I commented. Lucky dumb accidents indeed, but at least multicellular life was created.

These days, an accident will mean most likely cancer.

I hope I made myself clear.

And? So? Is there an obscure point here?

Reviewing the literature, it seems to be believed that mulitcellularity may have independently evolved from some 20-40 times (there is disagreement because this sort of thing is hard to pinpoint). It may have also evolved early, vanished, and then evolved anew later. All we do know for sure is that multicellularity taking hold and producing the biota we have is very recent in geologic time. But if it did evolve independently dozens of times it sees unlikely to have been a pure accident and that therefore some element of selection was involved.