----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris Doss" <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com>
Why must criteria for organisms being more or less advanced come from within the framework of evolutionary theory itself, anyhow?
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I don't recall anyone asserting that they must; it's just that imputing terms such as 'advanced' or 'higher' are unnecessary anthropomorphisms which evolutionary biology can do without while still performing robust explanatory work. Surely parsimony matters, no? Yeah, we can't do without some anthropomorphisms [someone wrote a recent book in philosophy of sci. -Oxford U Press iirc], but if those terms create interminable and unnecessary disputes without even coming close to suggesting experiments of some sort, what *work* do they do?
Ian