I do not think that Darwin’s omission is a valid problem.
Evolution is not a cause of change. Shit happens and and things evolve or die. Nothing is the environment is capable of improving intelligence.
Natural Selection works negatively. What is left behind can be faster, stronger, bigger, smaller, depending on what is advantagous the the survival of the organism.
It is likely that things that are smarter may well be more capable of success.
Darwin deals with this in Descent of Man.
If that is true then it seems that Darwin’s principle is insufficient.
It accounts for all life on earth.
I think it is over applied, since mutation leads to a multiide of variation which needs not have any significance to survival. But Darwin encompasses that in hsi recognition of “infinite variety”.
Pundits, however, in the world of evolutionary theory with jobs to keep and reputations to maintain like to try to impose a principle of usefulness, via and assumption of parsimony. I think unnecessarily.
It’s my view that most traits including high intelligence are not absolutely beneficial to survival in a Darwinian sense, since many smart people prefer to life their lives childless.
One can also point to many things such as body air, appendixes, male nipples, toenails, and many other things which, whilst having some use are not significant enough to demand survival.
SO in what way do you think it insufficient?
It appears to leave out the likelihood of positive contributors from the environment that enhanced survival traits. It is hard to believe that there were never any such contributions considering that even basic nutrients come from the environment and those nutrients and other chemical anomalies are occurring all the time - certain probiotics would be a possible example that simply were nonexistent at one time but then became a main component in digestion. Mitochondria has been theorized to have been introduced into apes (by whatever means) causing them to become substantially more human.
And whether the long term survival works out, the Darwin Principle involves the short term survivability - which has already been proven. The new situation of over population presents a new challenge.
Like what, and in what way.
What are your examples?
So called probiotics has existed in a symbiotic relationship in the digestive tracts of all animals for billions of years. It is to their own advantage.
You are wrong here. All living things have mitochondria in their cells, and this as been the case also be billions of years. They were not “introducred into apes”. All foetuses recieve their mitochondria from their mothers. Evolutionary theory has much to say about symbiotic relationships like this.
Not really, overpopulation is, and always has been a massive driving force in evolution. It was Thomas Malthus’s work that brought the significance of this to Darwin.
Darwin’s principle does account sufficiently for that
an interesting example which you might consider is the panda
in the region of the world where they exist there were vast forests of bamboo
that can be considered to be a positive environmental variable
in the presence of that abundant source of food
their organism evolved to become experts at digesting bamboo
the specialization was such that now their organisms are able only to consume bamboo
of course, that is a clear evolutionary advantage
but only in the presence of abundant sources of bamboo
another example is the sloth bear
bears as you know are onmivores and will eat anything
which is a drastically different survival strategy than that of the panda
the sloth bear however, has gone the way of specialization
given the abundance of termite hills in its habitat
you can see how their nozzles have become elongated
a little bit like an anteater
they still eat fruit and even carrion when there is scarcity of other foods
but I suppose that the “evolutionary temptation” to specialize is very great
if you can derive more energy from a food source than any other animal in that habitat
it’s a gamble
albeit one devoid of any conscious will or motivation
animals just do what they do
and their bodies over the course of millennia adapt
the mitochondria is another example
evidently it is in no parasite’s best interest to kill their host
for their colony dies with it
it is proposed that all organelles of our complex cells
were once parasites in a very distant past
but that over the course of an evolutionary process
have “learned” to either not cause harm to the host
or in fact become beneficial to it
the parasite’s ultimate goal is simbiosis
one can also think about the use of drugs that are beneficial to survival
and how they’ve managed to extend our life spans
allowed for a woman’s fertile life to be extended
significantly lowered the rates of child mortality and birth deaths
and how this was one of the elements driving our demographic explosion
though I don’t believe that we have been in contact with these drugs
for long enough for any significant genetic alterations
we do know that if we don’t expose our bodies to antigens
that we don’t develop a proper immune system
over the course of thousands of years
I can see that becoming an issue
though I can only speculate 
PS: i take your ignoring of my previous post
to mean that you have desisted from that approach
either due to finding merit in my criticism
or concluding that was not a worthwhile line of discussion
in any case
noted
On that issue of dexterity before the intelligence to use it - I think that they must always play together.
You proposed that we could give intelligence to a clumsy ape and he could then find ways to use his clumsiness but giving him refined dexterity does not significantly improve his performance.
I see two problems with that thought -
- I’m not sure that it is really true - it might be - but more significantly to my point -
- I don’t think that nature can “give” higher intelligence to a creature incapable of using it
The question that I am meagerly trying to address is whether Darwin’s Selection Principle is all that is involved in the development of higher order species.
The examples that you have just provided all point out that positive developments occur naturally. I never thought of that as being even disputable. My “argument” (really just a question) is that if Darwin’s Principle proposes that it is only the “survival of the fittest” testing that is responsible for higher developments (as has been proposed on this thread) then the principle doesn’t account for those positive contributions that obviously have occurred.
I don’t think it can be disputed that positive influences occur which contribute to survival of a species and to its advancement to being a higher order species (I don’t how the religions stand on that issue - but - not my concern at the moment). I am only questioning whether Darwin’s Selection Principle - a principle focusing on the atrophy of the weak is sufficiently addressing the natural strengthening of the strong.
I agree that the atrophy of the weak contributes to the altering of a species through time toward a species more adapted to a new environment. The part of the principle is clear enough. But where in that principle is the issue of the naturally occurring aberrant strengthening of the strong (or the weak for that matter)?
If the basic assertion proposed by Darwin’s Selection Principle is merely that the environment of a species affects changes in that species (positive or negative) - then that seems a little too tautological to even debate. That is paramount to asking if adding anything to a number changes the number.
It seems to me that through subtle promotions (even propaganda) the Darwin Selection Principle is similar to saying that we obtain the natural number set by all of the numbers originally being infinite but through an infinity of time, the weaker numbers got dwindled down by natural influences and testing that resulted in the now completely ordered set we call the natural numbers. 
agreed
I did not propose that
in fact both must evolve together
there is no fine motor skill
without significant brain processing power
i do believe I said that somewhere here
well, out yourself at ease about these
as I did not propose that
and as indeed nature does not “give” anything"
attributes of a living organism
evolve over a long span of time
and it is by using them to their advantage
that they persist in the population
for long enough to evolve
(i recognize that the wording used here
might lead to misconceptions
counting on your understanding)
not necessarily
but it is all that is required
i mean that there can be interventions
like for example, humans pulling shit with genetic engineering
but that is not a requirement for evolution to occur
whether there are humans tweaking genes or not
evolution will still continue to happen
restating the above
it is not necessarily the only
but it is all that is required
and occam’s razor compels us
to seek the simplest solution
dunno whose example this is
but when you see a coconut on the ground next to a coconut tree
you can propose that an eagle grabbed it
then flew around the world
and then was struck by an arrow
and dropped the coconut there
… or the coconut just fell on its own straight down
the evolution of any particular feature
is not necessarily a strength
it is a gamble
like the panda
something that is a clear advantage at one moment
might at another moment become the reason the species goes extinct
i do think that darwin sufficiently explained the emergence of attributes
that at a given point in time are advantageous to a species
and we have plenty of evidence to corroborate that
bacterial resistance to antibiotics, to cite one example
i believe that is plainly explained
by the fact that when competing for resources
the stronger(fittest) win
then why are we debating it?
except for the infinite part
also don’t understand why you’re using “numbers”
instead of “living organisms”
does that make it easier for you to understand?
Well obviously if humans are modifying genomes, that falls under the category of natural evolution of which the human genome anyway already was.
That is the failing of Darwin. To somehow place humans outside the continuum of evolution.
If you want, call it the gene for genetic manipulation.
A gene is not an actual thing anyway like an allele or a chromosome. It is a convenient abstraction for “whatever fucking combination of alleles makes this happen.”
So in the end it cannot even be said that DNA is the unit of evolution.
Evolution is simply a description of what happens.
At what point does “discreet packet of DNA” require so much bending over backwards,
That it enters the realm of Ptolemy’s perfect circular orbits?
Darwin failed because he said “it happens because it succeeds,”
And whereas it must succeed in order to happen,
The ‘because’ escapes the scope of Occam’s razor.
Also it’s kind of a cheap way out:
Before and during Darwin,
Others and not only Lamarck,
Were busy trying to describe the mechanisms, patterns of change,
Whereas Darwin just said:
Nieh it happens because it can,
Well no shit Sherlock,
No shit.
And people treat him like some kind of trail blazer,
When already in the 1700’s,
Leibniz was struggling to reconcile the obvious fact of the independence of evolution,
With the doctrine that God created everything directly.
Darwin became super big,
Because he took the easy way out,
“It happens because it can,”
And so bypassed the whole immense trail of mistakes,
That it was necessary to make in the development of theories of the mechanisms of evolutionary action.
English motherfuckers.
Better than Germans I guess.
But here we are left,
With a grand total of “0,”
By way of theories explaining the mechanisms of evolutionary change.
“Mutations,”
Oooooooooooh,
Thank you there,
Fucking Batman.
Please read The Descent of Man.
Wow that is some fucked up rambling
Genetic evolution hasn’t any real mysteries. It’s cosmological evolution that is mysterious, particularly the fine-tunedness of certain features of it.
The real question is an anthropic one: is brans’ dicke a coincidence.
Genetic evolution and natural selection is easy. What’s hard is keeping the laws of nature immutable long enough for the same processes to keep happening over and over and over, e.g., an element changing if you add just one neutron or electron, etc. You could do this billions of years ago and the same thing would happen. That consistency is the mystery. The fine-tunedness staying that way for soooooooo long.
There is no problem here.
The universe is as it is observed to be, by and large. If you find that amazing then that too is a feature of the universe. But since you do not have another different universe to compare you have no basis upon which to find uniformitarianism a problem.
That is just the way the universe works. If you don’t like it then show me another one which makes more sense.
The universe abides. DO not think to adjust the universe to your thinking; you need to adjust your thinking to the universe.
I bet you say that to all the boys!!
It’s a worn out strategy. No one is fooled by it.
no it’s not that simple, sculp. we need a semiempirical ansatz to compute anharmonic contributions to the free energy in the universe, first, before we can know for sure.
Little help here, parodites.
Well it really is. The idea of a variability in the laws of nature is an anthropomorphization of the laws of nature. See they are not really laws, such as men give and can alter laws. They are just observations. Called laws for convenience’s sake.
Damn string theorists. The idea of a variability in observed patterns in physical phenomena is a philosophical one, with no relation to observed reality, a scientific method, or math. Math needs something to be applied to.
Oh no but scientists are superior to philosophy. Is that right?
Called “laws” because they are thought to be divinely unbreakable? -
- until they discover they weren’t gods but a ghosts.
Truly there is but one actual God (determiner of what can or cannot be - “Divine Law”)
[list] - “worship no other”.[/list:u]
God = “the Reality of your Situation” (and by many other descriptions) - James S Saint
i apall the notion that in order to validate philosophy
one must attack science
it is akin to validating cuisine by attacking pastries
I think more like validating the tree by attacking the apple and those who partake - 
no because cuisine is a methodology that applies to physical things
has it’s own rules and procedures
and pastry cooking is a subset of it
in which there are particular rules and procedures
that apply only to it
but not to the whole of cuisine
though are within it
however pastry does not succeed
if you use the whole set of rules of procedures of cuisine
it only works within its own subset
you don’t make pie dough as you would make pasta dough
i hope that you don’t assume that
because I hardly have any time to post
that i post without thinking