Sunday 21 March 2010

Fodor/Sober Argument on Darwinism

For an interesting case of how there might be an argument concerning Darwinism from a philosopher that poses some interesting questions whilst not rejecting the phenomena in question see the exchange between Jerry Fodor and Elliott Sober.

4 comments:

Patrick O'Connor said...

interesting summary of different positions on Darwinism. It's a shame Darwin is not engaged with more; just for the sheer complexity and explanatory power it has. In phenomenology circles its taboo. How is he held in Kantian circles?

http://chronicle.com/article/What-Darwins-Doubters-Get/64457/

Gary Banham said...

In terms of phenomenology there is the versions of naturalistic phenomenology that got going with Varela for a while. In Kantian terms the real question is how Darwinian views relate to the account of teleology given in the second part of the Critique of Judgment. This is one of the questions that interest me, the other, raised in the attached videos by Fodor, concerns in what sense the laws of evolution are really "laws", that is, how they relate to the classic case of scientific laws, that of Newtonian mechanics. Planning to reflect later on both these questions!

David said...

Matthew Ratcliffe's 'A Kantian Stance on the Intentional Stance', Biology and Philosophy, 16(1) is interesting here. He argues that a teleological conception of function and 'selection for' presupposes an 'instrumental agent in terms of whose plans and purposes the biological world is constituted'(46). Thus adopting Dennett's design in biology stance presupposes an unnaturalizable intentional stance.

That said, I think this misconstrues the IS. Although the IS is not a direct candidate for naturalistic reduction, it is naturalizable if there are naturalistic explanations for why certain entities are predictable by treating them as intentional agents. So I don't see Dennett as a Kantian malgré soi.

Gary Banham said...

Thanks for this comment David: would have to look up Ratcliffle's article. Not sure, on the basis of what you have reported, whether the view is really Kantian but would like to check it out.