I'm glad you brought this up. Tim Tyler, who inhabited this forum a
couple of years ago, is now over on comp.ai.philosophy pushing,
amongst other things, the "inevitiability of human life" and
intelligence, and using Simon Conway Morris as his "authority" ... to
wit: "Anyhow, Conway-Morris is the cannonical antidote to those who
think chance rules in evolution: ", etc...

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.ai.philosophy/browse_frm/thread/c70c6f2a9df28bbf
[starting about msg #32]

He's also pushing the idea that evolution is deterministic, based
upon ...
============
New Findings Confirm Darwin's Theory: Evolution Not Random

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080118134531.htm

Evolution Is Deterministic, Not Random, Biologists Conclude From
Multi-species Study

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071119123929.htm
=============

What's the opinion of this stuff, including Conway Morris, in the
science/evolution community? Sounds pretty much left field.

in article fv51cm$u9...@darwin.ediacara.org, feedbackdroid at
feedbackdr...@yahoo.com wrote on 4/28/08 10:26 AM:

[SNIP]





Tim Tyler, who inhabited this forum a
couple of years ago, is now over on comp.ai.philosophy pushing,
amongst other things, the "inevitiability of human life" and
intelligence, and using Simon Conway Morris as his "authority" ... to
wit: "Anyhow, Conway-Morris is the cannonical antidote to those who
think chance rules in evolution: ", etc...

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.ai.philosophy/browse_frm/thread/c...
f28bbf
[starting about msg #32]

He's also pushing the idea that evolution is deterministic, based
upon ...
============
New Findings Confirm Darwin's Theory: Evolution Not Random

 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080118134531.htm

Evolution Is Deterministic, Not Random, Biologists Conclude From
Multi-species Study

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071119123929.htm
=============

What's the opinion of this stuff, including Conway Morris, in the
science/evolution community? Sounds pretty much left field.

I find Tim to be a smart and level-headed fellow.  I wouldn't easily dismiss
him as being in "left field".  

Some if Morris' work strikes me as on the
bleeding edge of scientific thinking, which is where you often find a mix of
bad and brilliant ideas.  It will take some time for the scientific
community to sort them out.  Regarding the recent article in science daily,
I personally think the authors (and Tim) made a mistake by describing their
findings as "deterministic".   I think there is a very important observation
in their work that we can appreciate better without the baggage of
implications the word "deterministic" brings with it.  This study does
illustrate, in my opinion, important physical constraints on developmental
and evolutionary outcomes that have been discussed for many years by
complexity theorists.  Brian Goodwin, for example, has been emphasizing this
point for many years.

Guy- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

On 2008-04-28, dkomo <dkomo...@comcast.net> wrote:





Where do you get this stuff?  I was talking about progressions in *time*
and factual observations about the evolution of life.  For example: the
1st fishes appeared in the Ordovician, the 1st land plants in the
Silurian, the 1st insects in the early Devonian, the 1st reptiles in the
Carboniferous, the 1st apes during the Oligocene, the 1st hominids
during the Miocene, the 1st modern humans in the early Pleistocene, and
so on and so on and so on.  These are the "many progressions" I referred
to.  These are *facts*.  I wrote absolutely nothing and implied
absolutely nothing about "progress".

Now, it is also a fact that human level intelligence appeared at the end
of this progression.  Noting this is not an instance of anthropocentrism
nor does it necessarily imply anything about evolutionary progress.

I frankly think you brought a red herring into the discussion by raising
the issue of progress.  Andrew Watson in his mathematical modeling makes
use of the historical fact that human intelligence developed late in the
life span of the earth, and that the earth has already used up most of
its allotted life span.  In my original reply, I suggested that on other
planets evolution could proceed much faster, and that you can't conclude
that because it took 4 billion years before intelligent creatures
appeared on earth, it would also take 4 billion years somewhere else.

And it could also never happen at all. If by "progression" you merely
mean "one damn thing after another" (as someone, I forget who, defined
history), then I have no quarrel, but then the idea seems to become
trivial. Of course intelligent life did appear, but so what? As we have
only one example of it we are unable to say anything abut its
probability. But perhaps we are at cross-purposes here.

On 2008-04-28, feedbackdroid <feedbackdroid@yahoo.com> wrote:


I'm glad you brought this up. Tim Tyler, who inhabited this forum a
couple of years ago, is now over on comp.ai.philosophy pushing,
amongst other things, the "inevitiability of human life" and
intelligence, and using Simon Conway Morris as his "authority" ... to
wit: "Anyhow, Conway-Morris is the cannonical antidote to those who
think chance rules in evolution: ", etc...

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.ai.philosophy/browse_frm/thread/c70c6f2a9df28bbf
[starting about msg #32]

He's also pushing the idea that evolution is deterministic, based
upon ...
============
New Findings Confirm Darwin's Theory: Evolution Not Random

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080118134531.htm

Evolution Is Deterministic, Not Random, Biologists Conclude From
Multi-species Study

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071119123929.htm
=============

What's the opinion of this stuff, including Conway Morris, in the
science/evolution community? Sounds pretty much left field.


I reviewed Conway Morris's book "Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a
Lonely Universe" a couple of years ago (review is on my site). He is of
course a highly respected biologist and a committed Darwinian, but he
nevertheless seems to wish to apply a theological gloss to evolution. It
would be wrong to call this a hidden agenda, because he is quite open
about it. His final chapter is called "Towards a theology of evolution?"
and contains a frank recommendation to acknowledge the validity of the
Book of Genesis. "The assumption that the world has some meaning which
is linked to our own calling as the only morally responsible beings in
the world, is an important example of the supernatural aspect of
experience which Christian interpretations of the universe explore and
develop."

--
Anthony Campbell - ac@acampbell.org.uk
Microsoft-free zone - Using Debian GNU/Linux
http://www.acampbell.org.uk (blog, book reviews,
on-line books and sceptical articles)


I lost interest in Conway Morris when I realised that basically he was a

On 2008-04-28, feedbackdroid <feedbackdr...@yahoo.com> wrote:







I'm glad you brought this up. Tim Tyler, who inhabited this forum a
couple of years ago, is now over on comp.ai.philosophy pushing,
amongst other things, the "inevitiability of human life" and
intelligence, and using Simon Conway Morris as his "authority" ... to
wit: "Anyhow, Conway-Morris is the cannonical antidote to those who
think chance rules in evolution: ", etc...

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.ai.philosophy/browse_frm/thread/c...
[starting about msg #32]

He's also pushing the idea that evolution is deterministic, based
upon ...
============
New Findings Confirm Darwin's Theory: Evolution Not Random

 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080118134531.htm

Evolution Is Deterministic, Not Random, Biologists Conclude From
Multi-species Study

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071119123929.htm
=============

What's the opinion of this stuff, including Conway Morris, in the
science/evolution community? Sounds pretty much left field.

I reviewed Conway Morris's book "Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a
Lonely Universe" a couple of years ago (review is on my site). He is of
course a highly respected biologist and a committed Darwinian, but he
nevertheless seems to wish to apply a theological gloss to evolution.

It
would be wrong to call this a hidden agenda, because he is quite open
about it. His final chapter is called "Towards a theology of evolution?"
and contains a frank recommendation to acknowledge the validity of the
Book of Genesis. "The assumption that the world has some meaning which
is linked to our own calling as the only morally responsible beings in
the world, is an important example of the supernatural aspect of
experience which Christian interpretations of the universe explore and
develop."

--
Anthony Campbell - a...@acampbell.org.uk
Microsoft-free zone - Using Debian GNU/Linuxhttp://www.acampbell.org.uk(blog, book reviews,
on-line books and sceptical articles)- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

IMO, in the absence of visible aliens, a scientific analysis of
this thesis mostly depends on anthropic arguments about the
probability of stages of the great filter:

http://hanson.gmu.edu/greatfilter.html

On Apr 29, 12:35 pm, Anthony Campbell <a...@acampbell.org.uk> wrote:

On 2008-04-28, dkomo <dkomo...@comcast.net> wrote:






Where do you get this stuff? I was talking about progressions in *time*
and factual observations about the evolution of life. For example: the
1st fishes appeared in the Ordovician, the 1st land plants in the
Silurian, the 1st insects in the early Devonian, the 1st reptiles in the
Carboniferous, the 1st apes during the Oligocene, the 1st hominids
during the Miocene, the 1st modern humans in the early Pleistocene, and
so on and so on and so on. These are the "many progressions" I referred
to. These are *facts*. I wrote absolutely nothing and implied
absolutely nothing about "progress".

Now, it is also a fact that human level intelligence appeared at the end
of this progression. Noting this is not an instance of anthropocentrism
nor does it necessarily imply anything about evolutionary progress.

I frankly think you brought a red herring into the discussion by raising
the issue of progress. Andrew Watson in his mathematical modeling makes
use of the historical fact that human intelligence developed late in the
life span of the earth, and that the earth has already used up most of
its allotted life span. In my original reply, I suggested that on other
planets evolution could proceed much faster, and that you can't conclude
that because it took 4 billion years before intelligent creatures
appeared on earth, it would also take 4 billion years somewhere else.

And it could also never happen at all. If by "progression" you merely
mean "one damn thing after another" (as someone, I forget who, defined
history), then I have no quarrel, but then the idea seems to become
trivial. Of course intelligent life did appear, but so what? As we have
only one example of it we are unable to say anything abut its
probability. But perhaps we are at cross-purposes here.



Shifting the goal posts, I'm willing to attribute intelligence to
organisms much older than just humans. Arthropods come to mind - they
have been so successful in so many environments for so long that they
represent multiple examples of (more or less) independent evolution
of intelligence, right here an planet earth.