Sorry, I guess I was being a jerk. Please forgive.
It is ever so.
That procreation can occur without sex is arguing from a special case to a general rule and, thus, cannot be used to negate the idea that sex as a drive came about through the process of evolution and natural selection for the purpose of procreation.
No, to be clear, I believe that sex as a drive came about for the purpose of procreation. That sex can have other purposes for humans is interesting, wonderful and great, but irrelevant to this scientific fact.
Maybe it will help if you explain why you necessarily see it as having a goal.
“Serving the purposes” is already an anthropomorphism. Sex can lead to procreation, yes; that is a purely mechanistic fact. The shining of the sun does not ‘serve the purpose’ of causing skin cancer, even when it does.
The question is if you understand the theory of evolution. It seems you think you have been appealing to it, when I have been the one appealing to it.
Well, let’s say macho behaviour makes a man more sexually attractive to women (thereby allowing him to have more sex with women): does that mean the goal of his macho behaviour is more sex with women? It can be, but it need not be. It may be completely irrational, due to some random mutation.
A random mutation could, in theory, cause one to not have a sex drive—even before one is born (so that one is born without a sex drive, making it no ‘innate inborn part of one’s nature’).
Designed? Surely not intelligent design? But if it isn’t intelligent, can it be design?
Our bodies are not ‘designed’ to survive; the genes that survive, survive, and that has always been so; and our phenotype follows from our genotype. Therefore, our bodies seem to have a ‘design’ that allows them to survive under the conditions our ancestors have survived under (and similar ones, probably; and I will leave mutations out of the equation for now, for simplicity’s sake).
Why is raising your children necessary? So they can in turn raise their children, etcetera etcetera? But why is this necessary, if at all? What purpose does this serve, if any?
You’re aware that asexual reproduction is older than sexual reproduction, and that most organisms (though not most species of organisms) still reproduce asexually, right? So the general rule is reproduction, and the special case is sexual reproduction.
So far so good (though natural selection is a mechanism of evolution, and is therefore inclusive to it)… But:
I wasn’t aware that I was attempting to negate any of that. Though, I wouldn’t refer to that as any more than speculation. It is educated speculation in your defense, and I do agree that it is the most probable scenario.
This is almost exactly what I am attempting to argue. Though I obviously haven’t been able to be quite so concise and clear in my point, as Sauwelios here.
I tried presenting this argument in my own way as well, so I figured it was worth affirming. Point being that sex need not have a “goal” and that reproduction need not involve sex. However, this does strengthen the idea that sexual drives are a result of evolutionary processes.
I believe that sex is a product of “natural selection” I suppose. I am just not entirely firm in this belief as I recognize evolution and natural selection to be theories. Great theories, in my opinion, but not concrete truths by the same merit.
Let’s try looking at it another way. Does life itself have a goal? Yes, according to the science of evolution, the goal of life is life itself. Thus, if a biological sex drive develops in humans, its goal would be to foster life, in this case, procreation. That it might also be associated with pleasure and/or love would further serve the goal of life.
Thus, arguing that procreation can occur asexually in animals is really pleading from an irrelevance, because here we are talking about humans, yes?
Also, when I wrote to statiktech that I saw procreation as the result of the sex drive, you said that you agreed with my view. Yet that is what you seem to be arguing against with me. I’m confused.
How about one small modification here – the “goal” of life is to live. If we have life, we owe to it that we might live and do so well.
This is just too simplistic and vague to me. The goal of life is life itself - why? Not all natural activities directly promote sex, procreation, or life. In fact, we abuse our bodies and minds in ways that are quite contrary to all three.
We are talking of natural, primal drives. These occur in a much wider spectrum than just human urges. Thus, consideration of foreign reproductive dynamics may help us to better understand our own.
Haha agreed …I think.
Although, perhaps it is the other way around – the sex drive is a result of procreation (or the drive toward preservation).
Something cannot be its own goal. That’s as absurd as the notion of a self-cause. In fact, it’s a kind of self-cause, as a goal is a final cause. (The kind of cause the word “self-cause” usually refers to is the efficient cause.)
No, that would just be its effect.
I was not the one arguing that. Statiktech may have taken your statements out of their intended context, but then again, you state them very generally. And I think it was you who thought it necessary to remind me that humans are animals. Anyway, this is not my discussion, but yours and statiktech’s. Ours is about goals.
I did not mean it as exclusively as you perhaps did.
First off, I’m a Nietzschean. So even if procreation is not the result of a drive in the narrow sense but, say, the result of artificial insemination, I still regard it as the result of the will to power (or multiple wills to power).
What I basically agreed with was the idea that procreation is not a drive but a result. And yes, it can be the result of a reproductive drive, sexual or asexual. I never meant to say that procreation is always the result of a sexual reproductive drive, not even in humans.
Isn’t it inherent in the idea of survival of the species?
Why not? Would you say that the goal of life is not life itself? If not, what then would be the purpose of natural selection?
Okay, that makes sense.
I do not know what you mean here.
I would agree that there is will or intent behind artificial insemination, but not always behind sexual arousal or the sex act. Also, I do not think that everyone is driven by the will to power, just some.
Would you agree that there are other energies driven by will, such as the will to pleasure, the will to meaning, the will to love, and so on, like that? Or do you subscribe only to the will to power as the only energy driving us?
Designed was the wrong word to express my thoughts. I don’t think something can be designed without intent, which requires intelligence. Change the word designed to structured, and to answer the question that spawns by that, we are structured by natural selection. We (our species) want to survive, we’re not being opposed, without any prior knowledge we should go with our instincts.
My statements have the assumption that survivability is priority one. Ignore a baby, it’ll die. That’s why it’s necessary. Life doesn’t serve a purpose, but life doesn’t require a purpose. There’s never been a prerequisite of purpose for any phenomenon that unfolds around us. There’s lots of energy in our universe, it doesn’t go anywhere, so our existence isn’t ‘wasting’ energy, changes altering it. No harm, no foul. We want to live, let’s live. The only thing that’ll oppose life, is life.
Is it fair to say that life will never vanish? I know all living creatures may die out for x amount of time, but given that there’s energy that isn’t going anywhere, isn’t it fair to say that eventually the process of life will start over again?
We’re going around in circles. I question the notion that evolution (of which natural selection is a part) must have a purpose, or that life must have a goal, etc.
I went on to explain myself further on in that post.
That’s the will to power in its narrow sense. According to Nietzsche, the will to power is at the core of all physical force.
The latter. Pleasure is the feeling of power. Love is an enhanced feeling of power, or a transfigured will to power. Meaning is, as interpretation, a way of shaping the world: making sense out of it; imposing form, order upon it; in any case, a vi-olation. (But a vi-olation, an exertion of force on something, need not be a disfiguring. It can also be a perfecting!)
Our genes ‘want’ to survive, though “want” is already an anthropomorphism. If a gene has an effect which makes it and/or copies of it more likely to survive and/or reproduce, it and/or its copies are more likely to survive and/or reproduce than a gene and/or copies of this gene which do not have such an effect… Genes with such effects therefore tend to be ‘selected’ (i.e., to persist more than others). Therefore the genes of individuals who have a greater urge to survive and/or reproduce (which is in turn determined by their genes) tend to persist more than others. And ‘species’ are simply groups of individuals whose genes are compatible. A species’ ‘will’ to survive is just the sum of its individuals’ ‘wills’ to survive, and an individual’s ‘will’ to survive is just the sum of its genes’ ‘will’ to survive. So it all comes down to the ‘selfish’ gene. Anyway, I don’t think your view is necessarily at odds with this.
Maybe it’s best then to just let the circle spin itself out and disappear.
By power I presume you mean energy, so in that sense I can see power at the core of all physical force. However, the notion of will implies sentience or intelligence that has an intention. Are you imputing that kind of consciousness for every movement?
You know, one of the problems with the word power is its double meaning. I can see power as energy being a universal phenomenon. Not everyone, however, would see it universally driven by will as you and Nietzsche do, though. Power can also be viewed as strength, dominance, having control.
So, if you think of power as energy, then feelings have energy, I suppose, in the sense that you could then say that there is a power (energy) in the respective feelings or gainings of pleasure, love, meaning, peace, and so on.
But if you view power as the dominance or control of something or someone, then those feelings are not so cut and dried. Some feel pleasure in power and some do not. Some feel and share love without that kind of power or feeling of power, and it’s possible that for some love is associated with power over someone. Some find meaning in the world without using power to change it, and some do as you describe. Not everyone is inherently power-driven, but I would agree that some are and that some who are not inherently power-driven might find themselves caught in a power-compulsion due to disempowerment issues, so there would be no real pleasure in gaining power over others or using it; rather it would just be a way of not facing their victimization issues and instead taking it out on someone else.
Nietzsche himself was not inherently power-driven. His inherent energy was originality and self-expression with a view towards aesthetics, so strong in fact that he apotheosed aesthetics. That he had power issues had more to do with victimization by the women in his life and nothing to do with power itself as his dominant energy. If he saw the will to power everywhere, and made such a big issue out of it, that’s because he was coming at it from a position of powerlessness needing to feel power in a big way. But I bet you anything that he was not the kind of person who would walk into a room and take it over, naturally giving orders like a general without the least problem or thought; he would have been the sensitive aesthete, the romantic bohemian artist/mystic looking for beauty and originality and a way to express it and be heard. That’s what it means to be a Nietzschean, I think.
This is definitely saying that there is a goal or purpose to gene selection and evolution, and that is survival of the species. If you impute consciousness and will to every evolutionary mutation or process, then you have to apply the same criteria to sex and love.
Why do you think I put the word “will” between quotations marks? Compare:
[size=95]In describing genes as being “selfish”, the author does not intend (as he states unequivocally in the work) to imply that they are driven by any motives or will—merely that their effects can be accurately described as if they were.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene#.22Selfish.22_genes][/size]
This should also answer your questions about the will to power. Thus Nietzsche wrote:
[size=95]The […] concept “force” […] still needs to be completed: an inner will must be ascribed to it, which I designate as “will to power”, i.e., as an insatiable desire to manifest power; or as the employment and exercise of power, as a creative drive, etc. Physicists cannot eradicate “action at a distance” from their principles; nor can they eradicate a repellent force (or an attracting one). There is nothing for it: one is obliged to understand all motion, all “appearances”, all “laws”, only as symptoms of an inner event and to employ man as an analogy to this end. In the case of an animal, it is possible to trace all its drives to the will to power; likewise all the functions of organic life to this one source.
[The Will to Power, section 619.][/size]
The word translated as “power” above is in each case Macht.
By the way, I do not discount the possibility of consciousness working in genes and their actions, in everything really. But I haven’t refined or extended my thinking on it very well. I still have a lot of trouble with the idea of “will” applied to the forces of inanimate objects.
I do not see that an “inner will must be ascribed” to whatever Nietzsche means by the concept of “force.” I presume he equates force with power, but whatever he means by “power” is just as ambiguous in the German “Macht” as it is in the English, as I described above.
Furthermore, let’s do a thought experiment. Picture sitting before me a row of dominoes. I decide to knock over the row and willfully use my power (energy) to push over the first domino. Then each domino exerts a power on the next until the last domino falls. Can you say that there was “will” in each domino there? I think not. It’s a process not dissimilar from the butterfly effect, is it?
He does not equate force with power. “Force” is Kraft in the German. By the concept “force” Nietzsche means the physical concept (i.e., as in Physics).
According to Nietzsche the force each domino exerts on the other must be understood as a symptom of an inner will to power.
Nietzsche says that an inner will must be ascribed to force (Kraft) which he then says that he designates as the “will to power (Macht).” If this is not equating force and power, then what exactly does Nietzsche mean by “power”?
So you’re saying that, according to Nietzsche, each domino’s exertion of force is a “symptom of an inner will to power” on the part of the domino? That may have been what Nietzsche thought of it, but is it really possible to parse it out in understandable terms? Also, do you agree with that idea?
I don’t see how it is equating force and power. It is at most equating force with will to power.
Does it help to use “might” instead of “power”? As in “the will to might”? Does that make it more clear?
I agree, yes. Pure mechanism is not something to which we can at bottom relate, psychologically. We must think of each domino as if a will is aroused in it by the will-force exerted on it by the preceding domino, or by you.
