Are Biological Functions Observer-Relative?

The following three positions need to be distinguished:

  1. There is design in nature, and a complete account of it is impossible without recourse to a cosmic designer such as God.
  2. There is intrinsic design in nature, and it is wholly explainable in naturalistic terms.
  3. There is no intrinsic design in nature: all features that exhibit design, purpose, function are observer-relative, and the only observers are themselves denizens of the natural world.

Theists who rely on design arguments subscribe to (1), while some naturalist philosophers come out in favor of (2). (2), however, involves the claim that there is intrinsic design in nature, a claim that is far from obvious, and is arguably inconsistent with Darwinism. The point of Darwinism is that what looks to be designed, in reality is not, but can be accounted for in terms of mechanistic, non-teleological processes of random variation and natural selection.  If we are using the term 'design' strictly and without equivocation — and thus not confusing 'design' in the present sense with 'design' in the sense of pattern or shape — then nothing can exhibit design unless there is a designer responsible for the thing's design.  If someone were to say that natural selection designed birds' wings so that they can evade their predators they would be gulty of a two-fold fallacy: first, the fallacy of hypostatizing natural selection, and second, the mistake of supposing that birds' wings exhibit an intrinsic designedness.

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Asics

Why are Asics running shoes so called?  After purchasing a pair on Saturday I was pleased to discover that Asics is an acronym for anima sana in corpore sano.  The standard tag is mens sana in corpore sano (A sound mind in a sound body), but Msics doesn't quite make it acronym-wise.  I am not enough of a Latinist so say whether anima sana in corpore sano occurs in any classical author. 

If water is the philosopher's drink (Thoreau), and running the philosopher's sport, then Asics may be the philosopher's running shoe.  But the mileage on my Asics Gel-Nimbuses is still too low (8 miles) to say for sure.  So far, they seem very good in terms of stability and cushioning.

A good running maxim: "Trash your shoes before they trash you."  Frugality has its limits.

The Concept of Design

To move towards a resolution of some of the questions posed in the comment threads to recent posts it is necessary to back up and try to clarify some of the fundamental terms in the debate. One of them is 'design.'

Our starting point must be ordinary language. As David Stove points out, "it is a fact about the meaning of a common English word, that you cannot say that something was designed, without implying that it was intended; any more than you can say that a person was divorced, without implying that he or she was previously married." (Darwinian Fairytales, p. 190, emphasis added.) In other words, it is an analytic proposition that a designed object is one that was intended in the same way that it is an analytic proposition that a divorced person is one who was previously married. These are two conceptual truths, and anyone who uses designed object and divorced person in a way counter to these truths either does not understand these concepts or else has some serious explaining to do.

I should think that Richard Dawkins has some serious explaining to do. Consider the subtitle of The Blind Watchmaker. It reads: Why the evidence of evolution reveals a universe without design.

Now I think I understand that. What Dawkins will do in his book is argue how the modern theory of evolution shows that the natural universe as a whole and in its parts is in no way the embodiment of the intentions and purposes of any intelligent being. Thus a bat, a piece of "living machinery," is such that "the 'designer' is unconscious natural selection." (p. 37) The scare quotes show that Dawkins is not using 'designer' literally. What he is saying, putting the point in plain English, is that there is no designer. For if there were a designer, then he would be contradicting the subtitle of his book, which implies that no part of nature is designed. So far, so good.

Unfortunately, on the same page Dawkins says the following about Paley:

His hypothesis was that living watches were literally designed and built by a master watchmaker. Our modern hypothesis is that the job was done in gradual evolutionary stages by natural selection.

But now we have a contradiction. We were told a moment ago that there is no designer. But now we are being told that there is a designer. For if the design job is done by natural selection, then natural selection is the designer.

Now which is it? Is there a designer or isn't there one? Dawkins cannot have it both ways at once.  If there is no designer, then natural selection cannot be the designer.  What this contradiction shows is that Dawkins is using 'design' and cognates in an unintelligible way.

Some will say I am quibbling over words. But I am not. The issue is not about words but about the concepts those words are used to express. I am simply thinking clearly about the concepts that Dawkins et al. are deploying, concepts like design.

If you tell me that design in nature is merely apparent, and that in reality nothing is designed and everything can be explained mechanistically or non-teleologically, then I understand that whether or not I agree with it. But if you tell me that there is design in nature but that the designer is natural selection, then I say that is nonsense, i.e. is unintelligible.

One cannot have it both ways at once. One cannot make use of irreducibly teleological language while in the next breath implying that there is no teleology in nature. The problem is well expressed by Stove:

. . . ever since 1859, Darwinians have always owed their readers a translation manual that would 'cash' the teleological language which Darwinians avail themselves of without restraint in explaining particular adaptations, into the non-teleological language which their own theory of adaptation requires. But they have never paid, or even tried to pay, this debt. (DF 191)

The Belief in Libertarian Free Will as a Life-Enhancing Illusion

William James famously characterized the true as the good in the way of belief. But is knowledge of the truth in every case life-enhancing?  Does knowing the truth always contribute to human flourishing?  Or is it rather the case that to live well with ourselves and others, to be happy, to flourish, requires the maintenance of certain life-enhancing illusions?  Nietzsche raised these questions and he may have been the first to raise them.  They are hard to dismiss.

Consider libertarian free will (LFW).  It is a difficult notion.  Many find it incoherent.   Suppose it is.  Then, whether or not determinism is true, LFW cannot exist.  Compatibilist construals of free will, however, do not seem to supply an adequate notion of moral responsibility.  Suppose this is so, and that only LFW supplies an adequate notion of moral responsibility.

One might then be tempted to adopt the position Saul Smilansky calls "illusionism." This is the view that the illusory belief in LFW is positive and useful.  "Humanity is fortunately deceived in the free will issue, and this seems to be a condition of civilized morality and personal value." See Free Will, Fundamental Dualism, and the Centrality of Illusion, sec. 3.2.

 

An Argument for Libertarian Freedom of the Will

First the argument in nuce, then a detailed explanation.

P1. I am morally responsible for at least some of my actions and omissions.
P2. I cannot be morally responsible for an action or omission unless I am libertarianly free with respect to that action or omission.
Therefore
C. I am libertarianly free with respect to at least some of my actions and omissions.


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World’s Oldest Blogger Logs Off for Good

Maria Amelia Lopez, thought to be the world's oldest blogger, has died at the age of 97.  More here.  Her entry into the 'sphere occurred at a young 95 and appears to have given her a new lease on life.

I was reflecting just this morning on how enriching the World Wide Web has been for so many.  Without it, I would never have met Peter Lupu, the noble Philoponus, or Michael Valle, to mention just three who live within striking distance.

We should honor those whose intelligence and creativity and hard work have made it possible.  Tim Berners-Lee for example.  But how many have heard of him?  Instead, we hear ad nauseam about worthless nonentities whose empty celebrity is their only claim to fame.  Pick your favorite Hollywood airheads and Washington, D.C. politicos.  How about Nancy Pelosi?  She is both an airhead and a politico.

If You are a Conservative, Don’t Talk Like a Liberal!

I saw Michael Smerconish on C-Span one morning. His conservative credentials are impressive, but he used the word 'homophobe.'

I've made this point before but it bears repeating. We conservatives should never acquiesce in the Left's acts of linguistic vandalism. Battles in the culture war are often lost and won on linguistic ground. So we ought to resolutely oppose the Left's attempts at linguistic corruption.

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Modern Materialism as Essentially Cartesian

Arthur W. Collins, The Nature of Mental Things, Notre Dame 1987, pp. 61-62:

Modern materialists have been so profoundly convinced by the general structure of Cartesian thinking about the mind that they manage to promote only a materialist version of a philosophy of mind that is essentially Cartesian in its underlying attitudes and its extensive matters of detail.  Contemporary mind-brain materialism is a body-body dualism  Materialists typically accept the Cartesian idea of an inner mental realm.  Contemporary repudiation of  dualism is generally a consequence of the extension of scientific knowledge in the biological field and the acceptance of a comprehensive evolutionary naturalism.  Many thinkers now sympathize with the materialist rejection of mental substance.  Impenetrable mysteries will be a part of the the understanding of the mind as long as a ghostly substratum for consciousness and mental activity is tolerated.

[. . .]

Materialism is on the wrong track because the trouble with Cartesian philosophy of mind lies in its conception of  a realm of inner mental things and events comprising conscious mentality.  This is the aspect of Cartesianism that is retained by materialists to this very day.  So the chief defect of materialism, in my view, is that it is a species of Cartesian philosophy of mind.

Collins' beef is with the notion of a "realm of inner mental things."  But what exactly is his problem?  Isn't there a tolerably clear sense in which memories, for example, are inner?  It's a metaphor of course; we are not speaking of spatial interiority.  Memories and such are not spatially inside of anything, which is why mind = brain materialism is absurd.    That thoughts are literally in the head is Unsinn.  That we sometimes talk this way cuts no ice, e.g., "He got it into his head to take up golf." And surely behaviorism is dead as a dog and out for the count:  beliefs, desires , memories, etc. cannot be understood  in terms of behavior or dispositions to behave.  I'll have to read more of Collins to see what he is driving at.  But I suspect I will no more fully understand what he is driving at than I ever understood what Wittgenstein was driving at.

I agree with Collins that contemporary materialism  is dualistic in that it is a brain-body dualism, or as he says, a "body-body dualism."  And I agree that it is absurd to attempt to identify thoughts with events in a hunk of intracranial meat.  But once the absurdity of behaviorism is appreciated, how avoid some notion of inner goings-on?

 

I’m Free! Some Thoughts on Compatibilism

SouthLake-SierraNevadaMts Backpacking solo in California's Sierra Nevada range some years ago, I had occasion to exult: "I'm free!" What did I mean?

I meant that I was doing what I wanted to do as I wanted to do it. I was not subject to any external or internal impediments, or any external or internal compulsions. An example of an external impediment would be a snowstorm or an uncooperative companion, while an example of an internal impediment would be acrophobia. An example of external compulsion would be being forced at gunpoint to hike. And if I suffered from cacoethes ambulandi, a pathological itch to ramble, a syndrome I have just invented, then that would count as an internal compulsion. But unencumbered as I was by any such impediments or compulsions, I was doing what I willed (wanted, desired, chose, . . .).

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Free Will Again: A Tension in Philoponus’ Doxastic Network

Near the end of Thursday night's symposium, Philoponus, animated but not rendered irrational by the prodigious quantity of Fat Tire Ale he had consumed, stated that he is really only interested in practical and existential topics in philosophy as opposed to theoretical ones.  He is concerned solely with questions on the order of: How should we live?  What ought we do? But he also took a hard determinist line on the problem of free will, based on his study of recent neuroscience.  He tells me he has been reading Daniel Wegner's The Illusion of Conscious Will.  It occurred to me the next morning that there is a certain tension between these two Philoponian commitments.

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Thinking of Graduate School in the Humanities? Part II

On February 9th I linked to Thomas H. Benton's Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go.  Today I discovered his Just Don't Go Part II.  Prospective graduate students should digest it thoroughly albeit cum grano salis.  I don't recommend Benton's piece in order to discourage anyone but to apprise them of what they are up against should they embark upon graduate study.  But if ideas are your passion, and you have talent, and you are willing to live like a monk, take risks and perhaps later on retool for the modern-day equivalent of lens-grinding, then go for it!

Here is the question you should ask yourself.  Will I consider it to have been a waste of time and money to have devoted 4-10 years of my precious youth to graduate study if I find that I cannot secure a tenure-track appointment in a reasonably good department in which the chances of tenure are reasonably good and find that I either have to re-tool or become an academic gypsy moving from one one-year appointment to another, or end up as an adjunct teaching five courses per semester for slave wages?

If you answer in the affirmative, then you almost certainly should avoid graduate school given a very bad job market that gives every indication of getting worse. But if you love your discipline, have some talent, and your very identity is bound up with being a philosopher, say, then you should take the risk.  I did, and I don't regret my decision for a second.  Of course, I was one of those who secured a tenure-track position right out of grad school and went on to get tenure.  But had I failed to get a job, I would not have considered my time in grad school wasted.  They were wonderful years in a wonderful place: Boston on the Charles, the Athens of America.  I lived on next-to-nothing but avoided debt by tailoring my lifestyle to the modest emolument of my teaching fellowship.  But that's just me.  Philosophy for me is the unum necessarium.  I cannot imagine who I would be were I not a philosopher.  For me, no way of life is higher.  I am going to do it one way or another, whether or not I can turn a buck from it.

Now if you think like I do, but allow yourself to be cowed by parents and friends and the manifold suggestions emanating from a money-grubbing society in which 'success' is spelled '$ucce$$' and pronounced 'suck-cess' into thinking that you must be 'practical' and put economic and career considerations above all others, then you may wake up one morning a rich shyster or medico but with deep regrets that you didn't have the courage to pursue your dream.