"John Wilkins"  wrote in message
news:c9nhga$ism$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
> Perplexed in Peoria  wrote:
>
> > "John Wilkins"  wrote in message
> > news:c9jnmk$2g5p$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
> > > Perplexed in Peoria  wrote:

> > > > [Regarding the definition of "analog" and
"digital"]
> > > > [The] main thrust of my response to John was
> > > > that any discussion on these topics has to take place in
> > > > the context of Shannon's communication theory.  That means:
> > > >
> > > > 1.  That information theory inevitably carries a dose of
> > > >     teleology - it is an engineering discipline, not a
> > > >     branch of pure descriptive science.  Of course,
> > > >     Nature (natural selection) is also an engineer.  A
> > > >     central part of this is Shannon's idea of the active
> > > >     channel.
> > >
> > > Shannon began his classic paper by observing that it didn't matter
what
> > > the meaning of the message was in his theory, so long as the stream
> > > received was the stream sent. I don't think this is in any way a
> > > teleological theory, and I believe you are overinterpreting. It
applies
> > > nicely to a nonteleological system (for example, cell--cell
signalling).
> > >
> > As it happens, my lost post anticipated and dealt with this
> > response.  You need to imagine three levels here.  Meaning reduces
> > to information, which in turn reduces to physical state.  Shannon
> > deals only with the lower two levels, but the information
> > level retains a modicum of teleology.  Here is the quote
> > from Shannon that you referred to, with my EMPHASIS added:
> >
> >   The fundamental PROBLEM of communication is that of
> >   reproducing at one point either exactly OR APPROXIMATELY
> >   a message selected at another point.  Frequently the
> >   messages have meaning; that is they refer to or are
> >   correlated according to some system with certain physical
> >   or conceptual entities.  These semantic aspects of
> >   communication are irrelevant to the ENGINEERING PROBLEM.
> >   The significant aspect is that the message is one
> >   selected from a set of possible messages.  The system
> >   MUST BE DESIGNED to operate for each possible selection ...
>
> That there is a design problem in Shannon systems is a fact about the
> context in which Shannon developed the maths. It has no more teleology
> in it that game theory needs rational egoists to make sense. In a
> *telegraphic* system there is an element of intentional design, because
> that is how telegraphic systems get made and why. But application of
> Shannon theory to a biological system does not involve teleology, any
> more than the application of game theory to genetics or evolution
> requires reflective self-interest-maximising agents.

I am clearly using "teleology" in a broader sense than you would
prefer.  More on this below.  But in response to this specific
point, I would claim that any analysis of an information theoretic
nature must take into account that there is some goal, purpose,
or function involved in the preservation or transmission of the
information.  Otherwise, the "information" is not really information,
it is just an interesting pattern of noise.

Similarly, any application of game theory involves some kind of
objective function or goal of the agents - that is why the key
parameter is called a "payoff".  The same math can be used on other
kinds of systems; ones that don't involve goal-oriented (I'm trying
to avoid "directed" or "seeking") agents.  But then it
is no longer
"game theory".

> > However, it must be that you use the word teleological
> > differently than I do.  Cell-to-cell signalling is quite
> > teleological, as I use the word, assuming of course that
> > this signalling is an adaptation created by natural
> > selection to serve some function.  Your reductionist
> > tendencies (or perhaps tendencies toward Cartesian dualism)
> > may be worse than I thought.  Natural selection EXPLAINS
> > the appearance of design - it does not dispell it.  To
> > my mind, NS restores the respectability of teleology in
> > biology - it doesn't demand that teleological language
> > and forms of explanation be suppressed.
>
> I think you need to read up on the way teleology has been dealt with
> since Mayr and Pittenrigh  worked out the notion of a teleonomic
> system.

I thank you for directing my attention in that direction.  "Teleomatic",
and "teleonomic" seem to be useful terms.  However, in the course of
researching this, I find that "teleological" is used in two senses.
In the broad sense, it is a subject area that encompasses all of the
"teleo-" words.  In the narrow sense, it means
"goal-directed" and
seems to carry a connotation of consciousness to some commentators.
More on the narrow sense below, but here is a link to a broad sense use:
http://www.hku.hk/philodep/courses/ac/2011telogic.html


> Teleonomy is goal-seeking behavior, teleology is goal-directed
> behavior. Shannon building a telegraphy system for Bell is teleological,
> because Shannon is a gaol-directed system.

Surely all of Shannon is not gaol directed - only the heavy drinking,
football watching portion of the population.  ;-)

> Cell--cell signaling is a
> teleonomic system because it seeks a particular outcome, but it does so
> because of decidedly nonteleological processes.

By Jove, I believe that we have Dr. Wilkins committing the fallacy of
composition, led in that direction by Ernst Mayr!  Certainly, the
ontogenic development of signaling apparatus by a cell is teleonomic,
rather than narrowly teleological.  In Mayr's terms, the cell is following
a "program".  Same goes for the use and operation of that apparatus.
An extreme reductionist might even call these events "teleomatic"
because we are simply witnessing the working out of physical laws.

But what about the *design* of the signaling apparatus?  That is,
what explanation do we give for the fact that almost all cells of
that type in that species construct the same apparatus and apparently
use it for the same function?  In my world-view, a designer can be
identified - it is "Nature", also known as "Natural Selection".

Is NS acting teleonomically?  Mayr and Wilkins apparently think
so, but they are reasoning fallaciously by composition.  Each cell
is following a program, but is the "species" of such cell types
following a program?  Is NS following a program?  I will argue
below that it is not.

Of course, our extreme reductionist could claim that the whole process
is teleomatic at all levels.  Such a viewpoint is irrefutable, but
not particularly useful (except perhaps to someone who spends too much
time on talk.origins, and is motivated to refute the argument from design.)


> Think of it like this:
>
> "Blind" systems include teleonomic systems include
teleological systems.
> The pre-evolutionary view was the exact reverse.

In the course of my research, I was directed to a particular FAQ
archive containing the following essay:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolphil/teleology.html
which seems to be the only source for the idea that teleomatic
systems include teleonomic systems, which include strictly
teleological systems.  I'm not sure which direction of inclusion
is more useful, so for the remainder of this discussion, I am
going to assume they are disjoint.  (Hence the "strictly", below.)

I would define:

A (strictly) TELEOMATIC system is one whose behavior is "hardwired".
It simply follows physical law.  While its behavior may be constrained
by its surroundings, it is in no sense "informed" by the surroundings.
Examples might include (1) the behavior of a dropped rock, which only
seems to seek the center of the earth, (2) a mixture of chemicals,
which only seems to be directed towards equilibrium and the maximization
of the world's entropy.

A (strictly) TELEONOMIC system is one whose behavior is "programmed".
It "senses" some aspects of its surroundings, and adjusts its
behavior in response in a way that optimizes some objective function,
such that it can be said to be goal-seeking.  Since such systems
very likely include non-linearities in their feedback cycles, they
may have a kind of "memory" and can be said to contain a rudimentary
model of their surroundings.  A slightly more traditional word for
"telonomic" is "cybernetic".  Examples of teleonomic
systems might
include (1) the famous rotating pressure regulator for steam engines,
(2) homeostasis, or cell-to-cell signaling, in the context of a
single organism.

A strictly TELEOLOGICAL system is one whose behavior is "intelligent"
or even "rational" in a broad sense.  Such systems go beyond simply
maintaining a model of the surroundings.  They actively construct
such models, and perform "thought experiments" or physical experiments
to answer "What if?" questions.  They are goal-directed, and they
achieve those goals, typically, by designing and constructing
teleonomic/teleomatic systems that will achieve those goals.  Examples
might include (1) Claude Shannon, (2) the US NASA, though it is not very
good at it, (3) an AI system, if such a thing is ever constructed,
and (4) more controversially, Natural Selection.

Only someone who insists that the "consciousness" (whatever THAT is)
of the agent and the agent's "understanding" of its goal must be
part of the definition of "teleological" could disagree.  (And, to
someone of my world view, such restrictions would make "teleological"
a useless word, having no real-world entities to describe.)  NS
is a very hands-on kind of thinker.  She models in the same medium
in which she constructs.  Her model of a species is a subpopulation
of a species.  She finds the answers to her "What if?" questions by
carrying out physical experiments on a restricted scale.  If her
experimental designs are successful, then they are rolled into full
scale production.

So, to summarize, and to return to the original question of "analog"
vs "digital":  these words are terms of art, and are properly used
only in the case of systems that are at least teleonomic.  They
ought to be used to describe strategies used to store or transmit
information, though they are sometimes used more loosely to say
whether the message has been selected from a discrete or a continuum
set.  They are almost certainly not used appropriately in the
analysis of teleomatic systems, which have no use for "information".
You pretty much agreed with this on another thread, unless I misread you.

But we seem to have a new issue - whether Nature is acting strictly
teleologically when she designs teleonomic systems.  I am willing
to distinguish two different kinds of strict teleology, and to
relegate Nature's kind of teleo- to a lower level that that of you
or I.  But I don't think that Nature is acting strictly teleonomically.
In making this claim, I am partly drawing on my intuition that NS
has more "foresight" than she is usually given credit for.  But even
without this bit of heresy on my part, my case seems pretty good that
NS is not merely teleonomic.
---
þ RIMEGate(tm)/RGXPost V1.14 at BBSWORLD * Info{at}bbsworld.com

---
 * RIMEGate(tm)V10.2áÿ* RelayNet(tm) NNTP Gateway * MoonDog BBS
 * RgateImp.MoonDog.BBS at 6/4/04 5:09:53 PM