As to the usefulness of distinguishing between natural and artificial, consider SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. If SETI detects a non-terrestrial signal broadcasting primes, they will know it's of alien origin. It makes no difference if someone points out that aliens are a natural part of the cosmos. Obliterating that distinction for SETI is of no help to them whatsoever, since they're trying to distinguish intelligent signals from radiation given off by other sources.

Similarly, it's not helpful to collapse the distinction between biological evolution and other meanings of the term.

I'll simply request, by way of being constructive, that you take a read of the paper I cited on page 3. — StreetlightX

It's fine to want me to read a paper, but this is a philosophy forum, and you should be able to spell out the argument. I can link to papers and videos, too, and hope that posters read/watch them, even though odds are they won't.

So with that in mind, does making medicine to aid survival prevent natural selection? Or is the ability to make medicine a naturally selected trait? — Michael

It doesn't prevent natural selection, but it does change the outcome from what natural selection would have selected. Human interference isn't natural selection, it's artificial selection. We wish to artificially select for as many people surviving as opposed to lots dying to improve genetic resistance.

But sure, natural selection still acts on the result of our interference. In order to completely be rid of evolution, we would have to engineer life forms whose genetic copying was bullet proof. I don't know whether that's doable.

Human interference isn't natural selection, it's artificial selection. — Marchesk

Right, so what about spider interference? Is that natural selection, or artificial selection (or spiderficial selection)?

Right, so what about spider interference? Is that natural selection, or artificial selection (or spiderficial selection)? — Michael

So humans are naturally selected to manufacture medicine to prevent natural selection from selecting against some of us, just like spiders are naturally selected to produce webs that give them a survival advantage?

I think there's an important distinction somewhere along the line. At least when you get to the point of directly manipulating DNA in a manner that nature never would.

"Dams, nests, webs, cities, and genetic engineering are not evolution" - as though this sentence was even sensical to begin with - well, I'm sorry, but it's clear that you don't have the terms of evolutionary science down well enough for this discussion to be productive. — StreetlightX

Also, I'm like 99.9% certain that cities and genetic engineering are not topics of biological evolution.

Also, I'm like 99.98% certain that nests and webs are not evolution, since evolution is a process that life forms undergo, not things like dams or nests.

It seems like you want to import your own philosophical views on how natural and artifical should be used (or not used) into science, when you know well that genetic engineering and cities are not a topic of study for evolutionary biologists.

As to the usefulness of distinguishing between natural and artificial, consider SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. — Marchesk

It is interesting that SETI, forensics, and certain other fields that are widely acknowledged to be properly scientific rely on the presupposition that the outcomes of intentional processes are objectively distinguishable from the byproducts of natural processes; yet the same principle is somehow ruled out of bounds in biology.

My point here is not to argue for intelligent design, just to highlight a philosophical curiosity.

My point here is not to argue for intelligent design, just to highlight a philosophical curiosity. — aletheist

Agreed. There should be a way to tell whether a life form or biosphere was intelligently designed or the result of natural processes.

What's the counter argument? That intelligent design is meaningless or impossible? What if we found a world terraformed by aliens in which they continuously modified the organisms instead of letting them evolve on their own? Can we not distinguish between the two?

Individual genetic 'defects' mean nothing evolutionarily unless they come to define a species as a whole.

But is it not true that genetic defects which would normally kill certain individuals are now becoming more present in the species as a whole as those with genetic defects are becoming able to bear children with those same defects. Even though at the moment these defects may form a minority, the number of people with genetic diseases is rising, particularly through the advent of non-uteral birth.

But is it not true that genetic defects which would normally kill certain individuals are now becoming more present in the species as a whole as those with genetic defects are becoming able to bear children with those same defects. Even though at the moment these defects may form a minority, the number of people with genetic diseases is rising, particularly through the advent of non-uteral birth. — Javants

So long as those traits do not negatively affect chances of reproduction within a specific environment, they will not be selected against by evolutionary mechanisms. By extension, the genes and behaviors that produce those traits will not be selected against. The fact that more people have diabetes today because of medical technologies does not mean we have somehow prevented "natural" evolution, but, rather, that we have changed the environment the species lives in, thus changing which traits are positive, neutral, or negative.

It is interesting that SETI, forensics, and certain other fields that are widely acknowledged to be properly scientific rely on the presupposition that the outcomes of intentional processes are objectively distinguishable from the byproducts of natural processes; yet the same principle is somehow ruled out of bounds in biology. — aletheist

I like Charlie Lineweaver's take on the issue....the counter to the argument that we will be able to detect aliens by their wasteful radiation.

Hawking also said that to understand the lights of Earth, you must know about life and minds. What are these lights that shine from planet Earth and what do they mean? I think those lights mean that someone left the lights on.

All of those lights are inadvertent waste. For the past 100 years the Earth has been wastefully beaming radio and TV signals into the universe, not because we wanted to share I Love Lucy with the universe, but because our broadcasting strategies were primitive.

This “shining of the Earth” that Stephen suggests is a sign that the universe has become aware, is maybe more correctly interpreted as a sign that something on Earth has become wasteful.

As we become more knowledgeable and efficient, signals that were once broadcast into space are squeezed into fibres. Earth will soon stop broadcasting its millions of mobile phone conversations. Routers and cell towers will migrate into the wall paper of every living room. The Earth will stop shining.

The conspicuous consumption of resources and the inadvertent beaming of info-waste into space will end.

Arthur C Clarke wrote that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, but I think Karl Schroeder’s modified version may be more relevant for SETI searches:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Nature […] either advanced alien civilizations don’t exist, or we can’t see them because they are indistinguishable from natural systems.

http://theconversation.com/what-is-the-search-for-extraterrestrial-intelligence-actually-looking-for-44977

http://nautil.us/issue/46/balance/survival-of-the-friendliest

Nautilus recently had a very nice article discussing issues exactly related to this topic. It rightly points out that not just struggle but also cooperation plays a role in evolution, with the latter loosening the evolutionary pressures of selection in ways that foster variation. Technology thus ends up being an extension of this cooperative evolutionary mechanism, feeding right into the way in which we have evolved:

"As humans collected into ever larger groups, the discovery of increasingly complex technology was accelerated. In high-density settlements, artisans and innovators could specialize in their crafts and exchange ideas. Selection for tool development has had an associated pressure on our ability to co-exist peacefully in large numbers, and aggressive, uncooperative individuals may have been selected against."

The article refers to this aspect of evolution as the wonderfully named 'survival of the friendliest' or the 'snuggle for survival'. So again, the idea that technology somehow 'undermines' evolution gets things exactly backward: technology can be considered part and parcel of the evolutionary process no less than natural selection. The mistake is in thinking that evolution only ever involves selection pressure, and not modulations of that very pressure.