I see, science rather than philosophy is the authority on what "causality" is. It seems that the teaching of science where you are is very poor.

Show me how evolution is the cause of anything.

Variation is not evolution and neither is survival. — charleton

As a theory 'Evolution' is a theory of change. It includes both the micro level individual changes that produce advantages that are selected for, the processes of selection and the macro level changes in species that result.
As an actuality evolution is change which incorporates the actualities of micro and macro level changes and the environmental changes that modulate the interplays between them.
Process is change and all natural (which includes cultural) processes are evolutionary.

Show me how evolution is the cause of anything. — charleton

Show you? How about you take a look at all the wonderfully varied species of life which exist all around you everywhere. Then read Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species". If you still wonder how evolution could be the cause of anything, get back to me.

Here's a line from the Wikipedia entry concerning "On the Origin of Species" :
"This slowly effected process results in populations changing to adapt to their environments, and ultimately, these variations accumulate over time to form new species (inference). "

Notice how the theory of evolution states that the process of evolution "results in" (meaning 'causes') the formation of new species.

I've read OofS front to back twice, and DofM once. I've read Darwin's Autobiography, his account of the Voyage of the Beagle and his monographs on human expression and his work on worms.
Everything he suggests point to evolution being the NATURAL consequence of necessity. In fact the whole point of his work is to remove it from the out-of-date notion that there is an underlying cause.
Get your arse out of your religious preconceptions.
Wiki is abusing language. It's common enough.
You might like to consider Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini who explains this error in simple language.

Seriously. I've not got the patience to teach you guys that you are thinking about Evolution wrongly.
It's a common enough error, and you can't be blamed for absorbing the shite that is all around you.
But when you get this, it will transform your world view and for the first time you shall REALLY understand how evolution comes about.
Consider this quote from "What Darwin Got Wrong"
argument that goes like this: there is at the heart of adaptationist
theories of evolution, a confusion between (1) the claim that evolution
is a process in which creatures with adaptive traits are selected and (2)
the claim that evolution is a process in which creatures are selected
for their adaptive traits. We will argue that: Darwinism is committed
to inferring (2) from (1); that this inference is invalid (in fact it's what
philosophers call an 'intensional fallacy'); and that there is no way to
repair the damage consonant with commitment to naturalism, which
we take to be common ground.
There is no active process for the selection of traits that the false assertion that evolution is causal would suggest. In terms of evolution, selection is passive. Death is the real mover in evolution, as it removes negative traits. But selection is blind. IT has no direction or goal. THAT is why evolution is an effect; the result of change and not a cause.

Everything he suggests point to evolution being the NATURAL consequence of necessity. In fact the whole point of his work is to remove it from the out-of-date notion that there is an underlying cause. — charleton

Do you understand what the word "cause" means? When something is the "consequence of necessity", then that thing has a cause. Something can only be necessitated by a cause. So your statement here is completely contradictory. You say that the description of evolution, as the "natural consequence of necessity", removes the notion of underlying cause. But all that the notion of "consequence of necessity" does, is reinforce the notion of causation.

There is no active process for the selection of traits that the false assertion that evolution is causal would suggest. In terms of evolution, selection is passive. Death is the real mover in evolution, as it removes negative traits. But selection is blind. IT has no direction or goal. THAT is why evolution is an effect; the result of change and not a cause. — charleton

Selection and death are both aspects of evolution. To deny that selection is causal, and introduce death as a cause, does not prove that evolution is not causal.

Poor Charleton, who has left both variation and evolvability out of his understanding of evolution.

PS sorry I've left this thread quiet, Christmas is a busy time of year, hopefully I can give it some attention in the next few days.

(1) the claim that evolution
is a process in which creatures with adaptive traits are selected and (2)
the claim that evolution is a process in which creatures are selected
for their adaptive traits. — charleton

Creatures with adaptive traits are more likely to survive, flourish and reproduce. There is no suggestion that there is anything that intentionally selects creatures, or that all creatures with adaptive traits will survive and flourish while all with maladaptive traits will fail to flourish and/ or perish.

while all with maladaptive traits will fail to flourish and/ or perish. — Janus

No. That's part of the point. Selection is not partial. Any member of a species can survive and maladaptive traits can flourish just so long as it does not too adversely impede reproductive success.

The error as shown by F&P above is ubiquitous throughout evolutionary studies.
The simple act of nominating any trait as adaptive or maladaptive insists that selection works towards adaptive traits. This assumption can be found in almost every work on evolution, even in Darwin.
Partly its a hang over from Victorian Naturalism which assumed design; language has not properly caught up.
When a scientist says trait X "is adapted to.." this intensionalist fallacy is made, and it happens all throughout the literature.

In the quote from Wiki above;

"This slowly effected process results in populations changing to adapt to their environments, and ultimately, these variations accumulate over time — Metaphysician Undercover

Populations do not adapt TO their environment, but FROM it. Variations have to precede selection. You cannot select, by reproductive success if those adaptations are not already present in the variation within the species.
An environmental change leads to the selection of more fitness FROM those existing variations.
To suggest populations adapt TO their environment is to suggest that novel variations emerge because of that change; that is absurd. This is so obviously false since the genome has no way to assess the changing environment and design adaptations to fit them. Such adaptations have to be present in the population BEFORE the environmental change.
The continual changes that precede from that selection process is what we like to call evolution.
There is no force of nature called evolution which is causing this process. Evolution is the effect of environmental change upon living things which show natural variation and mutations.

Poor Charleton, who has left both variation and evolvability out of his understanding of evolution. — StreetlightX

Don't be a [****]. If you have something to say, about me, then have the decency to read what I have written.

[**** = Mod edit]

I'll be a [****] if I want to, especially to someone who is a needlessly aggressive pedant about employing the word evolution to describe a series of linked processes, or indeed, a nexus of causes and effects, as Janus rightly points out. To think of evolution as merely an 'effect' is to subscribe to a pre-modern conception of linear cause and effect which has no place in thinking about evolution. I will say that what you wrote about variation is mostly correct, with the caveat that it is misleading to think that evolution is some simple two-step process of variation followed by selection; evolvability is itself something that can be selected for which makes variability itself a selectable trait: evolution feeds back into itself, which is why speaking of linear cause and effect is indeed an 'abuse of language'. Evolution is as much an explanandum as it is an explanans.

Andreas Wagner's book which is all about - in his words - how nature innovates - might be of especial interest to you. Alternatively, there is also Mary Jane West-Eberhard's pioneering work on adaptive innovation, which is equally interesting and important.

Populations do not adapt TO their environment, but FROM it. Variations have to precede selection. — charleton

I think you are making the category mistake of associating what is said of "a population", with what is said of "an individual". Variations occur in relation to individuals, and precede selection. Changes to "a population" are posterior to selection. It may be that you have difficulty understanding what is meant by "a population", but this is collective terminology which is common in evolutionary theory.

Here's an example to help you understand. An individual will vote yes or no in a particular referendum, and this vote is prior to the decision of the population. After the vote is counted, we say that the population has voted in such and such a way, according to the count. Notice that the individual's vote is prior to the count, and the population's vote is posterior to the count.

To suggest populations adapt TO their environment is to suggest that novel variations emerge because of that change; that is absurd. — charleton

Variations in "the population" may emerge because of that change in the environment, but this does not mean that variation to the individuals are due to that change in the environment.

while all with maladaptive traits will fail to flourish and/ or perish. — Janus


No. That's part of the point. Selection is not partial. Any member of a species can survive and maladaptive traits can flourish just so long as it does not too adversely impede reproductive success. — charleton

You have quoted that out of context and made it look as though I was affirming that all creatures "with maladaptive states will fail to flourish, and/or perish". In fact I was rejecting that idea, which you would have noticed if you read what I wrote more carefully.

It is obviously, though, tautologously true that in general adaptive traits will be more likely to lead to flourishing, and maladaptive traits will be more likely to lead to declining.

I think you are just being pedantic over the inevitable use of the language of intentionality in evolutionary theory. It does not follow that the theorists who use those terms must reify them and imagine a telos where there is no telos, or imagine a certain kind of telos that does not exist. Whether or not there is a telos in nature is itself not a simplistic black and white matter.

Or you could write clearly.

Explain what this magical force "evolution" is and how it is causative! LOL
]

Evolution is as much an explanandum as it is an explanans. — StreetlightX

It's not a cause though is it?

I've cited plenty of links in our discussion so far. Educate yourself.

I imagine my education on this matter exceeds your own. You have not begun to make your case.

"Imagine" being the operative word.

I'm back at work for a day or two which means, ironically, that I have time to respond to interesting posts again! Hopefully the momentum isn't entirely dead...

It would seem then the distinction between grammatical form and semantic content is not clear-cut.

But I agree with this! In fact this was part of the point of the OP: that grammatical categories just are semantic categories. Grammar is not just a formal scaffolding of lingustic organization but reflective of - to use the Wittgenstinian lingo - a form-of-life. The whole point is that this informs Witty's statement that 'if a lion could speak, we would not understand him'. His form-of-life, reflected in his grammar, would be radically different from ours (not to be confused with 'in/commensurte' with ours). The focus on grammar here is to specify a mechnaism which would explain how this difference would come about/operate.

That all said, and thinking a little bit more carefully about your comments, perhaps I was too quick to assimilate art and perception together as two categories to set 'against' language-qua-symbolism. I think on reflection that the category to set apart is perception rather than art insofar as part of my motivation with the focus on grammar was to recognize the way in which it (grammar) allows for the creation of context 'out of thin air', as it were (also, reading back, our conversation began with a discussion of perception rather than art, and I think I allowed myself to get confused in the flow of it).

Anyway, the idea is that with grammar, I am no longer tied to a particular here and now, words can be used not simply as indexes or icons but as full blown symbols (to employ the tripartite semiotic distinction). This is something Dor gets at when he explains the specificity fo language:

"The claim is that the uniqueness of language lies in this very specific functional strategy. All the other systems of intentional communication, used by humans and the other species that we think we understand, work with different variations of the functional strategy that I call experiential: all these systems allow for (different variations of) the communicative act of presenting: “this is my experience”. This very general characterization captures the foundational fact that experiential communication is inherently confined to the here-and-now of the communication event, where experiences can be presented.

Language is the only system that allows communicators to communicate directly with their interlocutors’ imaginations, and thus break away from the here-and-now of co-experiencing: instead of presenting the experience to their interlocutors for perception, communicators translate their experiential intents into a structured code, which is then transmitted to their interlocutors and instructs them in the process of imagining the experience – instead of experiencing it. What the interlocutors do is use the code to bring back from their own memory experiences connected to the components of the code, rearrange them according to the structural configuration of the code, and construct a new, imagined experience." link

So yeah, okay, language is indeed closer to art than I was willing to give credence to, but further away from perception insofar as perception is indeed tied to the affordances of the environment which acts as the 'external' grammar of our perception (it constrains what we perceive, even while our perceptions are co-informed by our 'sensory-motor schemas').

Ah, well. Your thread. I tried. — Banno

Not really. To nick a saying of Feynman's, FOPL is as useful for talking about grammar as ornithology is to birds. You're not engaging with anything by invoking it, because it's completely tangential to any discussion of grammar. Want to talk about cases, genitives, declensions, participles and deixis? Be my guest. FOPL? Nothing doing.

"Imagine" being the operative word. — Metaphysician Undercover

I wasn't going to say it but...

Also, I really liked your paper. The second half - on the 'phenomenology of writing' - although I don't think you use the term (very reminiscent of M-P's Prose of the World!) - also really reminded me of one of my favourite lines from Deleuze:

"How else can one write but of those things which one doesn't know, or knows badly? It is precisely there that we imagine having something to say. We write only at the frontiers of our knowledge, at the border which separates our knowledge from our ignorance and transforms the one into the other. Only in this manner are we resolved to write. To satisfy ignorance is to put off writing until tomorrow - or rather, to make it impossible. Perhaps writing has a relation to silence altogether more threatening than that which it is supposed to entertain with death."

I really like the move from this kind of account to one that holds equally for intersubjectivity, and the diffusion of solipsism it allows. Cool stuff.