[From Bill Powers (960910.0800 MDT)]
Bruce Abbott (960910.0845 EST)--
The reason Simon is dealing with purpose in this way is that he is speaking
to a group of engineers and engineering students (at MIT) about the process
of design. When we undertake to design something, we have a purpose (or
perhaps several purposes) in mind for that something; the resulting
something we design is, according to Simon's definition, an artifact.
So, too, Simon notes, are living things, whose features have been selected
over the long course of evolution to serve certain purposes in the life of
the organism.
The design engineer, to paraphrase, has a purpose in mind which is made
easier to achieve by using the device that's being designed. So the designer
X of the artifact Y shapes the features of Y to serve X's purposes. I note
that in many cases, "selection" is as good a term as "design," as when a
primitive person selects a rock with a sharp edge to serve the person's
purpose of cutting things, or a modern person selects a TV program to watch.
You also say that some X selects the features Y of living systems to serve
certain purposes in the life of the living system Y. The assertion of an X
is disguised by changing to the passive voice (the features "have been
selected"), so the selector is not mentioned (Skinner used this method a
lot). But is that a parallel analogy? If X designs or selects features of Y,
is it not the purposes of X that are served rather than the purposes of Y?
It isn't that which is designed or selected (the artifact or the living
system) which has purposes that are served; it is the designer or selector
whose purposes are served. So what is this, a proof of the existence of God?
An attribution of purposiveness to natural selection?
Now if you were to say that living systems select _their own_ features to
serve _their own_ purposes, the analogy would be valid. What we call
"selection pressures" would simply be disturbances of internal variables
critical to the organism, and the organism, by altering its own features,
counteracts the effects of those pressures. A simple short-term example
would be a 97-pound weakling whose chances of procreation are threatened by
muscular beach bullies, and who undertakes a program of exercise to alter
his own physical features enough to counteract the threat. The application
across generations is not so straightforward, but can still be done with a
valid analogy.
I don't think you'd want to propose the other remaining valid analogy, which
would be that the environment selects the features of organisms to serve the
environment's purposes. That's what we call animism.
Best,
Bill P.
