The philosophical problems with the theory of evolution and determinism.

[Jose AR]

Hello light, I like that you cringe, because it means you have intelectual discomfort, and are on the right track.

Your post, and your argument, all hinge on definitions. You open a can of worms by calling evolution a fact, "fact" is a very narrow word useful in only narrow confines, like "chicago is a city". Evolution is indeed a theory, but theory does not mean "untested idea" but broad explanatory system used to describe, explain and predict wide ranging phenomena, in this case "evolution" is a theory that explains speciation, variation, and the common ancestry of all life (at least).

When you say natural selection is a philosophical idea, not a fact, you are saying nothing. Everything is a philosophical idea, and such a big idea like natural selection, being a system description cannot be a fact. "Can thunderstorms, or learning to play golf be a fact?". Until someone comes up with an alternative explanation (not god) for the evolution of species (which is a fact) then we stick with Darwin. So far, 150 years later, the age of Darwin alive and kicking with no alternatives anywhere.

When you go into the whole determinism and free will, you raise interesting points. The era of this debate was 100 to 200 years, ago, so you are a bit late. (Descartes, Locke, Hume, etc) The argument has been had and settled, and philosophers have moved on to other things. It ends up that you have free will only in some small daily matters (stream of consiousness) and the rest (your birth, genes, demographics, etc) were determined without your help. It has always been this way, although religion teaches us that we are responsible for everything and helps fill jails (and hell, I suppose). To say there is no free will is to say that someone who robs a store needs help to become rehabilitated (humanism), not lots of jail (anti-humanism), becuase that person is following the trajectory of their life, and society can help then change that trajectory (or just jail them)

Evolution NEVER occurs to groups -- only to individuals. This has been long argued and settled, with group selection being related to some very narrow special conditions. Individuals are born with variation, and struggle to survive and have kids, not groups. Group evolution is "pop evolution", a condition cured by lots of reading.

The whole "agency" issue has already been covered, see Dennett. But you are kind of down the wrong road. A bee's life is largely determined, but that bee still chooses which flower to visit. My life has been largely determined but I still choose what words to type and to go to work. Like I said, you are in control of all the day to day stuff (what is defined as your life). To say we have no free will sounds dramatic, like saying we are robots, but within having no choice but to say "i'm hungry" we pick what to eat, so its not so bad. "Agency" as you call it is really just consciousness (that's all ...) or what has been called a product of intentional stance.

We don't have to derive all ideas as if we were the first generation, becuase we stand on the shoulders of giants. These giants have gotten use where we are, intellectually, and it is our job, if we can, to get humanity further, but we have to actually stand on the shoulders of giants, by reading: Mill, Darwin, Russell, Dennett, Dawkins.  Show your free will by reading, learning, understanding, because you can.

PS sorry if sound patronistic, I can't help it ...

[Tank]

Individuals don't evolve. Individuals are the subjects of natural selection. A gene pool evolves due to selection pressures on variations of the individuals within the gene pool. A gene pool of a sexually reproducing organism comprises that group of individuals capable of mating and producing viable offspring.

[hackenslash]

Sometimes I cringe when I hear people say something analogous to "evolution is a fact", because, it is not.

Err, except, of course, that it is a fact. It has been observed occurring. The theory of evolution is an explanatory framework dealing with all the observations, hypotheses, etc, pertaining to that fact, but evolution itself occurs. This is a fact.

Evolution could be said to have factual basis in some aspects, but others are based on philosophy alone.   The main premise of evolution, that all life, in the material form, could be said to have decended from a common ancestor is the part I am in agreement with, because there is much evidence to support this idea.   However, the proposed mechanism, natural selection, is a philosophical idea, not a fact, and the implications of it lead to some irrational conclusions.

Natural selection isn't merely a proposed mechanism, it's an observed process (or, more accurately, it's the umbrella term for a group of processes, including predation, reproduction, extinction, etc).

Evolutoin is a deterministic theory since natural selection is a deterministic mechanism.

Quite the opposite! Indeed, in the early days after Darwin published his work, it was broadly accepted by people of the ilk who deny it today. The early rejections of it were all by physicists, because Darwin had introduced a new element into science, namely random factors. The physicists of the time rejected the role of chance in the cosmos, as pretty much all of them were Laplacian determinists. In fact, I've heard it convincingly argued that Darwin is indirectly responsible for the formulation of Quantum Mechanics, because it wasn't until indeterminacy was in play in physics that such a formulation was possible.

There is no mention of free-will or conscious choice, in the attribution of the success, of an organism.  The full attribution is placed on the inherited genes, which will determine the actions and outcome of the successful reproduction of an organism.

Well, several things wrong here. While determinism absolutely nullifies the idea of free will, the lack of free will doesn't necessarily entail determinism. Further, success isn't only dependent on genes, because that would be silly. Firstly, an allele that is deleterious in one environment may be advantageous in another. The obvious example here is the sickle gene. In some environments, the sickle gene confers an increased immunity to malaria. However, in environments in which sunshine is depleted, such as cloudy Northern climes, it can result in decreased vitamin D uptake, as well as causing other issues.

Further, even in a given environment, carrying a deleterious allele doesn't necessarily mean that one won't reproduce or that it won't be passed on. The key is that fitness is differential. This all seems to be rooted in the trope 'survival of the fittest', which is a horribly inaccurate description of how natural selection actually works. Properly stated,, it should be 'survival of the sufficiently fit, on average'.

Natural selection has to be looked at in two ways to be fully appreciated. The first is from the perspective of the population, at which level the effects of selection are seen. At this level, NS is most definitely not random, where 'random' means specifically 'statistically independent', because it can be probabilistically quantified. At this level, we see that, on average, advantageous alleles are selected for, in the form of being passed on to future generations with a statistical weighting. We also see that, on average, deleterious alleles are selected against, in the form of not being passed on to future generations, again with a statistical weighting.

The second way to look at NS is from the perspective of the individual organism, at which level selection actually operates. From this perspective, NS is random. The particular selection pressure that an individual organism will succumb to or indeed evade, is statistically independent, thus random. The organism with an allele that allows it to evade a particular selection pressure has statistical significance, but the means of checking out without issue are many and diverse, and which particular pressure said individual will fall prey to (pardon the pun) can only be treated in the broadest of terms.

Some may argue that evolution does not exclude free-will since natural selection can be thought of as reffering to a group of living things, rather than an individual.

But, Darwin himself did not believe in free-will, and accepted the deterministic nature of his theory, as is mentioned in this quote: ""the general delusion about free will [is] obvious," and that one ought to punish criminals "solely to deter others"—not because they did something blameworthy.4  "This view should teach one profound humility," wrote Darwin, "one deserves no credit for anything... nor ought one to blame others." [http://www.discovery.org/a/9581]

Again, Darwin stating that he didn't believe in free will does not mean that he thought his theory was deterministic. Lack of free will and determinism are not directly synonymous, as described above.

Therefore, one who accepts evolution wholly as fact, is then agreeing to the position that they have no free-will and their life is imprisoned in the deterministic casual chain.  Their awareness of conscious choice, is simply a delusion.

Dealt with above. As it happens, I'm fairly sure that we don't have free will. Indeed, the question is whether we actually have will, free or otherwise. There is good evidence to suggest that our will is most certainly not free, in the form of recent experiments in a phenomenon known as 'priming'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1OVhlRpwJc

Note that this still doesn't entail determinism, not least because determinism cannot exist, as demonstrated by Werner Heisenberg and experimental validations of the uncertainty principle.

I'm going to ignore the rest for the moment, because a) it seems to be rooted in the same misunderstandings as above and b) I have things to do. If anybody feels that the above does not sufficiently address any of the issues raised in the OP, let me know and I'll gladly come back to it.

[pytheas]

determinism and free will, interesting points. The era of this debate was 100 to 200 years, ago, so you are a bit late. (Descartes, Locke, Hume, etc) The argument has been had and settled, and philosophers have moved on to other things. It ends up that you have free will only in some small daily matters (stream of consiousness) and the rest (your birth, genes, demographics, etc) were determined without your help. It has always been this way.

to put it artistically

we enter on a boat at a point on a river bank. the flow of lifetime goes a certain way (Tao). The launchers have projected a travel duration and a possible exit point range furhter downstream. We can paddle and it is ineffective as to the movement direction. However, we can paddle or not, sit facing front or backwards or sideways. relax or struggle towards the afforementioned four directions. we can also crash the boat early aside prior to term.
I fully agree in intellect and intuition that there is both determinism and free will. Jose, a head bow, you spoke to my respect.

[pytheas]

Light,

the human will, free and otherwise, is shaping, taking part in the natural selection processes for Homo Sapiens sp. as well as with plenty other species as well

philosophically
the last fart of human scum on this planet is potentially a god, for in him neural factors that can make me rich, exist - just joking
I find beautiful randomness and chaos in the way the appropriate route is forged into "nothing random"