Comments on Mental Evolution and the Start of Living, Behaving and Volition and comments on the project in general go here. I set up this page because repeatedly going to the bottom of long content pages seems unnecessary.
Evolution and widespread intelligence are hot button issues for some people, so comments will be moderated. Comments can nest (up to 5 deep) so comments can be focused on previous comments. Please be topical, non-political, non-religious and keep disagreements on point. Topical posts assume that evolution (1) takes place stepwise by some sort of mechanical process, (2) has done so for upwards of 3.8 billion years on Earth and (3) anything alive has to process information. URLs are acceptable if the relevance of the referenced page is clear. Anonymity is not appreciated; email addresses are expected to function, but they will not be revealed.
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“This subject – my research – addresses one of the great mysteries: Life’s seeming purposefulness. My research indicates life is indeed purposeful, in the sense that each living thing acts purposefully by making intentional choices. The choices are possible because each living thing has a core of competency tuned to its physical capabilities and needs. That competency is mental; it evolves; and living does not exist without it.”
I agree in regards to life’s “purposefulness.” My question is, does, in your mind, that “purposefulness” stop at stockpiling food and comfort and pleasure, be ye man or microorganism?
I see two bogeymen in your question: pleasure by its inclusion, and time (with delayed gratification) by its absence. Pleasures and pains exist to direct choices, so the presence of pleasure is part of being purposeful. Doing good feels good. By removing pleasure from your question and adding time purposeful acts can be considered that may be uncomfortable when taken, but which have payoffs later and for others.
With immediate payoffs, the self is the only beneficiary. Without the need for an immediate payoff to an act, beneficiaries can include others, with a long or short delay. Since every sort of investment reflects delayed gratification, delayed payoffs range from bacteria making protective slimes to humans developing public works.
Purposefulness must go beyond immediate goals to secure a future for the self, for the next generation and for the self’s society. Even self-sacrifice has an evolutionary benefit when the next generation benefits. The selection pressures toward long-term outcomes are strong – the current generation and its social milieu reflect their operation over the entire history of each modern species. It follows that evolution generates moral structures as part of a society’s rules of interaction, that all members of all modern species are beneficiaries of moral structures, and that many more potential heroes are among us than we will know.
Evidence backs up this argument. Both humans and members of other species risk or accept death at times for the good of their societies or families; taking selfless action for the good of others despite the obvious possibility of great pain. Heroes appear in unexpected settings: a video (public space audio warning: news report) shows a dog risking death to rescue another dog; another shows (again, a news report) a cat driving off a dog attacking its child. And self-sacrifice among social insects defending their nests is well-known.
“Both humans and members of other species risk or accept death at times for the good of their societies or families; taking selfless action for the good of others despite the obvious possibility of great pain.”
While it does make sense from an evolutionary vantage, that living creatures expend energy or undergo pain in effort to benefit their offspring or others of their kind, what doesn’t make sense, thus far, is why they are willing to make these efforts and undergo these pains without any direct self-gratification. Are living creatures really so selfless? Are you saying that living creatures experience as much or more pleasure from seeing their offspring or fellow creatures succeed as they do from immediately gratifying themselves? Even when this external gratification is delayed and/or never witnessed by the creature making the sacrifice?
Yes, under many circumstances. Do not confuse experiencing pleasure or gratification with being aware of either. Mental systems are necessarily complex with the awareness (through which we experience and plan) working in parallel with other processes, each having to make timely choices and each subject to competing sets of motivators.
For example, it can feel pleasant or painful to throw a ball, but you only become aware of a feeling when it is unexpected. In contrast the well-practiced mental operations that actually control the throwing of the ball have to balance the pleasures and pains of all the muscles being used. A sufficiently injured muscle can stop the activity. Otherwise, the balancing done well, the whole arm becomes tired at once; the balancing done poorly, one muscle tires first, ending or diminishing the quality of the throwing.