“It most certainly does—if we are talking about natural selection in evolution and nature.”
Unfortunately, that has things backwards. Dawkins is exactly right when he says.
“Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind’s eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.”
He’s certainly an expert on the subject. As are Gould and the vast majority of evolutionary biologists. In fact, this is the first I’ve heard of this idea and you are linking to yourself as an authority. I chalk this up to your misunderstandings.
“organisms’ belief that the sun will come up tomorrow ”
Do organism’s “believe” the sun will come up tomorrow? I’m not even sure I believe it in the inductionist sense. Nor did I even consider it as a belief as a child. It wasn’t even something I considered. I certainly operated as if the sun would come up tomorrow but that doesn’t mean I arrived at my behavior via inductivist belief.
Let’s consider broadleaf trees dropping their leaves in the fall. Do they “believe” that winter will come? Did they arrive at that belief by “induction”. Not if you understand evolution. There is absolutely no requirement for any kind of induction in order to get an organism, a plant, that drops it’s leaves at the onset of winter. It’s not a prediction but more analogous to the copying of an successful accident.
Every thing has a nature and will tend to behave according to that nature. That doesn’t mean that the behavior being followed is necessarily held on the basis of induction. Every morning when I get out of bed I behave as if the floor will be there and has not magically transformed into a hoard of werewolves. That does not mean I decided by induction that the floor wasn’t going to turn into werewolves. In fact, the possibility need not even cross my mind or any mind.
When trees drop their leaves in autumn they are behaving postdictively, not predictively. That postdictive behavior is not about classical induction, generating universals from observations.
Natural selection operated for a very long time before there were the kinds of brains that make predictions. Natural selection operates just fine without brains, without prediction and without induction.
Even in the case of artificial selection humans, in the past, have been highly restrained by what mutations nature doles out. I’ve bred animals and you can’t just get to where you want to go. It would be great to breed a guppy that survives outdoors in the winter. My brain predicts that would be a best seller. However, it isn’t happening via standard methods of breeding.
Now perhaps the brains will some day use their predictive capability to create something called genetic engineering and perhaps that will generate cold hardy guppys. However to label that “natural selection” is to misunderstand the definitions involved.
“Not even science works via Popper’s theory of falsification.”
Actually, it does. This is probably another area you don’t fully comprehend. Kuhn was falsified long ago.
“A straw man AFAICT—nobody said “primarily”—and yes, organisms’ belief that the sun will come up tomorrow shows that they are performing induction.”
When you say that something “operates by induction” the word primarily is implicit. I was only making it explicit. Exposing the bias. Don’t we want to overcome that?
Now I must stop commenting lest I transgress the limits. Your confusion requires much more verbiage than this but such is not allowed here. This policy tending to maintain the bias here in the direction of the blog owners.
“It most certainly does—if we are talking about natural selection in evolution and nature.”
Unfortunately, that has things backwards. Dawkins is exactly right when he says.
He’s certainly an expert on the subject. As are Gould and the vast majority of evolutionary biologists. In fact, this is the first I’ve heard of this idea and you are linking to yourself as an authority. I chalk this up to your misunderstandings.
“organisms’ belief that the sun will come up tomorrow ”
Do organism’s “believe” the sun will come up tomorrow? I’m not even sure I believe it in the inductionist sense. Nor did I even consider it as a belief as a child. It wasn’t even something I considered. I certainly operated as if the sun would come up tomorrow but that doesn’t mean I arrived at my behavior via inductivist belief.
Let’s consider broadleaf trees dropping their leaves in the fall. Do they “believe” that winter will come? Did they arrive at that belief by “induction”. Not if you understand evolution. There is absolutely no requirement for any kind of induction in order to get an organism, a plant, that drops it’s leaves at the onset of winter. It’s not a prediction but more analogous to the copying of an successful accident.
Every thing has a nature and will tend to behave according to that nature. That doesn’t mean that the behavior being followed is necessarily held on the basis of induction. Every morning when I get out of bed I behave as if the floor will be there and has not magically transformed into a hoard of werewolves. That does not mean I decided by induction that the floor wasn’t going to turn into werewolves. In fact, the possibility need not even cross my mind or any mind.
When trees drop their leaves in autumn they are behaving postdictively, not predictively. That postdictive behavior is not about classical induction, generating universals from observations.
Natural selection operated for a very long time before there were the kinds of brains that make predictions. Natural selection operates just fine without brains, without prediction and without induction.
Even in the case of artificial selection humans, in the past, have been highly restrained by what mutations nature doles out. I’ve bred animals and you can’t just get to where you want to go. It would be great to breed a guppy that survives outdoors in the winter. My brain predicts that would be a best seller. However, it isn’t happening via standard methods of breeding.
Now perhaps the brains will some day use their predictive capability to create something called genetic engineering and perhaps that will generate cold hardy guppys. However to label that “natural selection” is to misunderstand the definitions involved.
“Not even science works via Popper’s theory of falsification.”
Actually, it does. This is probably another area you don’t fully comprehend. Kuhn was falsified long ago.
“A straw man AFAICT—nobody said “primarily”—and yes, organisms’ belief that the sun will come up tomorrow shows that they are performing induction.”
When you say that something “operates by induction” the word primarily is implicit. I was only making it explicit. Exposing the bias. Don’t we want to overcome that?
Now I must stop commenting lest I transgress the limits. Your confusion requires much more verbiage than this but such is not allowed here. This policy tending to maintain the bias here in the direction of the blog owners.