Purposeless purpose

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Is ns a subset of selection
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_frm/thread/ff04256a788cd316/2f7c69261444a18c#2f7c69261444a18c

On Feb 18, 7:42 pm, Robert Camp  wrote: > On Feb 18, 8:58 am, backspace  wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > On Feb 18, 4:43 pm, Richard Norman  wrote: > > > > On Sat, 18 Feb 2012 08:23:15 -0800 (PST), backspace > > > >  wrote: > > > >On Feb 18, 4:18 pm, Richard Norman  wrote: > > > >> On Sat, 18 Feb 2012 07:29:39 -0800 (PST), backspace > > > > >>  wrote: > > > >> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selectionmakesns a subclass of > > > >> >selection. But since the article itself flags as no sources or > > > >> >citations given are we to assume that 'selection' is undefined? > > > > >> >Compare > > > >> >http://www.evolutioncreationism.info/the-arbitrary-wikipedia-revision... > > > > >> >http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Natural_selection > > > > >> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection > > > > >> The wikipedia "selection" article you cite clearly defines selection > > > >> as well as mentioning that some selection is artificial. In other > > > >> words, not all selection is natural. > > > > >You mean purposeless? Darwin meant un-intentional with natural. Thus > > > >his natural selection reduces to purposeless purpose, an > > > >oxymoron. > > > > >Purposeless purpose isn't a tautology, its an oxymoron term. A > > > >tautology though can be constructed and arbitrarily associated with an > > > >oxymoron. For some reason nobody gets this. > > > > Perhaps the reason nobody gets this is because it is sheer idiocy. > > > What exactly? > > This exactly - "Darwin meant un-intentional with natural. Thus his > natural selection reduces to purposeless purpose, an oxymoron." > > It's idiotic because it assumes Darwin meant "purpose" when he said > selection. He obviously, as you have been told innumerable times, > meant no implication of intent with the use of the word "selection." > He meant it as we would mean it when we say that a screen door selects > for size differences between particles and insects. He meant it as we > would mean it when we say that hydrologic sorting selects for > different size gravels in fluid environments. > > He meant it metaphorically, and as such when coupled with "natural" it > is shorthand for empirically demonstrable processes. > > What accounts for your inability to learn this? > > RLC

Did Darwin use selection the pattern with a purpose or pattern without a purpose sense? Which raises the real question we are dealing with: What is purpose. Because our premises differ on this issue our conclusions differ. Your atheist premise is that purpose is tied to matter, while the YEC premise is that a certain arrangement of matter(black ink in a book) represents purpose but does not constitute it. Purpose, reality and the number 7 has no physical location from the theist premise, while Atheist believe that these can only be tied to matter. Hence the impossibility of communicating when using the same objects.

Both natural and selection can be used in either the pattern or design sense. 1) natural(unintended) selection(decision) - oxymoron 1a) purposeless purpose. 2) natural (intentional - http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Preferential_decision) selection(decision). 2a) purpose purpose - Tautology.

The object 'natural' does not mean purposeless, its majority metaphorical usage is to represent purposeless (literal meaning) while its only other minority metaphorical usage is to represent a pattern with a purpose - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design.

I propose we do away with the term *literal*, all language function as metaphor, nothing has an actual literal meaning. Dictionaries provide us with a roadmap, a repository so that if a Chinese speaker wants to know what *selection* or *decision* is used for the majority of situations he would be able to use the same object to communicate with a native English speaker.

Thus instead we must have: 1) Literal dictionary meaning - Majority metaphorical usage. 2) Usual metaphorical usage  - Minority metaphorical usage.

Hence the issue isn't what does ns literally mean, but what does is metaphorically mean. IF we plug in the majority metaphor as derived from a dictionary we have an oxymoron. The only way to escape formulating a http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Meaningless_sentence is to use the term metaphorically, or as a contracted shorthand for a full sentence.

This full sentence Charles Kingsley understood in his letters to Darwin, he clearly indicated that NS was used metaphorically and not literally, because literally its an oxymoron. http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/CharlesKingsley

When we *interpret* Darwin in the context of Huxley, Charles Hodge, Matthew, Samuel Butler, James Hutton, Charles Kingsley, Spencer, Henry Osborn(From the Greeks to Darwin), Aristotle, Democritus Atomism and the many other hundreds of authors that formulated the ideas Darwin condensed we derive the following conclusion:

Natural selection was the metaphor for Patrick Matthew's 'natural means of competitive selection,survival,preservation,accumulation' and specifically the metaphor for SoF. SoF <=> natural means of competitive survival.

Today Dawkins, Wikipedia Epicureans, realizing that SoF makes them look cognitively deficient insist that SoF was the metaphor for NS. Which violates rule nr.35 of language: 1) Thou shalt only usage terms metaphorically for phrases and sentences, not the other way around.

In other words as John d. Brey in his book Tautological Oxymorons explained the materialists are forced to usage pre-Enlightenment volitional type language to express a world view where there is no volition or free will; bastardizing syntax in an effort to destroy the dichotomous divide between a pattern with a purpose and pattern without a purpose.

Natural <=> unintentional and selection,survival,preservation etc. used in the pattern without a purpose sense.

Our problem is to try and force dictionary meanings on metaphorical usage. From a dictionary perspective NS is an oxymoron and therefore to avoid ambiguity it must be used metaphorically for a fully formulated sentence.

Compare what Charles Hodge wrote on the five pages on NS in OoS: http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Charles_Hodge

http://www.talkorigins.org/sandbox/kwork/Ver4_tautology.html#ref04

Darwin wrote:

Others have objected that the term selection implies conscious choice in the animals which become modified; and it has even been urged that, as plants have no volition, natural selection is not applicable to them! In the literal sense of the word, no doubt, natural selection is a misnomer; but who ever objected to chemists speaking of the elective affinities of the various elements? -and yet an acid cannot strictly be said to elect the base with which it will in preference combine. It has been said that I speak of natural selection as an active power or Deity; but who objects to an author speaking of the attraction of gravity as ruling the movements of the planets? Every one knows what is meant and is implied by such metaphorical expressions; and they are almost necessary for brevity.[8]

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19192/19192-h/19192-h.htm#Footnote_34_34 p.111 In his volume of "Lay Sermons, Reviews," etc., Professor Huxley has a very severe critique on M. Flourens's book. He says little, however, in reference to teleology, except in one paragraph, in which we read: "M. Flourens cannot imagine an unconscious selection; it is for him a contradiction in terms." Huxley's answer is, "The winds and waves of the Bay of Biscay have not much consciousness, and yet they have with great care 'selected,' from an infinity of masses of silex, all grains of sand below a certain size and have heaped them by themselves over a great area.... A frosty night selects[Pg 111] the hardy plants in a plantation from among the tender ones as effectually as if the intelligence of the gardener had been operative in cutting the weaker ones down."[35] If this means anything, it means that as the winds and waves of the Bay of Biscay can make heaps of sand, so similar unconscious agencies can, if you only give them time enough, make an elephant or a man; for this is what Mr. Darwin says natural selection has done. - Lay Sermons, p. 347.