Posts filed under ‘Philosophy’
Natural vs. Organic Functions– Review: Peter McLaughlin, What Functions Explain
In my previous post, I described the importance of a significance criteria for function ascriptions. My primary example was dueling function ascriptions for the Milky Way Galaxy. I argued that a natural function ascription for solid matter in the Milky Way Galaxy was a more significant explanation for the existence of solid matter, and the Galaxy, than an ascribing a biocentric (artifactual) function to the Galaxy. This argument rests on a presupposition that I did not explore however– that it makes sense to explain the functions of natural, but inorganic, entities at all.
Peter McLaughlin, whose What Functions Explain has spurred this series of posts, does not think that this presupposition of mine makes sense. Or at least that is the message I take from his late discussion of inorganic replicators in his book. McLaughlin writes that, “it makes no sense to speak of the function of some molecular substructure of a crystal, but we are not committed to the belief that the crystal somehow ‘benefits’ from being replicated” (2001, p. 181). Partially submerged in both of my previous posts on functional explanation is the idea that the split between natural and artifactual functions is a bit of a misnomer. In fact, the split seems to be much more between artifactual and organic functions, and so discussing functional explanation in terms of natural/artificial instead of natural/organic is a mistake. Merely being natural does not mean that something has a function, according to McLaughlin, but all organic entities do seem to have a function. McLaughlin seems to recognise this problem in his last few chapters, as once he has restricted the possession of functions to self-reproducing systems that have goods he begins to talk more in terms of organic entities that have functions and less in terms of natural entities that have them. To a degree, this problem is about semantics– if you don’t mean to include everything that falls under the category “natural”, use a different category, like “organic”!– but in a more important sense, the semantic problem reveals a real issue. Why don’t inorganic but natural entities have functions?
I think the split has been drawn between natural and artificial not just because it has a nice, dualistic ring to it, but because the terminology actually captures an important topic of metaphysics. There is a real difference between what it means for an artifact to have a function and what it means for a natural entity to have one. And, to add the kicker, that includes inorganic, but natural entities, such as the Milky Way. In my previous two posts, I have borrowed from McLaughlin function definitions that he ascribes to other authors, especially C.G. Hempel. But in the last (and very impressive) chapter, McLaughlin lets loose with a definition of his own. Answering the challenge posed in the book’s title, McLaughlin writes that functions explain “the existence and properties of those parts of a self-reproducing system that contribute to the self-reproduction of that system. What functions explain is systems whose identity conditions consist in the constant replacement, repair, and reproduction of their component parts” (2001, p. 209). This definition is meant to encapsulate organic functions only– artifactual functions are relative to the valuations of valuing agents, and (to repeat) it just makes no sense to think of the parts of inorganic systems as having functions.
I maintain that they do, and with alterations even McLaughlin’s definition of functional explanation can be made to accommodate them. Consider again my example of a system of extremely large scale– the Milky Way Galaxy. Then, expand the scale even further to that of the universe. According to most currently accepted cosmological theory, the universe is expanding, and has been since the Big Bang. Now, take the first half of McLaughlin’s definition of functional explanation– that functions explain “the existence and properties of those parts of a self-reproducing system that contribute to the self-reproduction of that system”– and integrate that thought with the idea that the universe is expanding. The universe is expanding, and (barring a misunderstanding, which, given the subject, seems almost inevitable), this means that there are parts of the universe that contribute to that expansion. These parts are parts of a self-reproducing system (the universe), that by their very existence, contribute to the self-reproduction and expansion of that system. Note that this would not be the case if the universe was in a steady state or in the process of collapsing into a Big Crunch sometime in the future.
There are clearly some enormous, massive difficulties in the details of this example. We don’t know what the stuff is that is causing the universe to expand. Some (a very small amount) of that universe seems to be matter of the kind with which we are used to dealing– solids, liquids, and gases– but most of it is apparently other stuff. Because I am not an expert Cosmologist, I cannot hope to explain these details. The expert cosmologists themselves seem to be at a loss, as well, but at least they have some ideas of how to work on these problems. What is important for my use of this popularly scientific understanding of cosmology is this: the Universe, the largest natural, physical, and (largely) non-living thing that can be conceived, seems to be a system that has parts that have functions. Many of those parts, being the structure of the universe, are just like it– they are natural and non-living. Yet they seem to be function bearers, at least with the first half of McLaughlin’s definition in mind.
At this point, you might be wondering if the universe, as a system, satisfies the second part of McLaughlin’s definition. Is the universe the sort of system “whose identity conditions consist in the constant replacement, repair, and reproduction of [its] component parts”? The rub for non-living systems in the definition seems to be the criteria of “replacement” and “repair”, included by McLaughlin in order to 1) distinguish natural functions from artifactual functions and 2) generalise the causal feedback loop required by functional explanations from requiring natural selection (which itself requires inter-generational reproduction) to intra-generational processes like the gradual maintenance of organs in living creatures (McLaughlin, 2001, pp. 179-190) This itself is an adaptation of a Maynard-Smith’s conditions for life, namely replication, regeneration, metabolism, and growth (Maynard-Smith, 1986). Regeneration, repair, or maintenance– no matter how you formulate the condition, it does not seem as if it is the kind of thing that can be assigned, broadly, to most parts of the universe. Which is why I suggest that we jettison the repair condition.
My motive for this is that parts of natural, non-living systems do seem to have functions. For the most part, except for this one criteria, parts of such systems meet the requirements that must be met by function bearers. The reason that I think natural, non-living entities should be included as possible subjects of functional explanation is that such explanation can be useful in providing more information about the universe. We are paying a heavy explanatory cost by limiting (severely limiting!) functional explanation of natural entities to living entities. Most of the universe is non-living, and we need all the information about it that we can get.
We do have to go about this sort of explanation in the right way. To lower the metaphysical costs of functional explanation, as well as to make the explanation more complete, we should be careful to limit (if not eliminate) intentional teleology, as well as anthro- or bio-centric perspectives, from functional explanations. Appealing to causal feedback loops as a primary ingredient of functions is currently the best way to achieve this goal. It is also important to keep the distinction between natural and artifactual functions, as one has an internal teleology and the other an external teleology, related to that of an external valuing agent. The primary objection to jettisoning the repair condition from a definition of natural functions is that by doing so one not only brings in natural but non-living entities but also artifacts. How do I propose to keep the distinction between natural and artifactual functions while rejecting the repair criteria? By building in a significance criteria. To get the most information out of an explanation, we should employ the variety of functional explanation that has the most significance for the system being explained. For a bicycle, an artifactual explanation is the most significant, and for the universe, a natural explanation is the most significant. It is not necessary to build into our definition of function that there is a distinction between artifacts, living entities, and non-living entities. We lose much by insisting that only one kind of functional explanation is possible for artifacts, another is possible for living entities, and no functional explanation is possible at all for non-living, natural entities. If we are truly motivated to accept a definition of functional explanation with the greatest explanatory range and power, and the lowest metaphysical cost, then we should not require that the subjects of such explanation be living if they are natural.
The Importance of Significance for Artifactual and Natural Functions
Peter McLaughlin provides separate formulations of what qualifies an artifact as having a function and what qualifies something naturally occurring as having a function. Most arguments over functional explanation seem to center around the functions of naturally occurring entities, although the apparent necessity of separate definitions for natural and artificial entities possessing functions is not without controversy. The problem with the split between natural and artifactual functions is usually located at the split, but I think there is also a major difficulty when the two come together.
McLaughlin’s basic summation of natural functions is this:
(1) X does/enables Y (in or for some S)*
(2) Y is good for some S; and
(3) By being good for some S, Y contributes to the (re)production of X (there is a feedback mechanism involving Y’s benefiting S that (re-)produces X). (2001, p. 140)
And for artifactual functions, he provides the following schematization:
(1’) X does Y—or at leas some relevant agent believes it does.
(2’) Y is good for some S—or at least some relevant agent believes it is. (ibid)
Now, to muddy the waters a little bit. It would seem that natural entities and artifacts might be divided along lines of living and non-living things. This is not the natural entities that are living ones, but is to say that “artifact” seems to intuitively include only non-living things. After all, living things cannot be made into artifacts, right? More than that, natural things cannot be artifacts, right?
This being philosophy, the line is not nearly so clear. What about domesticated animals? On the other end, in the non-living but nonetheless natural range, what about the Milky Way Galaxy? There seems to be a large enough class of things that blur natural/artifactual distinctions that there might be a confusing proliferation of function ascriptions, not to mention difficulties in classification.
Let’s look at one of my two examples that blurs the artifactual/natural distinction, the one that is more extreme: the Milky Way Galaxy. How, you might be wondering, might the Milky Way be an artifact? Under the guidelines for artifactual function ascriptions, the Milky Way (and the rest of the Universe, for that matter) might be said to (1) provide a substrate for life and (2) that providing a home for life is good for humans. In fact, this is much of the fine-tuning argument in a nutshell. One immediate problem with this ascription of function is the insignificance of providing a home for life (at least to the best of our knowledge) to the existence of the universe. It is an explanation incredibly small in scope– to say that a function of a galaxy is to provide a home for life is similar to declaring that a function of mine was to touch a particular token at an arcade in 2004. It is to pick out a physically and temporally small occurrence in the history of an entity and hold it to be a function.
Another problem is that one can also cast a functional explanation for the Milky Way as a natural entity. (1) The Milky Way Galaxy fuses particles together in such a way that solid matter exists. (2) Solid matter is essential to maintain the shape and makeup of the Milky Way. (3) The more solid matter there is in the galaxy, the more of the galaxy there is, and without solid matter there would be no Milky Way. This certainly seems to be a more significant function of the Galaxy than providing a home for life, not to mention that solid matter seems to be more important to the actual continued existence of the Milky Way as such than the existence of life in some corner of the Galaxy. Except in a linguistic sense (without language, the Milky Way Galaxy would lose its name), there is not much that the continued existence of life does that maintains the existence of the Galaxy.
Before function ascriptions can be made for natural entities and artifacts, perhaps there first needs to be an additional guideline on how to decide which function ascription to employ. This could take the form of a significance criterion, similar to that described in Philip Kitcher’s The Advancement of Science (1993). There, Kitcher asserts that a goal of science is not simply truth, but significant truth. There are all sorts of trivial truths that are easy to arrive at, but science is after those that are significant. Similarly, to ask for an explanation of an entity’s function one is looking for the most significant of the range of explanations. While life is important to some features of the Milky Way, solid matter is much more so. Focusing on a natural function of the Milky Way explains more– it helps explain more of how the Milky Way exists at all– while an artifactual function ascription explains the Milky Way from a very unrepresentative biocentric perspective. This is not to say that the artifactual function of the Galaxy provides no information, but the natural functions of the galaxy are much more significant and provide explanations with greater depth.
Functional Explanation, Science, and Religion
I am pressing ahead with Peter McLaughlin’s What Functions Explain. Although I have more reading to do– and McLaughlin is judicious in his pacing, frustratingly raising interesting questions and promising to engage them in later chapters so as to continue on a single subject– his discussion of the etiological approach to functional explanation raised some interesting thoughts having to do with a contrast between certain practices in science and religion.
Let me go over that territory again before linking functional explanation to science and religion. Exactly what entails a functional explanation– or an explanation of some entities function– is difficult philosophical territory. In contemporary philosophy, there are two main competing schools on what a function should consist of, originating with Thomas Nagel and C.G. Hempel. The etiological approach to functional explanation relies on including a causal aspect in the explanation. Instead of a nomological statement or two– along the lines of:
The function of an item X in a system S is to do Y, which under some condition C (including internal state Ci and environmental context Ce) is required for, or is at least conducive to, goal G. (McLaughlin, 2001, 68)
The Hempelian variation on this theme is broken into three parts by McLaughlin, namely disposition, welfare, and feedback. Disposition is the tendency of something– an organ, artifact, organism, or other entity– to do something under some condition (as above). The welfare condition is that that something tends to promote a goal of that entity. Finally, the feedback loop is the etiological (causal) characteristic of the explanation. It relates to how the entity has come to perform its function and how the performance of that function is vital to the continued existence and performance of that entity. In other words, it isn’t enough for a functional explanation to feature a means and an ends: it must also feature how the performing entity came to be a function bearer, and continues to exist as such. It must be part of the function of a thing to put it in place to perform its function in the first place, instead of its coming to perform its function by accident.
Naturally, this account raises all sorts of problems. I will take McLaughlin at his word, though, and continue on in his text before I take the plunge into that discussion. For now, I’m going to ignore some of the problems with the etiological account of functional explanation and go forward with how such explanation is illuminating for a description of science and religion. At least some of the time– when there aren’t issues with the vagueness surrounding the term “function”– I think scientific explanation makes use of this kind of explanation. In particular, the issues scientific explanation would have with function seem more oriented towards the dispositional and valuational characteristics of functions and not the etiological aspect. The opposite seems true of religion.
One of the issues, of course, is that of teleology and its attendant baggage of intentionality. The more interesting issue is that of the causal feedback loop. The issues scientists have with teleology and its gestures towards an unknown agency are fairly well-known, and so I will leave them to other authors or separate posts. What caught my interest today are the different demands of science and religion on functional explanation. Science seems to demand an etiological component, and religion does not. This is because of the two different approaches science and religion have towards causation. Religion, (if the definition includes some content regarding the supernatural) is not merely permissive of interrupted causation in the natural world– it is demanding of it. Science, on the other hand, stresses a uniformity of causation in the universe.
The significance of this is that causal feedback loops may be an essential ingredient of an adequate scientific explanation, while they create a source of tension with some religious explanation. A causal feedback loop provides closure in an explanation– the heart is frequently used as a classic illustration of this. The function of the heart is to pump blood, which certainly contributes to the welfare of the organism that contains the heart. As long as the heart continues to pump blood, the organism will continue to live and cause the heart to pump blood. Short of some interruption in the system, the heart will continue to function. The heart was developed particularly to do this, in that sort of system, and will continue to do so unless interrupted or replaced.
If one insists on a more intentional world (at the extremes, this consists of belief in special creation), this explanation might seem incomplete or unsatisfactory. “Why,” such a person might ask, “did the heart come into existence at all?” This question is intended not to probe the intricacies of the causal reinforcement loop– the reply, “it developed to pump blood” is really only a restatement of the information contained above, and it is not the sort of answer the questioner is after, anyway. This is because such a question is intended to step beyond the causal loop, and beyond the uniform sort of causation contained within. Doing so does away with the need for the etiological condition, reducing functional explanation to the dispositional and the valuational while providing an overlaying agency to the world. Now, the explanation for the function of the heart is this: The function of the heart is to pump blood, which certainly contributes to the welfare of the organism containing the heart. The heart came into being with organisms that required them to, themselves, function. It is not difficult to imagine this line of thought terminating in something akin to Aquinas’ arguments, a sort of regress that ends in the divine. This is a familiar sight in philosophy– if unsatisfied with a loop, the other choice is a regress. What had not occured to me before is how scientific explanation tends to be comfortable with the one, and religious explanation the other.
Editing and Knowledge
On the subject of Silvestre de Sacy’s three volume Chrestomathie arabe, a selection of writings from Middle Eastern and Northern African cultures, Edward Said has this (and much more) to say:
Sacy’s anthologies were used very widely in Europe for several generations. Although what they contain was claimed as typical, they submerge and cover the censorship of the Orient exercised by the Orientalist. Moreover, the internal order of their contents, the arrangement of their parts, the choice of fragments, never reveal their secret; one has the impression that if fragments were not chosen for their importance, or for their chronological development, or for their aesthetic beauty (as Sacy’s were not), they must nevertheless embody a certain Oriental naturalness, or typical inevitability. (Edward Said, Orentalism, p.129)
Much of what I am finding fascinating about Orientalism is that it is not just about the characterization and domination of the Orient by European intellectuals, but that it is about knowing. It is a different take on the production and dissemination of knowledge, one more informed by continental authors which I did not really acquaint myself with in the last few years. Said’s most frequent philosophical acknowledgements seem to go to Foucault, and then Marx, but as a philologist he also has interesting commentary on Schlegel and Nietzsche.
This excerpt grabbed my attention in particular because it is about editorship and the politics of pedagogical compilation. Most of the professors I have had in the last few years preferred not to use textbooks. A frequent complaint they voiced was that textbooks consist of information predigested by some panel of experts elsewhere. It also takes a long time for information to be so digested, so textbooks are frequently far behind the work being published in books and journals. The result was that most of what I have read for class in the last few years has been collections of excerpts from books and journal articles, selected by professors.
While it is good to know the editor directly, and be able to engage them in their editorial choices in discussion, I have a new feeling of unease brought about by this passage of Said’s. I would not say that I am suspicious of the sources that have been suggested to me by professors, but I am even more worried about my own range of texts. At the moment, I am my own editor with somewhat limited resources. I have a great deal of time, but not much in the way of money (at least not money I could spend on journal subscriptions). I need excerpts, anyway—I wouldn’t want to read every article in every issue of even one journal, unless it was a special issue on a particular topic of my interest. How can I make the most, though, of the sources available to me? I don’t want to read, and because of my limited memory, time, attention, or money, end up feeling as if I know things only with a certain philosophical naturalness or inevitability.
And maybe that is the real source of my unease: not the issue of editorial motives, but of attitudes towards knowledge. I feel this chiefly, selfishly, about my own attitude towards knowledge. I am worried because that feeling of naturalness or inevitability definitely crept over me while I worked on my senior thesis. Of course science was like this or that, of course religion has this or that attitude towards experience. I don’t think I spent enough time asking, “says who?”
Reading List- 6-9-09
When I graduated a few weeks ago, I was very excited about the prospect of reading fiction. So I ran through Haruki Murakami’s excellent The Wind Up Bird Chronicle. But about 3/4 of the way through, I was already back to nonfiction. I blame Raven Used Books in Harvard Sq. Jerks sell unmarked copies of current philosophy of biology texts on the cheap.
So, the current reading list is this:
Edward Said, Orientalism
I’m borrowing this one from our housemate, but I might as well be borrowing it from Nateene. So far I’m two chapters in, but Said writes in long form and with incredible style. I’ve tried starting on Orientalism before, but gave up. This time, it’s personal. Really, though, this is about the West’s perception and construction of the Orient, and how that has actually affected the orient that’s out there. On this reading, it’s sounding a strong note of caution for reaserch that I hope to do on the attitudes towards evolution possessed by people from Muslim cultures.
Philip Kitcher, In Mendel’s Mirror
As this is an essay collection, I’ve read a few of these before. I’m reading those essays, and others of Kitcher’s, again. It seems like a very good collection, and I can see it coming in handy for future courses that I plan to take in philosophy of biology.
Peter McLaughlin, What Functions Explain
Although filled cover to cover with difficult and frequently esoteric material and terminology, this is the best book-length piece of philosophy of science that I’ve read in a few months. It’s about teleology in philosophy, biology, artifacts, and all sorts of other areas. It covers a range of treatments of teleology and teleological thought, from Aristotle to Kant in some of the earlier chapters through Hempel and Nagel in the chapter I’m currently reading. There’s also a lot of original material and argument from the author.
I’ve been especially excited by this book because it offers a different entry point into issues of scientific and philosophical explanation. The investigation of what counts as a good explanation, what it means to explain something, is a classic issue of philosophy of science (if a domain so young can have classic issues). The trouble is that I don’t have the stamina to read through Carnap’s Aufbau or another Logical Positivist/Empiricist text on my own, when I’m supposed to be on a bit of an academic break. McLaughlin’s book is just accessible enough while being so technical as to be interesting and curious.
Gary Gregg, The Middle East: A Cultural Psychology
Orientalism is a good companion to this book. Written in 2005, this is one of the most current attempts to sketch a psychology of the Middle Eastern/North African region (Gregg refers throughout the book to the region as MENA, to distance himself from the tradition of considering the Middle East as a monolith). It’s a very thorough treatment of the area, at least for its size- at 365 pages, Gregg fits in chapters on the Social Ecology of MENA and chapters on psychological development from early childhood through adulthood. Gregg is very sensitive to the task of characterizing the psychology of a region with diverse geography and cultures, but is general modest in his claims and provides more descriptive material (for example, average number of months Middle Eastern mothers spend breast feeding) than conjecture (as to the effect of this breast feeding on the character of the people of MENA). Of course, he has to draw some conclusions… but the care with which he supports them makes me feel more confident that the information is reliable.
Population Thinking for Epistemology
One of my first posts on this blog was about essentialism. For some reason, Google has since picked up the keywords in the article, and it is a popular result for people looking for “essentialism” “philosophy” and “biology”. This has mystified me, because it simply is not a very informative post. If people were looking for a reference on any of those subjects, they would do better to look elsewhere.
For a long time, I have been vowing to write a better and more original post on essentialism in philosophy. This is that post, but it is still not a reference on philosophy, essentialism, or biology. For more information on essentialism, I would encourage everyone to check out John Wilkins’ brief discussion of the subject over at TalkOrigins, here.
This post concerns essentialism not in biology, but in philosophy. And I do not mean Platonic or Aristotelian essentialism; although the roots of essentialism in biology lie in part with the ancient Greeks, I think few philosophers today would say they consider truth in the same way as Plato or Aristotle. I want to discuss essentialism as the term has come to have meaning in biology in the 1930s and 40s, and in philosophy since philosophers have decided to turn their interests to modern biology. Ernst Mayr contrasted essentialist or typological thinking with population thinking in biology, as I mentioned in my previous post, but in discussing essentialism I think philosophers have failed to do the same.
What do I mean? Well, essentialism is primarily about identity, truth, and our capacity to recognize truth in a world in transition. Essentialism concerns knowledge of the characteristics that identify something, whether that thing is a species, a concept, or a person. In contrast to this, Mayr placed population thinking, whereby there is no one single organism that is a perfect model of a species, because that was not what a species is. A species consists of a population of organisms with varying traits. This makes life difficult, but not as difficult as looking for the perfect Gazelle and accordingly classifying all other Gazelles as flawed, but close enough.
Of course, philosophy doesn’t usually work in terms of Gazelles or other organisms. Philosophy deals in concepts, explanations, and other such abstractions. Because of this, I think that philosophers have traditionally focused more on essentialism than population thinking. Philosophers of biology bring both up at the same time, as I have, but when essentialism is discussed in other philosophical contexts population thinking is not mentioned. As in my original post on essentialism, philosophers in more traditional fields like epistemology and metaphysics discuss essentialism as something to be avoided, perhaps, as a pitfall or a fallacy. Sometimes, it seems as if “essentialism” is just to be equated with “oversimplification”.
Population thinking should be involved when essentialism is discussed, however, because it is an alternative to essentialist/typological thinking. How, then, should population thinking figure into the minds of, say, epistemologists? On the one hand, there is what the concept of population thinking actually consists of, which is interesting for sure. On the other, perhaps population thinking has something to say about how we should go about seeking knowledge. In most accounts of knowledge, truth is the goal, the primary ingredient, always an essential part. But truth itself resists explanation; it is what is accurate to the world, intuitive, plausible, and correct. The other bits of knowledge should be truth-seeking or conducive to finding the truth. And, unlike the populations of organisms that make up a species, there can be only one truth. There are arguments for truth pluralism, to be sure, but I can’t say they convince me. A problem for epistemologists and humans everywhere is that finding the truth, singular and perfect, is extremely difficult.
Extremely.
My proposal, then, is this: we should certainly not stop looking for truth, but perhaps we need some waystations before we arrive at it. Population thinking may be able to help us find these way stations. As has been pointed out and rehashed by many philosophers, relying on natural selection to find the truth may not be the best way to go about the search, because fitness ensures survival, not necessarily knowledge. Natural selection alone has not shaped humans into the ultimate truth-seekers. But, to paraphrase one of Karl Popper’s famous metaphors, perhaps humanity is lost on an endless, darkened plain. About this plane are scattered lanterns, all with different ranges of illumination. We can only pick up one at a time, and it is difficult (although not impossible) to tell if one we come upon provides more light than the one we hold. So we go about picking up lanterns and sometimes, after a short or long distance, we have to go back to one we dropped back along the way.
So we are lost in a population of lanterns. But perhaps some may be judged, on sight, as better in some ways than others. We might not be able to judge for truth (as I am not sure we know truth when we see it), but perhaps we can specify the fitness criteria of the better lanterns before we set ours down and pick a new one up. Perhaps, given the range of theories scientific and philosophical, it would be best to leave aside truth for a while and set our energies towards defining new optimums and examining our populations of theories for those.
Punctuated Equilibria and 100 Year Floods
Are concepts like 100 year floods related to punctuated equilibrium?
Here’s what I mean: “100 year flood” refers to the probability of a flood of a certain size happening not once in a hundred years, but its probability of occuring within a given timeframe. So, within a given year, there is a certain probability of there being a flood the size of a “100 year flood”. This is opposed to the idea that a flood of such size will occur once within the period of a hundred years.
Punctuated equilibria, on the other hand, refers to rates of evolution and speciation. If speciation occurs more in fits and starts rather than through a more gradualistic model, then the number of species existant exists in an equilibria punctuated by sudden change.
One clear difference between the two ideas is that one is impacted by biological evolution and the other is impacted by climatic and meterological factors. I unfortunately do not have the keenest grasp on probability theory or statistics, but I suspect a similarity there. Rates of speciation refer to change amongst populations of organisms impacted by a variety of factors, climate amongst them. This concept importantly involves population thinking, but also “tree thinking” as described by Robert O’Hara in a paper here. The crux of the difference between 100 year floods and punctuated equilibria (aside from the disperate phenomena they seek to characterize) may be that, as of yet, the mechanisms governing speciation and climate are too different. Rates of speciation and recurrance intervals of floods both importantly concern the history of the phenomenon under consideration and use this to guide probabilistic descriptions of rates and recurrance, but ultimately the phenomena and mechanisms that impact the phenomena may be too different from one another.
Evolution Education and Philosophy in High Schools
There’s a very well written op-ed article in today’s Washington Post that I was alerted to over at Science and Religion News. The title of the article is Evolving Towards a Compromise, and the gist of it is that some changes in science curriculum could help diffuse the support for the outright teaching of creationism. Rather than simply teach evolution, the article proposes teaching about what is and is not implied by evolutionary theory. To allay one of the specters brought up again and again by those who misunderstand evolutionary theory, for example, it is suggested that teachers explain that the description of the evolution of human behavior does not necessarily imply how humans should act.
I think that the article suggests a good direction that should be pursued by defenders of evolution education. Different polls show again and again that a majority of Americans are in favor of joint classroom time for both creationism and evolution. By discussing what evolution does not imply, perhaps educators can answer the public’s desire for a fair curriculum without having to go off the deep end and teach creationism.
There’s a major problem, though: class time. The authors of the op-ed apologize for asking educators to “shoulder another burden”, but between national and state standards it’s pretty hard to squeeze everything people want into the curriculum. Maybe better synchronization and communication between teachers could help with the compromise proposed– if, for instance, a social studies or history teacher could teach about the naturalistic fallacy while the biology department taught about evolution. The concepts would then be communicated at the same time, but the pressure on biology teachers to balance the demands of the public would be distributed amongst the faculty. The school district where I grew up tried to structure class groups along these lines (at least in middle school, where the district could largely determine which classes a student took) and it frequently had good results.
Something implied by the article, yet not explored, is the question of if and how to fit philosophical material into the public school curriculum. My high school was aberrant in that there was a single semester elective philosophy course open to juniors and seniors. I was too busy filling every elective slot with a music class at the time, and so unfortunately didn’t take it. A few friends did, however, and it was a class they truly enjoyed. So there is a high school audience for philosophy.
If there were a philosophy class included in the curriculum, there would be a natural setting where things like the naturalistic fallacy could be taught. There are a few problems with the inclusion of a philosophy class, however, that transcend the usual problems of funding and demand. First, there would be little point in making philosophy a required subject. In my experience, philosophy demands student curiosity and interest in order to be taught. The word means “love of knowledge” or “love of wisdom”, after all. Second, at least in my district biology was taught during freshman year. While I hope to have carried my high estimation of the intellectual abilities of high school students with me as I’ve gotten older, I don’t think that a philosophy class is for high school freshmen. It’s hard enough to take an introductory philosophy class as a college freshman. I’m not sure if biology is always taught, or has to be taught, during freshman year, however—does anyone out there know the reasoning behind placing biology the first in order of high school science classes? Is it the mathematical elements of chemistry and physics that requires that they be taught later than biology?
Having an elective philosophy course available alongside a biology class, even for a semester, makes a great deal of sense. It would create an appropriate space for the discussion of how philosophy and biology interact, and it would also provide an option for those parents who feel strongly that their child should be trained in critical thinking. It’s too bad that there are hardly available resources for such a class, and also that the class may be impossible to schedule. It’s a nauseatingly cheerful thought, but wouldn’t it be great if people realized the importance of a good philosophy class as a result of the long-running fight over evolution education?
Why Anthropocentrism Works for Deep Ecology
In “The Deep Ecology Movement: Some Philosophical Aspects” and other essays, Arne Naess wrote that an anthropocentric system of ethics is not a sound foundation for deep ecology. This was true for Naess even if such an anthropocentric ethic seemed to support the goals of the deep ecology movement. On this point, I think that Naess has it dead wrong. While all the possible foundations that Naess mentions provide a very intuitive basis for believing in the deep ecology platform, it is possible to have an anthropocentric ethic and still believe that the goals of deep ecology are important to pursue.
Right out the gate, it seems like the deep ecology platform is opposed to an anthropocentric ethic. The first tenant of the platform, after all, refers to the intrinsic value of all human and non-human life. How can an anthropocentric ethic recognize the intrinsic value of non-human life? If recognizing the intrinsic value of non-humans means that we must equate their value with those of humans, than I’m afraid Naess has me. It would seem a contradiction in terms to think that an anthropocentric ethic could work in such a way and remain anthropocentric. If, on the other hand, we can recognize the intrinsic value of non-human life and then acknowledge that different beings have different value, and that the flourishing of a being means something different for each kind of being, then an anthropocentric ethic can work for deep ecology. I see no reason why this take on intrinsic value is incorrect.
Naess is concerned, however, that even this variety of anthropocentric thinking provides too shaky a foundation for the deep ecology platform. He writes in “Deep Ecology: Some Philosophical Aspects” that such a foundation does not effective enough in producing belief in the deep ecology movement. The deep ecological ethic “would surely be more effective if it were acted upon by people who believe in its validity, rather than its usefulness.” This brings to my mind Richard Rorty’s call for sentimental education as a background for ethics. Rorty identifies the difficulty human rights ethicists have in posing effective arguments to those racists or sexists who believe that those they persecute are less than human. He proposes an education that emphasizes empathy and sentimentality as a means of promoting human rights that bypasses the arguments and deaf ears. The difference between Rorty’s call and Naess’ is that Rorty is open about his advocacy of sentimentality on the basis of its usefulness and Naess is not.
By promoting certain kinds of foundations on the basis of their usefulness and then refusing to count a pragmatic ethic among them, Naess is being somewhat inconsistent. It’s fair to say that the usefulness of a foundation is not Naess’ only criteria for an adequate foundation for the deep ecology platform, but it should be acknowledged as one criteria among many. For Naess, however, acknowledging utility as a sound ethical criteria falls into the category of shallow (read: narrow-minded) ecology. I think that this is to the detriment of what should be the big tent of the deep ecology movement, especially as an anthropocentric ethic can include belief in the intrinsic values of non-humans and can be quite effective in motivating ethical action.
