The concept of “expected fitness” is often used by biologists to counter the claim that “survival of the fittest” is a tautology. There, the expectation is by the biologist, who looking at the organism, attempts to predict its fitness in some specified environment.
An expected fitness maximiser is just an expected utility maximiser, where the utility function is God’s utility function.
If you put such an entity in an unfamiliar environment—so that it doesn’t work very well—it doesn’t normally stop being an expected utility maximiser. If it still works at all, it probably still tries to choose actions that maximise its expected utility. It’s just that its expectations may not necessarily be a good match for reality.
Considering organisms as maximising their expected fitness is the central mode of explanation in evolutionary biology. Most organisms really do behave as though they are trying to have as many descendants as possible, given their limitations and the information they have available to them. That the means by which they do this involves something akin to executing instructions does not detract in any way from this basic point—nor is it refuted by the placing of organisms in unfamiliar environments, where their genetic program does not have the desired effect.
I am not clear about your claim that Deep Blue thinks, but organisms do not. Are you ignoring animals? Animals have brains which think—often a fair bit more sophisticated than the thoughts Deep Blue thinks.
The concept of “expected fitness” is often used by biologists to counter the claim that “survival of the fittest” is a tautology. There, the expectation is by the biologist, who looking at the organism, attempts to predict its fitness in some specified environment.
An expected fitness maximiser is just an expected utility maximiser, where the utility function is God’s utility function.
If you put such an entity in an unfamiliar environment—so that it doesn’t work very well—it doesn’t normally stop being an expected utility maximiser. If it still works at all, it probably still tries to choose actions that maximise its expected utility. It’s just that its expectations may not necessarily be a good match for reality.
Considering organisms as maximising their expected fitness is the central mode of explanation in evolutionary biology. Most organisms really do behave as though they are trying to have as many descendants as possible, given their limitations and the information they have available to them. That the means by which they do this involves something akin to executing instructions does not detract in any way from this basic point—nor is it refuted by the placing of organisms in unfamiliar environments, where their genetic program does not have the desired effect.
I am not clear about your claim that Deep Blue thinks, but organisms do not. Are you ignoring animals? Animals have brains which think—often a fair bit more sophisticated than the thoughts Deep Blue thinks.