[FRIAM] Goal and Function (in the context of Evolution)

[Eric Charles]

>
> EricC, What again is the connection between goal orientation and function
> in the evolutionary theory literature? All I can remember, from this
> summer when we were discussing it, is that it was a way to distinguish
> those things selected-for from the spandrels.
>

Great connection!

The evolutionary *function *of a behavior or body structure is the reason
it has been selected for. (<Gould kicks in the door> "If it *has *been
selected for!" <me> "Yes, yes, we are covering that on the other thread
just fine.") So, for example, it may be that getting access to protein and
calcium is important for being a successful Irish Elk, and evolution favors
both males who get lots of protein and female who select males who get lots
of protein.

But what do female Irish Elk know about protein consumption? Answer:
Nothing. Despite millions of years of evolutionary pressure, neither gender
of Irish Elk has even a rudimentary grasp of amino-acid chemistry. So,
evolution needs something else to latch onto. Something detectable. It
turns out that antlers are made of mostly excess protein. So if you are
good at making big antlers, you are *de facto* good at getting excess
protein.

As a result of that, you have female Irish Elk walking around with the *goal
*of nabbing the male Irish Elk with the biggest antlers. And "goal" is used
there in the psychological sense - the female will seek out the male with
the largest Antlers around, varying behavior as necessary to achieve that
end. That the female's behavior is directed at getting to the male with the
largest antlers is an experimentally verifiable (or refutable) aspect of
her behavioral design. No dualism here, just an objective description of
how the female's behavior varies across circumstances to keep her headed
towards a particular end point.

We can do experiments where we artificially enhance the antlers of males
who are (apparently) sub par at protein collection, and thereby show that
females are responding to antler size, not protein collection ability
itself. And, by deduction, any male that evolved a way to grow huge antlers
on less protein would be able to exploit that *goal*, without fulfilling
the *function*.

Many perennial confusions in efforts at creating an evolutionary psychology
come from not distinguishing those two concepts cleanly. It would be a
significant mischaracterization of the situation to say "The female is *trying
*to get the male who is best at getting protein." The female is *trying *to
get the male with the biggest antlers. We have females who are
currently *trying
*to do that, because in the past, such a preference has *functioned *to
produce young elk who were, on average, better at getting protein than the
competition. You can't talk coherently about evolution or about psychology
without keeping those things separate.

P.S. Those of you who are fans of recently-extinct mega fauna know I
shouldn't be talking about Irish Elk in the present tense, and that none of
the experiments above have been done in that species... though similar
experiments have been performed in countless others. I'm not sure why Irish
Elk popped into my mind, but that's what I had to work with. That species
went extinct a few thousand years ago, and had the largest antlers of any
deer species ever, coming in at around 90 pounds (40 kg). There is much
speculation that the ridiculous antler size was due to sexual selection run
amuck, and that overgrown antlers contributed to the species extinction by
making it hard to avoid predators (including humans).
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