"John Wilkins"  wrote in message
news:c9jnmk$2g5p$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
> Perplexed in Peoria  wrote:
>
> > "Tim Tyler"  wrote in message
> > news:c9fpqn$19n4$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
> > > Perplexed in Peoria  wrote or quoted:
> > > > See my reply to John.
> > >
> > > Can't seem to find that reply.
> >
> > Damn, the reply seems to have been lost by Google Groups.  It was a
> > long one and I didn't save a copy.  Dumb of me.
>
> Most of my really excellent articles get lost, leaving only the mediocre
> ones. Can't exactly explain it...
> >
> > In the meantime, 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 ...

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.
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