[FRIAM] towards a description of a goal-function relation

[Eric Charles]

I think Jon's post was definitely getting us somewhere. I had a bunch of
knee jerk reactions I wanted to let calm down (including the one Nick
brought up).

I think at this time the most important thing I want to emphasize is that
the distinction in question is one found via experimental
investigation, not arm chair speculation. It isn't an arbitrary distinction
Nick and I "find it meaningful" to make, it is a distinction revealed
empirically.

Water exposed to electrolysis makes gas. If you arrange your apparatus
correctly, you can collect gas separately off each electrode. If you
investigate those gasses you find that they behave differently in numerous
ways. At that point, it is weird to say that chemists "find it meaningful
to distinguish" the two gases. It isn't that saying that is, strictly
speaking, incorrect, but it implies an arbitrariness about the whole thing.

But this is actually a bigger distinction than that, logically speaking.

When ethologists started asking "why is that animal behaving in that
fashion?" they used a variety of different methods, and found that some
methods produced different types of answers than other methods. Sometimes
when that happens, you keep trying to do science and end up with a jumbled
mess, but that's not what happened here. Time and time again set-of-methods
A converged one answer, while set-of-methods B converged on a different
one. And in decades of investigation by a field of Biology recognized well
enough to get three people Nobel Prizes, never once did the two sets of
methods settle upon the same answer. At that point, the reasonable
conclusion is that set-of-methods A is measuring one thing, while
set-of-methods B is measuring a different thing.  Looking at the methods
and the findings across numerous, numerous studies: Set-of-methods A seems
to point at the evolutionary function of the behavior in question, while
set-of-methods B seems to point at the immediate goal of the organism. We
could imagine living in a world where those were not different things; many
early evolutionary theorists thought no such distinction would be found;
and even some current evolutionary theorists talk as if no such distinction
exists (exasperating those of us steeped in the relevant literature). But,
it turns out, the distinction is there.

So this is less like the distinction between hydrogen and oxygen, and more
like the distinction between PH and surface tension. They are distinguished
by fundamentally different methods of investigation. You could imagine a
"possible world" in which PH and surface tension perfectly coincided, but
that isn't the world we live in. Yes, chemistis "find it meaningful to
distinguish" between PH and surface tension, but phrasing it that way
suggests the issue is being approached oddly.


-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist
American University - Adjunct Instructor
<echarles at american.edu>


On Fri, Jul 24, 2020 at 12:16 PM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Jo? Zingale
> Sent: Friday, July 24, 2020 12:38 AM
> To: friam at redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] towards a description of a goal-function relation
>
> another attempt to fix the broken threads...
>
>
>
> --
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