I'm actually curious why people believe one emergent system does (eg, people) but another doesn't (eg, evolution/biosphere).
What lets you determine when a composite object or pattern in an automata has crossed that threshold?
There isn't really a threshold beyond that pattern or object somehow communicating to you that it does indeed possess a will or some form of consciousness. The default assumption is to assume it doesn't until it shows it does instead of invoking an animist world view that imbues a spirit to every complex phenomenon (weather, death, etc.)
I'm in agreement with you though in general. It is arrogant to think that humans are at the terminal end of emergent complexity. Maybe our minds are too limited to conceive of something arising from a global or galactic scale.
Are our individual cells aware of the person?
That seems a strictly more complicated model (with equivalent or even lesser predictive power), in that it supposes two classes of objects rather than a single class (in some sort of distribution), and supposes there must be some special quality to things, wherein they gain an extra trait.
The simpler assumption (at least to me) would seem to be the animist one, albeit that most wills don't look much like ours (since most things don't look like us).
I mean, I could see if you were arguing that humans don't have a will, but evolution doesn't either -- but to divide them in to categories based on feelings (which seems to be the case) seems to needlessly complexify the model.
Although you raise an interesting point, that was the default view of many, if not most, societies until modern times. Once that threshold is crossed, we reflexively imbue it with other superstitious traits. In theory it makes sense, in practice, it'll lead to shit like human sacrifice.
If there's no selective pressure for a will to emerge, a will will not emerge (barring some infinitely improbable random event).
I agree. It is a further anthropomorphism to even assume that the integrated sensory and memory perception phenomenon that we apparently experience as consciousness is inherently "human" in its quality rather than something more qualitatively similar to the bending of space-time by matter. An incidental consequence of homeostasis is that arbitrary pieces of matter are somehow a "self" and a cluster of sensory signals are somehow an "experience". The animist view isn't even necessary if we do not insist that "consciousness" be "a state of existence" for thinking creatures to "have" or not.
What we see in the case of microbe cell division is goal-directed behaviour. The physical details of how it happens are very important to cell biologists, but the bigger point is that one way or another the thing will behave in ways that help it grow and divide.
In that light it seems perfectly fine to say that the cell wants to divide. Indeed it is the most correct explanation I can think of -- and then I can invoke evolution as an explanation of how it came to want this.
We have good reason to think that anything like "will" (leaving aside "free will" here, and just taking about things like the ability to achieve ends by developing plans and utilising information about the state of the environment) requires specific information processing capabilities. Capabilities that a process like natural selection does not have.
Since evolution does process information about iterative states, it's not the mere existence of feedback, so there must be some threshold in capabilities that requires crossing.
Please describe them in a manner that includes or excludes as you see fit babies, cats, and bacteria but doesn't leave it a continuum (ie, there must be a cutoff where on one side you have some and the other none).
I'm especially skeptical when you can't even describe the distinction in the span of a few paragraphs and instead resort to ad hominems.
I think you misunderstand what I said. The sort of information processing in something like a nervous system can hardly be characterised as blind.
Also, if it can easily be done in a few paragraphs then why did people have to write books hundreds of pages long (which still get misunderstood)?
I understand what you're saying, but the two concepts cannot be effectively compared. An organism's "will" is a label for the reactive tendencies we observe in physical systems that exhibit homeostasis, whereas evolution is the description of a physical process that is perpetually ongoing and has no physically discrete meaning.
"You" as an entity are really just a process emergent from chemical reactions on some area, and your "will" is just the result of feedback between many regions of that process and outside stimuli.
Biological evolution is a process happening in more dispersed reactions, but still has all manner of internal feedback mechanisms and responds to external stimuli.
I don't see how you've drawn a meaningful distinction between them, except to say that one os easy to observe in total (eg, you can draw a box around it) and is sort of like you, so you feel you can understand it.
Homeostasis and physical locality don't seem partocularly germane traits when discussing whether or not something has a will.
Further, you (just as evolution) are ongoing until you're not, and "physically discrete meaning" sounds like a dressed up "well, I just know it when I see it".
Agreed.
> Biological evolution is a process happening in more dispersed reactions, but still has all manner of internal feedback mechanisms and responds to external stimuli.
Disagree. Evolution does not "respond to external stimuli", there is no "internal" or "external" as far as evolution is concerned, that's like saying "erosion responds to external stimuli"; "it" does not respond, "it" is a description of a process.
> I don't see how you've drawn a meaningful distinction between them, except to say that one os easy to observe in total (eg, you can draw a box around it) and is sort of like you, so you feel you can understand it.
I can't draw a box around it because it is not a thing with a position in space unlike "you" which is.
> Homeostasis and physical locality don't seem partocularly germane traits when discussing whether or not something has a will.
Of course it does, if words are to have any meaning at all. Whatever it is you're trying to describe that is common between an organism and the description of physical process is not called "will" by any useful definition of the word. It's like if I said "evolution has no guiding principles" and you replied "well neither do humans really because our 'guiding principles' are just the result of a deterministic evolutionary process", but that's not true because "guiding principles" is a human concept that applies to beings that reason about their environment, even if the foundation of that reasoning is determined by constituent factors.
Personally I think it's quite an interesting point; much moreso than the point you seem to have replied to (i.e. the notion that evolution isn't blind, which I don't think GP was arguing by any stretch).
Similarly, if cephalopods swim. And if they do, why not jetskis?
Also, I was arguing it, but mostly to see the responses -- everyone seems so sure it is, and yet, the answers come down to "because it doesn't remind me of monkey cognition". (Similar to why I asked about animism -- everyone is so sure it was wrong, but doesn't seem to know why.)
http://www.kurzweilai.net/why-evolution-may-be-intelligent-b... [Summary]
http://eegjournalclub.weebly.com/uploads/2/6/5/0/26509069/wa... [Actual Paper]
I often wonder if there are "intelligences" at the stellar scale or above and if they existed, would we have the lobes to be aware of their existence.
Evolution is a computer?
> Please describe them in a manner that includes or excludes as you see fit babies, cats, and bacteria but doesn't leave it a continuum
What's the cutoff between a heap of and non-heap?
My exact point is there isn't such a meaningful distinction. I'm challenging people who think there is a distinction to elaborate on that.