RoR: Forum

http://web.gc.cuny.edu/philosophy/courses/06-07_spring.html#devitt

Sample of the Presentations

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In the session The New Biological Essentialism

“Species Have (Partly) Intrinsic Essences”

Michael Devitt

City University of New York, Graduate Center

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In the session Cognitive Science 1

“Is It Possible to Measure Happiness? The Measurement-Theoretic vs. the Psychometric Approach to Measurement”

http://www.dpo.uab.edu/~angner/swb.html

Eric Angner

University of Alabama at Birmingham

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In the session (Anti)Realism and the Success of Science

“Explaining Past Successes in Virtue of and Despite Particular Theoretical Commitments”

http://www.etsu.edu/philos/FACULTY/harker_cv.doc

David Harker

East Tennessee State

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In the session Neural Computation

“The Resilience of Computationalism”

http://www.umsl.edu/~piccininig/my%20research.html

Gualtiero Piccinini

University of Missouri at St. Louis

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In the session Philosophy of Physics 1

“Anthropic Reasoning in Multiverse Cosmology and String Theory”

http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~sw/papers.html

Steve Weinstein

University of Waterloo

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In the session Questioning the Tree of Life 1

“Microbiology and the Species Problem”

http://www.ucalgary.ca/~ereshefs/

Mark Ereshefsky

University of Calgary

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In the session Algebraic Quantum Field Theory . . .

“On Space-like Correlations in Quantum Field Theory”

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0708/0708.2189v1.pdf

Jeremy Butterfield

Cambridge

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In the session History of Philosophy of Science

“Kant and the Prohibition of Armchair Cosmology”

http://www.auburn.edu/~hettcmr/abstract.htm

Matt Hettche

Auburn

“'Bold Leaps': Guesses of Inferences? Herschel and Analogy in Scientific Reasoning”

http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2008-summer/laura-j-snyder.asp

Laura J. Snyder

St. John’s University

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Post 1

Saturday, July 26, 2008 - 8:32am

What is this? A joke?

Post 2

Saturday, July 26, 2008 - 10:19am

No joke, Dean. I am sincere. This is serious, bright work. I approve of it and enjoy it.

Post 3

Saturday, July 26, 2008 - 1:48pm

Oh I am quite sure it is no joke, tho would have to read some of this before making judgment on the validity of what is in question.......

Post 4

Saturday, July 26, 2008 - 3:31pm

Species and Essence Part I

The issue of whether species have essences is a quite central one in biology. The consensus view is that species are populations and that they are reproductively isolated groups, not biological instantiations of real (Platonic) essences. Indeed, what could evolution mean, if a species has an essence? Evolution would amount to transubstantiation rather than a step-by-step change in a population's genetic makeup. Now, there are types of speciation, polyploidy and hybridization, which amount to an immediate speciation event. One could argue that the instantaneous doubling of chromosome number amounts to an "essential" change, but while such doubling might result in isolation, and hence speciation, it does not necessarily mean that the phenotype, the "appearance within the environment" of the individual has changed. Species are normally identified by their niche, the role they play in their ecological setting. In order to be best adapted to its niche, a species will develop isolating mechanisms that prevent it from interbreeding with close relatives that are better adapted to other niches. For example, polar bears and grizzly bears can interbreed, but the resulting offspring don't function optimally as either salmon-catching land bears or seal-catching aquatic bears. The interplay between hybridization, isolation mechanisms, population dynamics, niche adaptation and breeding habits can be quite complex.

The result is that while geneticists will identify apparently identical organisms with hidden genetic differences that result in relative isolation as separate species, paleontologists and ecologists who deal with an organism's phenotype, its expression of traits within an environment, will look to macrostructures rather than genes to identify species. Systematists are left with a quandary, whether to use gross morphology, the presence or absence of physical traits, such as the white striped wings of a mallard duck as essential in defining a species, or whether to use the results of genetic analyses, which can end up splitting apparent morphological species into different groups - called cryptospecies - or uniting traditionally recognized separate species into different groups.

Essentialism in systematics is in a large part a holdover from creationist belief. Each species is seen, in effect, as a Platonic form. The essentialist mindset was one of the greatest stumbling blocks to the neo-Darwinian synthesis. The issue might seem academic, and so far as systematics is concerned, it is. Paleontologists who deal with fossils cannot test their genomes or do experiments on interbreeding. Ecologists define species by their niches. Geneticists and Cladists view such distinctions as suspiciously subjective. Objectivists might respond that one's definition of a species should be contextual.

The one area where the validity of essentialism is most vital is in the study of human nature. If man is a rational animal, does being a rapist make on inhuman? If man is a product of his genes, does the fact that historically 10% of births can be attributed to rape make rape a human behavior? The answer to such questions depends in part in the context in which it is being raised, and ultimately upon what it means to be human.

(Edited by Ted Keer on 7/27, 12:36am)

Post 5

Saturday, July 26, 2008 - 11:04pm

My understanding of essences (as Plato used the concept) - and as applied in this context - would be that each "species" was a perfect, pre-existing "form" - and 'real' - while each concrete animal would be an imperfect, non-real, copy or projection of that perfect form. So, "Dog" would be such a form, an essence, of which Fido is an imperfect copy.

Aristotle opposed the metaphysical view of concretes not being real and rejected the idea that a preexisting set of forms ("dog" included) were real. So how does he resolve the epistemological problem of where do we get 'dog' from, if not from this universe of pre-existing forms? He held that the 'concept' of dog lived inside of Fido (each concrete) - was intrinsic - because we somehow percieved dog-ness, as a property located IN Fido - he was a dog because it is in him in some fashion for us to discover.

Rand, although much closer to Aristotle in her position (sharing his metaphysics), tossed out the idea that our concept of dog came to us via senses as a 'dog-ness' in Fido. Instead she made the actions of mind the source of the concept of dog - but only after percieving many instances of dogs. Our concept of Dog only exists in our mind, but it is no less real because it is a mental entity AND it is of a real population of real animals. As per the chosen defintion (context), the population of dogs is real. Hence, no forms, no essences, no intrinsic concepts, existing concretes, existing traits, and an appreciation of the mind's active process.

I like the way genetics can be seen as a mirror of Objectivist epistemology.

We could sequence the DNA of large number of animals that we have categorized as dogs, compare the results for gene patterns known to make possible the ability to successfully interbreed (we don't know nearly enough now to do this, so this is little like science fiction that portrays what we probably will be able to do in the near future). So, we have found, in effect, an intrinsic element that can be used to identify this or that concrete as dog or not dog. But it is only valid in the species' current genetic evolutionary context and we could only do this as an active process of a computer doing comparisons (like the mind actively integrating by shared characteristic while omitting the specific measurements).

This post has very little purpose and projects a level of genetic understanding we don't yet have. But it tickles me to see science moving towards paralleling the epistemological process of valid concept formation and arrive at the same result. (I know; what else would one expect? - but I'm not talking about the rational expectations, but rather a kind of delight as those expectations began crossing from potential to actual.) And I like to look for faint outlines of underlying similarties between disparate disciplines.

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p.s., I invite any critiques of my understanding or expression of the ideas above. I'm still working on integrating some of this.

Post 6

Sunday, July 27, 2008 - 12:30am

Species and Essence Part II

The problem with looking for the essence of dogness in the DNA of dogs is that what we find of relevance to dogness in the DNA of dogs is the presence of isolating mechanisms which isolate dog populations from interbreeding with non-dogs. While we may indeed find certain genetic sequences that are unique to dogs, this is always a matter of accident, of historical contingency.

Let us say that dogs have a unique amino acid sequence in their hemoglobin proteins. (DNA codes for sequences of amino acids - that is, genes code for proteins.) This unique hemoglobin might be found only in dogs (i.e., it is a property of - a quality unique to - dogs, as laughter is a property or proper quality of humans) but it is not the "essence" of doghood. Indeed, one could transplant the human DNA sequence for hemoglobin into a dog. The dog would still respire and interbreed with other dogs. It would not have changed into a human dog, with a partially human essence. Rather, it would have the accidental quality of having a DNA sequence for hemoglobin that was proper to humans. From a systematic standpoint, the dog, with its 39 pairs of chromosomes, would still essentially be a dog, because it could still interbreed with other dogs and produce offspring.

We come to the amazing conclusion that it is not the possession of any positive characteristics that defines a dog in a biological context, no special gene that makes a dog a dog, but rather the presence of reproductive barriers, such as differences in chromosome numbers, that separate dogs from foxes, cats and bears. The essence of being a species is being genetically isolated from other species.

Now, most species that people deal with are well defined groups obviously separate from other species which we encounter. Horses are well separated from donkeys and zebras with different chromosome counts. Horses have been separated from other common equine species for some time. Horses have developed unique properties like neighing that the braying asses and zebras do not show. So we can define most animal species for our purposes based on normal properties (proper qualities) that they evince. Yet neighing, even if we use it as the defining quality of the horse, is not an essential property in the same way that three-sidedness is for a triangle. A horse that does not neigh, but which interbreeds with other horses is still a horse. Indeed, an eyeless horse with three toes per foot and human hemoglobin would still be a horse if it could interbreed with other horses. This might irk an essentialist. But variation between the individuals of a species is necessary for evolution to occur. Any variation that still allows interbreeding is not essential variation in the biological sense.

Now, think of the dog. It doesn't happen in nature, but a purebred Chihuahua and a purebred St. Bernard could interbreed. Their DNA is compatible. The two breeds are breeds of one species. But this is a contingent fact. If all humans and all dog breeds except for the Chihuahua and the Bernard were to go extinct, then what are now undoubtedly two breeds in one species would instantly become different species. Why, if there would be no change in DNA? Because the two populations would be reproductively isolated. Male Chihuahuas would be incapable of siring puppies on female Bernards without human help. Female Chihuahuas would not be able to deliver Bernard puppies without human help. Eventually, given this de facto separation by physiology, the two separate populations would build up genetic differences by a process known as drift that would eventually make their DNA mutually incompatible. Were an alien to land on earth after thousands of generations of isolation between these populations, they would be unable to interbreed the two species.

The lack of biological essences is not merely a result of mind experiments. Many larger mammalian species are so well isolated from their close relatives that we can list many traits to distinguish them from their closest relatives. The difference between the African and the Indian Elephant, the Bactrian and the Dromedary Camel, the Lion and the Tiger is sufficient enough that the layman sees them as unambiguously distinct. Given this distinction, we can define them, the striped cat versus the maned cat, the one-humped camel versus the two-humped camel, and so forth. But the reason for this separation is that large species have relatively small populations, and smaller interbreeding populations tend toward internal uniformity. Successful smaller organisms, such as some birds and rodents, tend to populate large areas over which they show great variation. These groups tend to exhibit species in which each local population can interbreed with its neighbor, while populations at the opposite ends of the chains or rings cannot interbreed. From Wikipedia:

A classic example of ring species is the Larus gulls circumpolar species "ring". The range of these gulls forms a ring around the North Pole. The Herring Gull, which lives primarily in Great Britain and Ireland, can hybridize with the American Herring Gull (living in North America), which can also interbreed with the Vega or East Siberian Herring Gull, the western subspecies of which, Birula's Gull, can hybridize with Heuglin's gull, which in turn can interbreed with the Siberian Lesser Black-backed Gull (all four of these live across the north of Siberia). The last is the eastern representative of the Lesser Black-backed Gulls back in north-western Europe, including Great Britain. However, the Lesser Black-backed Gulls and Herring Gull are sufficiently different that they do not normally interbreed; thus the group of gulls forms a continuum except in Europe where the two lineages meet.

The question that arises in regard to such organisms is whether the populations at opposite ends of the arcs are separate species or not. By appearance they are separate species. But by their intermediate breeding partners they are one species. There is no essential characteristic to which we can appeal to answer the question. Again, only the facts of actual isolation or interbreeding matter, and as we saw in the question of the Chihuahua and the Bernard, whether extremes can interbreed is a contingency based upon the accidental presence or absence of intermediate forms.

The lack of such a thing as a biological or genetic essence of a species is again for the most part an academic question. But were mankind not such a competitive species, it is imaginable that the forms intermediate between us and
the Chimpanzees might have survived. Had they done so, it would be very difficult, or at least biologically arbitrary, to define man as a rational animal. Luckily for matchmakers and ethicists, Chimps have 24 pairs of chromosomes, while we have 23. The question of what parts of human nature are essential, and which are not, is not answerable by naive appeals to biology and genetics.

(Edited by Ted Keer on 7/27, 5:14am)

Post 7

Sunday, July 27, 2008 - 5:12am

http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/ArticleDiscussions/1567.shtml#3

The other presentations in the session The New Biological Essentialism are these:

“Biological Essentialism in Modern Systematics”

Olivier Rieppel (Field Museum), co-editor of

Interpreting the Hierarchy of Nature: From Systematic Patterns to Evolutionary Process Theories (Academic 1994)

“Homeostatic Property Clusters and Higher Taxa: Rethinking Natural Kinds and Monophyly”

Richard Boyd (Cornell), author of

In Mendel's Mirror: Philosophical Reflections on Biology (Oxford 2003)

“What Wrong with the New Biological Essentialism”

Marc Ereshefsky (Calgary), author of

The Poverty of the Linnaean Hierarchy: A Philosophical Study of Biological Taxonomy (Cambridge 2001)

More on Randian essence in this thread:

Classification in biology today is set out in Chapter 1 of On the Origin of Phyla by James W. Valentine (Chicago 2004).

(Edited by Stephen Boydstun on 7/27, 5:55am)

Post 8

Monday, July 28, 2008 - 6:58am

In connection with topics in the session The New Biological Essentialism, note Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change

by Joseph LaPorte (Cambridge 2004). See especially Chapter 1 “What Is a Natural Kind, and Do Biological Taxa Qualify?”

and Chapter 3 “Biological Kind Term Reference and the Discovery of Essence.”

I should mention also three papers in the collection Philosophical Issues in Aristotle's Biology,

edited by Allan Gotthelf and James G. Lennox (Cambridge 1987).
“Aristotle’s Biology Was Not Essentialist” by D.M. Balme
“Logical Difference and Biological Difference: The Unity of Aristotle’s Thought” by Pierre Pellegrin
“Kinds, Forms of Kinds, and the More and the Less in Aristotle’s Biology” by James G. Lennox (also here)

Thoughts on Essence from Objectivity

From “Capturing Concepts” in V1N1 (1990) by Stephen Boydstun

“Definition is a technique for keeping different kinds and sets of items distinct as the number of one’s concepts increases (Rand 1990, 40–45, 230–33). Rand supposed that we require verbal definitions to securely grasp any concepts beyond those which are of items plainly demonstrable in perception (ibid. 49–50).

“The essence of definition is essence. ‘A definition must identify the nature of the units [the existents falling under the subject concept], i.e., the essential characteristics without which the units would not be the kind of existents they are’ (Rand 1990, 42). When the existents falling under a concept have more than one distinguishing characteristic in common, Rand says that one must observe the relationships among those characteristics and select as defining the one that is most fundamental. ‘Metaphysically, a fundamental characteristic is that which makes the greatest number of others possible; epistemologically, it is the one that explains the greatest number of others’ (ibid., 45; see further 230–33 and Peikoff 1990, 102–3). Essence and explanation are intimately related. I take Rand’s ‘greatest number’ criterion for essence to be of a piece with the ‘unifying power’ criterion for explanation (Friedman 1983, 236–50).

. . .

“The [developmental] shift from conceiving in terms of characteristic features to conceiving in terms of defining features can be interpreted as a shift from formulation according to relatively atheoretical similarities and conjunctions to formulation according to more theoretical relations. We seek defining features, and we seek theoretical relations, especially causal relations, which yield them (Keil 1989, 34–57, 268–81; on the complexity of essence and causation in biological systems, see Oyama 1985, 10–23, 137–39).

“Reliance upon similarities and identities among relatively accessible surface properties is reasonable in our early conceptual formulations. Surface properties are in fact generated and constrained by deeper properties. The former are diagnostic of the latter. Surface similarities sometimes mislead, and we must regroup (e.g., Sibley and Ahlquist 1986); these are exceptions proving the heuristic (Medin and Ortony 1989, 185–86). We advance our theoretical understanding by reforming our concepts in accordance with ever deeper similarities and identities.” (36–38)

References

Friedman, M. 1983. Foundations of Space-Time Theories. Princeton.

Keil, F. 1989. Concepts, Kinds, and Cognitive Development. MIT.

Medin, D., and A. Ortony 1989. Psychological Essentialism. In Similarity and Analogical Reasoning. S. Vosniadou and A. Ortony, editors. Cambridge.

Oyama, S. 1985. The Ontogeny of Information. Cambridge.

Peikoff, L. 1990. The Synthetic-Analytic Dichotomy. In Rand 1990.

Rand, A. 1990. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Meridian.

Sibley, C.G., and J.E. Ahlquist 1986. Reconstructing Bird Phylogeny by Comparing DNA’s. Sci. Amer. (Feb):82–92.

From “A Perfectionist-Egoist Theory of the Good” in V2N5 (1997) by Irfan Khawaja

“To adopt medieval terminology, the ratio essendi, the essence, of the human good would have to consist in the actualization, to the highest degree, of those irreducible capabilities that make an agent human. The ratio cognoscendi of the good, the familiar properties by which its essence is known, would consist in the more superficial properties by which we typically judge people to flourish as humans. (124)*

*To illustrate the ratio essendi/cognoscendi distinction, we might say that the ratio essendi of the chemical element sulfur is its atomic number, while its ratio cognoscendi consists of, say, its distinctive smell. The example comes from Matson 1976.” (140–41)

Reference

Matson, W. 1976. Sentience. U of California.

From “Pursuing Similarity” in V2N6 (1998) by Merlin Jetton

“Leibniz did not concur with Locke’s distinction between nominal and real essence. . . . Locke said that the general and universal did not belong to the existence of things, but are the workmanship of the understanding. Leibniz took relations to be as fully real as individual things. The resemblance relation which constitutes generality is a reality. Man’s combining or not combining such and such ideas has no bearing on essences, genera, and species, since they depend only upon possibilities, and these are independent of our thinking.” (55–56)

Essence is fundamentally nothing but the possibility of the thing under consideration. Something which is thought possible is expressed by a definition; but if this definition does not at the same time express this possibility then it is merely nominal, since in this case we can wonder whether the definition expresses anything real—that is, possible—until experience comes to our aid by acquainting us a posteriori with the reality (when the thing actually occurs in the world). This will do, when reason cannot acquaint us a priori with the reality of the thing defined by exhibiting its cause or the possibility of its being generated. So it is not within our discretion to put our ideas together as we see fit, unless the combination is justified either by reason, showing its possibility, or by experience, showing its actuality and hence its possibility. (NEU 3.3.15)

Reference

Leibniz, G.W. 1981 [1765, 1704]. New Essays on Human Understanding (NEU). P. Remnant and J. Bennett, translators and editors. Cambridge.

(Edited by Stephen Boydstun on 7/29, 5:42am)

Post 9

Monday, July 28, 2008 - 1:40pm

The Velociraptor and the Sparrow (Species and Essence Part III)

A species, such as Equus caballus, is a biological population, whereas our notion of "horse" is a concept with a definition. The two are not the same thing, even though the equivocal use of the word species leads to some confusion. Human concepts are tools of cognition. They may refer to all sorts of kinds. A well-defined (relatively uniform and isolated) biological species can be treated as a kind, although its generic status is biologically determined not by an essence, but by isolation as a breeding population.

When higher taxa are defined phenotypically - by common traits such as the possession of feathers in birds, or lactation from modified sweat glands in mammals, these higher taxa correspond to kinds which can be defined conceptually. But the modern trend has been toward defining taxa not by common traits, but by common descent. A bird is the first "bird" and all its descendents. This means that what it is to be a bird can "change" as one's identification of the earliest fossil "bird" changes. Also, defining a taxon as an ancestor and all its descendents means that the group is a population of concrete individuals. This cladistic notion of a taxon is why birds are now often described as dinosaurs, and why groupings like invertebrate and reptile (excluding mammals and birds) are treated as invalid. (Reptiles are now often redefined as all non-mammalian amniotes. This necessarily includes birds in the reptilia. Any definition of reptile which excludesw both mammals and birds is seen by strict cladists as a mere popular term with no scientific validity.) While most biologists accept the cladistic methodology of analysis, the cladistic form of classification, which when strictly applied results in an infinite multiplication of clades (groups defined by an ancestor and all its descendents) while relegating grades (groups defined by the common possession of certain characters) to popular "unscientific" usage.

In effect, strict cladistic systematics results in the removal of groups definable by characteristics from the realm of biological systematics. In essence, this means that the taxon including gorillas chimps and humans is no more or less valid biologically than one including only humans, since each is a well-defined population of an ancestor and all its descendents. Likewise, the group including velociraptors and birds is no less valid than that including only birds. The cladistic distinction between sharks on one side, versus not only bony fish, but also birds, mammals, turtles and all tetrapods on the other is also equally valid. The layman might ask how useful a classification which includes velociraptors not with Allosaurus, but with birds, or the tuna not with the shark, but with the dolphin could be? there is definitely a usefulness to the awareness of such relationships to the biologist. But an awareness that bony fish and land vertebrates do share characteristics that neither shares with sharks should not have to come at the cost of denying that sharks and bony fish share many characteristics that land vertebrates do not. Strict cladism would adhere to a politically correct methodology at the cost of treating the concept fish as valid only if it also includes porcupines, rattlesnakes and ostriches.

Let's return to the horse. Stephen Jay Gould wrote an essay in his 1984 book Hen's Teeth and Horses Toes called "What, if Anything, is a Zebra?" According to then recent analyses (I do not know if their conclusions are still considered valid) it appeared that the closest relative of the horse was one of six species of zebra, and that as a whole, the group that includes all zebras would also include the horse. In effect, zebras are not striped horses, but horses are rather stripeless zebras. In the real world, the horse is what it is regardless of whether the zebra exists or not. While one cannot ignore matters of common descent, the classification of higher taxa needs to be useful. The best way to classify higher taxa is to recognize essential characteristics, which can be identified with innovations which allow the colonization of new niche spaces. We identify birds as birds not because all birds descend from whatever the most currently known fossil species is, but because they share an essential trait, wing-powered flight, that closely related sister groups such as the velociraptor do not. This is not to deny that raptors and birds form a valid co-grouping based on descent. They do. But acknowledgment of that fact should not lead to the cognitive burden of emphasizing the relationship of the velociraptor to the sparrow, while downplaying the relationship of the velociraptor and the tyrannosaur.

(Edited by Ted Keer on 7/28, 11:48pm)

Post 10

Tuesday, July 29, 2008 - 7:40am

Forthcoming by James G. Lennox:

“Essentialism and the Fixity of Kinds in the Living World” in A Companion to Aristotle,

edited by Georgios Anagnostopoulos (Feb 2009).

*********************************************************
Another session of likely interest to RoR readers: Induction without Rules

“The War on Induction”
Peter Achinstein (Johns Hopkins), editor of
Science Rules - A Historical Introduction to Scientific Methods

“There Are No Universal Rules for Induction”
John D. Norton (Pittsburgh), author of
"A Little Survey of Induction"

“Hume and Induction without Rules”
Thomas Kelly (Princeton)
Works

“Evidence and General Rules: A Response to Achinstein, Norton, and Kelly”
John Worrall (London School of Economics)
Works

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Related in Objectivity: “Induction on Identity” (1991)
Part 1 (V1N2 33–46); Part 2 (V1N3 1–56)
**********************************************************

(Edited by Stephen Boydstun on 7/30, 7:36am)

Post 11

Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - 7:47am

Mathematics and Scientific Representation

Additional Presentations Likely of Interest

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In the session Applied Mathematics and Philosophy of Science

“The Value of Mathematics for Scientific Confirmation”

Christopher Pincock (Purdue), working on

“Essential Models and Explanatory Mathematics”

Robert Batterman (Western Ontario), author of

The Devil in the Details: Asymptotic Reasoning in Explanation, Reduction, and Emergence

“What If There Are No Mathematical Entities? Lessons for Scientific Realism”

Stathis Psillos (Athens), author of

Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the session Evolutionary Theory as a Theory of Forces

“A Non-Newtonian Newtonian Model of Evolutionary Theory: The View from ZFEL”

Robert Brandon (Duke), coeditor of

Integrating Development and Evolution

“Selection and Drift: Forces, Causes, or Epiphenomena?”

Elliot Sober (Wisconsin), author of

The Nature of Selection

“Not a Sure Thing: Fitness and Causation”

Denis Walsh (Toronto), author of

“The Pomp of Superfluous Causes: Interpreting the Modern Synthesis”

Philosophy of Science 74(3):281–303 (July 2007)

[Related: A, B]

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Post 12

Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - 9:32am

Thank you, Stephen - these are all interesting [tho you know you're pulling me away from my art by doing this..;-)]

Post 13

Tuesday, October 19, 2010 - 7:30am

Deleted

(Edited by Stephen Boydstun on 10/19, 6:24pm)

Post 14

Tuesday, October 19, 2010 - 10:35am

Richard Samuels – “Do Human Beings Have a Nature?”
................

Oh please... ALL living organisms have a nature...

Post 15

Tuesday, October 19, 2010 - 10:47am

Gee, Robert, I thought we had diversified so far that we left the universe of known things... things that could actually be pinned down as having any properties.

Should we be thinking about what we are if we aren't humans... or at least don't have common properties any more? :-)

[note: for those totally lost in the nonsense of the modern academy, the above is all sarcasm.]
(Edited by Steve Wolfer on 10/19, 10:47am)

Post 16

Wednesday, October 20, 2010 - 5:57am

Yeah, post-modern existentialists (a lot of scientists and most college professors) think humans don't have a nature. It lets them get away with murder.

Ed

e.g., The Moors Murders, actually "murder/rapes" of children, committed by existentialist Ian Brady (with the help of his girlfriend, Myra)

Post 17

Thursday, October 21, 2010 - 5:52am

I’m sorry I posted the samples (about thirty) of intriguing topics at the meeting of PSA and HSS next month in Montreal. This year they did not make abstracts of the papers available, and that left only the titles by which to get a sense of current scholarship. Posting the thin information I did evidently stirred nothing positive.

From the fact that someone here gave a gold sign to Robert’s simple (and innocent) remark on the title of Prof. Samuels’ paper, but no sign to my list (which required about an hour for me to produce), I gather that such information, at least when it is so thin, is unwelcome to some reader(s) here.

In a couple of years, all of the papers at the PSA conference will be published in the PSA journal Philosophy of Science, to which I have subscribed for many years. Samuels’ paper will be included. I may add a note about it in this thread then.

Meanwhile, one can get a glimpse into his work here. Similarly for any of the other presenters (a, b): if you google “name of the presenter” +philosophy, you can quickly get to their work accomplished and their work in progress.

Post 18

Thursday, October 21, 2010 - 6:47am

Stephen,

It's not as bad as you think.

Often times, scientists title their studies with catchy phrases in order to get everyone's attention. Rand did this with: The Virtue of Selfishness. And just because I disagree with some major scientists working 30 years in their own field, it isn't all bad or pointless. It either reveals my ignorance or theirs, and that is at least some kind of progress. I feel like you wanted us to embrace these scientists' work or conclusions (and we let you down). To remind you, when scientists draw conclusions and generalize, they do so as philosophers.

**A cursory glance at a piece of work by Samuels (http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/samuels58/rationalitywars.pdf) reveals that he accepts some of the wrong premises of mind theorists working within what he calls as "the heuristics and biases program" (hereafter: "h&b").

For 3rd party readers, this program has studied the kinds of conclusions folks draw when given certain artificially-presented problems, such as Bayesian reasoning problems dealing with multiple probability (a "prior probability" of a variable, and a "posterior probability of outcome, given the first variable). Folks often miscalculate probabilities of artificially-presented problems, so much so that some in this camp have decried human reason. Samuels pits this camp against another (the evolutionary psychologists; hereafter: ep) who claim a performatory contradiction exists when we say that human reasoning "doesn't work (or doesn't work well)."

On the one hand, we have h&b's claiming that they have proven that reason isn't good enough to be successful with probability, and on the other hand, we have ep's claiming that man could only have survived if reason worked for him -- i.e., was "good enough" -- in his pre-historic environment. The argument then comes down to the question of whether the artificially-presented problems match the kind of problems available to man in situations that would match his ancient environment. On page 29, Samuels refers to this last as "proper domains."

But I can honestly ask how any of this is different from a simple skeptic's argument involving context-dropping?

Answer: it doesn't. Now, what does that mean? Well, it means Samuel's essay -- while appealing to those in their respective fields -- doesn't offer much of anything new. It offers some progress, but only as a form of compromise with the skeptics (the h&b's). We can agree that artificially-presented probability problems trip man up, but if we put them in paleologic form, then man would do fine. While this might be an interesting avenue of research for curiosity's sake (I'd like to know the results), it doesn't advance human thought regarding rationality -- which was the intented result of Samuel's essay.

Samuels bought into the philosophically-bankrupt view of rationality put forward by skeptics of all ages (i.e., that rationality is something that leads toward omnisicience). It's the same with Game Theory researchers who declare that man isn't rational with respect to risk-avoidance and with respect to throwing competitors under the bus when he gets the chance to get away with it in the short run).

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 10/21, 6:52am)

Post 19

Thursday, October 21, 2010 - 8:17am