MEAD

Existential Darwinism

This theory supposes two ideas. 1) That human beings are imperfect and 2) the theory of Darwinism is in existence. If human beings are imperfect it is therefore impossible for them to create anything that is perfect in our current state. Thus humans have created an existence that is imperfect. The theory of Darwinism would state that a creature is continually evolving to be fit perfectly for its environment.
As humans we have created our own environment that we are continually trying to evolve to fit perfectly in accordance with Darwinism. Since we cannot create a perfect environment for ourselves Darwinism will push us to be perfect for the imperfect environment we have made.
However if a great goal in humanity is to reach perfection or create perfection, there is room for this goal in Existential Darwinism. By creating an environment that is as close to perfect as possible, we will depend less on Darwinism to further humanity. Therefore we must strive to be perfect but accept that it will never happen and through this we will reach perfection.
It is acceptable to call this a form of Existentialism since reaching perfection is completed internally and not dependant on a higher being to insert it artificially.

CSflim

First of all you use the words "perfect" and "imperfect" very frequenty and in extremely general sense, without any attempt to clarify their meaning. In what sense is an environment judged to be "perfect" or "imperfect", for example

I don't necessarily disagree with your conclusion, but it does not follow from your premsies.


This will only be true if the selection pressure is high enough. For us in the developed world, I see very little selection pressure at all. Hence we are not evolving.
(Pretty much anyone who so chooses can raise a child. The cases where this is not the case are a)statistically quite small and b)usually down to random unfortunate events, so not neccessarily so based on genetics (rarely so, in my opinion).

Exactly what is Existential Darwinism?

I guess that I am just not hip or 'Zen' enough to understand what to make of a sentance in the form:
"we must accept that X will never happen, and by this X happens"

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noodles

i also don't necessarily disagree with your conclusion, but the premises are lacking.

especially this one; i don't believe this is true. impossible is too far of a stretch. not likely, almost to the point of impossibility, but there is a chance. a chance that someone will screw up in just the right way to create something perfect. (infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters will eventually produce the complete works of shakespeare)

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raveneye

The term "Darwinism" is greatly overused. In most non-scientific discourse, it has degenerated to a fancy synonym for "competition".

If you really want to talk about Darwinism, you have to introduce some kind of heritability and some measure of fitness. Otherwise there's no framework for comparison.

noodles

wish i could delete weird server duplicate posts :-X
sorry for the extra posts, guys, the internetweb.com went on the fritz for me

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Master_Shake

While it is true that there is little selection pressure in the developed world, I don't think that means we are not evolving.

With new medical and scientific achievements it is now possible to control life factors that were previously only the result of natural genetics. Our technological improvements, while not biologically based, also make us better suited for survival and propagation in our environment. Although it is a different kind of evolution, those in the developed world are certainly still evolving. Not necessarily on a genetic level, but on a holistic level.

I find this particularly fascinating and am interested in what humanity will do with itself. We are very nearly on the cusp of being able to control our own biological evolution. Add this to our already impressive technological powers and we are becoming a very formidable animal.

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You know something, I don't think the sun even... exists... in this place. 'Cause I've been up for hours, and hours, and hours, and the night never ends here.

asaris

I want to know why we should think that Darwinian selection is leading us towards perfection. Either perfection is just whatever Darwinian selection is leading us towards, in which case you have an empty definition, or perfection is something else, which just begs the question, what is perfection?

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

CSflim

When I said that we are not evolving, I meant it in the genetic sense which should have been clear from the context. If not, I apologise.

I agree with the rest of what you said, with regards to cultural evolution.

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MEAD

I dont think Evoloution alone can create perfection becuase the environment is always chanigng. But with the ability to to control our environment to a much greater degrees thatn any other organism we stand the best chance of evolving to fit perfectly in our mostly static environment.

CSflim

It is still not at all clear what you are proposing.

If you are suggesting that humans should rely on the process of biological evolution in order to impove ourselves ("reach perfection" as you say) then you are simply way off.

Evolution is dumb. Evolution is messy. Evolution is Extremely inefficient. And most importantly, evolution progresses on the bloodshed and hardship of those it is improving. It is absolutley not something that we should model a society on!*

If you are not in fact refferring to biological evolution, then you really need to make that clear, as the majority of people, myself included, will assume biological, unless some kind of qualification is made. When someone is discussing philosophy, the primary goal of that person should be clairity above all else (regardless of what postmodernist 'philosophers' might tell you).

If you are refferring to cultural evolution, then you really need a supporting argument, rather than simply an assertion that it will lead us to perfection. Biological evolution is fundamentally different from memetic evolution in this case.


*And yes, a Universal Darwinist can hold this belief (that we should not model a society on evolution). In fact I know of none who think otherwise.

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MEAD

I'm defining perfection as creating and adapting to our technology without negavtive consequence, rather than suffering from it like we do now.

asaris

You're still being vague. Of course perfection entails a lack of 'negativity'; that's just what perfection means. But what are these 'negative consequences' you allude to?

And, CSflim, while clarity is an ideal, it should not get in the way of truth.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

martinguerre

the assumptions just strike me as implausible.

technology delivers a more stable enviroment? With out that assertion, the whole arguement falls since there is nothing to progress towards, no matter what the mechanism is (which i also fail to understand).

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For God so loved creation, that God sent God's only Son that whosoever believed should not perish, but have everlasting life.

-John 3:16

CSflim

it doesn't.

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C4 Diesel

First off, it kills me to see the word "evolution" massacred as much as it is here, but putting that aside...

People who are arguing biological vs societal/technological evolution are making a moot point. It is obvious at this stage of humanity that our biological evolution will progress as fast as our technology, since we are eventually going to engineer ourselves to be whatever we want to be, the constraint on that being our technology (how good we are at engineering ourselves).

The idea of a society being "perfect", on an absolute basis, is rediculous to me on a realistic and conceptual basis. Perfection is subjective, and therefore cannot be "attained" but merely observed to be such. The only way you're getting out of this is by the argument of "accepted reality" - that if the overwhelming majority believe something, it becomes true. And even then, it's not going to happen. People will always want to be/do/have more, and that will eventually come to a halt because we won't have enough resources and our universe is finite.

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NotMVH

I must agree with C4 Diesel. Perfection is not a universal concept. When speaking of such encompasing ideas as technology and society it can not be applied.

To your first post: Humans did not create existance, the only goal perhaps is to perserve a strong gene pool as a species. Depending who you follow with natural selection theory I agree with Richard Dawkings, we are byproducts of a single replicating cell's need to survive, we have evolved from that single cell and everything we have developed organicly has afforded us influence over our enviroment and the ability to continue the survival of a genetic pool of D.N.A. ( I know this is overly generalized)

Our society's and cultures have not been designed, perhaps they have been limited to having to appeal to people but what has come to exist is not any one persons or groups of persons creation. It is the result from countless billions of lives existing, struggling and competing to perpetuate a genetic pool of D.N.A. Modern technology has allowed for a greater influence on our enviroment but why does it exist? Primarly because it benifits the inventor. Henry ford did not set out from the day of his birth to invent the modern production line and forward the industrial revolution. He realized he could build a car and make himself and his investors $150 dollars profit. I can't say if he ever comprehended the results of massproduced automobiles but he certainly garnered for himself power by becoming the worlds first billionair by most counts.

MEAD

Perfection is universal, the idea that perfection is not universal is selling perfection short. Perfection is just like truth it is universal. How is it possible that something is perfect if it does not satisfy every aspect and possible variable? Maybe you say that perfection is not universal because you cannot percieve perfection clearly.

martinguerre

that's just a tautology. there's no satisfactory logical content in that statement.

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For God so loved creation, that God sent God's only Son that whosoever believed should not perish, but have everlasting life.

-John 3:16

C4 Diesel

Fine... Even if I accept your little tautology, then perfection would require an infinitum of whatever qualities are seen to be "as good as possible", and then you get stuck again, only for two reasons. One, "as good as possible" is subjective, and two, we can't have infinity of anything. And since we just defined perfection as being the best of something, it's STILL subjective. I absolutely dare you to define perfection in a manner applicable to the real universe without leaving room for it to be subjective and open to interpretation.

And, in the same manner... TRUTH is subjective as well. (although not nearly as much so)

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C4 to your door, no beef no more...

MEAD

Why are you trying to quanitfy or define perfection? It just is what it is. You can never have it, its an idea.

martinguerre

And, done! There's no point to the discussion if you don't even attempt to define your terms.

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For God so loved creation, that God sent God's only Son that whosoever believed should not perish, but have everlasting life.

-John 3:16

asaris

Hey now, let's take him at his word. He writes "How is it possible that something is perfect if it does not satisfy every aspect and possible variable?" So for something to be perfect, it must have every possible property, and have it to the highest possible degree. But that's just God. So the idea must be that we are evolving into God (or that we should be; I'm not sure which Mead would want). But that's impossible, well, on many levels, but especially on two. As far as I can tell, there's no chance that evolution is going to produce gods like this, so the theories not particularly Darwinist. And no existentialist would say we can become gods -- in fact, the whole point of Sartre's book "Being and Nothingness" is that much human suffering comes from the attempt to be gods (trying to unite the in-itself with the for itself). So it's not particularly existential either. What to make of a theory of Existential Darwinism that's neither existentialist nor darwinist?

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

martinguerre

" What to make of a theory of Existential Darwinism that's neither existentialist nor darwinist?"

I'd just call it ED, but he might object. No...i declare that things are done becuase the definitions being produced aren't usable in any real way. becuase my disagreement starts there, i can try to show where my assumptions differ. but with the language Mead is using, that's not really an option. Perfection is defined as the perfect. If this is questioned, he repeats the assertion.

So i say it's done. I'm not trying to be mean, but i just don't see an avenue for continuing the discussion in a meaningful manner.

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For God so loved creation, that God sent God's only Son that whosoever believed should not perish, but have everlasting life.

-John 3:16

C4 Diesel

I have to agree with Martin.

Although I never look at anything from a spiritual/religious standpoint, I agree with asaris that from this standpoint only god is perfect and it is impossible to become a society of gods (classically defined gods, for those who would start up a "well what is a god?" conversation).

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C4 to your door, no beef no more...

CSflim

Nice!

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debaser

Actually, infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters will yield infinite complete works of Shakespeare in exactly the amount of time it takes to type however many keystrokes are involved in the complete works...

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nezmot

Natural selection still operates in today's developed world. People keep making this error in thinking that evolution and natural selection is about things running out of food and dying. It's not. It's about things (animals, plants, people, microbes etc) failing to have children before they die. As such, over thousands of millions of years, various traits will be selected on the basis of attraction, rather than fitness of survival. Normally, this only happens in populations that have little or no competition (birds in remote locations) and manifests itself in various plumages, behavioral displays and other outlandish mannerisms. But seeing that we've largely solved the fight-for-life struggles, our evolutionary path is likely to pay more attention to these attraction aspects.

Interestingly, since attractiveness is a much looser and more subjective concept than survival - and since attraction is a MUCH more powerful force, evolutionarily (because not only is the attractive feature being reinforced, but also the predisposition to find that feature attractive is reinforced), features that develop through this process are much more likely to explode into extremes very rapidly.

Think of the peacock, birds of paradise, or those bright-red monkey's bottoms - all of those features are likely to have evolved due to this evolutionary concept of attraction, over this older, simplistic concept of things dying off if they don't run fast enough.

There are those who believe that the human mind, as extreme as it is, probably developed more through this route of attraction than it providing any specific or particular survival benefits. The rapid evolution of man is highly irregular, except in terms of this. And don't we all find intelligent people more attractive?

Zyr

Interesting point: Humanity evolved to a point, by changing itself, adapting to it's enviroment, until recently (in terms of evolution), where it became more intelligent, learning to use tools, eventually learning to adapt it's enviroment to it, even going so far as to create entirely new enviroments, unlike anything else (the internet).

I think we are still evolving. People will become more and more adept at adapting their enviroment. Those that can't, will be left behind.

There is also some stuff I can't quite remember well enough to elaborate on, about humanity becoming more connected, ideas being shared faster and faster, till people all know things simultainiously, becoming one large being, one collective entity. This could be that perfection thing. Of course I'm tired and ranting, but I'm sure I wrote it down somewhere. It had something to do with the books God's Debris, and The Religion War, and maybe the anime Lain. Still ranting. Ignore this paragraph.

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"Oh, irony! Oh, no, no, we don't get that here. See, uh, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so irony's not really a high priority. We haven't had any irony here since about, uh, '83 when I was the only practitioner of it, and I stopped because I was tired of being stared at."

Omnia mutantu, nos et mutamur in illis.
All things change, and we change with them.
- Neil Gaiman, Marvel 1602

Jinn

To the original poster:

The premise of the argument relies on a very very flawed understanding of evolution, as some of the previous posters noted. Your understanding (or lack thereof) in discussing evolution seems to rely too heavily on Darwinian evolution, which really only says that (a) organisms have different reproductive success rates and (b) that certain traits are selected for from generation to generation. That's fine-and-dandy, except it doesn't really address the issues of inheritance within species or other evolutionary forces.

The contemporary / "modern" theory of Evolution is the Synthetic Theory, and it includes mathematically modeled variations in organisms over time (population genetics / genetic drift) and Mendelian genetics. Without those two "forces" of evolution, you could almost make an argument that we're not "evolving" anymore. However, this relies on the idea that Darwin's Natural Selection is the only force causing the evolution of a species. This is clearly not the case, and Darwin himself would likely agree if he were to view his reliance upon Lemarkian genetics with the science of today. Nezmot above makes another great point regarding this -- differential reproductive success is omnipresent, even today. Perhaps its not manifested as "faster runner = better breeder," but less attractive people will breed less frequently and will therefore, via natural selection, be selected against. In essence: future generations will have the DNA of the successful breeders, not necessarily the most "fit" for the environment -- you could be a horrible runner but if you breed frequently, you're likely to have an effect on the genetic variability of your population in future generations.

I humbly suggest you update your viewpoint to include the valid scientific and mathematical models that explain evolution as we mean it today. If you'd argue that "evolution" commonly refers to "natural selection," you'd again be wrong. That may be how laymen refer to it, but its certainly not the nomenclature that biologists, chemists, or anthropologists use. I'm certainly not an expert, but there's a great deal of "evolution" that you seem to be excluding for the sake of making a flawed philosophical argument.

Perhaps an Anthropology class at your local University is in order?

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Nimetic

How do you define "Darwinism".

There appears to be a lot more to evolution than was observed by Darwin for example.

Likewise - I don't know if it is correct that evolution tends to create "lifeforms" (bacteria for example) that are perfect for their environment.

First up... the environment will change at the same time as a species evolves. So if tigers on an island become better and better predators for example, and if they eventually eat all available prey... they'll simply die out.

The second flaw that I can see - is that if we see visualize evolution as a path up a mountain (or into a valley), you can imagine that selection pressures migh easily push a species into a "local maxima". Sorry about that term... I come from physical sciences.

Ok... so in this case we become something like a (pick some species that hasn't changed much recently)... It's found it's niche and is well adapted for it. Mutations or changes in a variety of axes/directions cause no appreciable improvement - however is it truly as well adapted to it's current environment as it could be? Probably not.

And is it perfect. Heck no (in my view), although it would depend on your definition.