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Article 4483 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: silber@orfeo.Eng.Sun.COM (Eric Silber)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Causes and Goals
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Date: 16 Mar 92 21:30:18 GMT
References: <6374@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1992Mar11.201637.21875@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Mar14.010014.552@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> <1992Mar15.170938.9882@husc3.harvard.edu>
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[ The citations and the original articles, taken together, show that
  MZ has mischaracterized What Bill Skaggs has said ]

In article <1992Mar15.170938.9882@husc3.harvard.edu  zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
 In article <1992Mar14.010014.552@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu>
 bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs) writes: 

 BS:
   To say that a symbol has meaning is to say that it represents.
 How does a symbol come to represent?  The Functionalist answer,
 which I subscribe to, is that a symbol represents if it has
 the *function* of representing.
...
   Answer:  Any system (such as the human genome) that has evolved
 by natural selection can be assigned the primitive goal of 
 surviving.  Other goals and functions are inherited from this
 primitive goal.  Machines inherit goals from the fact that they
 are designed for specific purposes by beings that have evolved
 by natural selection, and the components of machines perform
 functions in helping them achieve their goals.  
 
MZ:
 Now you have a problem.  Setting aside the commonly acknowledged problems
 inherent in the sort of vitalism you seem to be assuming (most evolutionary
                         ^^^^^^^^
 biologists these days disclaim the theoretical indispensability of any
 notion of final cause), what you have is yet another quasi-materialist
 vulgarization of the Hegelian view of universal history, the main
 difference being that the primitive goal you postulate is outward-, rather
 than inward-directed.  Now, the goal-inheritance scheme you are advocating
 must be either wholly transitive, i.e. reducing the teleology of every
                                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 natural system to the one primitive goal of survival, or compositional,
                ^^^^^^^XXX(sic)^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 i.e. capable of combining this goal with other primitive (irreducible)
 goals ...
 ... your goals are wholly reducible to the single primitive goal of survival
 of the species, in which case you don't have any personal goals that would
 enable *you* to mean *anything* by your own words, or you have some private
 goals, in which case your evolutionary story is bereft of any explanatory
 force ... Either way,
 you lose.

 ES:
 Bill Skaggs, in his evolutionary/functionalist description, did not place 
 himself in the position of relying upon a teleology OR a 'vitalism' which
 reduces to a SINGLE goal.

 Studies in comparative psycho-physiology of the CNS indicate rather clearly
 that cerebral subsystems have evolved over millions of years and that
 certain cerebral subsystems act as distinct goal oriented agents whose
 biological function is associated with intrinsic, hardwired 'symbols'
 (e.g hunger etc. )

 The possibility that a  finite evolution-conditioned set of 
 intrinsic 'primordial' symbols may be the generative nucleus of
 all symbol processing in higher terrestrial organisms is not
 dispensed with or viciated or evaded by hurling the 
 irrelevant epithet "hegelian" in the face of the facts.


