Jon, Your RE: line shows me that you understand precisely the nature of the problem, and that you are addressing it head on. I am truly grateful that . However, for some reason, I have been feeling very muddle-brained all week (since I failed the Trump Test), and so fear that I may not be able to meet this post at the level it deserves. I am hoping that Eric and others may be able to fill in for me. Perhaps I may be able to pull myself together and catch up over the weekend.
At the risk of doing that thing that Glen says I do, let me pick out and hammer on one point. The function of a structure or behavior can NEVER be the preservation of the species. This is an example of the very principle we are struggling with here. To the extent that function is "that for which nature selects", nature cannot select for the preservation of the species, because, by the nature of species, the species is the repository of all the effects of differential reproduction. For selection to operate at the level of the species, there would have to be one or more competing species, and species, by and large, mostly, do not compete. (That is why they are said to occupy different "niches". ) They eat one another, but that is not competition. Even when they do compete, species do not have the coherence and variety to serve as units of selection. For these same reasons, group selection of any kind is controversial in evolutionary thought, but most everybody agrees that benefit to the species, as such, is not an evolutionary cause. What selection dictates, in the gull case, is not that "gulls survive", but that egg shell removal has arisen because those gulls that remove egg shells are prayed upon by foxes less than those that do not. The survival of gulls is an "unintended consequence" of selection upon eggshell removal. Thanks for pitching in and helping with our understanding of the goal/function relation. Nick Nicholas Thompson Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology Clark University [email protected] https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Jo? Zingale Sent: Friday, July 24, 2020 12:38 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [FRIAM] towards a description of a goal-function relation another attempt to fix the broken threads... -- Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
