Non-Organic Evolution (Sub specie Evolutionis)
One interesting way to undestand the specificity of evolution is, ironically, to treat it as a non-biological phenomenon, as much as a biological one. After all, if we stick to the strict definition of evolution as 'descent with modification' (the passing of traits from one generation to the next), it becomes clear that organisms are not the only 'entities' that can undergo evolution. Understood in the strict and/or broad sense above, the idea of evolution is, as it were, 'substrate-independant'. Darwin himself implicitly recognized this when he drew attention to what he called the 'striking homologies' between the evolution of species and the evolution - although he did not call it that - of language:
"The formation of divergent languages and of distinct species, and the proofs that both have been developed through a gradual process, are curiously the same... We find in distinct languages striking homologies due to community of descent and analogies due to a similar process of formation. [For example,] the manner in which certain letters or sounds change when others change is very like correlated growth. ... Languages, like organic beings, can be classed either naturally according to descent, or artificially by other characters. Dominant languages and dialects spread widely and lead to the gradual extinction of other tongues. A language, like a species, when once extinct, never... reappears. The same language never has two birthplaces. Distinct languages may be crossed or blended together." (Darwin, The Descent of Man).
Languages, like organic species, go extinct and die; they 'speciate' (or 'dialectize') through geographic isolation; and grammatical categories reflect the 'fitness' of a language with respect to the things it tries to get across (I won't substantiate this claim too much, other than by pointing to this paper which fills it out more). But language is only one example. One can also look at technology as another: consider the mobile/cell phone industry. One can think of cellphone models as populations of species distributed among environments, each vying for survival (based on features, usefulness, aesthetic criteria, economic considerations, advertising, etc). Any in any case, the comparison between language and technology shouldn't be so far fetched to the degree that language is indeed nothing other than a natural technology in it's own right (also see this paper which directly applies evolutionary principles to cellphone evolution).
So far we've talked only of 'natural' systems. But evolutionary principles can also be applied to artificial ones as well, as has been done in the case of both (1) architecture and (2) circuit-design. In the case of architecture, we can program computers to generate varying 'species' of architectural designs in order to meet certain criteria (a column must be able to bear a certain load, the building must have enough windows, etc), while eliminating those generated designs that do not pass the test of - in this case - artificial selection (read more on using genetic algorithms to design things here). In circuit-deisgn, the idea is the same: get a computer to simulate a whole series of circuits (the stuff your CPUs run on) in order to come up with the most efficient design so that your computer can process things fast and with minimal resources (the 'fittest' circuit design).
These are all just small examples from disparate fields, but I hope they begin to fill out a picture of how to understand evolution as not just an organic process, but an inorganic one as well. There are caveats to all of this of course, but perhaps they come through in any discussion that follows. The geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky once wrote that "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution"- and while he was undoubtedly right about this, perhaps he was being too modest; the same ought to be said of a great deal else in the world as well - that ultimately, we need to look at the world sub specie evolutionis.
"The formation of divergent languages and of distinct species, and the proofs that both have been developed through a gradual process, are curiously the same... We find in distinct languages striking homologies due to community of descent and analogies due to a similar process of formation. [For example,] the manner in which certain letters or sounds change when others change is very like correlated growth. ... Languages, like organic beings, can be classed either naturally according to descent, or artificially by other characters. Dominant languages and dialects spread widely and lead to the gradual extinction of other tongues. A language, like a species, when once extinct, never... reappears. The same language never has two birthplaces. Distinct languages may be crossed or blended together." (Darwin, The Descent of Man).
Languages, like organic species, go extinct and die; they 'speciate' (or 'dialectize') through geographic isolation; and grammatical categories reflect the 'fitness' of a language with respect to the things it tries to get across (I won't substantiate this claim too much, other than by pointing to this paper which fills it out more). But language is only one example. One can also look at technology as another: consider the mobile/cell phone industry. One can think of cellphone models as populations of species distributed among environments, each vying for survival (based on features, usefulness, aesthetic criteria, economic considerations, advertising, etc). Any in any case, the comparison between language and technology shouldn't be so far fetched to the degree that language is indeed nothing other than a natural technology in it's own right (also see this paper which directly applies evolutionary principles to cellphone evolution).
So far we've talked only of 'natural' systems. But evolutionary principles can also be applied to artificial ones as well, as has been done in the case of both (1) architecture and (2) circuit-design. In the case of architecture, we can program computers to generate varying 'species' of architectural designs in order to meet certain criteria (a column must be able to bear a certain load, the building must have enough windows, etc), while eliminating those generated designs that do not pass the test of - in this case - artificial selection (read more on using genetic algorithms to design things here). In circuit-deisgn, the idea is the same: get a computer to simulate a whole series of circuits (the stuff your CPUs run on) in order to come up with the most efficient design so that your computer can process things fast and with minimal resources (the 'fittest' circuit design).
These are all just small examples from disparate fields, but I hope they begin to fill out a picture of how to understand evolution as not just an organic process, but an inorganic one as well. There are caveats to all of this of course, but perhaps they come through in any discussion that follows. The geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky once wrote that "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution"- and while he was undoubtedly right about this, perhaps he was being too modest; the same ought to be said of a great deal else in the world as well - that ultimately, we need to look at the world sub specie evolutionis.
Comments (51)
True, but this is a matter of fact and not of principle. Were the robot revolution to occur and murder us all, the evolutionary principles would function all the same. Or, more technically, the only things that are needed for evolution to occur are (1) A target population (cellphone models, say), (2) an environment which places constraints on the growth of that population, and (3) a mechanism of reproduction (the cellphone industry). None of which entail any reference to living things. This is why I tried to emphasise that evolution, understood in it's broadest sense, is substrate independent, as a matter of principle. In fact, the generation of circuits and architectural designs using genetic algorithms is proof of exactly that.
To make it super clear, the role of life in biological evolution is to meet criteria (3) - a mechanism of reproduction. But that it is life and not something else is a matter of contingency, and not necessity, from the point of view of evolution. As Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb put it: "In existing organisms, which all have a nucleic acid–based inheritance system, it is inconceivable that the DNA inheritance system will be eliminated by another one that operates at a higher level. But theoretically it is possible that one heredity system can replace another. It may well have happened at an early stage in the evolution of life, during the murky period between chemical and biological evolution. Many theorists suggest that heredity during these early stages was not based on nucleic acids, and that the nucleic acid systems came later and replaced the primitive heredity systems. Maybe such a replacement will also occur in the distant future— if we create intelligent, reproducing, and evolving robots, they may eventually eliminate us. This would be equivalent to the elimination of one heredity system by another”. (Jablonka and Lamb, Evolution in Four Dimensions).
That’s a big assumption.
Quoting StreetlightX
That nicely encapsulates what I think as the very worst of ‘evolutionism’ - the fact that it keeps the mechanistic paradigm which seems to ‘explain’ the processes of life, but omits the very principle which distinguishes living things from machines, which might happen to include why living things exist in the first place. It’s where Darwinism has become a metaphor that’s gone rogue.
It's not an assumption; it's entailed by the principles of evolution. I literally spelled them out for you - or rather numbered them out for you - to show you that there is no reference to life in any of them.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm not sure this really makes much sense: the theory of evolution explains the phenomenon of evolution, not 'the processes of life' (what processes?). It aims to explicate the mechanisms by which evolution (again: descent with modification) takes place (via natural selection, sexual selection, etc). It is right to say that those who look to evolution to explain 'life' are indeed barking up the wrong tree, but that's a problem with those people, not the theory of evolution itself. And in any case, I'm not trying to 'explain the processes of life' either, so I'm not sure where this is coming from.
I agree that language and technology evolve, and that a distinction between natural and artificial selection makes sense, understanding that natural selection is a metaphor, whereas; artificial (human) selection is not.
But my own concept of technology (applied science production) precludes equating it with language. How do you define "language" and "technology"? Instead, I view technology as a product of human language (a modelling system).
Human design (artifice) produces artificial inorganic objects (artefacta), but because human beings are organisms, the human design process is organic and evolves. Inorganic phenomena and artefacta do not design themselves or engage in selection (except in a metaphorical sense).
So, I wouldn't view evolution as substrate-independent.
Heh, I threw that 'language as a technology' line in there as a provocation and wasn't sure if anyone would pick up on it, but the basic idea is that one of the functions of language (perhaps the most elementary, although not only one) is to enable us to communicate things which are not experienced. It can function as a tool - that is, a technology - that allows one to relate something you've never seen or touched, real or otherwise (one uses language to lie, to tell fantastic tales, etc). A precis of the idea can be found here [PDF, 3 pages], although I don't want to dwell on it too much as it is somewhat tangential to the thread. Perhaps I will start another on it down the track.
Quoting Galuchat
'Design' is not really relevant though, insofar as all natural evolution takes place without any reference to design. So it cannot be the spindle upon which to adjudicate whether or not evolution is substrate independent or not. As I said to Warfarer, what is important are the minimal ingredients needed for any evolutionary process to take place (to restate: (1) a population, (2) an environment, (3) a reproductive mechanism), and none of those ingredients implicitly - that is, by necessity - entail life.
I agree. Language is code as tool because it has functions.
Don't organisms design themselves by engaging in natural selection?
No, or at least this kind of terminology is extremely awkward. First, natural selection happens to a population, and not single organisms: populations and their environment are what are subject to natural selection. Second, insofar as natural selection is something that happens to said population, it's not something that organisms 'engage in', as if it were some kind of optional past-time. Organisms can attempt, in minimal ways, to reduce (but never eliminate) selection pressure - by not parading in front or predators, say - but that selective pressure is there by virtue of any organism being alive at all. Lastly the very word 'design' is basically a minefield that any account of evolution ought to steer well clear of.
--
Also I realized that in my list of ingredients I left out the need for variation within populations, but that doesn't affect my overall point.
A single mountain could be said to evolve, but the species mountain?
The evolution of life is sort of orchestral. The environment can be altered by a single animal:
as in the case of the yellowstone wolves.
Then:
1) Does natural selection also happen to populations of natural inorganic objects?
2) Is artificial selection something that happens to artificial populations (groups of individuals)?
3) If yes, how?
If and only if there is heritable variation (changes in a developmental system [population + environment] that is passed down to another generation).
I'm not sure what you mean by an 'artificial population'; 'artificial' and 'natural' qualify mechanisms of selection, but not populations.
Then, how do rocks reproduce themselves?
By artificial population, I mean a population of artificial objects (e.g., French provincial tables).
They don't, clearly. There is no mechanism of heritability among populations of rocks. All I've argued is that evolution can be applicable to non-organic populations, not that all non-organic populations undergo evolution.
The Yellowstone wolves are a case of a species creating selective forces on its environment. The environment evolves. Species and environment interact.
I never said there was one. But I also never said that evolution is just 'modification' either. That too would be a mistake.
So what non-living species evolves?
As a necessary but not sufficient ingredient, yes.
Quoting frank
Refer to the OP.
Speaking evolutionary language with too much of a platonic accent: evolutionary trajectories are in part generated by instantiations of* fitness functions coupled to reproductive variation (like selection), in part generated by contingent patterns which emerged in the evolutionary heritage of a reproducing unit (like fixation/deletion in genetic drift and heredity in general), and in part generated by the whole process's reflexivity (coevolution and evolution of evolvability). There are probably lots of bits I missed out.
Evolution is already severed from the living, as it operates on the population** rather than the individual, in this sense evolution is already an abiotic process. More precisely, it is indifferent to its substrate - be they early salts congealing themselves into enclosed units that spawn more condensation nucleii, those selfsame vesicles near thermal vents making use of the energy in their environment to adapt quicker and viral condensation/replication strategies, those thermodynamic pioneers who had the first vestiges of auto-catalysis in salts and amino acid precursors, or their eventual codification into replicating machines with functional components... Only the last step, always the last step, is life as we have ever observed it.
Evolution, as a generative process, has forever begun in the nonliving.
[hide=*](spatio-temporal localisations or more generally metric spaces of parameters of)[/hide]
[hide=**]or even more precisely, populations as a whole, subpopulations, and any heritable property. All of which thought in terms of some relational closure of reproduction (subpopulation-subpopulation interactions can be evolved and then transmitted back to the population level, hence the possibility of symbiosis and parasitism[/hide]
There's a clear definition of nonliving? Pfft.
Why would we need a clear definition of living or nonliving to study evolution?
Regardless:
At some point you'll probably come to the realization that philosophy doesn't have to begin with the definition of terms in most circumstances (try reading Sam26's exegesis of Wittgenstein thread if you are unfamiliar with both, it's excellent). Regardless, whether an organism is alive (or is an organism) doesn't matter for any question relating to how evolution works and specifically what it works on. That evolution operates on a far broader set of processes than 'living' ones isn't something that comes from an analysis of the term 'is alive', it comes from studying how evolution works and what it works on.
Evolution gave rise to life's precursors, the living emerged from the nonliving at some point. Some point before the mechanisms of heredity in genes (have to come from somewhere) and cell organelles (have to come from somewhere). Our mechanisms of heredity also evolved...
No matter how you slice the terms, evolution still works on things like replicating salts acting as condensation nucleii trapped in fatty vesicles - selecting for things like membrane permeability and molecular stability of molecules that enact (better and more prolifically, more efficiently, less deleterious - don't burst the bubble!) vesicle formation, it worked on them before the symbiosis of mitochondria occurred, before eukaryotes and archea split (why else would they split if evolution was not active?). If you want to make 'being alive' necessary for 'can evolve' as a matter of definition, fine, bite the bullet of the consequences that there are living software programs in some labs at this moment.
Also note that this is a matter of definition irrelevant to studying the conceptual structure and real properties of evolution.
One of the reasons thinking of the nonliving as continuous in some senses with the living, to my mind at least, is that evolutionary thinking methodologically refutes some kind of pure aprioristic thinking - the idea of a categorical distinction existing a-priori in some realm of ideas is a lot different from thinking with the immanent genesis of such a distinction (and basing your thinking around tracking the conceptual structure of the genesis).
You asserted that evolution starts with the nonliving. Was I incorrect in assuming you meant something by that?
Quoting fdrake
Your confidence in this strengthens my suspicion that projection is at work. Nothing a little Plato wouldn't shed light on. :)
Or Kant, which you'll probably need to find a definition for nonliving.
I have a spare chicken around here somewhere. ;)
Ah, I have a deaf ear for things like that. Sorry. Will think about it.
Going by the orthodox qualifications of evolution which you’ve stipulated, evolution necessarily in part consist of self-replication. Can you provide any example of a non-autopoietic given which self-replicates? For a given to be autopoietic is for the given to be alive. Viroids, prions, and viruses require an autopoietic host to replicate, so a) they don’t technically self-replicate and b) could not be in the absence of autopoietic beings. In the case of robots, for them to be autopoietic would be for them to be strong AI. A sci-fic concept as of present, one of life artificially created from out of inorganic materials (self-replicating nano-technology robots of organic compounds would by definition be [s]living[/s] (edit:) biological things, so these don't count as strong AI)
For a universal evolution that is not limited to life, you’d have to do away with the self-replication requirement—simplifying the process to sometime like “adaptation to, or conformity with, environment over time”. But this would no longer be the same as biological evolution as currently understood, though it would encapsulate the process of biological evolution were it to be true.
I have no problem with the notion of overarching concepts, viewing "data", "communication" and "information" to be such, applying to all types of objects, to wit:
1) Physical (Phenomena)
a) Inorganic
i) Natural (Geosphere)
ii) Artificial (Artefacta)
b) Organic (Biosphere)
2) Mental (Noumena)
If evolution is claimed to be substrate independent, it needs a general description which can be applied to all types of objects, otherwise the notion is category error.
And if the terms used in such a description (notably "reproduction") can only be (or are usually) understood with reference to the life sciences, they require redefinition (which is equivocation). To avoid equivocation, they need to be replaced or supplemented with other terms/concepts.
Funnily enough, category error and equivocation are the same problems I (and many biosemioticians) have with attempts to extend semiosis to physiosemiosis and pansemiosis. To be honest, I'm not even sure that semiosis should be extended to certain levels of biosemiosis.
Biological evolution is obviously a partially inorganic process insofar as it involves interactions between the organic and the inorganic. Nonetheless, arguably, the organic aspect is predominant.
Language, architecture and technology should be considered predominately organic, too, because they are activities associated only with organic beings. Of course they, just like organic beings and evolution itself, involve inorganic materials and aspects of the environment, but that does not mean that they are not predominately organic processes.
None of this is to say that there cannot be wholly inorganic evolution. The evolution of the pre-organic cosmos, for example.
Keeping your elaboration of this question with fdrake in mind as well, evolutionary thinking can be useful in a few different ways: first, as fdrake says, its puts the living in continuity with the non-living (along a certain dimension anyway), and it's always useful and interesting to draw bridges across domains like that. As I mentioned in the OP, we now use evolutionary methods to design electronic circuits and other things, and it's more than likely the CPU which you're writing your posts with were designed, in part, by use of such methods. Without the import of evolutionary ideas from the biotic realm, you'd probably have a crappier processor. So were talking at the very least about a clear and practical reason to consider evolution in non-organic terms.
Another, more philosophically interesting reason (to me anyway) to think the abiotic in evolutionary terms is that evolutionary thinking implies thinking of things at the level of populations, rather than either individuals or types. There is, in other words, an (entirely positive, to my mind) anti-Platonic element to evolutionary thinking whose import is vital. Here's how Ernst Mayr, one of the grandddaddies of the modern synthesis, put it:
"For the typologist there] are a limited number of fixed, unchangeable ‘ideas’ underlying the observed variability [in nature], with the eidos (idea) being the only thing that is fixed and real, while the observed variability has no more reality than the shadows of an object on a cave wall... [In contrast], the populationist stresses the uniqueness of everything in the organic world... All organisms and organic phenomena are composed of unique features and can be described collectively only in statistical terms. Individuals, or any kind of organic entities, form populations of which we can determine the arithmetic mean and the statistics of variation. Averages are merely statistical abstractions, only the individuals of which the populations are composed have reality. The ultimate conclusions of the population thinker and the typologist are precisely the opposite. For the typologist the type (eidos) is real and the variation an illusion, while for the populationist, the type (the average) is an abstraction and only the variation is real. No two ways of looking at nature could be more different." (Mayr, quoted in Manuel Delanda, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy).
This the implications of this last sentence are worth stressing too: only variation is real. There is a realism here not of Form, but of difference. This is, to put it mildly, a major shift away from a great deal of Western philosophical thought, which has often begun from the premise of Form and identity rather than difference, and which has rather scant intellectual resources for thinking in terms of populations. Another intimately related element that follows from thinking in evolutionary terms is the irreducibility of time or temporality. One cannot think in evolutionary terms without thinking in temporal terms: to speak of variation is to speak not only of variation in traits (modification), but variation in time (descent). So there are at least two, co-related realisms that 'fall out' of thinking in evolutionary terms: a realism of difference and a realism of time. The same too needs to be said of space: evolution also cannot be thought of without reference to spatial distributions, interactions of populations across distances, with isolation producing speciaton.
Yet another import of evolutionary thinking is the impossibility of separating the individual from it's milieu, and from it's interactions with it's environment. Evolutionary thinking upends the simple distinction between 'inside' and 'outside' insofar as what is 'outside' - environment - can literally effect the very genotypes of a species: an individual's morphology is an expression of it's environment, an environmental invagination such that you can't neatly draw any border between where the individual begins and where the environment ends, and this on account, again, of the long-scale temporality that any approach to evolutionary thinking is obliged to have. The individual and the environment exist in a topological relation rather than geometric one (to be brief with an explanation, in topology, inside and outside are relative, not absolute). These are just some of the implications of thinking in evolutionary terms, and even then I've glossed over heaps and heaps of nuances. There are things to be said about refiguring the nature-culture distinction, about novelty, necessity and contingency, and more, but this will have to do for now.
I could go on about this for days. I don't think philosophers have paid nearly enough attention to exactly how much evolutionary thought can inform and enrich the discipline.
I'll stop you there! It doesn't have to be self-replication just replication (or reproduction). That's the thing with cellphones: they don't self-replicate, but they do replicate (with the help of a whole industry). To play with your own words a bit, evolution can work just as well with hetropoiesis as autopoiesis. To say that it is substrate independent is also to say that it is, er, poietically indifferent. It's also important to remember that autopoiesis includes self-maintainence as part of it's definition, which again, is not entailed by any of the necessary ingredients of evolution (cellphones don't self-maintain, yet they can still be subject to evolution). Again, the larger point is that evolution is indifferent to the exact mechanics of replication: it requires some mechanism of replication, but exactly what and how it works is something it is largely indifferent to at a formal level.
(I say 'at a formal level' because the specificities of replication mechanisms in practice have huge effects on how evolution itself 'plays out', and a shit-ton of evolutionary biology is given over to studying exactly those mechanisms and their evolutionary effects. I simply mean to say that the fact of evolution is indifferent to the mechanics - it only requires that there be some/one; but once there is one, it's specificities will have, at it were, retroactive effects upon the actual workings of evolution. I hope that's clear).
I tried to address this in my reply to Wayfarer earlier, but yes, it's important to think in terms of principles rather than fact here.
I think the terms of evolution are robust enough to survive outside the incubator that was the biological sciences for them. In fact I don't just think this, I know this because those terms have been employed in non-biolgical ways as with the examples of circuit-design and architecture that I keep coming back to.
No, this is clear, and I agree with this. Nevertheless:
I was wanting to avoid directly addressing the issue of agency. Autopoeisis is a nice way of expressing a particular type of agency capable of causing effects in and of itself--top-down causation as its often enough termed. To use the example of cellphones, by what agency do they replicate? It's a rhetorical question to me (by human agency), but maybe you hold a different answer in mind.
To then rephrase my previous question: Can replication occur in the absence of agency? I hold the presumption that abiotic givens do not hold agency--instead, that they behave entropically by following paths of least resistance toward absolute entropy. Don't know the extent to which we might agree here or not. Then you get into the metaphysics of identity: What replicates if not the identity that is replicating itself (hence why I used self-replication to make this explicit).
OK, a ton of questions ... yet to me they still point to a universal evolution that encapsulates biological evolution needing to be more general in manners that don't include replication.
I guess at this point I remain somewhat agnostic on the issue, or at least open to convincing one way or another. As it stands though, I see no intrinsic or 'analytic' connection between replication and agency. To hone our concepts a bit though, it's important to specify - in a way I didn't do in the original 'list of ingredients' - that any evolutionary relevant replication needs to have a component of heritability. Hurricanes, sand dunes, and rivers, for example, are 'replicated' all the time given the right atmospheric/geological/hydrologic conditions but because they have no mechanism of heredity, strictly speaking, there can be no evolution of hurricanes/sand dunes etc. A hurricane is always created anew; it is not 'path dependant' on the phylogenesis of other, previous hurricanes. If we take these natural processes as our models of replication, then I see no necessary reason to think that agency plays any part in their replication.
On the other hand, the uniqueness of life lies in it's precisely having what is more or less a universal mechanism of heritability - DNA expression. Furthermore, DNA functions as a resource in the equally universal life process of self-maintainence (which is another thing not shared by other self-organizing systems like hurricanes). So at the very least what distinguishes life from other, natural, self-organizing systems is a mechanism of heritability and an ability to self-maintain - the two key components of autopoietic theory. Of these two components, I'm fairly convinced that the universality of DNA as a replication mechanism is, despite it's universality, a contingency due to shared ancestry, rather than an intrinsic component of life itself. As I quoted Jablonka and Lamb saying, one can imagine, in principle at a least, forms of life which might dispense with DNA altogether in favour of other kinds of mechanisms of heritability (other kinds which exist today - epigenetic, behavioural, and symbolic mechanics, to name the three they do).
So going back to the question of agency, the question is: where can we locate it? There are - on the outline above - three possible places (at minimum). (1) At the level of sheer reproduction (hurricanes, etc); (2) At the level of the mechanism of heritability (DNA expression, epigenetic processes of methylation, etc), and; (3) At the level of self-maintainence processes. I don't think any agency is required for either (1) or (2), but I do think one can begin to speak of agency operating at the level of (3). Complications arise when it becomes clear that one can't cleanly and analytically separate (2) and (3): in order to heal a cut, they body draws upon DNA in order to grow new skin to do so. So the question is: it is analytically necessary that processes of self-repair draw upon mechanisms of heritability? What is the modality of the connection between (2) and (3)?
If the connection is not a necessary one, then the answer to your question is yes: evolutionarily relevant replication can occur in the absence of agency. Repair can occur (in principle) without any need to draw on the resources of replication mechanisms. If the connection is a necessary, then agency cannot be separated from evolutionariliy relevant replication, and the answer to you question is no. So alot rides on the sense in which we understand replication, as well as where exactly it 'fits' in the conceptual and empirical constellation in which agency begins to matter. Anyway, I hope this also makes sense!
Notice though that this is different somewhat from the analogy with AI intelligence. The other heritability mechanisms that J+L speak of are real - they exist, here and now. The question is not - as with AI intelligence - whether new mechanisms will eventually emerge. There is no question of taking on faith or confidence that they will. It's already the case that they have. The question is rather whether or not their current existence may portend the dispensibility of DNA altogether as a mechanism of evolution, or at least whether or not that would be possible in principle. So I think this is definitely more than just a linguistic issue insofar as those other mechanisms - in living organisms all across the planet today - cause evolutionarily relevant effects independently of changes to the DNA code as it stands.
Quoting ?????????????
One other thing to note is that I am treating evolution here in entirely formal terms (in fdrake's terms, evolution is simply a 'generalized action of selection in a space of reproductive constraints'). Formal to the extent that it describes a certain process that may or may not be 'instantiated' by specific systems - be they living populations, a bunch of circuit-designs, or languages. It could be the case that all of these latter things cease to exist (if the Earth blew up tomorrow, say), and one could still speak of evolution as a formal process to which nothing, in fact, corresponds. One corollary of this is that the 'kind' of process(es) which may or may not correspond to it doesn't matter: it could be virtual, real, simulated - in fact, it doesn't even matter how we want to qualify these terms (as in, the question 'what is real?' or 'what is virtual?'), all we need to see is whether or not 'there is' evolution occurring.
Also, check out the article which I linked to in the OP regarding using genetic algorithms to come up with architecture. It describes how it's done in a way that I think is pretty helpful, and is a shortish read as well.
What do you think is the difference between "evolution" and "emergence"? Are they just two different words which refer to one and the same thing? Is evolution a special type of emergence?
When thinking about this my preferred subject has been fire (I forget where I first read of the parallel): it can be “birthed” of heat or sparks, for example; can have an “old age” and “die”; it needs to consume energy from outside itself in order to persist/be (i.e., for self-preservation); and, here most relevantly, it can reproduce itself via buddings that travel to new locations. The question here pondered by me being, “what then makes fire a non-living entity (doing away with the limitations of organic compounds as a necessity for life)?” Thought I’d mention this since it might be relevant to future discussions. (So it’s mentioned, my best current answer is that it is entropic rather than negentropic and, hence, autopoietic—I find that the latter two mutually entail each other.)
Quoting StreetlightX
I am very much in agreement that we shouldn’t prejudice ourselves to life necessarily consisting of the organic chemicals we know it to consist of on Earth—at least when engaged in abstract reasoning concerning the denotations of life and of evolution.
Quoting StreetlightX
I’m of the mindset that (3) is both necessary and sufficient for agency. And again, other planets in other (edit:) [s]universes[/s] galaxies might hold self-maintaining agencies/agents that make use of something that is neither nucleic acid based nor protein based. I’m not asserting this as a fact but merely as a possibility I currently find no reason to conclude invalid.
Quoting StreetlightX
But when it comes to the question you’ve posed, boldfaced by me, I’ll argue that it is necessary, given the following modification to the question: “that process of heritability draw upon processes of self-repair” (thereby making self-repair and self-maintenance primary and heritability an outgrowth of this primary aspect).
My reason for this is as follows: For evolution consisting of replication to occur (the orthodox current understanding of evolution), there necessarily needs to be inheritable variations among the givens considered. Otherwise, regardless of quantity of qualitatively identical givens which replicate, with a sufficient change in context (here loosely used to specify both external and internal conditions relative to each given) all givens will perish and none will survive (such as to further reproduce). And I take it as a given that changes in context always occur. The process of self-maintenance then, will also need to be to some extent capable of creating relatively random changes in that which is self-maintaining—i.e., capable of creating mutations (some of these will be beneficial, some deleterious, and some inconsequential, at least at the time of mutation). It is the self-maintenance processes that mutate, these encompassing the maintained process of replication. That stated in summarized form, for the non-deleterious mutations to be inheritable—thereby producing naturally occurring variations within the populace—they will need to be bound to the same process utilized in self-repair/self-maintenance (homeostasis, for example, is most commonly not self-repair though it is self-maintenance). Hence, as conclusion the just argued, the processes of self-maintenance and heritability will then need to be interrelated somehow.
In short, my own conclusion is that agency is required for reproduction as an aspect of evolution--something to which fire, I currently find, is for example not subject to (fire does not change its constituency over time).
To be clear about this, I do not desire to stifle interests in evolutionary processes extending beyond the realms of the biological; I’d rather encourage these interests. But I will again uphold that such abiotic evolution will need to reinterpret evolution in manners in which it is not partially contingent upon givens replicating themselves—such that biological evolution becomes a particular variant of a more general, if not universal, process. To this effect, for example: Evolution of language (a very interesting topic), to the extent it holds replicating givens (such as concepts and their expressions) a) is yet driven by (biotic) agency and b) yet holds naturally occurring variations in the givens addressed (again, concepts, their expressions, and the like).
That's the difference between biological and non-biological evolution; there is no self-organization involved in the formation of hurricanes, rivers and sand dunes.
An individual hurricane, river or sand dune evolves over its life just as organisms do. The idea of evolution you seemingly want to address, though, is the idea of the evolution of successive forms in the history of a population and not the evolution of individuals.
It is possible that there could be an evolution of successive forms of hurricanes, rivers or sand dunes; but this would be entirely due to 'external' environmental and climatic changes, not to 'internal' heritable changes in their constitution.
The question then becomes whether in the example of say, AI, programming could become a heritable self-organizing substitute for DNA.
I don't personally find the distinction between individual and collective evolution confusing, but for those who do, your suggestion might indeed be helpful.
In biology, an individual’s conformity to environment is specified as acclimatization whereas a populace’s conformity to environment (to that which is ontic) over generations is specified by adaptation.
Fitness—which to my mind could, as previously alluded to, be more metaphysically addressed as conformity to the ontic over time (how well something fits into that which is ontic; more concretely, one’s environment)—could then be hypothetically addressed in terms of acclimatization of individuals or cohorts within a specific generation or, else, in terms of adaptation that occurs via numerous generations within a populace (species). I suggest this while strongly emphasizing that “fitness” in current practice within fields of biology is tmk strictly shorthand for “evolutionary fitness”--hence not (always?) encompassing acclimatization (haven't read up on this in a while). Still, to me widening the scope of fitness to include fitness of acclimatizations is in keeping with a lot of our common usages of the term (e.g., that there person is quite fit (in mind as well as body), kind of thing). But, then, there is no such thing as being “more evolved” in biological fields either; all co-existent species are technically always equally evolved--equally selected upon given their ancestral time span. [edit: this not to say that all species are equally fit] Though we all understand what we mean when we say that we are more evolved than bacteria, for example.
Anyway, if any of this is of use ...
A quick response to this, as I'll be out all day: self-organization is most definitely a property of non-living things. Hurricanes are textbook examples of self-organising systems driven by entropic gradients. And as Srap rightly mentions, I'm concerned here with evolution in its strict sense - heritable variation in populations - rather than development over a lifetime. Finally, with respect to mechanisms of heritability, there is nothing about the principles of evolution that require those mechanisms to be 'internal' and not 'external', as it were. In fact, as I mentioned to Jarva, 'external' mechanisms are currently acknowledged to function in an evolutionary capacity independently of 'internal' mechnisms like DNA. That is, whether or not such a mechanism is 'internal' or 'external' to the subject population is a matter of indifference to the evolutionary process (cellphone blueprints and their factories are not contained in cellphones!).
There is nothing particularly unique about evolution in this regard. If you can describe evolution in such abstract terms, then it is ipso facto substrate-independent. But so is, say, the inverse-square law of attraction.
But languages are not non-organic. At the level of neurology they have to same use it or loose it evolution. Memetics applies to neural structures, though it appears as ideals.
You might want to look at Gerald Edleman on the Neural Evolution.
Languages do not speciate. If you accept that species are defined by their mutual lack or reproductivity. There seem to be no human languages which cannot borrow words and grammar from another.
This is no different from how animals are influenced by their environment and how they - as part of their environment have an impact on it as well. Predators can be an influence on how their prey evolve, and prey can have an impact on how those predators evolve. Each organism is a unique subset of the gene pool that arrived at this condition through the pressures of the environment, which can include it's own body.
True, but biological self-organization is of a different order than the kinds of self-organization manifested by hurricanes. The latter are the result of transitory 'internal' environments, for example vortices, which in turn result from local intensifications of atmospheric conditions. The former is an evolved, more or less stabilised, vastly complex and interrelated, inheritable and thus further evolveable, set of information.
True again, and I had already noted that myself. However what, from one perspective would be considered development over the lifetime of an individual biological organism, may alternatively be thought as a process of evolution of a population (of the constituting cells of the organism) which would also incorporate heritable variation. So, it is a matter of perspective.
I think there is a valid distinction to be made and maintained between internal and external in this connection to any example that we might want to characterize as 'evolutionary'. In regard to your example of cellphones, I would say their 'evolution' is a function of the evolution of human ideas, desires and needs, which are, on different levels or contexts, internal to human individuals (as subjective) and internal to human societies (as intersubjective). So, again I think it reduces to being a matter of perspective and the consequent ranges and domains of linguistic usage. A reduction to wholistic pluralism! :grin: