I’ve been trying to think of some new posts on philosophical issues here, and I have a few too many ideas — some (if not most) of which would be of little interest, I conjecture, to most participants here. So I turn it over to you: what topics, if any, would you like to see raised?
Here’s what I have in mind: people here make suggestions, I look them over and see which ones fall within my limited expertise, and then write up a post on that issue for framing discussion.
If that sounds good to you, then have at it!
Let’s make it a guideline!
I don’t know if anyone saw Jerry Coyne’s posts about a road-trip to and from a conference (Here’s the link to Coyne’s blog) with Richard Dawkins and Dan Dennett. Dawkins “made his excuses and left” for the return trip, leaving Coyne alone exposed to full-on Dennett.
Coyne remarks later :
Coyne later endorses a comment by Jeff Johnson which pretty much makes sense to me.
Does moral responsibility mean anything more than responsibility? Does intellectual honesty mean anything more than honesty?
Apologies for my lack of reading comprehension, but could you put that into layman’s language?
When I first started formally learning science at the age of 11 or 12, it was taught from a historical perspective, Democritus to Dalton for atomic theory, and so on. The curriculum changed in about the third year to a first-principles method. It involved simple direct experiments and explanations involving current theories. I tentatively suggest that philosophy could become more accessible by adopting such an approach. Do I need to follow the development of an idea over 2,000 years or so until its final rejection 200 years ago to be able to appreciate a point being made now on an issue relevant to humans in the twenty-first century?
I am interested in attempts to explain behaviour in terms of molecular biology. The seems to be a huge chasm between the level of understanding at the biochemical functioning of neurones and how nerve impulses initiate and propagate on the one hand and how brains think on the other.
Also I’m curious if there are any attempts to explain innate behaviour. I asked before how such behaviours could be stored genetically in the gametes but, other than the fact (?) that this must be encoded in DNA somehow, there seems little progress in this area.
This reminds of the very first time I heard the terms “Intelligent Design” without first raising the subject. At a social gathering this summer, the guests were disturbed by a large hornet that flew menacingly close. One enterprising guest managed to trap the insect under an upturned glass. On closer study, it turned out to be a Hornet Mimic Hoverfly.
This prompted me to wonder out loud how the hoverfly was able to conduct its life perfectly well without the benefit of hover-flying school. Another guest started to explain about genetics and inheritance and I said it did not satisfactorily account for innate behaviour.
“Are you a supporter of Intelligent Design?” he asked. Turns out he was a UK science teacher on holiday worried about the growing influence of “Faith” schools on science curricula.
I am inclined to say that there is no such thing as innate behavior. That depends, though, on what is meant by “behavior”.
I don’t think there’s much of a problem understanding rhythmic muscle contractions, as required for heart beats or for breathing. If you want to call those examples of innate behavior, then fine.
What about something more complex, such as nest building by a bird. That could not possibly be innate. The bird has to find locally available material, and has to work out ways of assembling the nest out of that material. There’s a lot of learning required. The genes do not have sufficient capacity to store all of those abilities. What can be innate, is some sort of drive or vague urge that turns out to be satisfied by nest building. That would be enough to set the learning process in motion.
I don’t see any difference between behavior learned through biological evolution and learned during the life of the individual.
In the case of mammals, there’s a difference in the granularity or fineness of response, most remarkably in human language.
But it’s all “stored” in the configuration of neurons, and there’s no visible demarcation between what is innate and what is learned during an individual’s life. And no way to find the location of a bit of learning, even though it may be possible to trigger a memory. It’s also possible to trigger a false memory. Brains behave. They change with learning, but they do not record in the same sense that tape or computers record.
The Coyne discussion of morality interests me. We went round and round on this. I took the position that we are responsible because other people hold us responsible. The alternative is that society doesn’t work.
And societies that don’t work go extinct.
Even people who aren’t wired right are held accountable and restrained in one way or another.
Happy people are those who want to get along and be helpful. They do not waste time and effort avoiding breaking laws and moral conventions because they have no desire to.
Perhaps. Consider an orb-web spider. Apparently capable of spinning a web each day then recycling it by eating it. Current studies seem to suggest the spider falls off in its performance over its lifetime rather than improving.
Something must be stored and transferred at the gamete level containing (or resulting in the development of) the capability to construct a web. I’m just curious as to what form it might take. Is there an equivalent cascade of gene switches that produce behaviour analogous to HOX genes and morphology?
What I’d meant was this: the content of a philosophical concept, like that of any concept — what the concept ‘means’ — consists in (i) the role that the concept plays in judgments; (ii) the inferential relations (compatibility and incompatibility) between judgments; (iii) the conditions under which I’m disposed to use the concept to classify objects in my experience, and treat them accordingly. So, my concept of “cat” consists in such things as my disposition to say, “hi, kitty-kitty!” when I see my cats, my assessment that “if it is a cat, then it is an animal” as a good inference and “if it is cat, then it bigger than a house” as a bad inference, and so on. This is a point about conceptual content generally — i.e. what a concept means — but it holds equally well of the concepts we use in philosophy. In other words, philosophical concepts are no different from concepts generally. The philosophical attitude consists in, among other things, an awareness of what we are doing when we use concepts.
The answer to that last question is “obviously not!”, but where did you get the idea that I (or anyone else here) had a different view? For that matter, I don’t think that the teaching of philosophy is dominated by the history. I certainly don’t teach the history of philosophy in my introductory classes, although I do teach the history of philosophy for upper-level classes. If your exposure to philosophy has been that first-order philosophical investigation is subordinated to the history of philosophy, that’s deeply unfortunate. (Maybe I’m part of the problem, because I do work in the history of philosophy.)
Thanks for the response KN. Out on the town tonight but will respond as soon as I can.
Speaking of history, I am looking forward to this series:
Socrates’ Children: Ancient: The 100 Greatest Philosophers
That’s a wonderful definition, because it’s possible to agree or disagree with it, and to expand on it. There are, of course objects, such as plush toys, that have been addressed as kitty. Probably people, also. But the attempt to operationalize definitions demonstrates how difficult it can be. Without the attempt, conversation is pretty much impossible.
I believe this website originated because Lizzie was banned from UD for requesting an operational definition.
So it is not surprising that UD regulars would resist.
Neil Rickert,
Yes, “Seversky” “Seversky1” and “SeverskyP35” are all me.
I lost access as “Seversky” around the time TSZ got hacked. When I tried to log in, LastPass filled in the username and password automatically as before but the login box insisted I had exceeded the allowed number of attempts to fill in a CAPTCHA code even though I’d done nothing. I tried re-registering as “Seversky”, got an email confirming the application but no follow-up telling me it was approved. I tried registering as “Seversky1”. Same thing happened. More recently, I retired my old computer and was able to register with the new machine as “SeverskyP35”. Since that’s working normally, I’d suggest leaving that one, promoting it to author status and deleting the other two if that’s okay with you.
You are now promoted to author. The other two names are demoted to “no-role-at-this-site”, but I did not delete them for now.
I hope that’s okay.
petrushka,
Isn’t operationalization tied up with the idea of measurement? It’s perfectly clear why that’s important for building up a scientific theory that models over some specified data-set, but I don’t see why ordinary mastery of a concept requires it. Am I to believe that I don’t know what “cat” means if I can’t operationalize — i.e. render into quantitative form — my concept?
In any event, I wasn’t trying to define “cat” — I was trying to explicate what it means to have mastered a concept, such as “cat.” One can exhibit conceptual mastery even if one cannot define a concept, and likewise, one can easily imagine cases where someone has memorized a definition but cannot use the concept in question.
You may be right, but my recollection is that Lizzie was banned from UD because she refused to cooperate with Arrington’s absurd power-trips. Arrington insisted that anyone who denied the law of non-contradiction was unsuited for conversation; Lizzie made the perfectly reasonable point that the LNC presupposes discrete objects and relations, and so might not hold for quantum phenomena; so he decided that she didn’t deserve to contribute to UD. (For the record, Aristotle himself would be on Lizzie’s side here — he’s pretty clear, in Metaphysics, that the LNC doesn’t hold in a process metaphysics, such as the Heraclitean view — that’s central to his objections to Heraclitus.)
That was the first ban; the second ban took place when she refused to take Jonathan Wells’ revisionist history about the concept of “junk DNA” as the Whole Truth. (There was also Kairosfocus’ trumped-up campaign to force Lizzie to violate her own stated rules as to when a TSZ participant has merited banning.)
I find this remark completely baffling, if it is directed towards me. But I shall refrain from further comment at this point.
I assumed (perhaps wrongly) that it was directed at Mung.
That’s what I suspected, thought I also wasn’t crazy about Petrushka’s suggestion.
If we only discuss operationalizable concepts, then only concepts used in scientific theorizing will be discussed. That would leave me with nothing to contribute, but perhaps that’s all for the best. However, insisting on operationalization where it makes sense to do so would help distinguish between scientific and non-scientific uses of concepts — which is, as I understand, precisely Bridgman’s point when he argued for operational definition.
Operational definitions are very nearly the only kind that allow unambiguous communication amoung people of different backgrounds.
I find the terminology used on most philosophy to border on meningless, and I’m not entirely uneducated. Discussions of free will are indistinguishable from
Sokalism without operational definitions. Same with discussions of morality.
Having linguistic and logical consistency is of no value unless you can communicate something to another person.
I really don’t understand that comment. Most people here are not experts in the fields in which we comment. There are exceptions.
But Mung and Gregory and Blas and others strongly imply that there is something baguely evil about biologism or scientism or materialism or naturalism that leads to bad behavior or at least to incorrect scientific conclusions.
I think when you mace such assertions you are obliged to cite specific examples and show how the incorrectness flows inevitably from some philosophical stance.
Alan Fox:
You may be interested in the following:
Genetic Explanations: Sense and Nonsense
Part Three: Genetics in Human Behavior and Culture
Some or all of this may be available online.
On the other hand, one knows that one has arrived at a rationally defensible view only if one has successfully communicated something to other people. Neither logic nor language are coherently conceived of as solipsistic enterprises.
But I do think that operational definitions are desirable for figuring out under what conditions we can make observations that fit (or don’t fit) our conceptions. That was why Bridgman insisted on them . My rough sense is that Bridgman wanted to eliminate metaphysics from science, and I (like most philosophers) am pretty skeptical about whether that is possible or desirable. Logical positivism was a noble and laudable project, but it just doesn’t work.
Ok, I see where you’re coming from here better — thank you.
I find myself in a funny position here, because I’m a philosopher, not a scientist, by training and by temperament. The goal of science is to explain observable regularities (and irregularities) by constructing models of data about them. Whereas the ultimate (and impossible) goal of philosophy is not explanation, but a different kind of understanding:
I do think that philosophy is better when it takes the sciences seriously (and art, and politics, and religion, and . . . .). And I think it’s bad philosophizing to prescribe to scientists what they should be doing or looking for. I’m embarrassed whenever a philosopher says, “what physicists/biologists/psychologists don’t understand about _______ is . . . .” I prefer philosophizing as a reflective rather than speculative activity, perhaps echoing my preference for epistemology over metaphysics. I’m not entirely hostile to all metaphysics — just most of it. 🙂
I think philosophy is indispensable to science. After all, it’s the duty of philosophers to tell us what counts as an ‘explanation’ and why. So in that respect I disagree with KN about philosophy, it is supposed to provide explanations.
But perhaps we need an operational definition of “explanation.”
On my view, figuring out what counts as as an explanation is pretty much the same thing as providing an explication of the concept of “explanation”, which is very different from actually providing an explanation.
By “explication,” I mean what most non-philosophers think of as “conceptual analysis.” But “conceptual analysis” has a very narrow meaning, among philosophers, as consisting of the stipulation of the necessary and sufficient conditions for the use of a term. However, there are a whole host of reasons for thinking that analyses, in that narrow sense, aren’t possible for concepts outside of the highly formal domains of logic and mathematics. So I talk about “conceptual explications” instead — in substantive (non-formal) domains, an explication makes explicit what is implicit in the concept, or put otherwise, an explication says what one must do in order to count as having a grasp of the concept in question.
By contrast, I think of explanations as models that tell us why observable regularities (and irregularities) hold, to the extent that they do. Hence it follows, on my view, that explanations do not consist essentially of laws, or vice-versa. Scientific laws are descriptions of the observed regularities and irregularities, and we want models to tell us why the laws hold, not just that they do.
So an explication of “explanation” is very different from an explanation of explaining. Though the latter is definitely worthwhile and interesting; for one example, consider The Cognitive Science of Science.
One difference is the issue of error guided learning. I presume that an innate behavior exhibits a structure that is largely invariant with respect to the context and outcome of its performance and accordingly does not significantly change accross successive instaances of occurrence. It seems reasonable to deem such behavior as innate or “hardwired”.
If error guided learning is to be possible the triggering if not the structure of various performances must be subject to variation relative to some intermediate or terminal condition on the interactive outcome of the behavior. If a behvior is undertaken on the basis of an implicit prediction that conditions for a favorable outcome are indicated and that outcome is not realized then modifications of the conditions of performance can occur through error feedback. While the resultant neural configurations may not be readily distinguished, the process dynamics are clearly distinct.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1528427/explanation
Scientific Explanation
RE: Call for Topics
Information
Information: A Very Short Introduction
Objectivity
Objectivity: A Very Short Introduction
Consciousness
Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction
I’m not aware of any invariant neuronal wiring except at the sennsory input level. Wiring for complex behavior, at least in mammals, develops through learning. There are some coarse grained behaviors in infants that are refined through learning, but you can’t look at a connection and tell whether it is innate or the result of learning.
A slightly simpler illustration of the multi-faceted nature of explanation was provided by British theologian Michael Poole in a letter criticizing Richard Dawkins back in the 1990’s. At one point he took Dawkins to task for equivocating over the meaning of explanation and explained it thus:
What is the philosophy of what counts as biological scientific evidence where a biological scientific theory is involved??
Or is biology a subject demanding observation of living tissue and tools to observe same or is biology also about static images using tools like pickaxes and dynamite?
Yes.
What an odd combination of factual error and illogic to be found in Britannica.
In The Many Faces of Realism Hilary Putnam offered a very interesting illustration of the entanglement of interpretation and observer interest in an instance of apparently straightforward physical explanation:
Putnam invites us to imagine a pressure cooker on which the safety valve has jammed, causing the cooker to explode. Why did the cooker explode? We say that the cooker exploded because the valve failed to open. We don’t say that the cooker exploded because an arbitrary section of the wall of the cooker, say one centimeter square in area, was in place and hence retained the steam, even though, from the perspective of physics, the stuck valve and an arbitrary section of cooker wall play identical roles: the absence of either would have allowed the steam to escape and averted the explosion. Why, then, do we say that the faulty valve caused the explosion, and not an arbitrary area of the wall? Because we know that the valve “should have” let the steam escape – that is its function, what it was designed to do. On the other hand, the arbitrary bit of surface was not doing anything “wrong” in preventing the steam from escaping; containing the steam is the function of that patch of cooker surface.
Putnam concludes that, in asking “Why did the explosion take place?” – knowing what we know and the interests we have – our “explanation space” consists of the alternatives:
(1) Explosion taking place
(2) Everything functioning as it should.
What we want to know, then, is why (1) is what happened, as opposed to (2). We are simply not interested in why (1) is what happened as opposed to an infinite collection of alternatives as,
3) An arbitrary patch of surface is missing, and no explosion takes place.
In short, our interests dictate that the presence of a given area of the wall of the cooker, and countless other facts about the physics of the explosion, take their places as “background conditions” rather than “causes” of the explosion. This discrimination between causes and background conditions cannot be provided by an account of the explosion supplied by mathematical physics, because the “intended” or “designed” aspects of the cooker cannot be deduced at the level of physics (except by creatures who already understand design and purpose). Consideration of design lies in the history of the mechanism – in the story of its origins and purpose – rather than in its present physical state. Hence an irreducible “explanatory relativity” must be introduced if we are to understand the cause of this explosion.
This is not, however, to say that there is no objective adjudication to be had regarding the truth of the assertion that the stuck valve caused the explosion. Quite the contrary. Once we have specified our interests, given the nature of our language, and, indeed, given our scientific practices (all of which help us discriminate foreground and background), it would be simply false to say that the wall of the pressure cooker caused the explosion – even though the physics of the explosion dictate that had that area of wall not been present the explosion would not have occurred. In fact, it is only once we have identified our conceptual commitments and our interests that the determination of the cause of the explosion at the level of our interests becomes an adjudicable, objective fact. Hence, unless one is to abandon the idea that “the stuck valve on the pressure cooker caused the explosion” is an adjudicable, objective fact, one must acknowledge the importance of those interests and abandon the notion that an idealized, purely “observer-independent” perspective is relative to our interests inherently more correct or more useful. We want to know why what should have happened failed to happen – or why what should not have happened, happened, a statement of our values and perspective that cannot be deduced from physics.
(Remember to recycle)
This intersects with the place of “function” in biology in, for example, causation in disease. We need an account of “2) everything functioning as it should” to get at causation in medicine, and probably more generally in biology.
If the idea is to have a philosophical discussion that’s grounded in biology, then here’s my suggestion:
Is a human more ‘complex’ than a fruitfly?
Concepts like causation, complexity and free will are pretty much useless without operational definitions.
Reciprocating Bill 2,
I tend to forget how wonderful Putnam is, even though I myself have often complained about how Putnam is overshadowed by Rorty or McDowell. Thank you for reminding me!
Somewhere else Putnam alludes to a comment from Austin (I believe) that there are as many senses of “cause” as there are uses of “because”. And the pressure-cooker example shows, among other things, the futility of specifying necessary and sufficient conditions for causal explanations. (Just as futile as specifying necessary and sufficient conditions for conceptual analysis in non-formal domains.)
I agree completely. I really need to start reading Millikan!
Which is why it is useful to define things such as causation in controlled contexts.
Mung linked to a Britannica article on explanation, which contained, as an example, a claim that tobacco products cause cancer.
I think it is somewhat disingenuous to suggest that science is unaware of multivariate causation or that it ignores the possibility of multiple contributing causes. Politicians do this, and scientists sometimes step outside science and comment on political issues, but as a rule, peer reviewed papers are rather cautious and narrow in scope.
Now if someone wants to claim that scientism or biologism are instances of misusing the concept of causation, I’ll listen. In fact, that’s precisely what I have been asking for. An example of bad science, incorrect scientific conclusions or missed research opportunities “caused” by scientism.
There aren’t any, because that’s not what “scientism” is all about. The idea behind scientism, as I understand the allegation, is that a society that privileges scientific research over other kinds of understanding will have an impoverished sense of the possibilities of human life and flourishing. That’s got nothing at all to do with “bad science, incorrect scientific conclusions, or missed research opportunities.”
Insofar as I understand how the term is used — and I hasten to point out that I do not endorse this usage — a society could be utterly “scientistic” without any problems with regard to the conduct of science per se. The ‘scientism’ would be manifest in, for example, the lack of appreciation for art, philosophy, literature, music, history — and the corresponding defunding of institutions which foster those disciplines (humanities departments in universities, public radio and TV, libraries, museums, etc.).
I’m also a bit suspicious of the concept of “biologism,” but one respect in which I do take it seriously is that I do not think that “reasons” are reducible to, or translatable into, “causes” . The reasons/causes distinction is one that I take very seriously.
Yet I’m also suspicious of the concept of “biologism” because I worry that complaints about “biologism”, like complaints about “scientism,” are motivated by a reactionary political agenda that relies on spurious claims about the non-natural or ‘supernatural’ dimension of human existence. And I do not believe that there is any such dimension — at least not as traditionally (theologically) conceived.
This much should make perfectly clear that I draw the reasons/causes distinction with respect to nature, thus conceiving of reasons as both fully natural (nothing non-natural required here) and yet sui generis with respect to causes.
How ironic.
The scientists that I know, enjoy the arts and support funding of the arts and humanities. For the most part, the people trying to defund the arts are the very same people as are complaining about scientism.
I’m sure the regulars at UD are distraught at the possibility that NPR, PBS and humanities departments might lose funding. If you will pardon a bit of sarcasm.
Nevertheless, I would like to see a list of bad effects coming from Gregory and Mung and Blas.
There are “philosophical” problems in science and mathematics, such as whether Pluto should be called a planet, or whether the solution to the four-color map problem should be called a proof and whether it is the most elegant possible proof.
But Gregory and Mung and Blas hint at more serious effects on civilization.
Well, there are pundits like Leon Wieseltier, who strongly support public funding for the arts and oppose “scientism”. (Wieseltier is the one who got into a pretty public dust-up with Steven Pinker about this. Links available on request.)
But generally speaking, yes, I quite agree — which is precisely why I don’t find the concept of “scientism” to be terribly useful, and why I maintain that the rhetoric about “scientism” operates by deflecting onto science the social ills produced by capitalism. (I have a similar view about how the rhetoric about “Darwinism” and “materialism” operates among creationist and ID proponents.)
The sarcasm is perfectly appropriate, and it illustrates quite nicely the contradictions involved in the right-wing criticism of scientism. (Whereas Curtis White belongs to the left-wing criticism of scientism, i.e. romantic anti-capitalism.)
I like the term romantic anti-capitalism. I think capitalism gets tarred by the same brush that IDers use against Darwinism. Same brush, different brushers, but same shallow reasoning.
I want to share this, from Sean Carroll: Ḷet’s stop using the word scientism.
Maybe, if Gregory returns to grace us with xis wisdom ever again, we can point to this quote and forward the discussion.
hotshoe,
Good!
I also recommend Susan Haack’s “Six Signs of Scientism,” which also tries to sort through the issues nicely. I can track down a PDF for those who can’t find it on their own.
Personally, I think that if “scientism” is limited to
then I have no objections to “scientism” thus understood, and would happily direct all my criticisms towards how science and technology are corrupted by corporate capitalism.
Okay, so the word science can be sheep’s clothing hiding a wolf.
The same can be said of religion. In fact I cannot think of any valued organization, substance or activity that has not been misused to cloak misdeeds.
Fifty-some years ago one of my high school teachers noted that every word used to denote a politician eventually became to be used ironically and disparagingly. At the time he was referring to “statesman.”
What I took away from that observation was the motivation to ignore emotion laden terms and to look directly at the behavior of people and organizations, and to look beyond their intentions and toward the actual results they produced. I could be accused of being a cynic rather than a skeptic, but I do not believe most people have evil intentions, even when what they do turns out badly.
Since you brought it up again, Part I of III review of White’s “The Science Delusion” is out: http://social-epistemology.com/2013/11/04/beyond-polemic-part-i-riggio-sandstrom-and-dufour/
So you’re embracing that definition of ‘scientism’ then?!
Sellars seems to be helping you imo ‘sell-out’ philosophy and worldview to science, in a rather imbalanced triad of major realms. Admittedly I haven’t (yet) read his “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man.” But then again, my challenge to you above remains – “KN has not yet given a significant statement about why philosophy matters nowadays.” [Aside, Nicholas Maxwell just came up with an interesting, though imo still tangential piece on this topic: http://www.academia.edu/4346706/What_Philosophy_Ought_to_Be%5D
Re: “Michigan Socialist House” – was Sellars a socialist? Icky, tricky ‘analytic’ philosopher obviously. I much prefer Wilfrid Laurier. = ))
Maxwell’s piece at least addresses tangible problems. I don’t see how they are problems addressable by philosophy, but I would be willing to listen in on a discussion.
I’m not sure it’s philosophy (or whatever you are all talking about in this thread) but I’d like to see “What is creativity?” discussed. Or rather, when can an act be judged to be genuinely creative.
Some noise has recently been made at UD over how computers cannot, by definition, be “creative”.
Much like with CSI, they know what can and cannot be creative (or create CSI) but given that they’ve yet to precisely define ‘creative’ it’s hard to know what their point is.
I would suggest that proponents of “computers cannot be creative” cannot define creativity in a way that does not also exclude human creativity.