[SomeStupidPoint]

I'm well aware of how evolution works. I disagree with your assessment that it's any blinder of a process than your own will is.

I'm especially skeptical when you can't even describe the distinction in the span of a few paragraphs and instead resort to ad hominems.

[vectorpush]

> I disagree with your assessment that it's any blinder of a process than your own will is.

I understand what you're saying, but the two concepts cannot be effectively compared. An organism's "will" is a label for the reactive tendencies we observe in physical systems that exhibit homeostasis, whereas evolution is the description of a physical process that is perpetually ongoing and has no physically discrete meaning.

[SomeStupidPoint]

Your commemt is no more insightful than "I understand how to draw a box around one of them".

"You" as an entity are really just a process emergent from chemical reactions on some area, and your "will" is just the result of feedback between many regions of that process and outside stimuli.

Biological evolution is a process happening in more dispersed reactions, but still has all manner of internal feedback mechanisms and responds to external stimuli.

I don't see how you've drawn a meaningful distinction between them, except to say that one os easy to observe in total (eg, you can draw a box around it) and is sort of like you, so you feel you can understand it.

Homeostasis and physical locality don't seem partocularly germane traits when discussing whether or not something has a will.

Further, you (just as evolution) are ongoing until you're not, and "physically discrete meaning" sounds like a dressed up "well, I just know it when I see it".

[vectorpush]

> You" as an entity are really just a process emergent from chemical reactions on some area, and your "will" is just the result of feedback between many regions of that process and outside stimuli.

Agreed.

> Biological evolution is a process happening in more dispersed reactions, but still has all manner of internal feedback mechanisms and responds to external stimuli.

Disagree. Evolution does not "respond to external stimuli", there is no "internal" or "external" as far as evolution is concerned, that's like saying "erosion responds to external stimuli"; "it" does not respond, "it" is a description of a process.

> I don't see how you've drawn a meaningful distinction between them, except to say that one os easy to observe in total (eg, you can draw a box around it) and is sort of like you, so you feel you can understand it.

I can't draw a box around it because it is not a thing with a position in space unlike "you" which is.

> Homeostasis and physical locality don't seem partocularly germane traits when discussing whether or not something has a will.

Of course it does, if words are to have any meaning at all. Whatever it is you're trying to describe that is common between an organism and the description of physical process is not called "will" by any useful definition of the word. It's like if I said "evolution has no guiding principles" and you replied "well neither do humans really because our 'guiding principles' are just the result of a deterministic evolutionary process", but that's not true because "guiding principles" is a human concept that applies to beings that reason about their environment, even if the foundation of that reasoning is determined by constituent factors.

[jamesrcole]

First, what ad hominems? Show me what you're referring to.

I think you misunderstand what I said. The sort of information processing in something like a nervous system can hardly be characterised as blind.

Also, if it can easily be done in a few paragraphs then why did people have to write books hundreds of pages long (which still get misunderstood)?