Philosophy Now Forum

Greta wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote:

Greta wrote:This is a conundrum. Logic suggests that evolution is non-directional, but the evidence of four billion years of life is compelling IMO. When you think about it, the idea of non-progressive evolution is at odds with how nature works. All living things mature over time - and it appears that ecosystems and the biosphere itself are not exempt from this dynamic. Evolution can be thought of as the processes involved in a maturing, or perhaps ageing, biosphere.

Factually, nothing is better or worse than anything else. Nothing counts as progress or regress. Those valuations are a factor of individual persons thinking about things in terms of their preferences, in terms of goals they have or they imagine that they would have in a particular situation (for example, "If I were a rabbit . . . ").

That solves the supposed conundrum.

Let's explore the idea of progression in nature. The clear inferential evidence before me is that you personally have progressed hugely from infancy and childhood. Here you, a smart bloke posting stuff on philosophy forums, no doubt various skills and abilities. Importantly, also increasing understanding of self and environment via experience and learning. A clear case of progression.

I think that progression is maturation. Why should the biosphere have an unordered life when everything within it does? I think it more likely that the biosphere itself is moving into a reproductive phase than the "humans as cancer/parasite/evil spirits" notions.

Progress is an all too human idea. Nature does not give a shit. You think complexity is progress; why not simplicity?

Greta wrote:Let's explore the idea of progression in nature. The clear inferential evidence before me is that you personally have progressed hugely from infancy and childhood. Here you, a smart bloke posting stuff on philosophy forums, no doubt various skills and abilities. Importantly, also increasing understanding of self and environment via experience and learning. A clear case of progression.

I think that progression is maturation. Why should the biosphere have an unordered life when everything within it does? I think it more likely that the biosphere itself is moving into a reproductive phase than the "humans as cancer/parasite/evil spirits" notions.

The "progression" you're talking about is simply a matter of something approaching preferences or goals (that you have or at least would empathically have in my shoes).

You could try to frame it as particular things increasing in quantity or something like that, but whenever one thing increases in quantity, something else decreases in quantity--it's just a matter of how we frame it. For example, if my knowledge increases, my ignorance decreases. As I gow and my height increases, my shortness (and my head-to-body ratio) decreases. The world itself has no preferences regarding any of those things. It's people that have preferences.

It should be noted that " progression" and "progress" do not mean the same thing. Progression is to move along a course, either of action, or in a particular direction. Progress usually means to improve or get better. Progression does not always involve getting better, but progress usually does.

thedoc wrote:It should be noted that " progression" and "progress" do not mean the same thing. Progression is to move along a course, either of action, or in a particular direction. Progress usually means to improve or get better. Progression does not always involve getting better, but progress usually does.

Okay so how does that relate to each of the arguments here?

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

thedoc wrote:It should be noted that " progression" and "progress" do not mean the same thing. Progression is to move along a course, either of action, or in a particular direction. Progress usually means to improve or get better. Progression does not always involve getting better, but progress usually does.

Okay so how does that relate to each of the arguments here?

Greta was posting about progression and you posted about progress, you 2 were posting about 2 different things.

thedoc wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

thedoc wrote:It should be noted that " progression" and "progress" do not mean the same thing. Progression is to move along a course, either of action, or in a particular direction. Progress usually means to improve or get better. Progression does not always involve getting better, but progress usually does.

Okay so how does that relate to each of the arguments here?

Greta was posting about progression and you posted about progress, you 2 were posting about 2 different things.

I think not.

Cite: "Logic suggests that evolution is non-directional, but the evidence of four billion years of life is compelling IMO. When you think about it, the idea of non-progressive evolution is at odds with how nature works. All living things mature over time - and it appears that ecosystems and the biosphere itself are not exempt from this dynamic. Evolution can be thought of as the processes involved in a maturing, or perhaps ageing, biosphere."

Hobbes' Choice wrote: I think not.

Cite: "Logic suggests that evolution is non-directional, but the evidence of four billion years of life is compelling IMO. When you think about it, the idea of non-progressive evolution is at odds with how nature works. All living things mature over time - and it appears that ecosystems and the biosphere itself are not exempt from this dynamic. Evolution can be thought of as the processes involved in a maturing, or perhaps ageing, biosphere."

People are obsessed with the idea of everything being a 'journey' (buzzword alert) towards an imaginary destination. It's a complete fallacy.

vegetariantaxidermy wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote: I think not.

Cite: "Logic suggests that evolution is non-directional, but the evidence of four billion years of life is compelling IMO. When you think about it, the idea of non-progressive evolution is at odds with how nature works. All living things mature over time - and it appears that ecosystems and the biosphere itself are not exempt from this dynamic. Evolution can be thought of as the processes involved in a maturing, or perhaps ageing, biosphere."

People are obsessed with the idea of everything being a 'journey' (buzzword alert) towards an imaginary destination. It's a complete fallacy.

Indeed.

Terrapin Station wrote:

Greta wrote:Let's explore the idea of progression in nature. The clear inferential evidence before me is that you personally have progressed hugely from infancy and childhood. Here you, a smart bloke posting stuff on philosophy forums, no doubt various skills and abilities. Importantly, also increasing understanding of self and environment via experience and learning. A clear case of progression.

I think that progression is maturation. Why should the biosphere have an unordered life when everything within it does? I think it more likely that the biosphere itself is moving into a reproductive phase than the "humans as cancer/parasite/evil spirits" notions.

The "progression" you're talking about is simply a matter of something approaching preferences or goals (that you have or at least would empathically have in my shoes).

You could try to frame it as particular things increasing in quantity or something like that, but whenever one thing increases in quantity, something else decreases in quantity--it's just a matter of how we frame it. For example, if my knowledge increases, my ignorance decreases. As I grow and my height increases, my shortness (and my head-to-body ratio) decreases. The world itself has no preferences regarding any of those things. It's people that have preferences.

You sound like you've encountered too many magical thinkers.

I sympathise with those wishing to rigorously avoid anthropomorphisation. However, the gatekeeping in this instance is affected by scope creep, resulting in arguments against the existence of increasing order even as we currently manifest that very order. The argument should only be against the conscious increase in order.

Your objections to earlier comments seem to hinge on entropy, that our local increases in order result in concomitant increases in disorder around us. However, the order is increasing rather than stabilising because some of the entropy humanity (and other organisms) inflict ends up as heat radiating into space.

There is no "preference" that leads us from zygote to adult. It just happens. Ditto the Earth and humanity. Everything is born (literally or metaphorically), grows, develops, degrades, loses their integrative systems and disintegrates, ready for recycling.

Progression is a given - the evidence is in - and the questions logically shift to "how, when and why". Life has always displayed an accumulator effect as information stored in DNA carries forward the properties of prior organisms, hence the rapid bounce back of life with increased sophistication and complexity after major extinction events.

While the idea of human divinity is obviously nonsensical, there can be no doubt that we post-apes are at the leading edge of sentience on the Earth. Before we get too excited about that, this role was once filled by archaea, trilobites and dinosaurs, and humans may well follow some of them to oblivion, and most likely eventually become unrecognisable.

I agree that increase in complexity and sophistication in evolution is only important to (some) humans. However, evidence of evolutionary progress exists broadly on the planet while evidence of reversion to simplicity is only present in limited locales, usually after an event threatens a species, which can favour the least specifically adapted individuals, being more robust rather than "fancy".

As per my earlier comment, what we perceive as evolution on our scale may simply be maturation on a biosphere/planetary scale. We are only in the early stages of understanding the systems of which are part. It seems to me that humans are filling a role in the Earth's (Sun's?) system akin to that played by imaginal discs in metamorphosing insects - consuming the larval form to create the structures leading to an adult form. Note that the larval stage is much longer than the pupa or reproductive stages, which are brief and eventful.

Even if my speculations are wrong, the fact remains that humans are keenly trying to explore and settle other worlds with the potential effect of seeding with Earthly bacteria. I see the future of evolution going a number of ways:

1. Humans die out but robots and drones seed other worlds with bacteria to start new processes of evolution from scratch.

2. Humans die out and AI carries on its own subsequent evolutionary path. If this seems fanciful, about four billion years ago geology turned into biology. Later, biology became intelligent. Perhaps the next step after organic intelligence is inorganic intelligence, no longer limited by biology?

3. (A small percentage of) humans significantly change via genetic engineering and synthetic additions to settle on other worlds, perhaps a subterranean existence within high tech compounds, with their sanity preserved via immersive VR

4. Seemingly most people's favoured option - humans go the way of the dinosaurs and fail to seed any worlds with anything but a bit of space junk.

If that happens then my money is on new intelligent species eventually stemming from rats. After all, every mammal today stems from a shrewlike animal that survived the Cretaceous extinction event. Any new intelligent species would progress faster than we did because, as soon as they commenced mining, they would find humanity's relics from which they could learn.

Great, "order" (or "increasing order") is the same thing as "progress" or "betterment" in your view? Clearing that up is the first important thing (in my opinion) for interpreting your post in the context of our conversation to this point.

"

Terrapin Station wrote:Great, "order" (or "increasing order") is the same thing as "progress" or "betterment" in your view? Clearing that up is the first important thing (in my opinion) for interpreting your post in the context of our conversation to this point.

"Great" ... nice typo

I'm not quite sure what you are testing for (superstitious ideation?). The concepts, "order", "progress", "increasing complexity", "progress" and "betterment" as applied to entities in the biosphere would seem part of the maturing process of the biosphere as a whole. However, since maturation always involves tradeoffs and losses, "betterment" depends on one's perspective. Progress obviously doesn't suit everyone.

Terrapin Station wrote:Great, "order" (or "increasing order") is the same thing as "progress" or "betterment" in your view? Clearing that up is the first important thing (in my opinion) for interpreting your post in the context of our conversation to this point.

If you want, I'd like to talk about the meaning of order, I think it's considered "objective" and it isn't, it's a matter of how difficult to understand you see a structure you decided to treat as a structure.

Greta wrote:"

Terrapin Station wrote:Great, "order" (or "increasing order") is the same thing as "progress" or "betterment" in your view? Clearing that up is the first important thing (in my opinion) for interpreting your post in the context of our conversation to this point.

"Great" ... nice typo

Haha--thanks. (Although it might have been a kindle auto-correct, but nice auto-correct in that case.)

I'm not quite sure what you are testing for (superstitious ideation?). The concepts, "order", "progress", "increasing complexity", "progress" and "betterment" as applied to entities in the biosphere would seem part of the maturing process of the biosphere as a whole. However, since maturation always involves tradeoffs and losses, "betterment" depends on one's perspective. Progress obviously doesn't suit everyone.

I was trying to clear up whether they're the same thing because we were discussing whether such things are objective or subjective. I can see defining "order" to refer to relative objective states (contra other states)--although it would be very difficult to apply any objectively-defined "order" to something like a human compared to a mouse or something like that.

Terrapin Station wrote: ..."order" (or "increasing order") is the same thing as "progress" or "betterment" in your view?

Greta wrote:I'm not quite sure what you are testing for (superstitious ideation?). The concepts, "order", "progress", "increasing complexity", "progress" and "betterment" as applied to entities in the biosphere would seem part of the maturing process of the biosphere as a whole. However, since maturation always involves tradeoffs and losses, "betterment" depends on one's perspective. Progress obviously doesn't suit everyone.

I was trying to clear up whether they're the same thing because we were discussing whether such things are objective or subjective. I can see defining "order" to refer to relative objective states (contra other states)--although it would be very difficult to apply any objectively-defined "order" to something like a human compared to a mouse or something like that.[/quote]
Order is objective as an opposite to chaos, but quantifying is difficult due to the many ways that things can be ordered. As regards life, the more ordered the organism, the less subject to chaos it is. Jellyfish ride currents, brainless and subject to chaotic influences while dolphins form communities whose paths through the ocean are sensed and strategically grounded.

This movement towards greater order occurs in all maturing entities - from stars and planets to jellyfish and people. Youth is marked by greater heat and turbulence while maturity is cooler, more ordered and complex. As per the above, I see evolution as the internal perspective of entities within a larger, maturing entity.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

Greta wrote:I think that progression is maturation. Why should the biosphere have an unordered life when everything within it does? I think it more likely that the biosphere itself is moving into a reproductive phase than the "humans as cancer/parasite/evil spirits" notions.

Progress is an all too human idea. Nature does not give a shit. You think complexity is progress; why not simplicity?

When a moth moves into a reproductive stage do you think it's behaving consciously? That it "gives a shit"? So why assume that a maturing biosphere moving into its reproductive phase is acting consciously?

I think the denial of this biosphere maturing process is the more anthropocentric view - the idea that humans are independent agents, not in some ways controlled by the planet.