Evolution and Purpose

[Mondrian]

Sometimes a dispassionate evolutionary perspective can make a lot of sense and appear to cut through a lot of speculation and fantasy about PD/spirituality.

What could be some evolutionary perspectives on life purpose? Animals seem to have the instinctive purpose of survival and for them, making a living, is going out and getting food to eat. They do it quite automatically. Why do we, as humans, make a problem of it? What goes wrong?

[Anna Conlan]

Mondrian,

I believe that life purpose is all about doing what you enjoy and are good at.

I think finding & doing what you're good at (and having fun doing it) is actually quite selfish, but in a good way. When you are enjoying using your skills, feeling valued and earning good money, it's self-serving, BUT everyone benefits. You are doing something other people can't do as well, you're putting money back into the economy, and the people around you feel good (and maybe inspired) that you are happy about your career.

Also, we are all good at different things and so we pool our skills and everyone gets to live longer, earn more money, and have a better life. I think that's the evolutionary aspect to it - it's more intelligent to cooperate than to go it alone. For example, I am not a techie, and couldn't do programming or build a computer. I am glad there are people who can do that so that I can have my intuitive business on the internet and reach more people.

[KaleidoskopicVision]

Evolution has one simple purpose: Replication. Evolving species endeavor to make more copies of themselves, through whatever means possible. These copies always end up being slightly different because of the nature of the universe (example: you can't split an atom and get two of the same exact atom, instead you get a big boom. If trying to recreate the same atom, you can't because you'd be using different source material since the atom already has the source material composing its existence. To recreate the same atom, you'd have to disassemble it and reform it, but that wouldn't really be recreating it, it would simply be disassembling and reforming it. You get the idea). Since replication can never be achieved within the laws of this universe, it's an endeavor to achieve the impossible. Bacterium, viruses, primordial trilobytes, human beings, we're all trying to do the same thing. Achieve perfect replication. The human being has been doing this through sexual reproduction and has recently evolved to the replication of ideas and personality. Sure isn't as sugarcoated as a divine purpose gifted by some superbeing, but it's definitely more of a twist. And it's much more unique and exciting once you realize the implications.

If I may suggest a book, Virus of the Mind is an excellent introduction to memetics, the concept I briefly went over. It doesn't directly address what I'm talking about, but it might provide some relevant connections.

[stewartM]

Humans have a greater ability to form groups

[Mondrian]

Originally Posted by Anna Conlan

Mondrian,

I believe that life purpose is all about doing what you enjoy and are good at.

I think finding & doing what you're good at (and having fun doing it) is actually quite selfish, but in a good way. When you are enjoying using your skills, feeling valued and earning good money, it's self-serving, BUT everyone benefits. You are doing something other people can't do as well, you're putting money back into the economy, and the people around you feel good (and maybe inspired) that you are happy about your career.

Also, we are all good at different things and so we pool our skills and everyone gets to live longer, earn more money, and have a better life. I think that's the evolutionary aspect to it - it's more intelligent to cooperate than to go it alone. For example, I am not a techie, and couldn't do programming or build a computer. I am glad there are people who can do that so that I can have my intuitive business on the internet and reach more people.

Thanks. So, from an evolutionary perspective are animals, in a sense, instinctively or unconconsciously doing what they enjoy and are good at? Would this mean that we have to consciously do what we enjoy and are good at? I'm just wondering why animals just seem to get on with it while we often struggle to work out what it is we should be getting on with?

[Mondrian]

Originally Posted by KaleidoskopicVision

Evolution has one simple purpose: Replication. Evolving species endeavor to make more copies of themselves, through whatever means possible. These copies always end up being slightly different because of the nature of the universe (example: you can't split an atom and get two of the same exact atom, instead you get a big boom. If trying to recreate the same atom, you can't because you'd be using different source material since the atom already has the source material composing its existence. To recreate the same atom, you'd have to disassemble it and reform it, but that wouldn't really be recreating it, it would simply be disassembling and reforming it. You get the idea). Since replication can never be achieved within the laws of this universe, it's an endeavor to achieve the impossible. Bacterium, viruses, primordial trilobytes, human beings, we're all trying to do the same thing. Achieve perfect replication. The human being has been doing this through sexual reproduction and has recently evolved to the replication of ideas and personality. Sure isn't as sugarcoated as a divine purpose gifted by some superbeing, but it's definitely more of a twist. And it's much more unique and exciting once you realize the implications.

It's a refreshingly realistic seeming perspective. And, with respect, what are the implications that you have realised?

[KaleidoskopicVision]

Originally Posted by Mondrian

It's a refreshingly realistic seeming perspective. And, with respect, what are the implications that you have realised?

I'm hardly attached to being human anymore. It's not to say the 'me' identity that is forged within this body is expected to escape and extend beyond its inevitable death, but the 'I' that perceives this replication process is one that has a primordial history to it. We've been in existence for much longer than you'd think and contemplating that brings up unexplainable things. Memories and sensations that don't make sense, because they aren't of human origin. It's like all of creation is one massive experience project, an attempt to do everything. I find this hard to put into words, I think the biggest implication is that once you really begin internalizing this concept, it changes you on a subtle level that evades mental definition. It can lead to realization of your absolute individuality. You aren't human, you aren't even really a you. The concept of a you is another attempt at the duplication, attempt at creating mathematical perfection and unifying universal concepts. You don't exist, neither do I.

There's this struggle going on between uniqueness, indivisible and unable to be copied and this force that seeks to create a singularity. But once it becomes clear that if every event and thing in existence is unique, it is also a singularity, then what is driving this replication process?

I'll let you figure that out for yourself

If this post was terribly confusing I apologize and would be glad to clarify anything as best I can. I'm pretty tired at the moment and might be somewhat incoherent as a result.

[Mondrian]

Interesting insights.

What about posing the question of purpose and evolution in a very basic form? A form that is based on what we can be pretty sure to be the case, if not the whole case.

We have evolved from from animals and animals and the main underlying purpose of animals is to survive and reproduce. Is our main underlying purpose anything different from this?

If it is, why is it different and it what way is it different?

If it is not, why do we not just simply survive and reproduce, but, rather, pose the question of our true purpose ?

[Angela]

Originally Posted by Mondrian

why do we not just simply survive and reproduce, but, rather, pose the question of our true purpose ?

Because we can.

[Erin Kronman]

Originally Posted by Mondrian

We have evolved from from animals and animals and the main underlying purpose of animals is to survive and reproduce. Is our main underlying purpose anything different from this?

If it is, why is it different and it what way is it different?

If it is not, why do we not just simply survive and reproduce, but, rather, pose the question of our true purpose ?

Animals aren't at the same level of sentience as humans. They have no self-awareness, so they do not seek to question their existence.

[LostMyMap]

Originally Posted by Mondrian

Sometimes a dispassionate evolutionary perspective can make a lot of sense and appear to cut through a lot of speculation and fantasy about PD/spirituality.

What could be some evolutionary perspectives on life purpose? Animals seem to have the instinctive purpose of survival and for them, making a living, is going out and getting food to eat. They do it quite automatically. Why do we, as humans, make a problem of it? What goes wrong?

Well animals, so far as we know, don't have the capacity to contemplate themselves and why they are here. And mostly, they don't have the means to be all that different. A shark has to be a shark. We on the other hand, have the choice and the ability to be all sorts of things. So we can obsess over that.

One of the big reasons we have so many choices is that we don't have to be totally responsible for our own survival. Animals don't have grocery stores and food distibution systems. Wild animals it seems spend all their time surviving, so they don't have the luxury of going on a life purpose search.

I would also say, that animals, like our pets, sometimes have a hard time with life if they aren't allowed to have their life purpose. Take a very active dog and coup him up in a small apartment. No surprise he destroys things. Only difference is the dog is reacting and doesn't have the brain power to contemplate his being. Not yet anyways...

[KaleidoskopicVision]

Originally Posted by Erin Kronman

They have no self-awareness

Ohohohohohohoho!

Good one!

Wait, are you serious?

[Angelique]

Originally Posted by Mondrian

What could be some evolutionary perspectives on life purpose?

Maybe evolve?
If we got all the basics covered...don't we need to ante up? Seems pretty
logical to me.

[Mondrian]

Originally Posted by Angelique

Maybe evolve?
If we got all the basics covered...don't we need to ante up? Seems pretty
logical to me.

Yes, I agree, it seems to follow. But in looking forward and attempting to evolve further are we not without the benefit of the hindsight through which we see how we have evolved up until now? We don't know what evolution looks like until it has happened.

We can go further and say that it seems logical to say that, just as 'simpler' lifeforms appear to have automatically evolved through changes in the phenotype they found themselves with, we too will develop in this manner. Thus, we find ourselves today with a body which includes a brain which asks the question of whether there is any greater purpose to life than just surviving and reproducing, and this question (as part of our phenotype) continues to evolve. Does this question then evolve into the answer that we can live a life that has a greater purpose than survival and reproduction, or do we answer that there is only ever survival and reproduction? Is this part of our difficult predicament with regard to the question of purpose, then? That is, from the past we have been biologically programmed for reproduction and survival but now that that has been fully developed. In the present we asking the question of purpose from here and we are oscillating between the known answer of reproduction and survival and the unknown answer of something different. In short, we are asking is our purpose given our can we create/evolve a new one? Or, put another way, are we determined or do we have free-will? Who will answer, the known or the unknown?

[Erin Kronman]

Originally Posted by KaleidoskopicVision

Wait, are you serious?

Yes, I was being serious. Were you?

[KaleidoskopicVision]

Originally Posted by Erin Kronman

Yes, I was being serious. Were you?

Yes! I'm not sure how you reached the erroneous conclusion that animals are not self aware, but let me pose an example that shows they are self aware. Not all animals have self awareness (as far as we're able to determine) but certain ones such as elephants, chimpanzees and dolphins have demonstrated self awareness in experiments such as the following, Elephant Self-Awareness Mirrors Humans | LiveScience
The results of the experience suggest many other animals may be aware of a concept of self, but that we simply lack the means to test for it.

Hope you find this informative

[Mondrian]

Thanks for the link, KV. It doesn't seem like too big a leap to imagine an elephant searching for its life purpose now!

I think I've been guilty of some prejudice and speciesism in this question. We think we know that survival and reproduction (replication as well?) are the imperatives of a process that we call evolution and that in the animal kingdom this takes place automatically. Well, at least, I thought that's what we thought. Maybe we don't even think this (I mean, if I looked into I'd probably find that the issue for those studying it is much more complex and uncertain than that).

I wonder if some animals have the concept or experience of 'I' or some version of it.

I was thinking a few posts back that perhaps animals or even plants 'experience' both a determinism and a free-will. If there is only a deterministic drive for reproduction and survival then how can anything new ever occur? We might answer that the newness results as an effect of infiniely variable environmental conditions acting on existing phenotypes (bodies). Under this view, the ability or capacity for newness or change is always external; either genetic inheritance or environmental conditions. But if ability and capacity is always external then it can never come from anywhere; it will always be somewhere else; everything is a piece of driftwood being tossed on the sea for eternity. The conclusion that I am heading towards is that there must always have been some sort of internal agency, some capacity and ability to change, and this, if we are here today, must have been exercised.

The implications of this (if it is the case and I'm 100% sure it is) are of some interest. For a start, it might mean, as Angela wrote above, that 'we can'.