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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>Jon,<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Tomorrow I have to clarify the goal, selection, function, that-for-which-designed muddle I have created. Over the 40 years I wrote about this, I slightly changed my tune, and it’s no fair to you to have you working at this if I don’t have my own language straight. In the meantime, I attach, in case you have not seen it before, the first paper in which I laid it out, which has myriad examples of the distinction, set forth in a very condensed format. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Thanks for helping me think about this. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Bed, <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Nick <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Nicholas Thompson<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Clark University<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><a href="mailto:ThompNickSon2@gmail.com"><span style='color:#0563C1'>ThompNickSon2@gmail.com</span></a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><a href="https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/"><span style='color:#0563C1'>https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/</span></a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b>From:</b> Friam <friam-bounces@redfish.com> <b>On Behalf Of </b>Jon Zingale<br><b>Sent:</b> Sunday, July 26, 2020 10:10 PM<br><b>To:</b> friam@redfish.com<br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [FRIAM] towards a description of a goal-function relation<o:p></o:p></p></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana",sans-serif;color:#333333'>Thank you, Nick and Eric, for the corrections, direction, and help as I<br>grapple with these ideas that you both are so familiar with. Taking a<br>step back, it appears that evolutionary theorists identify <i>function</i> in<br>the <i>epiphenomena</i> arising from <i>underlying mechanisms</i>. What connection the<br>epiphenomena have to the mechanisms can often be elusive, illusory, and<br>hotly debated. Must the mechanisms related to a flowing river give rise<br>to a meaningful[</span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:#333333'>Ȣ</span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana",sans-serif;color:#333333'>] function? Moreover and seemingly less to the point,<br>evolutionary functions are sought after that can be identified as being<br>preserved inter-generationally in some sense. The survival of gulls is<br>an <i>unintended consequence</i> of selection upon eggshell removal.<br><br>While <i>goals</i> are related to the satisfaction of the individual, the<br><i>function</i> is not so simply defined. As Nick has pointed out many times in<br>our conversations, <i>function</i> may better be understood in relation to a<br>concept of <i>design</i>[</span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333'>‖</span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana",sans-serif;color:#333333'>]. Perhaps it would be better to imagine <i>function</i> as<br>needing to satisfy the specification of some <i>design</i>[</span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"MS Gothic";color:#333333'>※</span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana",sans-serif;color:#333333'>]. The styrofoam<br>herding robot <i>knows nothing</i> of styrofoam, the bent metal in my thermo-<br>stat <i>knows nothing</i> of comfort, the maple pod <i>knows nothing</i> of the<br>journey or what it means to be distributed evenly, and the gull makes<br>no connection between removing shells and predation. However the theory<br>is to account for function, it will need to be in a language capable of<br>describing <i>side effects</i> as <i>first-class citizens</i>.<br><br>Eric relates the discovery of a goal-function distinction in evolutionary<br>theory to the discovery of the surface tension-PH distinction in chemistry.<br>Whether intentionally identified or just a side effect of his argument,<br>surface tension and PH are decidedly examples of intensive quantities and<br>so are of a type best characterized by contravariant functors[</span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:#333333'>⁂</span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana",sans-serif;color:#333333'>]. The<br>connections here to contravariant logical notions (pullbacks, sections,<br>equalizers, finite limits, etc...) may have very real manifestations wrt<br>how we <i>must</i> investigate such ideas <i>empirically</i>. Ideas like this are<br>hinted at in Lawvere's work, but also seem to trace back further to<br>thinkers like Clifford Truesdell and others that struggled with rational<br>thermodynamics. >From what I gather from those works, there ought<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana",sans-serif;color:#333333'>to be a tight connection between the logic of a notion and the methods<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana",sans-serif;color:#333333'>we employ in coming to understand the notion.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana",sans-serif;color:#333333'>To the extent that this much may be passable, I hope to find some time<br>this week to work through the possible connection to contravariant<br>functors, to reason further in analogy to free constructions, and extend<br>the analogy to <i>exaptations</i> and <i>spandrels</i>. Again, I invite additional<br>corrections, comments, and nuance.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana",sans-serif;color:#333333'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana",sans-serif;color:#333333'>Jon<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana",sans-serif;color:#333333'><br>[</span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:#333333'>Ȣ</span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana",sans-serif;color:#333333'>] By meaningful I exactly mean non-arbitrary. I would say that notions<br>like <i>energy</i> and <i>momentum</i> are <i>meaningful</i> to the physicist, for instance,<br>not because they are <i>arbitrary</i> but because they have a <i>privileged</i> place<br>relative to the <i>art</i> and the artisans that work there. The scientific<br>enterprise is a meaning-making enterprise and to say that such-and-such<br>idea is meaningful to the artisan is to emphasize its value relative to the art.<br><br>[</span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333'>‖</span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana",sans-serif;color:#333333'>] In a parallel post, I attempt to spell out a mathematical construction<br>that I believe can be an example if not a template relating design,<br>epiphenomena, and higher-order structure in mathematics. That this<br>construction can alternatively be interpreted as a post hoc justification,<br>gives a limiting case for not needing a designer to have a <i>design</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana",sans-serif;color:#333333'><a href="http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/How-is-a-vector-space-like-an-evolutionary-function-td7597965.html">http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/How-is-a-vector-space-like-an-evolutionary-function-td7597965.html</a><br><br>[</span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:#333333'>⁂</span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana",sans-serif;color:#333333'>] Footnoted again, but this time with an added emphasis on page 20:<br><a href="https://altexploit.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/1992-categories-of-space-and-quantity.pdf">https://altexploit.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/1992-categories-of-space-and-quantity.pdf</a><br>"<i>By contrast, an intensive quantity-type is a contravariant functor,<br>taking coproducts to products, from a distributive category, but now a<br>functor whose values have a multiplicative structure as well as an<br>additive structure.</i>"<br><br>[</span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"MS Gothic";color:#333333'>※</span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana",sans-serif;color:#333333'>] To act as touchstones, I am adding this list of functions:<br>1. herd styrofoam (<a href="http://www.verena-hafner.de/teaching/didabots.pdf">http://www.verena-hafner.de/teaching/didabots.pdf</a>)<br>2. maintain a comfortable temperature in the house<br>3. spread seeds far and evenly<br>4. avoid predation<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div></div></body></html>