3rd December 2005, 10:28 AM
(This post was last modified: 3rd December 2005, 10:38 AM by Dark Jaguar.)
lazy, that's a bunch of nonsense that is not supported by fact, even if you claim that to be the case.
Desire is completely unneeded to explain the survival mechanism. You are being too anthropomorphic here. We desire to live because we have brains and a decision making process and those who's decision making process includes desires to end their own life, will end their own life.
Plants have no such processes. They have no "will" to live. You seem incapable of imagining how something can continue to live without wanting to. You seem to think that death is something they have to WANT to avoid in order to avoid it. This is a fallacy. It's too complicated an explanation when the much simpler explanation of it merely being the way things work out does the job just fine.
First, begin by thinking as though what you are saying is not the case. With that mental framework, explaning evolution should be much simpler.
Desire to live is irrelevent in evolution. It can play a role, but is not required.
A plant, for example, is designed at the genetic level to take in sunlight and convert it to sugars. It is designed to grow faster on parts where more sunlight strikes. Some of them also develop poison. In those cases, a biological reaction occurs when the plant is chewed on and the poison is actually released in stronger doses througout the plant. Would you assign an intelligence to the clotting mechanism that occurs during bleeding? Would you assign an intelligence to the behavior of white blood cells? It is the same here, though without a pumping circulatory system it needs cappilary action in order to get the chemicals moving through it. A cut doesn't need to be "aware" that it happened on a creature that doens't move. On a dog, the brain does need to be made aware of the situation. There are so many possible factors that a single programmed reaction will not suffice, and an intelligence is needed to determine, for example, whether a fight is needed, flight is needed, or it was merely an accident and tending the wound is what comes first. In a non-moving plant (the usual kind), a brain isn't needed at all. Evolutionary biologists have concluded in the past that the only creatures that benefit from a brain are those that are capable of motion. Certain undersea creatures will have a brain in early life until they root themselves to a rock, and during the metamorphosis, they will consume their own brain as it is no longer needed.
By the way, I will refrain from the dated phrasing of some creatures as "higher" than others. The only real catagorization is those that are alive and those that are not. Some have very complicated brains, and we humans sure like to think that makes us "top of the chain" due to which of our processes are more complicated, but as far as nature is concerned, the only thing that matters is if it is still surviving.
A plant growing towards sunlight is merely something that leads that particular plant to a greater chance of survival than a plant who's cells do not react to the presence of sunlight, or, heaven forfend, grows away from sunlight by some odd reaction. It has no actual awareness of the process. And, when I say "it" I am refering to a conciousness that isn't even there.
Is a star alive? They reproduce, alchemize heavier elements, go through a life cycle and act in a way during their inception to feed themselves. During the death phase of stars, upon running out of hydrogen they actually change their internal fuel to that of helium to "keep lit". This method is just a natural reaction, something that just plain occurs due to the laws of physics. There is no intelligence involved.
Cells or no, that doesn't matter. Intelligence is not merely reacting to the environment. Everything that can be said to exist "reacts to it's environment". Intelligence is the WILLFUL move using what methods you have available to take in knowledge of the outside world, form a decision based on past experience and this obtained knowledge, and act based on that one decision from a laundry list of other possible decisions.
Plants do not show any signs of this. If you insist that they do show awareness, a flawed "thought experiment" shown exactly where it is flawed is not enough. Make observations of intelligence behavior. Merely saying "I can't see how it could survive if it didn't want to" is simply silly. Existance is primary, not conciousness!
To reiterate, plants and single cells have no "desires" whatsoever. They are not even needed. I will of course change my mind if you provide actual evidence of this though. I'll gladly eat crow if conciousness is spread even further through the tree of life than I thought. I have no objections to the idea as far as wanting it to be so. It's merely the total lack of any evidence. Does this theory of yours explain behavior where previous theories fail? I don't see how. The statement "they do so merely because of chemical reactions, and they live because if they didn't, they would not exist, and only things that exist continue to exist" seems sufficient. Occam's razor.
By the way, the idea that imagination is more important than intellect is flawed too. There are a ridiculous number of people who believe the same thing, and all have failed to make a difference. Only those that actually try to make new discoveries based on the observable world have made a difference. Any scientist you can name that has changed the world may be imaginative, but was fully aware that wasn't enough. Newton made countless observations and experiments. He didn't just sit around thinking. Galileo did the same. He saw how the world actually behaved and noted it totally contradicted the way people just THOUGHT it worked, and he went where the observations led, not just where wishful thinking led.
Every year, a new perpetual motion machine announcement shows up. They have no reason to think that such a device will work, but hey, it could very well be they did discover an exception. Problem is, they didn't DO any real testing of their supposition. They merely make the claim that it should work based on random conjecture. Then, upon being show repeatedly where such a design fails, and being asked for evidence that would refute their critics and justify this device's existance, they simply fail to do anything. They have little more than conviction without any evidence to back it up.
Aristotle, on the other hand, came up with many many explanations for how the world worked. Unfortunatly, he never once did any experimentation to see if it even worked the way he thought it did. That's cart before the horse science. You can't try explaning HOW a phenomenon works until you show that the phenomenon exists to begin with. It's like trying to formulize how many angels can fit on a pin head. Aristotle went about trying to explain why a heavier mass falls faster than a lighter mass. Problem is, there are NO records of him ever even establishing that heavier things fell faster to begin with. Galileo was fully aware of this himself when he wrote that cute short story of the debating philosophers. He, however, actually DID do some experiments. He did drop spheres from great heights, higher than any available to Aristotle in his day, and noted that, wind resistance being equal, they always struck the ground at the same time.
You see the difference? Imagination is great, but it must be guided by the hand of reality if it will ever make a difference.
Desire is completely unneeded to explain the survival mechanism. You are being too anthropomorphic here. We desire to live because we have brains and a decision making process and those who's decision making process includes desires to end their own life, will end their own life.
Plants have no such processes. They have no "will" to live. You seem incapable of imagining how something can continue to live without wanting to. You seem to think that death is something they have to WANT to avoid in order to avoid it. This is a fallacy. It's too complicated an explanation when the much simpler explanation of it merely being the way things work out does the job just fine.
First, begin by thinking as though what you are saying is not the case. With that mental framework, explaning evolution should be much simpler.
Desire to live is irrelevent in evolution. It can play a role, but is not required.
A plant, for example, is designed at the genetic level to take in sunlight and convert it to sugars. It is designed to grow faster on parts where more sunlight strikes. Some of them also develop poison. In those cases, a biological reaction occurs when the plant is chewed on and the poison is actually released in stronger doses througout the plant. Would you assign an intelligence to the clotting mechanism that occurs during bleeding? Would you assign an intelligence to the behavior of white blood cells? It is the same here, though without a pumping circulatory system it needs cappilary action in order to get the chemicals moving through it. A cut doesn't need to be "aware" that it happened on a creature that doens't move. On a dog, the brain does need to be made aware of the situation. There are so many possible factors that a single programmed reaction will not suffice, and an intelligence is needed to determine, for example, whether a fight is needed, flight is needed, or it was merely an accident and tending the wound is what comes first. In a non-moving plant (the usual kind), a brain isn't needed at all. Evolutionary biologists have concluded in the past that the only creatures that benefit from a brain are those that are capable of motion. Certain undersea creatures will have a brain in early life until they root themselves to a rock, and during the metamorphosis, they will consume their own brain as it is no longer needed.
By the way, I will refrain from the dated phrasing of some creatures as "higher" than others. The only real catagorization is those that are alive and those that are not. Some have very complicated brains, and we humans sure like to think that makes us "top of the chain" due to which of our processes are more complicated, but as far as nature is concerned, the only thing that matters is if it is still surviving.
A plant growing towards sunlight is merely something that leads that particular plant to a greater chance of survival than a plant who's cells do not react to the presence of sunlight, or, heaven forfend, grows away from sunlight by some odd reaction. It has no actual awareness of the process. And, when I say "it" I am refering to a conciousness that isn't even there.
Is a star alive? They reproduce, alchemize heavier elements, go through a life cycle and act in a way during their inception to feed themselves. During the death phase of stars, upon running out of hydrogen they actually change their internal fuel to that of helium to "keep lit". This method is just a natural reaction, something that just plain occurs due to the laws of physics. There is no intelligence involved.
Cells or no, that doesn't matter. Intelligence is not merely reacting to the environment. Everything that can be said to exist "reacts to it's environment". Intelligence is the WILLFUL move using what methods you have available to take in knowledge of the outside world, form a decision based on past experience and this obtained knowledge, and act based on that one decision from a laundry list of other possible decisions.
Plants do not show any signs of this. If you insist that they do show awareness, a flawed "thought experiment" shown exactly where it is flawed is not enough. Make observations of intelligence behavior. Merely saying "I can't see how it could survive if it didn't want to" is simply silly. Existance is primary, not conciousness!
To reiterate, plants and single cells have no "desires" whatsoever. They are not even needed. I will of course change my mind if you provide actual evidence of this though. I'll gladly eat crow if conciousness is spread even further through the tree of life than I thought. I have no objections to the idea as far as wanting it to be so. It's merely the total lack of any evidence. Does this theory of yours explain behavior where previous theories fail? I don't see how. The statement "they do so merely because of chemical reactions, and they live because if they didn't, they would not exist, and only things that exist continue to exist" seems sufficient. Occam's razor.
By the way, the idea that imagination is more important than intellect is flawed too. There are a ridiculous number of people who believe the same thing, and all have failed to make a difference. Only those that actually try to make new discoveries based on the observable world have made a difference. Any scientist you can name that has changed the world may be imaginative, but was fully aware that wasn't enough. Newton made countless observations and experiments. He didn't just sit around thinking. Galileo did the same. He saw how the world actually behaved and noted it totally contradicted the way people just THOUGHT it worked, and he went where the observations led, not just where wishful thinking led.
Every year, a new perpetual motion machine announcement shows up. They have no reason to think that such a device will work, but hey, it could very well be they did discover an exception. Problem is, they didn't DO any real testing of their supposition. They merely make the claim that it should work based on random conjecture. Then, upon being show repeatedly where such a design fails, and being asked for evidence that would refute their critics and justify this device's existance, they simply fail to do anything. They have little more than conviction without any evidence to back it up.
Aristotle, on the other hand, came up with many many explanations for how the world worked. Unfortunatly, he never once did any experimentation to see if it even worked the way he thought it did. That's cart before the horse science. You can't try explaning HOW a phenomenon works until you show that the phenomenon exists to begin with. It's like trying to formulize how many angels can fit on a pin head. Aristotle went about trying to explain why a heavier mass falls faster than a lighter mass. Problem is, there are NO records of him ever even establishing that heavier things fell faster to begin with. Galileo was fully aware of this himself when he wrote that cute short story of the debating philosophers. He, however, actually DID do some experiments. He did drop spheres from great heights, higher than any available to Aristotle in his day, and noted that, wind resistance being equal, they always struck the ground at the same time.
You see the difference? Imagination is great, but it must be guided by the hand of reality if it will ever make a difference.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)