From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ames!ncar!noao!amethyst!organpipe.uug.arizona.edu!NSMA.AriZonA.EdU!bill Tue Mar 24 09:57:46 EST 1992
Article 4639 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ames!ncar!noao!amethyst!organpipe.uug.arizona.edu!NSMA.AriZonA.EdU!bill
>From: bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: How can you get teleology?
Message-ID: <1992Mar21.030511.21269@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu>
Date: 21 Mar 92 03:05:11 GMT
Sender: news@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu
Reply-To: bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs)
Organization: Center for Neural Systems, Memory, and Aging
Lines: 30


  Here is something I've been puzzling about:  One of the
defining characteristics of intelligence, or indeed of life
in general, is activity that is apparently oriented toward
achieving goals.  (I use the word "apparently" to avoid
starting arguments about things that don't interest me.)

  There seem to be at least two ways of getting systems 
that show goal-directed behavior:  natural selection (in
the case of life) and design (in the case of machines).
Could there be other ways, or are these the only possibilities?

  One reason for thinking there might be other ways is
that, as Dawkins says, "survival of the fittest" is merely
a special case of "survival of the stable".  To any
dynamical system with an attractor we could, as a linguistic
exercise if nothing else, assign the "goal" of staying
on the attractor.  This would mean, for example, speaking
of the asteroids as having the goal of remaining in the
asteroid belt (which is an attracting orbit because of
the perturbing influence of Jupiter).  Is this just a
sterile exercise, or does it have some value?

  Even if it is overliberal to speak of attractors in general
as goals, might there still be some restricted class of
attractors (but including more than just the "survival of
the fittest" type) that can reasonably be thought of as
goals?

	-- Bill


