So I just put up this lengthy gripe about Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini, and there were a bunch of other things I wanted to say that I couldn’t squeeze in, so here are a few left-over comments.
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The best take-down so far is Block and Kitcher’s review — go read that. Basically, they approach the book from the perspective of both biology and philosophy, and Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini got ’em both wrong.
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Larry Moran takes on the one-sidedness of the Ruse review. Ruse panned Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini, but he also threw out the baby with the bathwater: don’t neglect the role of chance in order to promote selection as paramount.
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Salon has a truly awful interview with Fodor. I don’t know why they do this, but Salon always gets these suck-up interviewers:
But unlike most of these attacks, “What Darwin Got Wrong,” a new book by Jerry Fodor, a professor of philosophy and cognitive sciences at Rutgers University, and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, a professor of cognitive science at the University of Arizona, comes not from the religious right, but from two atheist academics with — surprise — a nuanced argument about the shortcomings of Darwin’s theories. Their book details (in very technical language) how recent discoveries in genetics have thrown into question many of our perceived truths about natural selection, and why these have the potential to undermine much of what we know about evolution and biology.
Wrong all the way through. It’s not technical: it’s a couple of non-biologists writing way outside their discipline. I’ve heard nothing about “recent discoveries in genetics” revealed in their book, and I’ve seen nothing that calls selection and evolution into question. The interviewer simply gives away the game and accepts Fodor’s premises right there in the introduction.
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In that same Salon interview, Fodor gripes about blogs.
Most of the backlash to the book so far has been on blogs, which have been pretty obscene and debased. What’s upsetting is that they tell you that they think you’re an idiot, but they don’t tell you why — people who aren’t part of the field or who may not, in many cases, know much about Darwin. I’m not sure that all people who have been blogging about it are very sophisticated. It’s frustrating because you don’t know who you’re talking to.
How odd. There hasn’t been that much of a response to Fodor on the blogs, and I’ve been looking. Is he complaining about Brian Leiter? The Nature Network? Brian Switek? Jerry Coyne, perhaps? I don’t think any of those people match his description of his critics as “obscene,” “debased,” or unsophisticated. I’d only apply those terms to the reviewers at the Discovery Institute, but they all seem to love his book.
Is anybody else marveling at the irony of the philosopher Fodor complaining that his critics aren’t part of the field that he is criticizing?
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I left out one of the most inane paragraphs in the New Scientist summary.
…the internal evidence to back this imperialistic selectionism strikes us as very thin. Its credibility depends largely on the reflected glamour of natural selection which biology proper is said to legitimise. Accordingly, if natural selection disappears from biology, its offshoots in other fields seem likely to disappear as well. This is an outcome much to be desired since, more often than not, these offshoots have proved to be not just post hoc but ad hoc, crude, reductionist, scientistic rather than scientific, shamelessly self-congratulatory, and so wanting in detail that they are bound to accommodate the data, however that data may turn out. So it really does matter whether natural selection is true.
That is simply unbelievable. Is Fodor really trying to argue that natural selection, in all of its demonstrations and instances, is FALSE? Simply because he doesn’t like selectionist implications and because some authors have been overzealous in making up just-so stories? That’s insane. Selection is a fact. It’s a well-established part of evolution. That some examples have not been soundly supported doesn’t mean that the good evidence is going to disappear from biology.
To the philosophers / cog sci types out there- is Fodor generally taken seriously by his peers any more? My somewhat uninformed impression is, not so much.
Hey! What’s reductionistic [sic] doing among all those swear words?
Translation: The reviewer doesn’t understand it, but is impressed by the jargon.
STFU, Rogers, until you are competent to deal with the issues.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
“What’s upsetting is that they tell you that they think you’re an idiot, but they don’t tell you why”
Actually they do. Mordor got the science completely wrong. Some of which is high school level biology. I suspect these guys are so ignorant about the biology that they can’t even understand why they are wrong when someone points it out to them in great detail.
“I’m not sure that all people who have been blogging about it are very sophisticated.”
Many of them are well known, well educated and accomplished biologists. The fact that he doesn’t know any biologists is obvious.
It’s frustrating because you don’t know who you’re talking to.”
So Fodor doesn’t know what a biologist is much less who they are. He could always read the profiles and look up their papers and books, read their blogs, and read wikipedia. I never heard of Fodor before this book either. Wasn’t much of a loss.
I don’t understand why anybody, other than scientists familiar with the field, would expect to write about science and not criticized about getting the science wrong. Especially philosophers, who tend to ignore facts which get in the way of their airy arguments.
Well, if recent is 1900 or later…
Yes, I saw that a day or two ago (was impressed), which is why I was surprised that such a piece of ignorant clap-trap as the Salon piece cropped up afterward.
Not Philip Kitcher who, as PZ noted, wrote an excellent take-down with Block.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Sorry for the off-topic link, but I think it will be forgiven for the awesomeness:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18559-stop-funding-homeopathy-say-british-mps.html
Looks like Britain’s giving homeopathy the one-finger salute!
Point conceded to Glen D.
@Steve LaBonne (#1)
Lest anybody gets confused, there is the Jerry Fodor that has co-authored this book, and then there is Janet Fodor, who, for the last decades, has been doing very cool work on language acquisition and language processing. Janet Fodor is a respected scholar, whose papers are a pleasure to read. Jerry Fodor, I’ve occasionally glanced at his stuff and decided I had better things to spend my time on.
The Salon article really doesn’t surprise me. They have a habit of publishing ridiculous psuedoscience and crank articles (apparently to present a “balanced” perspective).
On an unrelated note, their new site design is an abomination and I’m still pissed they dropped Keith Knight from their comics section.
How deeply mysterious. Do you suppose it could be because blogs can manage a faster turnaround time than traditional publications?
I’ll tell you why: it’s because you’re an idiot.
Accordingly, if natural selection disappears from biology, its offshoots in other fields seem likely to disappear as well.
So, fitness functions will disappear from genetic algorithms? Are you nuts? It won’t work, just as evolution won’t work without natural selection.
I saw Fodor present this material a couple years ago in a series of three lectures, and the audience reaction (mixed cog sci, philosophy, and biology) was fairly skeptical. However, I should make one point– since this hasn’t been clear in the posts– that in no way do the authors quarrel with the idea of “descent with modification”, only with the relative role of environmental pressures and specifically the notion of selecting FOR a specific trait. The authors’ program is simply NOT creation “science” or “philosophy”, which some intemperate comments might lead one to believe. This whole brouhaha makes me wonder if, given Darwin’s position in the middle of the culture wars, it’s harder for scientific theories of evolution to undergo standard patterns of change and development. Anyone who is skeptical about the dominant position immediately is perceived as a friend of cranks and cooks.
Did he seriously, unironically, refer to “imperialistic selectionism”? The fact that he said this alone, and then the fact that he segued from that into using ‘reductionist’ as a swear word, tells me most of what I need to know.
It’s all a little too postmodern for my tastes.
I have to wonder if Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini are paid by creationists to do this and say they are atheists. If they don’t regard evolution as the mechanism by which biology operates it does raise the question as to which alternative they propose. I don’t think there is enough evidence to say so at this point, obviously, but it might be worth some rudimentary sleuthing to find out.
I think questioning evolution by selection in the abstract sense, as that last quoted paragraph in New Scientists has done, may be even more absurd than questioning evolution by selection as it pertains to biology. Evolution by selection has been demonstrated in computer science and you can write it down in the form of statistical iterations. The question would then become is evolution is not heavily affected by natural selection, what mechanism is preventing it?
Which of course is why Gould and Eldredge were not regarded as serious biologists by their peers. Oh, wait…
Fodor is not engaging in “scepticism”. He is setting up and demolishing idiotic strawmen which bear no resemblance at all to anything in the actual practice of evolutionary biology, and your own babble about “selecting FOR a specific trait” shows that you are not well-informed enough to detect this, making your comment of as little interest as Fodor’s writings.
Prometheus @16: I don’t think they’re actually thinking that far ahead as to propose an alternative, or that they’re trying to explain even a fraction of the great success of the modern synthesis.
Not proposing an alternative does, however, leave the door wide open for creationists, as we’ve seen. Perhaps they’re gunning for a stealth Templeton?
Well they are. As well as being friends of cranks and kooks, they are themselves crackpots, cranks, and kooks.
Fodor knows no biology, less than a high schooler. So, of course, he gets it all wrong and litters his book with his made up strawpeople which he proceeds to callously murder.
To be taken seriously if one is making a major attack on a well established theory, one has to know what the theory says, what the data and evidence is for it, and have some coherent reasons and data about why it is wrong. Fodor fails at all of this.
So Chris, are you skeptical of the Germ Theory of Disease? Quantum Mechanics? The Cloud Theory of Rain? Round Earth Theory? Heliocentrism? There are people who doubt all of these theories. Since they have no data or real scientific reasons, we just label them religious fanatics, crackpots, kooks, and sometimes….philosophers.
It’s like playing dodgeball. It’s not that the last one standing has been selected for. It’s that the less-able players are selected against.
The final outcome is pretty much the same, though.
It is certainly possible. The creationists spend c. $50 million/year, all on propaganda and lies. The going rate to suborn someone used to be 30 pieces of silver. No idea what that would be in modern money.
But it might not be likely in this case. IIRC, Fodor thinks evolution and evolutionary psychology is creeping up on his field of philosophy and he is going to push it back. It could just be gutter level academic politics.
Plus, who pays much attention to most philosophers nowadays?* Some of these guys are like disturbed kids seeking attention. “Hey mom, look, I just tossed my trike and the dog into the swimming pool.”
*There are some good philosophers, Popper, Forrest, Pennock, Wilkins, Sartre, Russell, and lots more. There are also a lot of really lame ones and the list keeps getting longer and longer. Sturgeon’s law. 90% of anything is garbage.
The more I’ve read on this, the more I think Fodor has it backwards. It seems like he’s suggesting since biologists can’t tell what’s being selected for that there’s nothing being selected for.
Which of course is why Gould and Eldredge were not regarded as serious biologists by their peers. Oh, wait…
I should have been clearer: there is a higher risk than in other fields that criticisms of core ideas in politically embattled fields are incorrectly dismissed or interpreted as being politically motivated. I was considering whether this is negative (culture warriors impair scientific discovery) or positive (culture warriors actual support scientific discovery) with respect to the state of current knowledge.
Your assertion, unaccompanied by evidence (whereas I actually produced a counterexample). The reception of Fodor’s nonsense is no evidence at all for such a proposition.
Read the first page of the Letters section for the Salon piece. The letter writers just whack this book, the authors, and the interviewer around.
I am going to get in on this racket – lawyer publishes a book arguing that scientists are wrong to claim the earth is round and that they are ignoring evidence that increasingly shows it is an oblate spheroid – I have done considerable research on this already – Wikipedia
Fodor shows his intellectual consistency in the first paragraph of the interview:
WTF. Can’t make up your mind? How, uh, philosophical.
And can you give a better exposition of “holes”? Could they be things actually wrong with the ToE or could they just be as yet unexplained?
A little farther he says:
WTF!!11!!! Not clever enough to figure out that claws ->-> nails?
Gobsmacked double facepalm.
All this talk of biology, but what of planetary formation? In all this time when people have been arguing over whether complexity can emerge through multiple generations, it’s forgotten that planets themselves can’t design themselves. Gravity, plate tectonics and erosion are meant to be sufficient to explain the beauty and elegance of the Grand Canyon? I think not!
Time for someone with a chemistry Ph.D(or mathematics or philosophy) to come out with Laplace’s Black Box, and The Edge Of Planetary Formation to capture those who don’t think the Nebula Hypothesis is sufficient by itself to explain the complexity and beauty of this planet. They could make millions!
In some ways, it very healthy for outsiders to challenge the “conventional wisdom” in any scientific field.
It keeps folks honest and in a few rare cases it leads to greater understanding.
But the likelihood that Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini have uncovered some fundamental flaw in natural selection that other scientists over the past 150+ years have somehow missed is pretty slim.
The xkcd comic has already commented on this tendency for scientific outsiders to think they’ve discovered a fundamental flaw in a scientific field:
http://xkcd.com/675/
The hidden caption on the xkcd comic says it all:
“I mean, what’s more likely — that I have uncovered fundamental flaws in this field that no one in it has ever thought about, or that I need to read a little more? Hint: it’s the one that involves less work.”
raven @19 : Don’t forget to add “Dennet” to the good list. He’s done an awful lot of good work within the specific field of evolutionary theory.
Steve LaBonne #1
It seems that every time a philosopher, particularly one who’s had some prominence in non-philosophic circles, makes a fool of himself, all the philosophers say “oh he’s not a real philosopher, all us other philosophers don’t think so.”
On this blog I’ve seen this tactic used with Alvin Plantinga, William Wimsatt, Richard Rorty, and Michael Ruse. These guys spew bullshit, get called on their bullshit, and the philosophy types play the No True Scotsman fallacy by denouncing these guys as No True Philosophers.
Now before the philosophical fanbois jump all over me, I will admit that some philosophers do have interesting and useful things to say. This is a tiny minority of philosophers BUT THERE ARE A FEW WORTHWHILE PHILOSOPHERS! Pay attention to this, philosophy fanatics, because I am not going to accept your snooty “well, you don’t know anything about what philosophers do.”
I have maintained for some time that the vast majority of philosophers are professional bullshitters whose main product is professional grade bullshit. Fodor is just carrying on in this time honored tradition.
Yes, and sommeliers! Bartenders even!
But, see, there’s “skeptical” and then there’s “wrong” and then again there’s “ignorant and arrogant about it”.
The first is a core tenet of science, the second is the usual case and nothing to be ashamed of, if one admits it later, unless the cause is the third.
With these guys (by whom I mean everybody who “doubts” “Darwin” or is “skeptical” of the truth of biological evolution micro or macro, descent with mod, or the central role of natural selection in adaptation to environments (biotic and abiotic)(and genetic)) it’s the third.
All this shit really is that well established. Skepticism about the theory (as opposed to the details) is stoopid.
Fuck these dolts. Bring back the guy with the balloon-animal development hypothesis. All we need now is somebody with a criticism of Darwinism that revolves around some sort of funnel cake and cotton candy metaphor and we can have a Moron Fair. I wonder how many Discovery Institute Fellows can fit in a Volkswagen?
Please. You couldn’t get Berlinski’s head in a Volkswagen.
OK, man, you made me spew my tea with that remark.
Your assertion, unaccompanied by evidence (whereas I actually produced a counterexample). The reception of Fodor’s nonsense is no evidence at all for such a proposition.
Proposition: Alternative scientific theories more likely to be incorrectly dismissed in politically embattled fields than in other ones. This is a very hard proposition to find evidence for or against. Yes, alternative theories have been accepted in biology, but the proposition has a comparative form- so evidence must get at whether Gould & Eldredge were hampered or not by biology being politically embattled relative to if it had not been. Your “counterexample” is evidence only for a weaker proposition, namely that political embattlement is not sufficient to prevent the acceptance of new theoretical propositions (thankfully!).
Anyway, the idea is interesting, regardless of whether its easy to put together an experiment to test it. I’m personally inclined to think it’s not such a bad thing, a little politics makes sure the money keeps flowing and keeps everyone energized. But, I do wonder about what negative impacts this sort of politicization may have. (As a proxy for politicization, one might look at highly factional fields, like Geology in the early 20th century. Continental drift, which has turned out to be right, took years to get accepted, since geology had been paralyzed by a couple of strong factions before then).
I’m sure Fodor sees nothing wrong with his “people who aren’t part of the field” comment. When your sphere is how to think, there’s an obvious risk of believing that everything is your field. Fortunately, not all philosophers are quite so arrogant. From the excellent Block and Kitcher article:
#31:
I hope you don’t include Harry G. Frankfurt in that group! His book On Bullshit is the opposite of bullshit.
Chris — what is your f’n point?
The authors are infantile (as in below naive) in their foundations, assertions and conclusions. That is obvious to anyone that knows anything on the subject.
Competent, qualified, objective and initially interested practitioners have critiqued their premises and assertions with appropriate rigor and properly labeled them wrong and then explained why.
The authors obviously do not have integrity – intellectually or otherwise – else they’d admit their logic and factual failings. Instead they continue to spread their obfuscations and fairy-tales and the media (certain parts of of it) continue to give them unearned platforms and adulation of sorts.
Why do you see those that have a real horse in the race doing what Doctors are supposed to do – TEACH, GUIDE, CORRECT – as being unfair to the those that make an unjust mockery of their field?
While I’d tentatively agree with this, I’d like to point out that the concept of evolution has been politicized not by those with knowledge of the science, but by those specifically without knowledge of the science. Hell, many of them have demonstrated a lack of knowledge of science itself, both the epistemology and the practice.
While your proposition might be applicable to AGW, I find it hard to imagine it applied to evolution in general, and neo-Darwinism specifically.
Most notably, most of the people attacking modern evolution do so politically, and not scientifically. This book appears to follow that trend — rather than presenting a coherent demonstration of a flaw (or multiple flaws) in the modern science, they instead present an ill-informed potpourri of quasi-science and appeal to ignorance. (Granted, I have not read the book — I’m going strictly on reviews, and on their recent essay shilling the book.)
Science is vulnerable only to other science, not overviews or philosophical treatments of science. The idea that scientists should bother accepting thoughts in the field when those thoughts come from people not of the field, and not expressed scientifically, is ludicrous.
Really: if you want to overturn a scientific theory, use science. Otherwise: shut the fuck up. It’s a simple little algorithm.
Chris #36
Wegener’s continental drift theory had several problems (as explained by the font of all knowledge, wikipedia):
Continental drift was rejected because of some serious problems with the idea. These problems were answered by plate tectonics.
Gotta remember to use the close blockquote . . . all but the top paragraph my original typing.
His point is that scientists can’t tell kooks, crackpots, wackos, and religious fanatics apart from people who have real data and real hypothesis.
He is wrong.
It isn’t the fact that evolution has been unmercifully attacked for 150 years that makes it so hard to falsify.
The hardest theories to falsify are the ones that turn out to be true. The US National Academy of Science pointed out that after 150 years of trying, the theory of evolution is unlikely to be ever falsified.
And, Oran, have those few instances of intemperate invective (it happens in science and always has) prevented Gould from remaining widely regarded as a significant evolutionary theorist whose work has to be taken into account and argued with even if one disagrees with it? Not at all. Which is my point. Fodor will never be treated as such, because unlike Gould he has nothing to bring to the table.
I’d like to point out that the concept of evolution has been politicized not by those with knowledge of the science, but by those specifically without knowledge of the science
Yes, that was my point. Given that there are non- (and in often, anti-) science forces acting, is there a negative impact on real scientists as mistakes in existing theories are corrected?
Re: philosophers and science. Philosophers (logicians especially) seem to me to be qualified to critique problems in the logic of scientific theories. However, sadly logic doesn’t seem to be an important topic in philosophy these days…
No. Continental drift wasn’t accepted because of a lack of mechanism. Pretty much as soon as a mechanism was discovered, geologists changed their tune. And that was to plate tectonics, not continental drift.
Ah! The “alternative” propositions by kooks, whackos, and loons get tainted, even if they are on the right track, discouraging real scientists from perhaps empirically exploring those propositions. Is that close?
If so: sounds about right. But what are the chances that the kooks, whackos, and loons are correct?
Hm, Fodor seems to think that critiquing natural selection in biology will lessen the problem of overly functionalist approaches in philosophy and the social sciences. It’s just not neccessary- these things can be critiqued in their own disciplines quite well already. He’s got the wrong target. I’ve seen alot of people make this assumption- that if politically-motivated applications of scientific theories to other areas have been half-assed and destructive then that must mean that the original scientific theory they were drawing from must be flawed.
Funny enough alot of the postmodernists who make this mistake love to turn around and use scientific jargon themselves to validate their own stuff.
Using that language makes it sound so inflammatory. Surely the reason that selection is so readily used by biologists because of what it can explain. Explain the elephant’s trunk without selection. Explain our wrist and ankles without selection. Explain camouflage without selection. Explain wings without selection.
This is the problem, as much as people want to think there’s some kind of conspiracy to keep natural selection as part of biology, the most obvious reason why is that natural selection has the explanatory power to account for elements of life like no other and has the empirical evidence to support it.
‘Tis Himself:
I hope you’ve noticed that “the best take-down so far” according to PZ is by two philosophers.
Ned Block used to be Jerry Fodor’s colleague in Philosophy at MIT, and Phil Kitcher is one of the very top guys in philosophy of science.
I, for one, wouldn’t say that Fodor is “no true philosopher.” Fodor’s definitely a philosopher. This is one of the times he’s gone off the rails, though—and exactly as I would expect, other philosophers are jumping on him, and slapping him down hard for being a doofus.
That is exactly what I’d expect given that I think most philosophers are not kooks or just “professional grade bullshitters.”
Yes, philosophy is a field in which this kind of bullshit can happen. It’s also one in which many people in the field notice that it’s bullshit, and say so.
Low, I’d bet. But it reminds me of the expression “a stopped clock is right twice a day.” Then again, that expression is older than digital clocks. To find the proper metaphor, we must determine if kooks are more like analog clocks or digital clocks.
I really wish those philosophers who claim that philosophy actually has something useful to offer we scientists, would get their own house together, and educate or eject the thousands of professional philosophers who have severe cases of ‘foot-in-mouth’ syndrome when it comes to anything testable.
But they don’t, it seems.
It is left to scientists to point out just how ignorant are many philosophers, not other philosophers. (Rare exceptions noted)
I’ve always thought that the creationist interest in particular fields of science like biology and geology were rather arbitrary.
I quickly recognised that creationists are only keen to ‘debunk’ science that puts the lie to their religious myths. If engineering held profound implications for the christian creation myths, those fuckers would be out in the street protesting the construction of new office buildings. The current battleground may be evolution but their war is religious, not intellectual.
They don’t have a genuine interest in truth of the natural world and as a rule, they don’t have plausible scientific theories of their own. They are just desperate to keep science off of god’s lawn.
Point wasn’t to equate Fodor & Gould: point was to illustrate that biologists haven’t always taken kindly to anyone who questioned their explanatory tools. And whether or not Gould should be taken into account is precisely the question taken up by a lot of this kind of invective–there were those who’d not have had him at the table.
Now, a decade or two or three on from the writings that raised this ire (and much intervening work more or less supportive of many of Gould’s positions) everyone is a pluralist. Then, everyone claimed to be a pluralist but many only grudgingly acknowledged anything but selection and resented anyone who questioned adaptionist explanations for (pick your trait).
It’s not just about invective, but about professional ambition, shoddy science, bad motive and imperialist tendencies . . . which not coincidentally is how Fodor first got on this hobbyhorse (with an attack on EP).
My favourite takedown of his article “Why Pigs Don’t Have Wings” was by the British philosopher Simon Blackburn.
Nor have chemists, physicists, geologists… this is how human beings sometimes behave, even ones who should know better.
None of which supports Chris’s claims.
The existence of natural selection isn’t much of a question in biology.
We see it and deal with it every day in medicine and agriculture among other places.
Evolutionary theory predicted that a new flu pandemic would happen and about when. We’ve already seen how that worked out with the swine flu. It also predicts that it would become resistant to the main drug, Tamiflu. Which is happening.
We’ve been developing new antibiotics and anti-everythings for decades now. Because the pathogens keep evolving resistance to whatever is used against them.
In agriculture, part of the success of the Green revolution was breeding pathogen resistant crops. It worked well, but everyone knows this is an ongoing process. We develop resistant crops, the pathogens evolve to attack those resistant crops. It is an ongoing evolutionary arms race.
Natural selection isn’t some abstract entity hanging out in Plato’s ideal space. For medicine and agriculture, it is an everyday reality that we see and deal with on a routine basis. This only matters to people if they want to eat and stay alive.
There is also a vast experimental literature on natural selection. Evolutionary biology is both a historical and an experimental field.
Fodor and MPP made a classic error. Babbling on about something they knew nothing about.
His point is that scientists can’t tell kooks, crackpots, wackos, and religious fanatics apart from people who have real data and real hypothesis.
He is wrong.
My point is wondering if the extreme politicization of fields (by non- or anti-scientific forces) negatively impacts scientist’s willingness to do this. It’s not about ability — it’s about willingness. I actually completely agree scientists can recognize kooks instantly. But, they may still do “the wrong thing” in some cases, for political reasons, leading to a detriment of the field (whether or not this is counterbalanced by other positives of having a politically energized field is a matter of debate).
Apologies, I was supposed just to highlight the word willingness but I’m an HTML idiot.
Yawn, OK still doesn’t get it. Most philosophy, especially that which has no grounding to reality, is sophistry. As was Fodor’s work. Tell your fellow philosoph’s to leave science alone, unless they are actually willing to learn some science, and give the scientific evidence the proper (ultimate) authority it must have. Then we will stop complaining about philosophy.
Well no. You are making the assumption that scientists are stupid, have never seen a crackpot, and can’t figure what to do when they show up. You are wrong. We are surrounded from birth by advertising, propaganda, lies, and so on. Science itself as the main driver of modern civilization has everything known to man and beyond crawling around inside and outside it.
We just deal with when we have to and keep on going. It’s all very routine and simple. Don’t forget Chris, scientists are not selected on the basis of being dumb. They can be quite intelligent.
What we really resent though is hacks like the DI, AIG, Monton, or Fodor launching attacks on science that consist of lies and fallacies and sloppy nonlogic based on religious or academic political grounds. It takes time and resources to answer them. Time and resources that could be better used advancing science and making the world a better place to live.
People like Fodor and the DI are just drags on society. Every society has its baggage, some of us would rather drag the bag forward than be the bag.
For those interested in more responses to Fodor (by philosophers, but hey, they make sense), look at Dan Dennett, Elliott Sober and Peter Godfrey-Smith’s replies to Fodor in Mind and Language vol. 23 (2008). Fodor also replies to their objections, but he seems to miss the boat. Dennett care barely stomach taking Fodor seriously about this stuff (don’t blame him), but Sober and PGS make some good points, I think.
Paul Ewald uses evolutionary principles of evolution to successfully predict virulence in pathogens. Here’s a succinct TED talk by him, and I highly recommend his book, Plague Time.
The NS article by Frodo and Merry is neither philosophically interesting or empirically relevant. Frodo and Merry are attacking a position that no one in evolutionary biology actually holds, and in doing so erect a strawman that demonstrates an abject dearth of knowledge regarding evolutionary theory. It is the height of foolishness. To me, it doesn’t matter if they are philosophers, biologists, or actual hobbits. What matters is the quality of the argument. And the argument is dung.
The Seleucid King has spoken, and so it will be decreed in His Kingdom*
(until the Romans show up and stomp our asses)
Well no. You are making the assumption that scientists are stupid, have never seen a crackpot, and can’t figure what to do when they show up.
I’m not making this assumption at all and was quite clear about my position in post #58. I’m only questioning the last part of this. Scientists are certainly not stupid, they can identify crackpots (generally instantly), but I wonder if politicization of fields leads them not to always act the way they do when compared to less politicized fields. Specifically, are they more inclined to treat some legitimate scientists as non-scientific kooks?
You have absolute zero idea what you are talking about. How about some examples . . . perhaps you can get a recent philosophy paper . . . here’s one: http://jonathanichikawa.net/papers/kikc.pdf
And let us know exactly what its sophistical qualities are.
Yawn, OK, philosophy is for idjits like yourself. Show me the evidence, not the argument, which is meaningless. So, cite the peer reviewed scientific literature to back your point…
It’s worth pointing out that even though evolution in the sense of common ancestry was accepted in the 1860s, natural selection as a mechanism wasn’t really accepted until the 1930s. And even now, natural selection isn’t the whole story – genetic drift and neutral theory for example.
Why is it so hard to accept that maybe the reason why natural selection still forms a part of biology is that it has empirical evidence to support it? That it works as a logical and predictive framework. Can the panda’s thumb be explained without natural selection? What about camouflage? What about the evolution of sensory inputs as per suiting the environment? Why would nocturnal creatures have knocked-out violet opsin genes? Why would trichromatics have smell pseudogenes? Why would the european kestral have vision in the ultra-violet if not for seeing vole urine?
In politicised fields prone to kook-attacks? I’d say most likely. The solution to this isn’t to lambaste scientists for sounding the kook alarm too frequently or too loudly however, it’s to reduce the number of kooks being kooky.
Most of us would love nothing better than a world free of politically-connected creationists so we could get down to the nuts-and-bolts of arguing about evolution without always having to second guess whether it’s a legitimate criticism of some facet of the theory or whether it’s in fact stealth attack masquerading as science with the aim of establishing an American theocracy.
In other words, get rid of the kooks and you’ll see a whole bunch of evolutionary biologists suddenly become a whole lot less touchy.
That’s the solution you’re looking for.
Gladly, the moment after I see peer-review backup for each of your bloviations, Monsieur Hypocrite.
Not ironically, Gould had a fondness for kooks, people wrongly taken as kooks, sciences historical losers, and the occasional redeemed loser.
He’s actually got a good bit in TSEP about group selection and the generalized prejudice against in late 20th C. evolutionary theory.
But I don’t think even Gould felt that this distorting effect was TOO great or too longlasting. In the long run, you’d be dead and vindicated.
*facepalm*
This again? Didn’t we do this like three weeks ago?
Nerd: Evidence for what? What evidence are you looking for?
Evidence that the philosophy put forward by OK is anything other than sophistry and mental masturbation. That it has a true basis in reality. And the best place to find that reality is the peer reviewed scientific literature.
Indeed
OK, so I’m a layman, who never studied biology at school, because at 12 I had a choice between biol and physics, and, like most of the boys, chose physics. Most of the girls chose biol.
But that is by the by. All my biological learning comes from books on pop science, tv documentaries, discussion boards and reading blogs like this one.
Fodor and the other guy seem to be saying that when something is selected for, then other things come along for the ride, and that leaves natural selection fucked.
I say it is pretty obvious that when something is selected for, other things come along for the ride, the selective breeding for flight distance of foxes being an obvious case in point, and that evolution theory, rather than being fucked, is rather enriched by the increasing understanding of how it works.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox
And the Sec Cafe thread on this
http://www.secularcafe.org/showthread.php?t=5320
Like ‘Tis Himself, I am less than impressed by a whole lot (not all, but close) of philosophy. And if the philosophers get near science, and don’t show the evidence of science the respect it deserves, then philosophy will be trashed. Those in the field are the ones who need to keep idjits like Fodor from trashing their profession, with them caught in the crossfire. One aspect of that would be philosophers coming here afterward (like OK) actually apologizing for the scientific ignorance of Fodor, and saying they are working to prevent a repeat of such idjitcy. I don’t see that happening.
Nerd of Redhead wrote “Yawn, OK, philosophy is for idjits like yourself. Show me the evidence, not the argument, which is meaningless. So, cite the peer reviewed scientific literature to back your point…”
Here are a few articles by a philosopher in the peer reviewed, scientific literature.
“What’s Wrong with Intelligent Design” Quarterly Review of Biology 2007, 82 (also includes objections to Popper)
“The Contest between Likelihood and Parsimony” Systematic Biology 2004, 53: 644-653.
“Testing the Hypothesis of Common Ancestry” Journal of Theoretical Biology 2002, 218: 395-408.
There’s also his recent book, Evidence and Evolution, if you want to see some interesting philosophy. Of course it is a book, not a peer reviewed science journal, but it is indistinguishable in style and content from his work that does appear in science journals…
Well, if it helps, I’ll apologize for Fodor. He’s not primarily a philosopher of biology- he is best known for his work in philosophy of mind. And I’ll certainly admit that philosophy has a lot of crap. But not all of it is. And of course there are far fewer philosophers of science than there are scientists (I’m not saying that is a bad thing!) but that it would be a full time job to critique all the bad philosophy. Just like the scientists, not surprisingly, want to get on with doing science, the good philosophers of science don’t want to spend all their time criticizing the crackpots. But they do spend some time doing it (e.g., I co-wrote one of the first critiques of Dembski’s first book “How not to detect design” in Philosophy of Science.)
Nah. Gould drew fire for a bunch of reasons (some of them richly deserved IM irrelevant O), but daring to challenge pan-adaptationism really wasn’t one of them. The spandrels paper, and the exaptation idea, were both taken seriously and were pretty well received by biologists of the 80s.
I haven’t read the Gross article linked, but none of the quotations provided have much, if anything, to do with “questioning the power of adaptive explanation.”
Oh, it appears I left out the name of the philosopher of science I was recommending – Elliott Sober.
Oh, poor Chris. Sorry, my reading is limited to American Scientist and Scientific American due to time constraints. I realized 30+ years ago I couldn’t know everything about everything, so I stick to professional journals for me (chemistry) and the two above mentioned general science magazines. I’m sure if any philosophy you mentioned is worth anything, it will eventually appear in the two general science journals. Until then, Yawn.
Jeez, Nerd, have you noticed what the philosophers are saying about Fodor & natural selection?
So far the philosophers I’ve heard from—noted philosophers whose work I’m familiar with—include Phil Kitcher, Elliot Sober, Dan Dennett, Ned Block, and Simon Blackburn.
And they all say Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini are wrong.
So far, I haven’t heard any philosophers agreeing with them.
So please, stop making it sound like this bullshit is representative of what philosophers do. It isn’t.
Yes, this sort of cluelessness does happen in philosophy; it’s fairly common and philosophers whinge about that, too. But it is not typical, much less representative of the “vast majority” of philosophy.
The problem with philosophy is simple. It is far too easy to create a logical framework from which to support any position you wish to take. And while philosophy is sometimes good at presenting questions, it is far from equipped to answer the questions.
Take a look at Zeno. There was a great quandary presented in a way that identified the core concepts of calculus, but completely derailed any potential solution that might actually lead to calculus.
These days, the stupidity of philosophy can be demonstrated by Plantinga, or anyone who wants to bring up the cosmological or teleological or transcendent argument for god. There’s a lot of effort spent there, spinning all kinds of sophistry into fool’s gold.
Then there are all those philosophers who learn the form of logic, but not the application. This leads to all kinds of mutilation of modal logic in support of some argument for god. In fact, any time I see a philosopher present some sort of argument based on modal logic, I realize I’m going to be the intended victim of a snowballing.
And then there are all the philosophers who use some sort of modern version of Plato’s Forms. Whether it’s the dualists who argue for “qualia,” or Fibonacci’s Mask, Plato’s Forms is always rearing its scarred and skull-like head in one form or another.
So, yeah, I’d say philosophy tends to harm as much as it helps. I’m not even sure if philosophy in general helped or hindered on the way to creating or discovering the epistemology of science; but since then, it’s done almost nothing but get in the way. The philosophers that have contributed the most have been those that have explored the epistemology of science itself, and what that means for the practice of science — from Spinoza and Hume all the way through Popper, and probably even now.
Of course, that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Amen Brother!
Sometimes – only sometimes, I think, arguments from authority have a lot to be said for them.
As in this case, and this authority.
“Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.”
— Richard P. Feynman
Fodor and the other guy don’t like evolutionary psychology. That’s fine, a lot of people have doubts and questions on the subject. But Fodor and what’s his name should find another way to argue against evolutionary psychology than attacking one of the strongest parts of modern biology.
Logic/philosophy as offered by realist philosopher geniuses like Daniel Dennett offer scientists exquisitely useful meta-models for thinking and discovering things. I think they are esteemed by scientists and philosophers alike.
The problem is the MSM promotes about anything no matter how silly, unfounded, rebuked, and/or rebutted if it has authors with any kind of credentials and is destined to appeal to MSM level audience. Anything that is “anti-evolution” (or can be misconstrued as such) or that is “mystical” is a winner in their eyes – their audience just loves that stuff up.
They classify scientists – real science – under boring – not audience red meat.
That is my feeling at least. Look at what the History and NatGeo channels run so often. MSM makes its bread and butter “presenting the controversies and mysteries” (even if there are not any!). And don’t get me started on Chopra.
Why shouldn’t scientists feel offended and make their disdain known.
Nerd:
1. Science is philosophy. The scientific method (=Popperian hypothetico-deductivism) was established by philosophical argumentation.
2. That you have chosen American Scientist and Scientific American as the only potentially valid source of philosophical writing seems arbitrary at the very least.
3. Philosophical issues are current and relevant subjects of contention for many branches of science, especially those involving very complex inferences. Evolutionary biology is chief among these…open up the journal Evolution and you will find papers that are primarily concerned with philosophy.
Since we’re talking about philosophy, over on Jason Rosenhouse’s blog there’s a discussion that includes some back-and-forth about philosophical arguments for god; a few of the regulars from here have made comments.
My problem is that I can’t contemplate how there can ever be a compelling philosophical argument for a specific god, given that there is more than one religion, each making similar (in terms of validity) claims – scripture, historical figures, philosophical arguments – to support their assertions.
As long as one can take a philosophical argument and cross out the words ‘Yahweh’ and ‘Jesus’ and write in another name (or names) and have it be just as valid then – to me – it’s not going to be compelling.
Yawn, the philosophy apologists are still at it. Boring.
So where does mathematics fit in to all of this? It’s arguably closer to philosophy than to science, but no one would claim you could develop a mathematics that lets you prove any proposition (as was suggested can be done in philosophy in post #83). Most scientific disciplines get a lot from mathematics. And some (e.g., quantum physics) even use pure mathematical reasoning as a source of empirically testable hypotheses.
Yet, mathematics is not scientific. It does not depend on formulation of hypotheses or empirical validation.
So what gives? I personally wouldn’t want to throw the baby out with the anti-philosopher bath water!
A couple of people asked what Fodor was known for in terms of his cognitive science/psychology background. A long time ago he wrong a book called “The Modularity of Mind”, which was part philosophy and part psychology. It was pretty influential, and has continued to be in some sub-disciplines of modern psychology.
The book was a hundred or so pages of Fodor vomiting words about the make-up of the brain (complete with totally unhelpful side-comments scattered in during important sentences and paragraphs – there’s nothing like losing focus, eh?). A hundred pages doesn’t sound like all that much, but when you consider that the whole thing is basically one long paragraph, it will give you a headache.
Oh, and if you know anything about programming (especially object-oriented programming), the whole book seems really trivial and not really worth the pain. That was my experience, at least.
Nigel the Bold #83
Ramen.
My beef with philosophy starts with the postmoderns. I am particularly unimpressed by postmoderns like Martin Heidegger (not just because he was a Nazi), Jacques Derrida (I agree with John Searle that Derrida indulges in dadaist sophistry) and Richard Rorty (whose disdain for social justice and dislike of science annoy the fuck out of me).
Postmodernism is intellectually diverse, yet it promotes a quite reactionary obscurantism. I really dislike its anti-rationalist “critiques” (aka attacks) on science. It also has a fascination with authoritarianism, particularly fascism. I do think Sokal’s Hoax showed postmodernism is more involved in sophistry and anti-rationalism than trying to advance social organization and understanding.
A whole lot of what passes for philosophy these days is nothing but bullshit.
I’m just going to put it out here that Nerd of Redhead is making the same basic fallacy that Jerry Fodor is making. Like those who use evolutionary biology to suit their own ends: racists, evolutionary psychologists, eugenics proponents, etc. there are plenty of people who use philosophy to try to push through their nonsense as if they can define into existence through pure wordgames.
To think of examples on here, John Knight who harped on about the problem of induction then solving it by positing that his God was necessary to maintain the laws of physics. Or facilis who could only accept that 2+2=4 if God says so, and anyone who points out the illogic of this statement can’t justify logic. Then there are those who try to use ontological and a priori justifications for their woo, the post modern deconstructionists who devalued scientific inquiry into mere literary criticism (Ken Wibler fan) – I could go on and on with the nonsense that people have pushed here at each stage trying to use philosophy to justify the position. However…
This doesn’t mean that the discipline itself should be thrown out, most of the sceptical tools that we use aren’t empirically justified, indeed to empirically justify the justifications is creating a tautology. Of course there’s knowledge outside the scientific discipline – you can’t empirically demonstrate the constancy of abstract ideas such as 2+2=4 in a base 10 counting system. Nor do you need to check that every time you put two bananas with two more bananas that you will have four bananas. Once is enough.
That people think they can philosophically define gods and gremlins into existence is a problem, that you can ontologically define a maximally powerful being doesn’t mean that there’s one changing the results of the lottery on a prayer. That there are those who think that B follows from philosophically justified A doesn’t mean that there’s no value to philosophy.
So the same error I’m seeing NoR make that Jerry Fodor is making is that they are both throwing the baby out with the bathwater because of the perceived encroachment on their discipline. That Fodor perceives evolutionary psychology as a post hoc rationalisation isn’t sufficient to dismiss the power of the idea in explaining the eye, same that NoR perceives that those trying to define into existence unicorns means that there’s no value at all to thinking about thinking.
Y’what? Popper’s work, while important, is hardly the last word in POSci. let alone the defining expression. Try Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend etc.
Which I don’t think necessarily makes it a bad thing – it has value in being able to teach people to analyse things a certain way; mental exercises, if you will – but it’s just that it has limits as to what it can be used on.
To see Nerd’s position captured brilliantly in film go here and start watching at 0:45 seconds.
timrowledge: that was a “fer instance”…Kuhn and Feyerabend (I don’t know Lakatos) are also important. Kind of dig Elliot Sober too. Think he was mentioned upthread.
I’m a bit of the Nerd school, I find Philosophy very, very boring mental masturbation, not my cup of tea.
Maybe it’s useful, but I’ve never managed to find out what for.
We had this compolsory one year Philosophy course in the last year of high school in France. Big waste of time for me, I failed it miserably. Since then I’m allergic to philosophy.
Kel, OM #94
The “experts” tell us that 2 + 2 = 4. But can that really be the whole story? Consider this: Isn’t it odd that 2 + 2 = 4 and 4 = 2 + 2? Such a nice little package, don’t you think? Isn’t that convenient? But then consider this: 4 = 3 + 1. That’s right, we already know what 4 equals. So what are they hiding? What does 2 + 2 really equal? What would it hurt for more study on the real value of 2 + 2? A lot of people make a lot of money off of the fact that 2 + 2 = 4. Math teachers, accountants (who control the world’s money supply), capitalists, the socialist fascist military industrial oedipal complex. I think they’re afraid of the truth. Now I’m not one of those loonies who say the number 2 doesn’t exist, or that it can’t be combined with other numbers to make bigger numbers, only that the “official” party line that 2 + 2 = 4 seems odd to me. “They” say that 2 + 2 = 4, but then they also say that 2 × 2 = 4, and 2² = 4. How convenient. They can’t be all right! I think it’s time we ask what are they hiding? We will not be silent any longer!
Chris, I think you have valid points. A couple of posters above seem to have the I-read-into-other-people’s-posts-stuff-that-isn’t-there disease. Heck, it might even be a syndrome, if you attach the I-rush-through-other-people’s-posts-so-I-can-fire-off-a-response defect.
WowbaggerOM #89:
So well said! Whenever I see a formal arguement for God (e.g. ontological) I read the conclusion, ‘Therefore God exists’. Yet I can’t see why the arguement can’t say ‘Therefore gods exist.’
Pikemann Urge wrote:
On the blog I linked to upthread one of the posters – a Christian apologist – claims that Aquinas’s ‘Five Ways’ argument covers that but, having read it, I can’t see that it’s anything more than the same assumptions, i.e. ‘[something] is/does [something else]; therefore a God of specific characteristics must exist’
Why they get to make those assumptions never seems to enter into it.
‘Tis: Ha!
My beef with this concerns the soundness of the underlying epistemology. While I think it’s all well-and-good to be thinking about thinking, there are no effective tools to separate the wheat from the chaff. Math such as 2+2=4 can be tested against the real world, the same way science can be tested. Its “truth” is measured by the its congruence with observed reality, and consistency within its ontology.
With much philosophy, there is no such empirical congruence. How do you judge Quine, for instance, when he denies the distinction between synthetic and analytic statements? Or David Chalmers when he presents the strangely-dualistic concept of qualia?
On the other hand, both math and science have epistemic and ontological frameworks that are relatively well-defined, and are congruent with observable, measurable reality. Anything we can observe and measure falls under the bailiwick of science. Everything else falls under… what, exactly? Personal experience takes up much of the rest. Is there anything left, after?
So we’re stuck with: what is the rubric by which we judge the worth of philosophic propositions? How do we determine if “qualia” is a concept worth pursuing, or a completely wrong-headed way to approach consciousness that will distract us from the real answer for decades? It seems all we can do is read a philosopher and say, “That’s a really neat idea,” or, “What a concise way to put that,” or, “What a complete load of New York sewer.”
While I can see that being useful to a certain extent, the subjectivity of it all seems a flimsy basis for describing or exploring reality.
But again: I could be wrong. I’ve only taken a few formal philosophy classes, and have been forced to get up-to-speed on some of the rest of it by the arguments of various Christian apologists, who all seem to think that philosophy trumps science every time.
Especially their philosophy.
My own take is here.
Ok, I got my socks folded.
Here’s my opinion. Philosophy provides the underpinnings for the logic of science, but that has been in place for a long time now. I have no need for new philosophy to do my job. Ergo, I don’t need to read the latest
sophistryphilosophy to be good at what I do. Likewise, I don’t need the latest philosophy to take care of chores at home, pay attention to the Redhead, or plan for my retirement.Philosophers have a distinct problem in addressing science. Science is evidence based, not argument, based. Many philosophers seem to think in such cases, ignore the evidence if it gets in the way of the argument. Sophists like Matthew Seagal, Ken Wilber and Fodor come to mind at this point. If philosophers stick to the evidence and rules of science, they can contribute a bit to science if they don’t over extend their expertise, and point out potential areas for study. Or they can explain science to the general populace if they stick to the evidence.
Individual scientists may use philosophical underpinnings to ask questions they expect to answer or to help explain science to the general populace. But, they don’t necessarily use the latest in philosophy to do so. Philosophy is more important in areas where the evidence is weak. Areas that can be explored can be developed.
In summary, modern philosophy is not a requirement for science, or for scientists to do science. It can be a useful tool in looking at potential areas for research, or to help explain science to the general populace. It is not as useful on a day to day basis as philosophers like to pretend. That has been my point all along. Philosophy can be a useful tool, but philosophers oversell the utility, and that needs to be reined in.
@100 Tis: Thanks. For the fine mist of Vernaccia all over my keyboard.
” I’m sure Fodor sees nothing wrong with his “people who aren’t part of the field” comment. When your sphere is how to think, there’s an obvious risk of believing that everything is your field”
At least one can be thankful Frodor is only a philosopher and not a member of the real imperialist tribe – the economists. Indeed if I recall correctly economists feature strongly among climate change skeptics (or should that be ‘deniers’ – a word I don’t really go for.
It’s at times like these when I used to be in the habit of post some giibberish under the handle of Quentin Robert DeNameland.
Nowadays, with the
moatcomment registration system in place, it’s too much trouble to sockpuppet.used ta be…
Not all of us, asshole. There are other economists besides Austrian School libertarians and the Chicago Boys. In fact, these two groups, where the majority of denialist economists are found, are on the fringe of economics.
So Nerd of R whines that no philosophers are taking Fodor and Piatelli-Palmarini to task — then, when shown all the excellent takedowns of FPP have in fact been by philosophers, pretends not to notice?
What does this say about NoR?
I’m of the NoR mind on this mostly if not all. For instance I think Daniel Dennett is cool and I assume NoR would agree.
I think ‘Tis #100 nailed the sophist problem – think I’m reading him right.
I also think philosophy runs into a problem when it stops being a meta-model and thinks it can prove a new reality or deny an old proven reality.
Its logic discipline can help test thinking and assertions – but logic cannot trump evidence – i.e., reality – nor definitively prove a new reality.
It can say – your thinking is not clear on this or that via via some epistemological analysis and why your logic fails so watch out.
It cannot prove god or fairies or solve the technical problems with making fusion power plants commonplace. It cannot also disprove the ToE nor the ToG or that consciousness comes from a soul or something outside of neural systems.
I think I am mostly with NoR.
And if I am just a brain in a jar thinking this and you all are really not suffering through my musings well then aren’t you all lucky!
Thanks to Block and Kitcher I learned a new word: intensional.
I was confused by the original use by Fodor & PP thinking it was a European spelling for intentional. Which would be something different (a horse of a different colour no less). Turns out that would be an intensional error…who knew?
then, when shown all the excellent takedowns of FPP have in fact been by philosophers
excuse me?
all the really good takedowns were done by the people who were rightly offended by their nonsense in the first place.
Biologists.
Your concern is noted.
Fodor on Salon:
It shows.
In this case though, their whole argument can be dismissed without even needing to show a single experiment. It’s conceptually wrong.
So Nerd of R whines that no philosophers are taking Fodor and Piatelli-Palmarini to task — then, when shown all the excellent takedowns of FPP have in fact been by philosophers, pretends not to notice?
What does this say about NoR?
Oh sweetheart, please don’t embarrass yourself. The only reason Nerd can play that rethorical card is because he’s actually right. Well, most of the time.
And the last time pure philosophy ever contributed to anything except tenure rates was about two centuries ago.
Yes, I hate philosophy. Sue me.
Aaand the philosophy haters are all over this damn thing. How, without philosophy, are we supposed to consider ethics? How do we discuss art, society or politics in any kind of analytical way? There’s no way for science to tell me how I or anyone else should behave. You can’t get from an is to an ought, not never.
None of this prevents Fodor and PP from being totally wrong. However, claims that doing anything other than constructing empirically verifiable statements about physical models of the universe is a purely ornamental activity go a long way to explaining why ostensibly intelligent people feel the need to assemble such a ridiculous set of arguments in the first place. I have an inner life myself, and I don’t particularly appreciate having it treated as a worthless embarrassment and being told that there’s no place for it in the realm of rational human discourse.
But how can you justify an ought without having an is to ground it with?
Don’t get me wrong, I agree with you on the philosophy bashing. But as far as you should behave, I’m betting you ground your oughts a lot more on the is that you make on.
You justify the ought from your personal experience. That inner life I’m talking about which certain of the more ideological scientists would rather we all ignored, but which is ultimately the only ‘is’ that matters in the arena of moral choices. I have no doubt that said inner life is at base a consequence of the deterministic interaction of fields, forces and whatnot but it’s still what I use to work out whether or not I should take the office stationery home, and whether I should feel guilty about it afterwards.
Matt Bright
1. I believe most serious scientists appreciate rigorous honest purposeful philosophers and recognize their contribution to the meta-model of learning and discovery. Through the years I have seen this in the greats and I myself (a mere insignificant speck of dust in the dustbin of life) hold this view and appreciation.
2. What gets frowned upon is shoddy philosophy, sophistry, and airy-fairy philosophy. Especially when that same babble attempts to address reality as if it were science.
3. I might not be as bright as you (some pun intended to be honest – it was just there to pluck) but what does “That inner life I’m talking about which certain of the more ideological scientists would rather we all ignored, but which is ultimately the only ‘is’ that matters in the arena of moral choices. “?
And how do you figure that’s how you OUGHT to behave? For example, if you were beaten as a child what can you take from that experience as to how you OUGHT to behave? You can’t without appealing to some nature and some desirable consequences – both of which are IS. The OUGHT has to stem from the IS otherwise it is arbitrary.
I’m not saying that an IS implies an OUGHT, but that an OUGHT without an IS doesn’t work.
Matt Bright:
It’s a little more complicated than that, isn’t it? Or are you a total blank-slater? Do you think there are no innate factors, or cross-cultural universals about morality?
Don’t you think that most people try to use their personal experience to judge what’s actually right or wrong, even if they’re mistaken about how to do that? (E.g., looking it up in Leviticus.)
Doesn’t rationality enter the picture right there, in a huge way?
It’s not mostly subjective in the very strong sense you seem to assume. (That’s something that traditional moral philosophy gets right—morality is not simply subjective, and is worth arguing about, and thought experiments can be illuminating.)
I have no idea which “more ideological scientists” you’re talking about, who want our inner life ignored. The only scientists that come to mind when I hear that are radical Behaviorists. (And I’m happy to report that radical Behaviorism is pretty passe.)
Everybody else seems to think they have an inner life, and that it’s important; they just don’t think it’s off-limits to science.
So? I don’t see any great significance to that. The fact that we have to make moral judgments in real time, from the inside of a meat machine, has little to do with whether that process outside the scope of science. Or rather, it makes it a good subject of scientific study; what could be more interesting or important?
Only a part of it.
FWIW, I’m on the editorial board of the Journal of Evolutionary Biology, at least one person thinks I know what I’m on about. :-)
I am unsophisticated, though. I’m sat with a working group running some analyses, and we’ve just had our first beers delivered.
I agree that aspects of the processes that lead to selfhood are not only studyable, but eminently worthy of study.
I’m not sure how any of that gets us to the ‘self’ – the integrated process that’s happening right about three centimetres behind the bridge of my nose. The only instrument that can tell you about that is me.
Really now?
#177 — NoR has been claiming that F and PP’s fellow philosophers haven’t taken them to task — when in fact cite after cite after cite has shown that they have. And you’re saying that NoR is right?
Somebody’s embarrassed in this conversation, but it’s not me. I’m not the one trying to slip and slide away from giving a straight and honest acknowledgment of an obvious fact.
If you really want to persuade people of the intellectual worthiness of your arguments, you don’t do so by continuing to uphold an untruth even after it’s been repeatedly debunked.
Steve LaBonne: I’ve had a low opinion of Fodor since 1997, when it was explained to me (as a hapless undergraduate) that he seems really to think – at least then – that all possible human concepts are somehow innate.
Chris: Ironically, of course, since there’s decent work about the “Darwinian” or evolutionary aspects of conceptual change. (David Hull, etc.)
‘Tis Himself, OM: I’ll say it right now – you can virtually bonk me if I ever pull the “not a true philosopher” on you at any time rather than saying simply a misguided one. (Exception: Heidegger and maybe Derrida and Rorty’s later stuff.)
Fodor’s object of attack, I think, is the crankery that calls itself “evolutionary psychology.” Fodor’s argument about the modularity of the brain has been hugely influential and as the Fodor v. Pinker roe suggests, Fodor is concerned that quacks like Pinker have thoroughly misunderstood his point about modularity (witness the title of Fodor’s reply to the garbage that Pinker published). Fodor, I believe, has lost patience with a naïve and vulgar Darwinism that sees everything that human beings do as being adaptive (we tell stories because they are biologically adaptive, we are make art because it is biologically adaptive, we have “religion” because it is biologically adaptive (or perhaps merely an unintended result of other adaptations) etc—perhaps we might even link to an utterly idiotic opinion piece by Hauser et al linking it with the vacuous notion of “universal grammar”); what we used to merely dismiss as sociobiology (an odd name since it was neither social nor biological; witness the same conundrum concerning “evolutionary psychology”). It would appear that Fodor is trying to make an intervention with “cognitive science” and “evolutionary psychology” to remind them that survival is not always about the “fit”, but about the not terminally unfit (shades of Protestantism ring in such views of human beings). That “universal” just so stories, while comforting to some, are still mere stories (and of doubtful adaptive use). You may disagree with the details of Fodor’s intervention, but the intervention is certainly needed.
Re. 128; Most “universal grammarians” would stipulate that all meanings are innate and that different languages merely add labels to prefab concepts. There is, of course, their uneasiness with Edward Sapir, Benjamin Whorf, and Franz Boas. It is a naïve semantics; lacking a view of meaning as always social, always multifunctional, always semiotic and always pragmatic (in the Silverstein 1976 sense).
In a word, bullshit! There’s plenty of opposition to those “just so” stories out there already, criticisms of panadptationism, and elements of the theory that have nothing to do with selection.
The problem is that Natural Selection as a concept works and has plenty of empirical evidence to validate it. That there are those doing “just so” adaptation stories doesn’t mean that there aren’t testable predictions out there. How else do you explain the Lenski experiment but with natural selection? Or the nylon-eating bacteria? These are both instances where the environmental factor can clearly be seen and thus Natural Selection is both testable and empirically valid.
And the biggest mistake of this? Thinking that the people looking at the process afterwards not being able to determine what was selected in no way can entail that there’s no selection at all. The algorithm that is natural selection works, at best all this argument can do is dismiss the ability to know what was naturally selected – but that doesn’t mean that there was no selection involved.
There are plenty already who are arguing against the overextending nature of disciplines like evolutionary psychology, that doesn’t mean that one should throw the baby out with the bathwater. Fodor is wrong, pure and simple. He’s conceptually muddled and even if there are plenty of biologists and psychologists who overextend at times doesn’t mean that the whole thing can be dismissed – especially when the evidence shows it to work.
Ever since I started looking into evolutionary biology seriously, I’ve got to say I’ve heard almost nothing but bad things about evolutionary psychology. Seldom read an even somewhat positive article, the best assessments are cautious at best. I’ve really got to wonder how it has ascertained such bogeyman status, the perpetual scare story where science is invading what it means to be human.
Surely the arguments can be taken and taken down on their own merits, sans vitriol. It makes it very hard to grasp the distinction between bad science and the fear of what the science say when the two are so intrinsically tied in objections.
Matt Bright:
I’m still puzzling over this:
Who on earth are you arguing against?
Where are you getting this?
It sounds to me like you’re arguing against straw men, or flakes that nobody else here is taking seriously.
It sounds like he’s trying to derive an OUGHT from an IS, just that he wants his IS as opposed to one that can be justified through consequences.
Matt Bright:
Your saying that makes me wonder if you actually know any cognitive psychology. Introspective reports are notoriously unreliable, because minds and memory do not work the way people naively assume they do.
Where are you getting this stuff?
tyrone #129 though it means nothing I am with Kel #130/131 technically speaking.
I do appreciate your explanation of motivations though. I just wish they would have asked more expert ToE biologists to collaborate with them.
Here is my simple take – if I assume a reasonably perfected model has been developed (B’s advancing all the time) – the ToE can provide pretty perfect predictive models and operating frameworks for behaviors.
These then provide explanations for trends in behavior of populations. This include human populations.
Predicting individual or point in time behaviors is very difficult (impossible for most part) because of the complexity of the variables. We probably will never have full knowledge of all those – especially if we have to predict them. But we accept this – just as we accept the critical usefulness of our imperfect models for weather forecasting and climate forecasting.
I cannot expertly explain it but nothing in terms of our human behavior makes sense to me without the Biological ToE. Especially the stuff we classify as evil deviant behavior.
At the risk of getting battered for a loosely said illustration: that in the species there would be some that would want adult pleasures with babies – indicates yes an imbalance – a defective calibrated or wrongly triggering switch – but the switch is there because there are advantages to breeding early (but not too early – some mother maturity helpful) and often. It does not surprise me at all – and I don’t have to think devils are agents – nor that pornography made the underlying framework nature that went wrong.
The ToE helps us understand a lot about behavior – including the why – and why our rules develop as they do. No it cannot now nor probably never will be able to predict an individual’s behavior in all things nor peg and dope out all the variables to consider for any model. But it is an extremely useful theory (I’d say the essential theory) to advance our knowledge and understanding of life – including how we act and feel.
My opinion. But Kel’s defense of ToE in legit psychological is much better.
Even if those motivations are correct, it’s like rejecting Christianity because a Mormon recently baptised your dead grandmother. Not really a compelling argument for a disbelief in God, certainly not good enough for a philosopher who should know better.
I’m an atheist and want to move towards God.
Somebody has to get inside the defensive perimeter to take the motherfucker out.
Oops, wrong thread @137. Sorry.
Just a little intervention in the philosophy vs. anti-philosophy debate:
Someone in the thread accused the philosophers of pulling a “No true philosopher!” whenever Plantinga or Fodor or whoever is brought up. You can interpret it that way, or you can interpret it this way: you’ve got plenty of people in all areas of academia – less so in science, true, but most areas have them – where someone makes an important advance, gets rightly rewarded for it, then goes on to become a crank, protected behind his institutional establishment. Some of the anti-philosophers have to do a double-backed no true scotsman to save the few philosophers they don’t want to save. Dan Dennett becomes a “cognitive scientist”. As do the Churchlands and whoever else doesn’t fit the All Philosophers Are Evil, Science-Hating Losers stereotype.
Now there is definite selection bias going on here. This isn’t about no true scotsman. The philosophers or defenders of philosophy feel about the rhetoric on this the same way the biologists would feel if everytime Michael Behe was discussed, a small army of people came along and said “This guy is a lunatic! This guy is a biologist. Ergo, biologists are lunatics.”
As for the ‘calling out’ stuff, let me see. Remember when Nagel reviewed Stephen Meyer’s (he of the Discovery Institute) book and recommended it. Leiter Reports was on it pretty damn quick – see here. Leiter also noted the criticism of Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini – here. Also, remember Plantinga and his Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism that was roundly rebuked on this blog? When that happened, we had the usual philosophers-are-shits chorus. You don’t have to look into the literature too far to find scatching critiques of Plantinga’s EAAN. I’ve got a whole bookful of essays ripping merry hell out of Plantinga – both on logical and scientific grounds. It isn’t very difficult to get hold of Ernest Sosa’s superb attack on Plantinga (the one with the ‘DISABLEX’ objection). Unfamiliarity with the literature doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
Is all philosophy bunk? Richard Rorty has a wonderful quote:
“Philosophers get attention only when they appear to be doing something sinister–corrupting the youth, undermining the foundations of civilization, sneering at all we hold dear. The rest of the time everybody assumes that they are hard at work somewhere down in the sub-basement, keeping those foundations in good repair. Nobody much cares what brand of intellectual duct tape is being used.”
I don’t agree with the second half of the quote, but he is right in the first half: philosophers only get attention when they screw up. Same is sort of true with scientists – Behe has gotten a lot more attention for being wrong than the countless scientists working honestly in their labs churning out good stuff have. Plantinga gets pilloried for the EAAN, but what about all the other epistemologists who are putting forward decent ideas that aren’t being ripped apart on blog comment threads? If you were to take a Master’s level course in contemporary epistemology, you’d probably encounter some or all of the following: Sosa, Dretske, Armstrong, Audi, Jaegwon Kim, Ayer, Wittgenstein, Goodman, Dancy, Haack, Kornblith, Swinburne, Feldman, BonJour, Lehrer, Unger, Chisholm, Foster, Harman, Davidson, Lepore, Goldman, Nozick, Stroud, Putnam, Searle, and, yes, Plantinga. Nozick was a libertarian and Swinburne and Plantinga are Christians. A few of them are explicitly naturalists (in the ‘CFI/JREF’ sense of naturalism, not the Quinean naturalized epistemology sense) – Ayer, Haack (she’s been on Point of Inquiry!), David Armstrong. Don’t know about the rest. Don’t really care. Now, take this as a fairly representative set of modern epistemologists – I mean, it is a rough-and-ready merge of what I studied last year in an MA lecture series on epistemology, and it is also in an online reading list from my university. Are these all disreputable cranks? Anti-scientific loons? Is this list subject to Sturgeon’s Law of “90% of everything is crud”? Absolutely not. That’s not to say that there aren’t kooky views on the list. Even there though, just because one has kooky views doesn’t mean everything one says is suspect. Take Plantinga: I think broadly that his externalist justification project is sound and reasonable. I obviously don’t agree with him that you need an intelligent designer (or some rough equivalent) in order to give the criteria for proper functioning systems. I’m with him all the way through “Warrant and Proper Function”, but I think he loses it when he starts trying to defend his religious beliefs in “Warranted Christian Belief”. And there are plenty of people who are willing to agree with Plantinga up to a point: D.M. Armstrong and Plantinga are both externalists.
As someone whose primary interests are in epistemology and metaphysics, I can’t say how influential Fodor is in philosophy of mind. Outside my area of expertise. I certainly know of plenty of philosophers of mind who wouldn’t go along with Fodor on this.
If philosophy truly is the preserve of cranks and has a systematic bullshit problem, show it. As far as I can see, we’ve got a few Continental bullshitters (Derrida – absolutely), we’ve got Mary Midgely, a few religious types like Plantinga trying to throw God into the proceedings, and we’ve got occasional outbursts of philosopher-playing-scientist from guys like Fodor. Small, unrepresentative sample set. If you want to show philosophy is all bullshit, how about showing that the work that gets published in, say, Philosophical Review, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Mind, The Monist, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly or Noûs is bullshit? How do you do that? Well, you can do a survey of the journals – show that they are full of bullshit – or maybe put in a Sokal-style hoax paper.