Is "discourse of the mind" evidence of design?

[The Grand Nudger]

Wasn't I clear? Selection doesn't seem, to me, to have any similarity to a test. Certainly not by the definition you offered. In fact, every parameter for a test as per your definition seems to find a contradictory process at play in selection. You don't need to spell it out for me, no - but if you want me to understand your opinion....it would certainly help.

[Angrboda]

Creation / mutation introduces novel prototypes. Testing / selection gauges the fitness of specific prototypes.

Man can gauge the fitness of a prototype in mind, prior to creation. Nature cannot. Clear?

[Cato]

Wasn't I clear? Selection doesn't seem, to me, to have any similarity to a test. Certainly not by the definition you offered. In fact, every parameter for a test as per your definition seems to find a contradictory process at play in selection. You don't need to spell it out for me, no - but if you want me to understand your opinion....it would certainly help.

I'm ok with Rasetsu's use of test here. See if this helps (using Rasetsu's bolded portion of the definition):

The procedure of submitting a statement (variation) to such conditions or operations ( the environment) as will lead to its proof or disproof or to its acceptance or rejection (impact on fitness).

[The Grand Nudger]

Creation / mutation introduces novel prototypes. Testing / selection gauges the fitness of specific prototypes.

Man can gauge the fitness of a prototype in mind, prior to creation. Nature cannot. Clear?

If you'll read back you'll probably notice that I made the nod to selection and design being two very different methods of achieving a similar effect. That these two methods achieve a similar effect in no way diminishes the differences between those two methods. Selection isn't a test just because we get roughly analogous outcomes to what we might expect if we were testing something (ignoring those cases in which we don't). I think that conceptualizing it as such only adds to confusion, without clearing anything up. Perhaps we're not even discussing the same thing?

@ Cato, don't get me wrong, I can put on my troubadour's cap and see how we might enjoy communicating the effect that way (which is ground already covered), but in point of fact I simply can't ignore the differences between the actual processes involved. I think that such language is great between folks with a thorough understanding of the mechanism, but I wouldn't liken selection to a test if somebody asked me to explain selection from the ground up. Variations aren't submitted, because nature isn't submitting anything. To use the language, nature would be the submission itself. The conditions of nature aren't analagous to the conditions of anything remotely resembling a test in that there are no set conditions, in fact - some variation actually bootstraps itself as a condition. The very first predatory organism (a variation) -was- the condition that all of it's prey was submitted -to- (and again..I'm trying very hard to use the language - so bear with me). Fitness isn't a proof or disproof of variation, nature neither accepts nor rejects because it lacks a mechanism with which to do so. Even death/extinction can't be called a rejection of a variation - because as I've already mentioned, some other creature might express a similar variation and be "accepted" in precisely the same environment.

If every word in an analogy has to be stretched to the breaking point in order that the analogy hold, I call it useless at best, counterproductive at worst - especially so with regards to science and biology.

"It's a little bit like this, but not really because it's totally different, but I want you to accept that the inference holds regardless" ?????????

[Angrboda]

Whatever. As noted, my point holds mutatis mutandis. The specific congruence of the analogy does not affect the point I made.

[The Grand Nudger]

Sure, if we ignore that your analogy is fundamentally flawed..it holds. You win.

Rasetsu!

[Angrboda]

I win!