Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id EAA23593 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 12 Apr 2001 04:15:54 +0100 From: <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 22:18:27 -0500 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Determinism Message-ID: <3AD4D833.2591.2B5C17@localhost> In-reply-to: <20010411162230.A1443@reborntechnology.co.uk> References: <3AD45C63.71DDD7BF@bioinf.man.ac.uk>; from Christopher.Taylor@man.ac.uk on Wed, Apr 11, 2001 at 02:30:11PM +0100 X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On 11 Apr 2001, at 16:22, Robin Faichney wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 11, 2001 at 02:30:11PM +0100, Chris Taylor wrote:
> >
> > I'm interested in how we generate our choice - competing 'solutions'
> > will often be ranked by a closer evaluation (i.e. a deeper
> > comparison with relevant stuff), but where that does not occur, for
> > example in a snap decision, or with poor knowledge (the classic
> > casket choice, most famously in The Merchant of Venice, for
> > example), do we just have a pseudorandom number generator to toss a
> > coin? Is it a case of which memes have most recently been active
> > (had a nice dream about a forest, therefore picked a green thing
> > over a turquoise thing, had a nice dream about the sea, therefore
> > vice versa - the one I think Dennet would go for).
>
> Seems to me in the vast majority of cases choices are not evenly
> weighted. What makes the difference is subjective probability: what I
> think is most likely to be true, or to be optimal. Then there's the
> distinction between what I think likely to be really true, or good, on
> one hand, and what I'd like to be true, or to do, on the other. And
> sometimes, of course, I actually toss a coin. This stuff is so
> complex and so varied that it's really difficult to generalise about.
>
And very difficult to consider superdetermined from the instant the
Big Bang bung.
>
> But I'm sceptical of the utility of the pseudorandom number generator
> concept. The concept of randomness, as most often used, is a
> subjective one. Not "these events have no pattern", but "these events
> have no interesting pattern". That's what's meant when it's said that
> genetic mutation is random: in evolutionary terms, it is, but
> individual cases often have clear causes, and without wanting to get
> into areas I've recently been avoiding, we might suppose that all
> cases are actually caused -- it's just that the causes are not
> generally of interest to evolutionary biologists.
>
It is not the mutation which is nonrandom, but the selection.
>
> So what's random is a matter of opinion. In the case of an actual p-r
> n g, it can clearly be distinguished from the rest of the machinery of
> which it is part, at least in terms of its usage, but in the natural
> world (in which I'm including our minds, for present purposes) there
> are no such distinctions.
>
> > Ecosystem evolution is as much about serendipity as it is about
> > 'fitness'; here chance decides who fills the niche. Where
> > determinism comes in is that in hindsight (frankly, predictive
> > power, or power to act, is irrelevant joe) we can see why one
> > species, rather than another, was available; why the weather killed
> > off the other possible candidate last summer; why the blah blah blah
> > (yadda yadda - I like that one).
>
We do not have perfect knowledge of the past, either; for instance,
we have no clue as to the why of the extinction of the american
eohippus (whose bones we have found) without evolved
descendants, while it's european conspecifics (whose bones we
have also found) evolved into horses, which populated the americas
when the Spanish brought them over.
>
> This is an example of "it's not caused in a way I find significant, so
> I'll call it chance". In general terms, we don't need hindsight to
> see that there are always reasons for these things. Taking the
> broadest possible view, chance just never comes into it.
>
People as self-directed causative agents are not operating
according to randomness or chance, unless perhaps we are
presented with the choice of Buriden's Ass, who starved to death
because he was tethered halfway between two equally large and
succulent-looking piles of hay, and starved to death because he
coundn't decide which one to walk over to and eat. We'd
(figuratively) flip a coin and go chow down.
> --
> Robin Faichney
> Get your Meta-Information from http://www.ii01.org
> (CAUTION: contains philosophy, may cause heads to spin)
>
> ===============================================================
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>
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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