Doesn't darwinian theory fall apart on ontological grounds?

[paulhanke]

... kudos for originality ... note, however, that your ontology appears to set itself up for paradoxes of various kinds ... for example, Shannon's theory of information uses entropy as its basis - that is, in his view information and entropy are the same ... to maximize information one implicitly maximizes entropy ... (but perhaps you would appreciate Wiener's theory of information - in Wiener's theory, information is "negentropy" ... maybe even better yet, the syntropy/entropy dichotomy ) ... another is your truth/deception dichotomy ... in nature, the Viceroy butterfly has evolved a color scheme that is imitative of the Monarch butterfly ... in such a way, Viceroy butterflies deceive predators - this is a truth of nature, untainted by humans ... but is that a paradox for an ontology that treats truth and deception as polar opposites? ...

[memester]

Originally Posted by paulhanke

... kudos for originality ... note, however, that your ontology appears to set itself up for paradoxes of various kinds ... for example, Shannon's theory of information uses entropy as its basis - that is, in his view information and entropy are the same ... to maximize information one implicitly maximizes entropy ... (but perhaps you would appreciate Wiener's theory of information - in Wiener's theory, information is "negentropy" ... maybe even better yet, the syntropy/entropy dichotomy ) ... another is your truth/deception dichotomy ... in nature, the Viceroy butterfly has evolved a color scheme that is imitative of the Monarch butterfly ... in such a way, Viceroy butterflies deceive predators - this is a truth of nature, untainted by humans ... but is that a paradox for an ontology that treats truth and deception as polar opposites? ...

Your assumption being that Viceroys never did have that data needed to make a Monarch-like pattern, and that Monarchs came first, so that Viceroys offer deception as plagiarists ?

[paulhanke]

Originally Posted by memester

Your assumption being that Viceroys never did have that data needed to make a Monarch-like pattern, and that Monarchs came first, so that Viceroys offer deception as plagiarists ?

... the science of developmental evolution is clarifying that complex coloration patterns can be produced with a small number of rules ... so for the Viceroy to mimic the Monarch's coloration, the informational requirements could be very minimal ... and for evolution to do the "thinking" here, there would have needed to have been an initial resemblance in order to drive the Viceroy closer to the Monarch (say, Viceroys that more closely resemble the Monarch get eaten with less frequency than Viceroys that less closely resemble the Monarch) ... and given an initial coincidental resemblance, the informational requirements would be even less ... but you're right - this is indeed speculation ... the only thing that can really be immediately observed is that the predators are "once biting, twice shy" ... from there, it's just math to model and predict what the ecological consequences of this fact might be ...

[jeeprs]

Originally Posted by memester

Your assumption being that Viceroys never did have that data needed to make a Monarch-like pattern, and that Monarchs came first, so that Viceroys offer deception as plagiarists ?

Interesting IP case

there are two different meanings of the word 'deception' here. Symbiotic adaption (as it might be called) is not 'deceptive' in the sense of 'consciously misleading or withholding information'. The latter requires conscious intent, doesn't it? They exist on quite different levels, don't they?

[memester]

Originally Posted by paulhanke

... the science of developmental evolution is clarifying that complex coloration patterns can be produced with a small number of rules ... so for the Viceroy to mimic the Monarch's coloration,

How is it ascertained that the Viceroy is mimicking ?

---------- Post added 12-03-2009 at 06:24 PM ----------

Originally Posted by jeeprs

Interesting IP case

there are two different meanings of the word 'deception' here. Symbiotic adaption (as it might be called) is not 'deceptive' in the sense of 'consciously misleading or withholding information'. The latter requires conscious intent, doesn't it? They exist on quite different levels, don't they?

What's IP ?

Yes, I'm following the language..deception, truth, mimicking...just trying to find out if the words end up doing the thinking.

[paulhanke]

Originally Posted by jeeprs

there are two different meanings of the word 'deception' here. Symbiotic adaption (as it might be called) is not 'deceptive' in the sense of 'consciously misleading or withholding information'. The latter requires conscious intent, doesn't it? They exist on quite different levels, don't they?

... from the perspective of an ontology that incorporates "deception" as a key concept, there are at least to roads to take here ... there is the (jeeprs?) pan-consciousness perspective, in which at some level there is conscious deception going on here; and there is an opposing perspective in which it can be reasoned that for an ontology that incorporates "deception" to be relevant to more than just the misbehavior of higher animals, that ontology must take on board a broader conception of deception that is not linked to consciousness ... but your example of "symbiotic adaptation" also provides a hint of a third road ... cannot a species, through its evolution, be said to remember what works and what doesn't? ... cannot a species, through its evolution, be said to interact with, respond to, and be part of a dynamic ecology? ... and if it can remember and interact, can it deceive in some way that resembles 'consciously misleading or withholding information'? ...

[memester]

every leaf-greenness of insect or frog is deception, too.
Why is that not mimickry ?
Chameleons are doing it all the time.
How do you know that Viceroys came after Monarch ?

[paulhanke]

Originally Posted by memester

How is it ascertained that the Viceroy is mimicking ?

... in a situation where predators abhor Monarchs but like Viceroys, the Viceroy's evolutionary pressure would be for it to look more like the Monarch (if it's mistaken for a Monarch, it won't get eaten) while the Monarch's evolutionary pressure would be for it to look less like the Viceroy (if it's mistaken for a Viceroy, it will get eaten) ... so it would be a race of sorts, with the Viceroy on the tail of the Monarch ... I think to determine whether or not this is what is really going on would require detailed measurements of Monarch and Viceroy coloration patterns over many generations to see if the Monarch leads and the Viceroy follows ...

---------- Post added 12-03-2009 at 04:56 PM ----------

Originally Posted by memester

every leaf-greenness of insect or frog is deception, too.
Why is that not mimickry ?
Chameleons are doing it all the time.
How do you know that Viceroys came after Monarch ?

... I think mimicry and camouflage are close cousins, often spoken of in the same breath and sometimes used interchangeably ... (does a walking stick deploy camouflage? mimicry? both?) ... as for which came first, the Viceroy or the Monarch, strictly speaking it doesn't matter ... even if the Viceroy had been around for millions of years and the Monarch only a few hundred thousand, evolution is an opportunist and will jump on any advantage that presents itself ...

[jeeprs]

IP = Intellectual Property - typically cases where someone is accused of stealing someone else's idea

Originally Posted by paulhanke

... from the perspective of an ontology that incorporates "deception" as a key concept, there are at least to roads to take here ... there is the (jeeprs?) pan-consciousness perspective, in which at some level there is conscious deception going on here; and there is an opposing perspective in which it can be reasoned that for an ontology that incorporates "deception" to be relevant to more than just the misbehavior of higher animals, that ontology must take on board a broader conception of deception that is not linked to consciousness ... but your example of "symbiotic adaptation" also provides a hint of a third road ... cannot a species, through its evolution, be said to remember what works and what doesn't? ... cannot a species, through its evolution, be said to interact with, respond to, and be part of a dynamic ecology? ... and if it can remember and interact, can it deceive in some way that resembles 'consciously misleading or withholding information'? ...

I suppose you are right, and also holding me to an argument I have already advanced; but deception has an ethical connotation that mimicry does not.

In the religious context, I am reminded of the saying 'the devil is the father of lies'. I think by this is meant that 'the devil' conceals, distorts or prevents to perception of the reality, of truth. In this context, the idea of deception has a definite ethical connotation. There is a conscious intent to mislead.

Perhaps you can say (and here is an out for my pan-conscious argument) that humans are sufficiently evolved to employ guile and trickery for their own conscious and self-interested ends. I don't think creatures are capable of slef-interest in the same way, even though in some ways the same principle, namely deception, is involved. In this sense, creatures are 'innocent', albeit at the cost of 'being able to do no wrong' because the capacity of self-awareness is not sufficiently present.

[memester]

Originally Posted by paulhanke

... in a situation where predators abhor Monarchs but like Viceroys, the Viceroy's evolutionary pressure would be for it to look more like the Monarch (if it's mistaken for a Monarch, it won't get eaten) while the Monarch's evolutionary pressure would be for it to look less like the Viceroy (if it's mistaken for a Viceroy, it will get eaten) ... so it would be a race of sorts, with the Viceroy on the tail of the Monarch ... I think to determine whether or not this is what is really going on would require detailed measurements of Monarch and Viceroy coloration patterns over many generations to see if the Monarch leads and the Viceroy follows ...

---------- Post added 12-03-2009 at 04:56 PM ----------



... I think mimicry and camouflage are close cousins, often spoken of in the same breath and sometimes used interchangeably ... (does a walking stick deploy camouflage? mimicry? both?) ... as for which came first, the Viceroy or the Monarch, strictly speaking it doesn't matter ... even if the Viceroy had been around for millions of years and the Monarch only a few hundred thousand, evolution is an opportunist and will jump on any advantage that presents itself ...

But what if Viceroy already looked like it does, before Monarch did ?

The appraisal, that "it makes sense", doesn't address what actually happened.

e.g. I might have a great potential gain from stealing your hundred dollars when you were drunk, but that doesn't mean I did so, or that anybody did so.

Or...what if Viceroys also are unpalatable ? What if Monarchs are heading toward Viceroy, or maybe both are approaching a common point , and Monarchs are moving faster toward it than Viceroy ?