‘a physical device that uses energy to perform a specific task, typically by modifying force, speed, or direction to make work easier’
is a thought experiment. It doesn’t exist.
That doesn’t even warrant a response. It’s ironic you join a forum and spend so much time and energy on trying to convince everyone that humans are machines and life is meaningless. I mean, what’s the point?
Of course science is constructed by humans. It is how we represent the structure of a fundamental reality that is otherwise ineffable.
Yes, of cause nothing matters to the universe, but Kellis wants to matter to the universe, he want subject independent meaning but it doesn’t exist. The point is, why didn’t anybody tell him this.
Yes things matter to us in a subject dependent way, my philosophical ideas matter to me, this is why I wrote them down. Thanks for pointing this out.
So you agree we are replication machines then?
Well have a think about it then. Would a Von Neumann probe (if one existed) that maintained it self against entropy be a machine?
Why, is it not true, is it not philosophically relevant, or are you just substituting detain for an actual argument?
I guess I would say the point is that this is a philosophy form and the fact that we are replication machines and life is meaningless dose seem to be philosophically relevant.
Do I need another reason?
Why did you join this blog. Why do you spend so much time arguing we aren’t machines and life has meaning?
You may not see it, but you’re arguing against reason. But it’s from me. Over and out.
Ye, cool. Say I am arguing against reason without any explanation of why and then leave the conversation.
Its as easy as it is intellectually impotent to drop unjustified statements and then declare an end to the conversation.
You may have well ended by saying, i am wright, you are wrong, I have an argument that proves it but I am not going to tell you it even though I totally could.
“We are replication machines” - Right.
“We are just replication machines” - Wrong.
“Science explains” - Right.
“Science explains everything” - Wrong.
I agree (about Ligotti). But most people are going to deny that we can grasp a “subject-independent” meaning, precisely because meaning is, as a concept, subject-dependent. I tend to agree. Ligotti seems to want to say something “different” without really being able to.
I don’t think I included the word just. Also, I’m curious to hear you unpack what work you think inclusion of the word just is doing in the sentence.
Again, I don’t know if you’re suggesting that this is something I have said, but I don’t think it is. I would also say that in a more trivial way the current state of science that we have doesn’t explain everything, obviously. I would also say that it is also very difficult to imagine how certain questions could be explained scientifically as to explain something scientifically you have to immersed it within the scientific narrative. Why is there something rather than nothing is a question it is difficult to even imagine being get being immersed in the scientific narrative. Another question is what matter is made of at its most fundamental level.
I think that other than these questions throughout there aren’t many that science couldn’t tackle in principle. Consciousness, the existence of self free world, meaning morality are all trivial and perfectly easily explained
I am a thinking machine, I am a desiring machine, I am an eating machine, I am a writing machine, I am an assembling machine, I am a flowing machine, I am a love machine, I am a language machine, I am a social machine etc etc. So, yes, I am a replicating machine. So what? It’s almost harder to look for a type of machine I am not. Well, perhaps I am not a fruit machine. I don’t eat and spit out coins while you pull my lever.
Ok Love machine
The reason replication machine is what I have gone for is because the primary imperative evolution setup is template replication, hence replication machines.
The reason organisms eat is so they can use the food they consume to replicate making eating a second order imperative that accrues as a result of our status as replication machine. the reason you have evolved to do everything on the list is because they make you a better replication machine.
This doesn’t mean that you aren’t free to call yourself a love machine but me calling you a replication machine encompasses your love making ability as it is part of what makes you a replication machine.
I don’t think this constitutes a point of disagreement.
There is an implied disagreement. And that it is that in order to establish the primacy of the subject as replicating machine over other types of machine in the way you are attempting, you need to posit a causal relationship across categories that can’t be justified and, in effect, constitutes a category error. At the meta level, the subject is a symbolic, sentient, and biological machine and you can’t encompass / fully account for the sentient and the symbolic in terms of the biological.
To elabortate on the above:
Take the following statement:
“I get turned on by blue socks”
Let’s suppose that this is factual.
Now explain how this can be sensibly predicated of the subject in terms of the subject being a replicating machine. Tell me how, in principle, the causal relationship here could be established. If you can’t do that and can only tell convoluted evolutionary “just so” stories, you will be begging the question.
The point here is that what you predicate of a subject defines the terms of a sensible answer; the subject may be viewed from several different perspectival categories that are no less real or felicitous in establishing causality on their own terms but don’t interrelate deterministically. Another way of saying this is that you cannot here establish cross-category relations of necessity in the way you can do so within categories.
And that it is that in order to establish the primacy of the subject as replicating machine over other types of machine in the way you are attempting, you need to posit a causal relationship across categories that can’t be justified
I mean, I wouldn’t say we aren’t those other types of machines you listed, I am simply saying by saying replication machine I am encompassing the idea that you are those are the types of machine. I wouldn’t use primacy, I would say they are all different aspects of our nature as replication machines.
It seems like you are disputing the idea that the things that you list as being part of the nature are part of your nature because you are a replication machine. As far as justification goes, the justification is evolution, both genetic and cultural but it will be easier to focus on the genetic evolution.
It will also be easier to talk about evolution in its simplest form and make it more and more complicated and then apply it to us based on the fact we are a continuation of this process.
We haven’t just evolved from very simple organisms, there is good reason to think we evolved from ribozymes which are stretches of RNA with catalytic activity, with the catalytic activity of these ribozymes being used to replicate themselves. Even if you dispute this, it is instructive. The ribozymes that replicated themselves the best of all would have been ones that survived. Even back then there were different aspects of what made a ribozyme a good replicator. Things like longevity and fecundity and fidelity all contributed to more replication so were different aspects of what made the different ribozymes better replicators.
The next stage is believed to have been communities of ribozymes. These different communities of ribozymes would have done different things all of which would contribute to the replication of the community. Some would for example break down raw materials allowing the ribozyme to have access to more materials with these raw materials being used to aid in the replication of the community. The different distinct communities of ribozymes were all competing against each other with limited resources, meaning that the ones that were best at replicating were the only ones that survived.
Upon the evolution of protein synthesis, these ribozymes effectively give way to communities of genes. The genes make the protein and other molecules we organism consists of with these proteins giving rise to mechanisms that aid in the survival of the community of genes (template). This collection of related mechanisms evolved to allow for the replication of the community of genes could reasonably be described as a replication machine.
Still the same idea that they contribute to the survival of the community ribozymes applies. There are different genes in bacteria that are translated into proteins that synthesise the molecules the bacteria need to replicate such as, nucleotides, amino acids and lipids for example. The bacteria could be described as a nucleotide synthesising machine and indeed it is, but as this is in aid of replication, this behavior is encompassed by saying it’s a replication machine. This applies to more complex bacteria behaver. There are genes that allow for the movement of the bacteria and control the direction of the movement of bacteria towards what is useful for their survival and away from things that are detrimental to their survival. This makes bacteria a resource finding machine but it is finding these resources in order to replicate..
The reason replication is absolutely key is that these communities of genes that build their replication machine around them have only one way of surviving over the long term and that is to replicate. No replication no survival for the community of genes, this means that the only community of genes to survive are the ones that build machines that are better at replicating than the competition. All of the many many things that these machines do, from synthesising amino acids to swimming towards nutrients are in aid of their replication. No aspect of what they are makes sense outside of their need to replicate, their need to replicate is explained by the fact that if they didn’t replicate that template would stop existing. If the bacteria decided to do something that in any way negatively affected replication, which could happen, the community of genes that give rise to that bacteria would eventually be outcompeted.
Everything that I have said applies to us, accepting more complicated and cultural evolution plays a significant role although the reasons cultural evolution plays a significant role is because of genetic evolution. This is the meaning of the phrase nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. It is a scientific fact that we are no less subject to the realities of evolution as bacteria because the communities of genes that build the replication machines that are us also depend on replication for their survival. We are nothing more than one of an untold number of organisms with the same rules that apply to bacteria, slime mold, flowers, frogs and chimps applying to us.
The big picture reason we do the things that we do is because they, on average and in the environments in which we actually evolved, aid in our replication. The reason we eat is because we have genes that tell us to eat, literally hormones and receptors and brains that are encoded by the aforementioned community of genes. Same for sex. We have genes that are critical for us being able to talk with talking helps us replicate and ensure the survival of genetic legacy. You are a social machine because the ability to be social increases your chances of replicating.
Out of the big things that we do, have sex, eat, find shelter, gather resources, accumulate information that could be helpful, generate and work to be accepted by a community people, look after our children and anybody else that may help us preserve at genetic legacy, take precautions with respect to our health and well-being, defecate, drink, generate minimally reciprocal relationships (friends), It is easy and fairly obvious to see how all of these things would affect our survival. It is also obvious without genes we wouldn’t do these things. We know this both because it is trivial to connect our ability to do these things to our survival. None of these represent a “ just so story” and that the causal relationship between doing them and replicating genes is obvious. You don’t eat you don’t replicate your genes, you don’t have sex you don’t replicate your genes you don’t drink you don’t replicate your genes, you don’t have minimally reciprocal relationships and you need help to survive you don’t replicate your genes. Even things like writing, which is also a product of cultural evolution, making an indirect product of genetic evolution is quite obviously going to increase your chances of replicating your genes, at least in societies where literacy rates are high and the kind of jobs that help you support families require writing.
It is not just the obviousness of the relationship between these thing and our replication I am relying on. These argument as well as our selves as organisms have to be placed in the wider content of the whole of nature. We understand how evolution applies to the actions of all organisms with us just being one in millions. It is obvious to us that birds of paradise, or even fruit flies do their mating dances and rituals because they have evolved to do it because doing it relates to replication and replication is how the community of genes that tell them to do their mating dance service. We however struggle to apply the same logic to ourselves and apply the same truths we apply to nature elsewhere to ourselves. Given the amount of evidence available, if you don’t want to apply the truths of evolution that we apply to all other organisms to ourselves it is incumbent on you to say what sets us apart from the rest of nature and why these truths don’t apply to us.
I think it’s incredibly profound and philosophically important that people’s desire to do all of these things have evolved and is the result of genes.
Take the following statement:
“I get turned on by blue socks”
Let’s suppose that this is factual.
Now explain how this can be sensibly predicated of the subject in terms of the subject being a replicating machine. Tell me how, in principle, the causal relationship here could be established. If you can’t do that and can only tell convoluted evolutionary “just so” stories, you will be begging the question.
It’s ok love machine Baden, you don’t have to pretend that the blue sock thing is hypothetical. We are happy to accept you for who you are. 
The first thing to say is that evolution can’t explain your hypothetical if you make up a hypothetical that doesn’t increase your chances of replication.
That said, having a blue sock fetish could help you replicate by somebody buying a pair of blue socks, you getting turned on by the blue socks and then having sex and them and having a baby. Obviously this explanation doesn’t explain why this sucks being blue does it for you but that isn’t important. What is important is that there are things that people can do relatively easily that make you wanna have sex with them. Male fruit flies of a particular species do a 4 step dance and female fruit flies have evolved to respond to that. It helps them reproduce because it tells the females that the males are of their species and are genetically normal enough to do the dance. There isn’t an explanation of why it is not three steps or not 5 steps for the overall utility to be obvious.
I’m not sure you could expect genetic and or cultural evolution to explain every little bit of minutiae about everybody’s life. Brain development is extremely complicated and although it’s starting structure and particular heuristics are genetically controlled which puts relatively specific constraints on behaviour, which colour of socks turns you on the most is unlikely to be controlled directly by genes, unless there is a specific reason for it. Its like throwing a paper airplane, generally it will go forwards, you may have some control of where it lands but just because you can’t explain every little bit of nuance about exactly how and where it lands every time it gets thrown doesn’t mean it wasn’t thrown with some intended result.
It’s also not a perfect process 100% guaranteed to make a replication machine that never does anything stupid from a replication point of view either. A community of genes controlling the behavior of a machine comprised of trillions and trillions of proteins is not easy and it isn’t always going to in every instance produce intuitively obvious results or have control over every evolutionary irrelevant piece of minutiae. This is different from saying they have no control.
Every human except identical twins contains a unique never-before- tested mix of genes, the benefit of this is that you on average find mixes of genes that are better and better at replicating with those genes predominating. The negative of this is that you also get combinations of genes that are less good at replicating and do dumb shit. There are also things like genetic drift we could talk about.
We tend to view genes in a me centric way. We tend to put the emphasis on ourselves as the star of the show and see our genes merely as an explanation for how we came to have our particular eye color etcetera. We see, what we may refer to as ourselves, as the driving force of template dependent chemistry rather than the template that created us.
The reality is however that we are the machinery that our template encodes for the purpose of ensuring its survival. The template in order to compete for survival went from free floating RNA, catalyzing reactions to hiding inside a cell, coordinating and managing the construction of its survival machine. The information in the template explains us, we don’t explain the template. We are the product of the information in our template; our template is not a product of the information in us. It is our genes that persist from generation to generation and we are the short lived machinery designed to get our genes into that next generation.. Dawkins describes us as template generated survival machines which seems to be a fair representation of what is the case.
When you look at seeds produced by plants it is very much evident to see how they have evolved in a way that gives the template they carry the best chance of prospering. Seeds designed to be eaten, seeds fitted with propellers and very small seeds equipped with fluff that float on the wind. The templates need to be replicated explain the properties of the seeds, to say the properties of the seed explain the template would be backwards. In the same way the genes existed before the seeds that carry the genes existed meaning that it is the genes that give rise to the seeds. This needs to be the case because the template produces protein which produces the seed. It is our template that explains and gives rise to the properties of the replication machine that is us and it is the evolved propensity of the template that created us to propagate that explains what we are. This is because things that aren’t concerned with and/or well suited to replicating stop existing in accordance with the evolutionary algorithm.”
I appreciate the extensive reply, but I’m familiar with the mechanics of evolution. In fact, one of my favorite books is ‘Darwin’s Dangerous Idea’. However, I don’t see that you’ve addressed my objection but are doing just what I said was problematic, asserting a primacy that needs to be argued for using something other than its own terms in order to avoid begging the question. Still, I’ll look at your reply in more detail and see if I can progress this.
As I said, I’m not asserting primacy.
I am arguing that in a big picture way the behaviours we exhibit contribute to our ability to replicate, which is why I made the choice of calling us replication machines and why calling us replication machines encompasses the behaviours that contribute to our replication.
This is all I’m saying I think what I wrote? Does quite a good job but justifying it.
Begging the question is a logical fallacy where an argument’s premise assumes the truth of its own conclusion, rather than providing actual support for it.
premise is a statement or idea that is accepted as true and used as the foundation for a logical argument, theory, or plot
With respect you begging the question if this was true then you wouldn’t be able to make the statement at any trait that any organism had evolved in order to help the organism replicate. Saying that bacteria evolved their ability to synthesise nucleotide because it increases their ability to replicate would be somehow illegitimate because it would be begging the question. like what?
Okay, so
premise one
Evolution occurs through increasing the chance that an organism replicate its DNA
Premise 2
all made a traits of an organism that are generally conserved across the species and require specific proteins and specific genes in order to occur
Premise three
The ability to synthesise nucleotides is a major trait that is conserved across braces and requires protein specific genes in order to occur
Conclusion
A bacteria synthesis nucleotides in order to help it replicate. This means the ability to synthesise nucleotides is an aspect of its ability to replicate.
What’s wrong with the structure of this argument?
Do you agree making?
Is this just semantics?
Also, Dawkins refers to animals as survival machines in his book the selfish gene. He does this repeatedly he’s doing it for the same reasons and promised on the same arguments that I’m calling living organisms replication machines. So there you go.
Dawkins isn’t a great source for evolutionary biology. He’s an adaptationist, and that is now considered bad science.
I think in the context, I quoted Dawkins there really isn’t an issue.
If you want to say something specific about the context, I’m happy to hear it.
I would also say that the criticisms of adaptationist do not in any way claim that adaption doesn’t happen. I would also say that some of their criticisms are over rot and rely on caricaturing people who talk about adaption and highlighting edge cases where the ambiguities is real. People who are labelled negatively as adaptationist are alleged to think that adaption is the only force that is working in evolution when the vast majority of these people fully recognise it’s not just adaptation and recognise the other forces that the critics of adaption pointed out. Also, even the most ardent critics of adaptationist do not deny that adaption happens.
For me, the adaptationists and the non adaptationist generally agree on the science and the argument is on the margins of how much emphasis is placed where and how obvious a function a trait has to have before you say that trait has evolved to fulfil that function. As with most debates that are concerned with degrees of-emphasis rather than fact I think that this debate is reliance on people mischaracterising each of this positions more than it is reliant on a disagreement about the underlying science. I think this largely applies to people’s criticism of Dawkins. I don’t like Dawkins as a philosopher in general, but I don’t think most evolutionary biologist. Will disagree with most of what he’s saying although some quibble on the margins. They said I haven’t read everything he’s written. I’m happy for you to quote something he says wrong.
I also don’t know that I care that much as long as you’re not saying ademption isn’t a thing.
The extent to which adaptation influences an organism’s features is related to the size of the population, so bacterial evolution heavily reflects adaptation, whereas human evolution does not.
Good video about the potential for misunderstanding stemming from adaptationism, which is connected to Nazi science, so another reason to be wary of it.
I don’t think this is quite right, and i think its definitely unfortunat you’ve decided to link adaptationism with Nazis. It’s an actual, fully accepted, scientific view:
Quite an important point to note is that htis is a spectrum of views:
“No matter how incorrect it may ultimately be to invoke natural selection as a sufficient explanation for a trait, it is the most direct way possible to find the true causal explanation of a trait. Methodological adaptationism differs markedly from empirical adaptationism in that the former acknowledges the possibility that natural selection may ultimately prove not to have the most influence on a given trait’s evolution.”