"Edwina Taborsky" <tabor...@primus.ca>
wrote:
Steven - I don't consider that adaptation is akin to induction. It's akin to abduction.
1] And I disagree with your comment about random mutation - which you seem to suggest is sufficient to provide a species with an adaptive capacity. As I pointed out, for the reasons of both statistical viability and conservation of energy, I consider that random offerings, so to speak, are insufficient and indeed, even dangerous, as a means of dealing with environmental pressures.
2] I will repeat yet again, Peirce's dictum. 4.551
"thought is not necessarily connected with a brain. It appears in the work of bees, of crystals and throughout the purely physical world".
that is - my point is that the biological organism - without a brain - let's just say a paramecium, much less a bird - is in informational interaction with its environment - and as such, comes up with constructive solutions to environmental challenges, within its organic and inorganic composition.
3] And no- this is not consciousness. Again, as Peirce pointed out, "consciousness is a special and not a universal, accompaniment of mind" 7.366
4]What is Mind?
"Mind has its universal mode of action, namely by final causation....the motions of a little creature show any purpose. If so, there is mind there. 1.269
I note that there is no concept here of 'consciousness'. Rather, Peirce continues: "Passing from the little to the large, natural selection is the theory of how forms come to be adaptive, that is, to be governed by a quasi purpose. It suggests a machinery of efficiency to bring about the end"...and this end is the purpose or final cause.
That is, my view is that ALL matter [and I include the physic-chemical realm, but will refer here only to the biological'] functions within MIND, which is to say - matter functions logically, rationally, with a purpose, which is...to be matter, to not dissipate, to increase in complexity and diversity.
Therefore - adaptation and evolution are not random happenings, but MIND-produced actions, produced by local organisms in informational interaction with their local environment, to enable constructive continuity of that matter - whether in that particular form or in another form. Informational interaction does not require a brain nor consciousness. After all, trees are in constant informational interaction with their environment, producing pheromones when, for example, attacked by pests, that will attract birds etc to come to attack those pests. Producing sap to close water evaporation gaps, and so on.
Adaptive responses, requiring deeper biological changes, are, in my view, the result of information interactions with the environment, where the species will produce a new form - not randomly which is a waste of time and energy - but functionally, ie, one that will fulfil that 'final cause' function - and thus, change the beak size.
Edwina
On Thu 17/12/20 6:40 PM , "Skaggs,Steven" s.ska...@louisville.edu sent:
Thanks, Edwina. A lot of the problem has to do with discerning scales and other kinds of boundaries, i.e. phylogenic from ontogenic. The division of scales of any sort, even splitting the rainbow into 4, 6 or 8 colors, is difficult. I agree with what you're saying about adaptation, a word that sits more comfortably for me here than inductive reasoning. It is local in the sense of being an interactive feedback response between organism and environmental context, both of which may change through time. Don’t know about "reject random mutation as a means of dealing with environmental challenge", though. Seems that pressure from threatening conditions would greatly favor those individuals that differ in ways that defer or blunt the pressure. And, short of conscious agency (for example, on the part of social groups who could indeed use inference), most biological forms would probably blindly fall into the sweet spot — or become extinct. —SxS
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