Is artificial selection considered "evolution"?

[Anomalocaris]

is not a product of consciousness or intelligence.

I am not sure exactly when the notional line in the sand was crossed and animals began to acquire rudimentary consciousness or intelligence, but I suspect it occurred substantially before the evolution of apes. So in this sense, intelligent design, albeit initially of very subdued order of efficacy, had been with us for a long time.

Also, sexual preferences by intelligent (nominally) mates have had a very strong influence on the evolution of humans. So I guess we are all to a very substantial degree intelligently designed.

I for one think the flesh, if not necessarily the brains, of the likes of Megan Fox is so intelligently designed that no god could have had a role in her creation, only successive generation of men.

[The Grand Nudger]

"Design" is a very specific thing Chuck. You'll be hard pressed to point to any designs in nature past the poetic sense of the word and our own tendency to interpret or describe things in ways that are familiar to us.

[Anomalocaris]

"Design" is a very specific thing Chuck.

I think its origins in the natural world are very fuzzy and stretches very far back. When any animals act in a way not only to gain immediate success in the present activity but to make the same activity easier in the future, it is definitely designing. I think you can detect that behavior in animal as brainless as ants, so I suspect it had been carried out repeatedly by more brainy animals throughout history.

[The Grand Nudger]

Design has it's origins in human endeavor, language and interpretation. No further. Ants don't design their mounds, bees don't design their hives, etc etc etc, though we can call either structure very well designed (if we were so inclined).

[Anomalocaris]

Design has it's origins in human endeavor, language and interpretation. No further.

I think design stretches back much further, at least past the apes who shape tools to get at termites.

No, but ants in effect design the fungus that can't live without being in parasitic relationships with the aunts.

[The Grand Nudger]

"in effect" being the operative. In actuality, being what I'm referring to. The effect of a stage illusion, for example, has no bearing on whether or not a woman is actually being sawed in half.

[Modular Moog V]

Agreed. Human consciousness is a product of nature. However, the process by which animals evolve without our interference is not a product of consciousness or intelligence. I'd call that an important distinction. As would our livestock and crops, if they could speak, which isn't something we're likely to select them for..lol.
(late edit, "is not always", we could invoke sexual selection and the consciousness and intelligence of the animals making the selection)

You can't have it both ways, humans are part of the evolutionary process, so everything we do is part of nature. Having greater "intelligence" could be the advantage that gave us survival in the earlier history of our participation in this process, but could be seen as also how we could become extinct as well. Same as everything else. Seems to be in our nature to create nukes and worse! No different than yeast eating sugar in a closed system.

[The Grand Nudger]

Are you entirely sure you're responding to my post? What human beings do is ultimately a product of nature, but what does not involve human beings, while being a process of nature, does not involve consciousness or intelligence in all cases (or even most), as these are characteristics of ourselves, how we go about "artificial selection". Natural selection is not bound to leveraging intelligence or consciousness in its ministrations, and if it were, we'd be in trouble, because we can't seem to find the "consciousness or intelligence of natural selection" anywhere we look. NS is not a force, it is a description of a collection of pressures. It is not wandering around placing blocks where it chooses or pleases, it makes no choices, it does not please. It is unthinking because it does not have a mind, it is not a conscious process for that same reason. That is the important distinction. "Artificial selection" can provide predetermined outcomes, can weigh the possibilities, makes plans, sticks to plans, discards the unplanned, works faster, and is altogether more reliable insomuch as the parameters are specified. Natural selection does none of these things, cannot provide any of these things, and works from an entirely different toolkit.

[Anomalocaris]

"in effect" being the operative. In actuality, being what I'm referring to. The effect of a stage illusion, for example, has no bearing on whether or not a woman is actually being sawed in half.

Ant is admittedly an extreme case in which the other case component militate against any reasonable definition of design. But in less extreme cases, like chimps, where other case component paints an ambigious picture, effect is the main factor shaping our judgement.

[reverendjeremiah]

Thats a good question. Im no biologist, but I was under the impression that Evolution was classically known as "natural selection".

I suppose artificial selection can also be called evolution.