Meh. English isn’t really set up to have a special form or conjugation for negating agency. If you get rid of “competition” then you have to pretty much stray away from any verb in the active voice. You could say the fishes sperm are subject to the mechanisms of natural selection. Or use negating phrases such as “so called” or “metaphorical”. What real scientists writing popular works usually do is just cover this in a preface, noting that any words of agency are just metaphors.
That just saddles us with the problem of explicating the notion of “reward.” If you want to say a reward is something that benefits the recipient, we need to explicate “benefit.” It’s not just that there’s a potentially infinite chain of definitions you have to go through (that’s true of any word whatsoever) but rather that these terms in particular need further explication if what we’re trying to do is express a naturalistic theory.
The problem is that “competition,” “reward,” “benefit” and so on are all terms that are usually defined as involving agency and value, but presumably, evolutionary theory (and any other naturalistic theory) can ultimately be expressed in terms that do not involve agency or value. This is because, presumably, agency itself supervenes on more basic processes that don’t have agency, and presumably, things do not have value naturally in themselves but rather only in light of the evaluations of some agent or other.
The trick of defining these terms in purely naturalistic terms is a pretty difficult one. This is so especially given the fact that most people think a purely naturalistic theory must also devoid itself of any terms that involve purpose in their definition.
So I could, for example, propose the following. X benefits Y when X serves to enable Y to fulfill Y’s purpose. From this, “reward” and “competition” can also be defined. But what is a “purpose?” Doesn’t “purpose” require agency, and don’t we have the same problem all over again?
Some philosophy types think they can define purpose without reference to agency. Y’s purpose is P when Y was selected for its tendency bring about P. But then what about selection, isn’t that agential? It can be but (on the account I’m discussing) it doesn’t have to be. Completely non-agential processes can also be selective. The differentiation between grain sizes in layers of sedimentation, for example, is a selective process. (But (I think) does not give those grains of sand any kind of purpose since there’s no sense in which they were selected because of something they bring about.) And evolution involves non-agential selections, of course. And sometimes those selections are for tendencies to bring about states of affairs. Bones were selected (non-agentially) for their tendency to bring about structure (among other things). Hearts were selected for their tendency to bring about blood flow. And so on. Hence hearts, bones, and so on, have purposes, though there is no agency involved in that purpose.
If we go for such an account, then we can see how things might be shown to be beneficial in a naturalistic account. Given the above naturalistic account of purpose, we can see that food benefits an organism because it helps the organism('s parts) serve its (their) purpose(s).
From this, we can easily see how to figure out what reward and competition are.
-FrL-
Meh.
This seems like a pedantic argument to replace a simple, relatively accepted definition with a needlessly more complex definition in order to stroke some hippy “intellectual”'s ego.
“Competetion” does not have to be conscious and deliberate. The two fish don’t necessarily know who’s faster. But the faster one will nevertheless outcompete the other.
And FWIW, competition is central to our existance. We are in constant competition for jobs, promotions, projects at work, mates, housing, other people’s time, anything where there are more people who want something than there is of that thing available. People who don’t realize that are generally spoiled or otherwise somehow protected from having to be evaluated against others for their worthiness.
I intend to keep using the word “competition” in this context without reservation.
And if any fitter lifeform wants to replace my stance with its own, let it try.
But you have to admit that that kind of competition - the conscious and deliberate kind - is the kind that’s central to our existence. Anyone who is not on the ball every day of their lives is either spoiled (lucky them) or out on the street. That’s what the so-called hippy intellectual is concerned with: what does that do to our humanity when we have to constantly prove ourselves, over and over, just to survive?
We prefer the spelling: “hippie” but of course I can’t force anyone to change their language just to please me.
I think it’s a mistake to differentiate (“that kind of competition”) what a fish does and what a human does just because the human is more aware (conscious) of the actions it has taken.
Our consciousness merely provides internal feedback regarding the deliberation that we do. It’s just a mechanism that allows our machinery to solve more abstract problems that a simple stimulus-response would not be able to, but ultimately there is nothing magic, it’s just machinery churning out a response based on current input and state.
Our competition is the same kind as other animal’s competition, we just happen to have a different set of tools that allow optimization over a longer time period and based on data whose relationship has many layers of indirection.