Writing Studies 3302 Spring 2009

I thought Dawkins' structuring of purpose into neo-purpose and archi-purpose provided a reasonable and non-bias way to rationalize the idea of purpose. Throughout the history of the earth, it seems as if the majority of natural selection has influenced physical characteristics both micro and macro. Say life started with bacteria; such a simple organism, yet so robust, so perfectly suited for its niche, by physical characteristics alone. With the ability to adaptation (not modification), branches of organisms became better able to thrive in their respective environments. With more "specialization" came less ability to adapt alone. Marine life made the transition to land first with plants, then animals. Here we are as humans today, arguably the most complex organisms in existence. However, our ability to adapt alone seems to be zero; we could not stand outside with no thermal insulation, or we would freeze is just one example. However, this lack in ability to adapt seems to be compensated for by our mental capacities. As Dawkins defined neo-purpose as the ability to set goals deliberately, I think this seems to fall in line with adaptation in a darwinian framework. Dawkins said neo-purpose is a darwinian adaptation with an archi-purpose (archi purpose = purpose product of natural selection as an adaptive function). I see this neo-purpose as an adaptive mechanism as a species, not as an individual-a stabilizing sort of selection. As humans we have progressed to a point of "overriding" darwinian logic as (Dawkins gave the example of skydiving). In essence our specialization as humans or even as animals may be observed to have reached an "asymptote" or local maximum, and I must stress, "local" on the evolutionary course.

Well my comment won't be as insightful as Mike's, but I do say I was surprised with the lecture. Most of the material I have seen on Dawkins made him look like a "I'm right, and you are wrong" type of person. Although I was expecting much more of it to be on religion, as Mike stated his ideas of Archi-purpose and Neo-purpose were very intriguing. Archi-purpose is supposed to be the illusion of purpose created over billions of years, while Neo-purpose is true, deliberate, intentional purpose which is a product of the brain. In Dawkins own words, "My thesis is that neo-purpose, or the capacity to set up deliberate purposes or goals, is itself a Darwinian adaptation with an archi-purpose." Basically how I understand it is that we create the idea of humans needing/having a purpose because it is inherent in each of us to think so (because we are the only known mammal with superior intellect). Dawkins idea behind it is truly fascinating, and I shall dig further into its meaning with time.

A side note, I also noticed during the Q&A portion that Dawkins tended to not completely answer the questions presented to him. In a funny way, he always tended to relate a personal question to society as a whole, not really expressing his own beliefs in full but more as a society. Overall I felt it was a good presentation, but not worth the $8 ha ha. Something I could have seen on YouTube for free :).

Richard Dawkins is hilarious. His presentation was extremely entertaining once he got past the initial—possibly unnecessary—introduction to artificial and natural selection processes. I was impressed Dawkins confronted his own sense of spirituality and the theoretical truths in eugenics. For most scientists these topics are too dangerous to approach under the scrutiny of such public lectures because they can’t articulate their viewpoints well enough to avoid being misconstrued by the audience. A few wrong words addressing one of these topics would have meant a headline in The Daily of, “Richard Dawkins Really Does Believe in God” or “Richard Dawkins Is a Eugenicist.”

My favorite part of the lecture was the question and answer section where Dawkins made it very clear that even if he wasn’t the smartest scientist in the room, he was without a doubt the most talented orator. At the end of the lecture a student asked a question along the lines of “do you think there is any validity to findings in favor of epigenetics?” Dawkins answered this question with skepticism towards the validity of current research, but also with an open mind to the effects substantiating such a theory could have on his own research, as well colleagues dating all the way back to Darwin. Dawkins made a great point that even if there is truth to epigenetics, scientists need to prove not just a generation or two of genetic alteration due to environmental imprint, but a permanent alteration of the germ line of DNA before a fundamental alteration to the broader theory of evolution takes place.

I would have to say that overall I was a bit disappointed with Dawkin's lecture. I was a bored for the first fifteen minutes when he was explaining the natural selection process. I also felt like I did not really know where the lecture was going and I would have liked to have some sort of an outline, but that may just be me, needing organization. At the end of the lecture, I felt like Dawkin's was just getting his lecture going, getting to the meat of his subject, when suddenly it was over and I was left wanting more. A lot of his points were interesting, but I was disappointed because I did not have any real "ah hah!" moments. Maybe some of the lecture was over my head though, I guess I would have to watch it again.

I thought his thesis was interesting, and I would have liked him to talk a bit more about it. From what I understood, humans create purpose through a set of goals that we make for ourselves. This is neo-purpose. Then the REASON that we do this is archi-purpose - that is to say that we have, as humans, adapted to want or need a purpose. So as far as Darwin is concerned, we have evolved (archi-purpose) to have a need for purpose in our lives, and we fulfill this through creating and fulfilling goals (neo-purpose).
I really enjoyed the question and answer session; I felt that I got the most out of this part of the lecture. It was interesting to hear the questions that people came up with (and how long it took them to get to the piont..) and how Dawkins took that questions and formulated an answer. I felt that he did not always answer the question completely, and he said more of what he wanted to say than something that actually answered the question.
Overall I thought that it was interesting and a good lecture. I am glad that I went, but I preferred the lecture that he gave on Ted.com.

This was the first public lecture I have ever attended and I found it to be pretty interesting, although I did feel a little out of place as a Christian who had never heard of Dawkins prior to this event.

I found him to be a good speaker and liked some of his points, but I also came away a little disappointed. I liked his point that humans were selected to think whereas other animals were selected to climb, swim, dig or fly. It is something I have never thought about before but it makes sense. I also liked his point that every act that animals do has to do with protecting their offspring, except humans. We adopt babies, and do things such as sky-diving which puts us directly in the face of death. Evolutionarily speaking, both of these acts are pretty stupid. However, I liked these two points for different reasons than I think I am supposed to. He presented them to further his argument, but I was so intrigued by them as evidence of purpose, that I kind of lost the point he was trying to make against purpose. Both points just show me how much more different we are than every other animal on the planet, and that, to me, means humans have a purpose here that differs from the rest of creation. It is almost getting to the point where it doesn’t matter what people say about evolution because I just shrug it off as being inconsequential. I know what I believe and that is good enough for me.
The only reason I was disappointed was because he didn’t present any new evidence about natural selection or anything. I was kind of hoping he would have had something new to say about it but he did not. However, I guess this makes sense because the intended audience is the general public and it therefore has to be a pretty introductory discussion of natural selection. It just gets a little boring, hearing how natural selection works, over and over again.
Overall, I did like the way he presented his argument. I liked that he had images to correlate with what he was saying and I like the humorous bits he included, such as the purpose of the banana. I am glad he didn’t just straight up lecture at us all to denounce God and become atheists, although that started to come up in the question/answer bit following the lecture.

I really enjoyed Dawkins as a person, but can’t really say that I took too much away from his lecture. I was also expecting him to talk a little more about religion, but this was not the case. While he was refreshing the audience on natural selection, I was thinking that was something I’d learned before and could’ve heard from any Joe Shmo evolutionist. But after that, Dawkins focused more on archi-purpose and neo-purpose, which I found slightly confusing for about half the lecture. What I took away was that archi-purpose is the purpose given to living things through evolution, and that neo-purpose is how we use that to set new (and sometimes slightly more temporary) goals for ourselves. I found it intriguing when Dawkins talked about how humans, once set on one of these new goals, tend to be very persistent and even stubborn. And that this often comes into play in the realm of religious doctrine and teachings.
I hate to say it, but my favorite part of the lecture might have been the “banana is the proof of God’s existence” youtube clip. I had never seen it before and thought it was absolutely hilarious. Other than that, I did enjoy the question and answer session because I think it provoked the types of answers the audience had been waiting to hear from Dawkins.

So I Googled my name to try and find this site since it's still not working, in terms of the original way of finding it anyway. And, come to find out, there are tons of site pertaining to Daniel Austin. Thankfully I have patience...

Anyway, Dawkins... I can only blame myself for the ill preparation of this lecture. For some reason I just assumed, and I'm not sure why, this lecture was going to be like our classroom discussions; kind of open ended... with a specific beginning that leads into who knows what responses... then kind of touches on another subject and somehow we're talking about video games again. Or, there's a giant class jug of water on a table in front of Matthew, as some weird illusory distracting me from reality, causing me to drift into wonderland...

So, I wasn't really ready for the lecture mentally and like many of you above wasn't too impressed. I blame myself entirely. I did happen to engage early on but things just weren't clicking as well as I'd hope. His responses to some of the questions where dodge techniques. It's an interview strategy when people don't want to sound like they don't know something. Instead of answering the question that's asked you answer the question that you wished was asked. He did this to some exciting questions that I'm glad were raised though, unfortunately, he only touched on them partially.

I enjoyed this lecture, but like so many others who posted I felt slightly disappointed after the whole thing was over. Not only do I feel like I’ve heard much of what Dawkins said before, but I think he could have gone further in depth on a few of the topics, specifically the purpose of religion in society. Archi-purpose and Neo-purpose could have definitely been better supported.

While this lecture was for the general public, I think the fact that he had to explain natural selection and evolution was quite a waste of time that he could have spent articulating on his other points that aren’t as well-founded or believed at this point in time (I had never heard of archi- or neo-purpose before).

I guess I went into this lecture expecting the stereotypical Dawkins, one who is willing to state his own opinion and fully defend it regardless of how offensive it might come off as. I unfortunately didn’t see much of his argumentative side in the lecture, especially during the Q & A.

Richard Dawkins spoke for a while on the topic of naïve Darwinism. Within that, he mentioned that there is no explanation for humans to adopt a child that is not biologically their own. He continued in explaining that humans are the only species on Earth who do this willingly because every other species that adopts a “child” needs to be fooled in to doing so.
I thought another interesting point that he made was that if the characteristics of an object in nature looks like it has been shaped by God, it is in fact through the process of Natural Selection. I also really liked the use of the banana video in explaining this point.
In class we talked a little bit about how he didn’t really go to in depth into religion. He had several images in the slideshow that may have been offensive to some but I appreciated the fact that he didn’t go on an all out assault of religion.

I was actually very disappointed by this lecture. As a world renowned atheist, I was hoping that Richard Dawkins would have formulated a more convincing argument against Intelligent Design, rather than merely introduce new philosophical concepts to the argument. In fact, I did not think that he came out particularly strong in convincing anyone that his mere distinction of archi-purpose and neo-purpose was enough to define "The Purpose of Purpose". From my understanding, archi-purpose represents the naturalistic and evolutionary view of the "purpose" of being. As such, this reality is independent of any human mind or conception. On the other hand, neo-purpose is conceived by the human mind/conscious/intelligence where a "purpose" in all things is postulated, ingraining a divine purpose to all material things in the universe. All in all, I felt that his presentation on the two purposes was a prelude to a larger argument. However, he abruptly ended his lecture, leave me wanting more. Much more!