From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!uunet!tdat!swf Fri Sep  4 09:41:06 EDT 1992
Article 6705 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!uunet!tdat!swf
>From: swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Development of Complex Structures
Message-ID: <942@tdat.teradata.COM>
Date: 26 Aug 92 17:04:26 GMT
References: <1992Aug18.161151.12316@mp.cs.niu.edu> <1992Aug18.181021.14352@sequent.com> <915@tdat.teradata.COM> <1992Aug20.153436.4779@u.washington.edu>
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Reply-To: swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
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In article <1992Aug20.153436.4779@u.washington.edu> forbis@carson.u.washington.edu (Gary Forbis) writes:
|In article <915@tdat.teradata.COM> swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen) writes:
|> No complex system or structure
|>can possibly evolve without *some* use.  But individual, *simple* features
|>may well occur more or less at random (*maybe*).  Culture is a very complex
|>phenomenon, and could not exist without some use.
|
|Would you support this claim?
|
|It seems to me one structure can build upon another.  Unless there is some
|negative to having a structure it can establish itself. 

A 'structure' composed of random functionless bits would just be a collection
of random fuctionless bits, it would be a case of higgledy-piggledy.

No such association would show any form of *integration*, of *organized*
internal interactions.  These sorts of things simply do no occur without
selection.

Also, many structures *do* have a cost.  And the larger, and more complex,
the structure the larger tha cost (in general).  Simply the metabolic cost
of building a structure can be evolutionarily significant.

Culture involves complex trade-offs, where immediate personal advantage is
traded-off against *long* term personal advantage.  Thus any cultural trait
that did *not* have a benefit would incur the cost of the immediate
disadvantage.

The above is a grossly oversimplified, highly abbreviated, summary.
The evolutionary literature available at your local university library
contains a much more detailed, more complete analysis.

|I feel that many 
|mating rituals fit this category.  While one may say they serve a use that
|use is not defined by the rituals themselves.  Likewise, much of physical
|aspects of secondary sexual traits serve no other use than they are selected
|by a mutually evolved behavior selecting that trait.
|
But that is still a *use*.  Anything that promotes reproduction has a use,
the promotion of reproduction.

In evolutionary biology saying something 'has no function' is a way of
saying it 'is selectively neutral'.  The two statements are essentially
equivalent.
-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com


