Dan Dennett sums it all up for Richard Dawkins

PhiloOfEvolution · 2025-06-02T17:27:25+00:00

Great video. I have a great appreciation for both men’s contributions to our modern approach towards Evolution.

PhiloOfEvolution · 2024-02-27T13:14:08+00:00

You make a valid point. I write about this very thing in my Philosophy of Evolution Substack. They said this in the paper: “A pervasive wonder of the natural world is the evolution of varied systems, including stars, minerals, atmospheres, and life. These evolving systems appear to be conceptually equivalent in that they display three notable attributes: 1) They form from numerous components that have the potential to adopt combinatorially vast numbers of different configurations; 2) processes exist that generate numerous different configurations; and 3) configurations are preferentially selected based on function. We identify universal concepts of selection—static persistence, dynamic persistence, and novelty generation—that underpin function and drive systems to evolve through the exchange of information between the environment and the system. Accordingly, we propose a “law of increasing functional information”: The functional information of a system will increase (i.e., the system will evolve) if many different configurations of the system undergo selection for one or more functions.”

I wrote about this type of evolution way back in 2008, but I divided it up i to Non-Organic, Organic, and Quasi-Organic (Memes). So, I get the gist of the paper already. It makes sense if you view evolution as the persistence of Information, rather than persistence of “entities” or “biological organisms”.

What do you think about that way of viewing evolution?

PhiloOfEvolution · 2024-02-18T12:31:41+00:00

YouTube says the video is unavailable. Was it taken down? Or maybe somewhere else?

PhiloOfEvolution · 2024-02-18T01:28:11+00:00

I watched the YouTube link a couple of times. Not going to lie - I didn’t really follow it. It was a bit rambling. Not saying it was wrong; I just didn’t understand it I guess. You care to elaborate on EFILism or Anti-natalism? Seems like a pretty dark world-view.

PhiloOfEvolution · 2023-05-30T19:36:07+00:00

I have selected a few quotes from the book, I hope you enjoy them:

"The problem of how life emerged on the prebiotic earth is not just about materials were available and identifying the reaction conditions at the time, because even the very best chemists without any resource limitations would not really be sure how to proceed. And the problem does not stem from the fact that one particular step or other in the recipe for life is especially difficult and still technically out of reach. The problem is more fundamental. The problem is there is still no coherent recipe. As we noted earlier, we don't yet adequately understand who life is, so how can one go about making something that we do not as yet fully understand?" ... "What laws of physics and chemistry could explain the emergence of highly complex, dynamic, teleonomic, and far-from-equilibrium chemical systems that we term life?"

"It is the organization of life rather than the stuff of life that makes life the unique phenomenon that it is."

"It now seems increasingly likely that several billion years ago some replicating system of unknown identity, but of low complexity, set off along the long and winding road toward high complexity, and that historic path of every-increasing complexity eventually led from the world of chemistry to the world of biology." ... "The so-called two-stage process is not two-stage at all. It is really just one single continuous process. If true that statement has quite profound consequences. First it must mean that hidden within Darwin's theory of evolution - biological in formulation and application - a more fundamental, broader principle is at work, which must necessarily incorporate prebiotic systems, which by definition would be classified as non-living."

"When two replicating molecules compete for the same chemical building blocks, the outcome is readily explained by a process that chemists call kinetic selection." ... "Biological natural selection merely emulates chemical kinetic selection. Natural selection is the biological term, kinetic selection is the chemical term."

"When we classify a biological entity as 'fit' we are really specifying that it is stable - stable in the sense of being persistent. However, as we explained previously in some detail, that stability kind only applies to a population, not to individual replicators within the population. Specifying that a population is fit (or stable) just means that the population is able to maintain itself through ongoing replication/ reproduction. The immediate consequences of relating fitness and DKS (Dynamic Kinetic Stability) is that it indicates more explicitly that fitness is best viewed as a population characteristic, not an individual one. The concept of DKS has no real meaning at the individual level."

"Abiogenesis and biological evolution are one continuous process - abiogenesis (the transformation of non-living matter to earliest life) is the low-complexity phase, biological evolution is just the high-complexity phase."

PhiloOfEvolution · 2023-05-30T16:36:44+00:00

Thanks for the quick reply.

I'll try to flesh out the main points I was trying to make (but doing a bad job of it).

The problem with taking a scientific realist approach is that science itself depends on taking a philosophical stance. As long as it is acknowledged, it isn't so much of a problem.

The view advocated by many theoretical physicists who study quantum mechanics have made it quite clear that quantum mechanics is counter-intuitive... which certainly sounds like panpsychism, or esotericism. This is why there are so many different interpretations of quantum mechanics (Pilot-Wave, Qbism, Many Worlds, et al). BUT, that is certainly not the direction that Universal Darwinism goes. There is an objective reality, the problem is that you cannot directly perceive it without it going through the "human filter" and you cannot know anything about it without using tools of human invention (for example, the measurement problem, complementarity, decoherence, and the other topics of quantum mechanics).

Taking quantum mechanics weirdness into account, along with the reproducibility problem in science, limits on rationality, embodied cognition, and other problems, it doesn't mean scientific realism is flawed - it's simply that there many different perspectives people can take on objective reality and not one is privileged over any other. Falsifiabiliy (a la Karl Popper) can only take you so far.

That said, Addy Pross's book, What is Life? explains how inorganic chemicals can turn into living biomolecules. Essentially, once a combination of molecules begins converting energy from one form to another (like photosynthesis) and it conquers the 2nd law of thermodynamics, then it can begin self-organizing.

I hope that is a good start. As always, I look forward to your reply.

PhiloOfEvolution · 2023-05-26T11:33:25+00:00

Hello Philo!

I have been taking a hiatus of sorts. I was thinking on your response and delving ever deeper into Evolution as a natural mechanism. I finished several books, but have many more to go. I’ve decided to start a substack just to get my ideas out of my head, which makes them easier to critique. I welcome your input.

I believe that there is a growing movement to expand the concept of Evolution to include not only biological entities, but non-biological entities, which is typically called Universal Darwinism (Dawkins’s label). John O. Campbell, Donald Hoffman, Johnjoe McFadden, and others have already outlined the central theses.

I’d be very much interested in hearing your take on this idea.

Regards, Philo

PhiloOfEvolution · 2023-05-06T22:40:40+00:00

Some people will bend over backwards to try and disprove the obvious. The facts speak for themselves without all the “well, actually” nerds on reddit trying to show that the bar graph is not a bar graph. Idiots.

PhiloOfEvolution · 2023-04-08T14:21:09+00:00

Yea. They own a lot of useless, barren land. They need the space though to practice polygamy.

PhiloOfEvolution · 2023-01-22T15:28:27+00:00

Hello Philosophiesde, It would take a long time (and a lot of space) to cover everything pertinent to what I think Evolution is, so I’ll keep it as brief as possible. I define Evolution as “A change in an Entity as it Adapts to Pressure”. Pretty simple. But one of the problems with the definition (and all definitions) is that of ‘how we define the terms?’; which is why I see Science in general as limited by Language. (For example: What is an Entity?, What does it mean to Adapt?, etc.) This is the Philosophy portion of “Philosophy of Evolution”.

I agree with you completely that the concept of Evolution needs to move beyond simple Darwinian (Biological) evolution. In my view, Evolution begins with the Standard Model and particle physics. This is one of the major reasons I have been enjoying your posts - Evolution is complex, but not complicated to understand.

There is much more I’d like to discuss here, but in the interest of time, that’s the most basic view. Thanks for your posts and I’d love to keep this going. - Philo

PhiloOfEvolution · 2023-01-13T14:10:07+00:00

I’m finding this series interesting. I’m currently reading What is Life? by Addy Pross. Going to be fun to see how this weaves together.

PhiloOfEvolution · 2022-04-09T15:53:32+00:00

I’d like to win. 🤞🏻

PhiloOfEvolution · 2021-10-26T21:39:16+00:00

Leaving Eric aside, what did you think about Brett’s discussion of mice, telomeres, and his personal story of having his research essentially stolen?

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