Clarification: everything is evolutionary

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

When we’re talking about organisms at all, everything is ‘evolutionary’ in the sense that everything is a product or byproduct of evolution.

For example, my enjoyment of say Tetris, isn’t an adaptation, but it may ride of adaptations for enjoyment and excitement and whatever the case may be.

When I say that everything is evolutionary, I am highlighting the uselessness of the term ‘evolutionary’ in discussing behavior not my belief that everything is functionally an adaptation.

I don’t believe that and never have.

the term ‘evolutionary’ can only mean in relation to behavior, adaptive behavior or byproducts of adaptations.

theres no behavior I could ever commit that wasn’t either highly envolved with adaptations or byproducts of adaptations.

So, any of this straw man arguement that I think everything is ‘evolutionary’ (and so only dogmatic and no arguements can be made) can stop now, because they’re false.

all behavior is evolutionary because ‘evolutionary’ is a stupid term that can’t be brought about into discussions of behavior as if the term means ANYTHING worth stating.

some people define ‘evolutionary’ as ‘adaptation’ or ‘instinct’ but thats not how I ever chose to use the word.

2

I hear you. I think the same thing about the term ‘selfish’ as it’s often defined.

3

I don’t hear you, Cyrene. That’s incoherent to me.

There’s no behavior that I could ever commit that’s not in the Milky Way galaxy.

What does that say?

4

Cyrene - it’s almost (but not quite) tragic that you and I agree on so much, yet argue so much. Please disillusion me of something.

I read your arguments thusly:

  1. We are products of evolution.

  2. We are products of evolution.

Therefore: We are products of evolution.

But more disturbingly, how is this:

“When I say that everything is evolutionary, I am highlighting the uselessness of the term ‘evolutionary’ in discussing behavior not my belief that everything is functionally an adaptation.”

not a contradiction of this:

“theres no behavior I could ever commit that wasn’t either highly envolved with adaptations or byproducts of adaptations.”

5

evolutionary could be defined as “a process of comming about over time”…

what couldn’t fit into that definition? it’s beyond my imagination…

6

I am struggling with this one.

7

of course the purple wombats are pulling the strings to make you think you evolved…

-Imp

8

because the term ‘evolutionary’ could apply equally well to my eyes (adaptations) or the spaces between my toes (not an adaptation). Also my enjoyment of tetris is evolutionary( depends on adaptations or a by product of them) but i didn’t evolve tetris ‘adaptations’ the word evolutionary can apply too every action anyone ever made (including suicide) its not a question whether somthing is an adaptation or not which is a useful question. the thing about the milky wais highlighting its a statement which is true it just doesn’t highlight anything the term ‘evolutionary’ used in that way suffers the same. But its still wrong to say ‘so and so is nonevolutionary’ just saying that it is doesn’t mean anything worth saying.

9

it all hinges in definitions, doesn’t it? if everything is evolutionary then nothing can be nonevolutionary. science or semantics?

10

My point is that ‘evolutionary’ is a term that can’t be meaningfully applied in a conversation about behavior because everything is evolutionary in one way or another one needs to use more distinct terms like instinct, adaptation, byproduct, etc.

it can be meaningfully applied in other ways, like ‘evolutionary science’ or ‘evolutionary biology’ but these sciences make the distinctions between the above quite clearly.

While in a general conversation someone saying ‘it isn’t evolutionary’ well they’re wrong, but the fact that it is, isn’t meaningful in much of a way.

I think saying ‘rape isn’t evolutionary’ is like saying hands aren’t ‘evolutionary’ both are evolutionary, the interesting question is whether they’re an adaptation or not and if they are under what circumstances. (or avoiding rape) etc.

for example, dreaming is ‘evolutionary’ but that doesn’t mean dreaming is an adaptation or serves a functional purpose. It might i’m not sure. but theres no clear evidence that it is.

11

Its both science and semantics.

any science done needs clear definitions of what I talked about and on top of that a casual input/output explanation (which envolves more variables than I’ve mentioned, personal genetics, environmental stimuli whatever).

textbooks/researchers make the distinction in explaining behavior, my use of ‘evolutionary’ isn’t incorrect or else we wouldn’t need the precision when talking about behavior.

and its semantics because I accept that definition or use of the word ‘evolutionary’ as common, in-so-far that i’ve seen the word used at least it seems like a common use of the word. How i’ve used it so far, i mean.

12

I don’t know whats so controversial about saying everything is evolutionary, when the definition of evolutionary (or a common one) is this:

13

So you are saying everything as it relates to humans, both physical and behaviorally, is evolutionary; therefore, it is unnecessary to argue that anything either physically or behaviorally isn’t evolutionary.

14

Yeah.

Any input/output that happens is because we have genes to be able to change our behavior based on the environment.

the term doesn’t work well when said like “Is X evolutionary” but it makes sense to use the term ‘evolutionary science’ or whatever.

all non-absurd brain science is ‘evolutionary’ science, the disagreements are about other things entirely. Like the amount of specialized machinery there is for specific tasks, or how they develop, or the reasons theres some-times variations depending upon differing environmental stimuli.

just like all biology is ‘evolutionary’ but we can still use the term ‘evolutionary biology’ to refer to a more specific scientific field of inquiry.

15

So a better question might be whether or not rape contributes to the overall wellbeing of a society, as opposed to whether or not it’s evolutionary.

Or, it would have to be clarified that evolutionary, as it was being used in the other thread, is meant as the social progress of society, rather than the biological process known as evolution.

16

Evolution occurs on all different scales - some behaviors evolve over the course of an individual lifetime, others evolve over the course of millenia, but they are all evolutionary in the sense that none of them emerge in a vacuum and are responses to environmental contingencies - so yes, the distinction between science and semantics isn’t entirely clear at this point, but that was the point of my question - science is, at certain levels, largely a process of semantics, of providing the most broad based accounts of reality possible within a given paradigm - which ultimately becomes a process of assigning meanings to certain types of words (“evolutionary”) so that they can account on a more fundamental level for all the things that science has yet to get around to explaining in more detail. It’s similar to how many theologists might use the word “divinity” or “evil” . . .

17

Dorkydood - that’s what i have been trying to get at. Thank you.

My further point is that saying:

“Any input/output that happens is because we have genes to be able to change our behavior based on the environment.”

is saying nothing (about stuff like rape), because it doesn’t speak to the nature of such things as morality. God could have given us these genes, or this condition could be “accidental” or determined (but by what?).

That’s my problem Cyrene. I have never been able to determine a thesis in anything you have ever posted. I have never been able to divine any practical consequences to attributing everything to “adaptation”. If you are saying that some adaptation further the species and some do not, it still doesn’t mean anything to moral considerations.

I just don’t see any useful ramifications to anything you say.

But i am trying.

18

haha.

Thats because your focus on comments like ‘everything is evolutionary’ to make statements about how ‘dogmatic’ I am, or how ‘no debate could be had’ with me. You chose to focus on statements like ‘everything is evolutionary’ when I make that correction, instead of the other statements i make, about adaptations or byproducts, in specifics.

You chose to focus on a correction ( a comment I made) that didn’t have much worth in and of itself other than to be a correction.

I can talk to you about relevant things, useful things in every-day life, like step-children abuse rates and what evolutionary oriented studies found out about that, the spatial cognitive differences between men and women, theres a lot of stuff thats ‘useful’ to know, plenty of mental adaptations worth talking about and studying.

Plenty of byproducts as well.

for example, when I i’m talking about an evolutionary perspective, the whole ‘USE’ of that is it provides predictions/tests that no one else would think to ask/look for, outside of an evolutionary perspective.

the very use of evolutionary sciences is that they (all good ones) have PREDICTIONS, the grounds for finding evidence for a claim, or realizing theres no evidence for X, are all very well defined.

For example, the idea that pregnancy sickness is an adaptation has PREDICTIONS, like women shoudl get sick when eating chemicals that harm developing fetuses, it provides new insight that we didn’t normally think about.

Huge aspects of mental life are filled with adaptations, from learning language, to giant aspects of morality and daily social life.

19

No ‘evolutionary’ is not meant as a description of behavior we DON’T UNDERSTAND, its not excepted as such. Its true that X behavior is ‘evolutionary’ in that its a byproduct or product of evolution, that shines absolutely no light on why or how somthing is produced, and when someone says its done because its ‘evolutionary’

they are laughed at. No one accepts this, least of all, no one in any EVOLUTIONARY science.

I said everything can be called ‘evolutionary’ because the term is broad and far-reaching (so far so as to be meaningless in a conversation about behavior, as it was used before) not that its an acceptable explanation for behavior that we don’t understand.

So no, its not like theology, its more like, a vauge and broad term that can mean almost anything and so when people use it, they need to be careful about how and in what contexts.

20

For example, the question about rape/consent, the interesting part is whether its an adaptation or is it caused by environmental stimuli that serve to twist a person into a monster.

So is it socially caused or is do we have adaptations to avoid/engage in it depending on circumstances? The reason evolutionary oriented ideas can important, the reason they’re useful in every-day circusmtances, is because they provide a platform for making predictions that otherwise wouldn’t be thought about.

Evolutionary psychologist researcher has identified some factors that ‘predispose’ people to rape, like statistically, that we didn’t know about before, because of predictions like this.

Another example is men assessing the likelyhood of parenthood based on facial resembelence of the child, now I already highlighted the research that supported that on this thread, many many times, but thats important and useful to know. Its also useful to know that theres research that shows that how much a father looks like a child, statistically influences how that parent treats the child.

So thats probably important or ‘useful’ to know.