The refutation by Block and Kitcher is the most cogent one I've read so far, and points out how the whole exercise that Fodor et al. undertake is flawed. In some ways, the flaws in Fodor's reasoning that Block and Kitcher point out are directly applicable to Dawkins' equally flawed reasoning regarding theology.
I think Tomkow makes exactly the same logical mistakes that Block and Kitcher point out that Fodor makes: namely, that he uses philosophical logic well but completely misses the point of what evolutionary biology is actually about in practice.
In other words: I don't buy Tomkow's defense of Fodor because Tomkow uses the same kind of philosophical argument that Fodor uses, which Block and Kitcher have already shown is invalid and doesn't apply to evolutionary biology.
Here's the two most relevant paragraphs from Block and Kitcher:
"Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini are not biologists. Fodor is a leading philosopher of mind and cognitive scientist, best known for his ideas about the modularity of mind and language of thought; Piattelli-Palmarini is a cognitive scientist. They do not have new data, new theory, close acquaintance with the everyday practice of evolutionary investigations, or any interest in supplying alternative explanations of evolutionary phenomena. Instead, they wield philosophical tools to locate a “conceptual fault line” in contemporary Darwinism. Apparently unshaken by withering criticism of Fodor’s earlier writings about evolutionary theory, they write with complete assurance, confident that their limited understanding of biology suffices for their critical purpose. The resulting argument is doubly flawed: it is biologically irrelevant and philosophically confused. We start with the biology."
That's completely valid. Having been trained as a scientist, and having studied biology among other sciences, I find B&K's description of how the scientists actually regard their science to be dead on accurate.
And here's the other key point that B&K make:
"Describing the issues this way simply restates in technical philosophical terms the basic charge: in the face of spandrels, evolutionary theory requires that there be a process that makes discriminations that natural selection cannot make. So the entire argument depends on the authors’ claim about the intensionality of selection-for. Are they right about this? In a word, no. In the only way that matters for evolutionary biology, selection-for is extensional rather than intensional—and this suffices for making sense of the use made in evolutionary thinking of the notion of selection-for and correlative notions such as adaptation and biological function."
In translation into ordinary laymen's terms, this basically means that Fodor is making a priori assumptions about intension that are not supported by observation nor by research. Fodor wants to dismiss evolutionary bioligy (which he really knows nothing about) by the rules of philosophy—but they're not the same domains of learning, and don't function by the same rules.
Block and Kitcher very politely point this out in their closing paragraphs:
"Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini take the role of philosophy to consist in part in minding other people’s business. We agree with the spirit behind this self-conception. Philosophy can sometimes help other areas of inquiry. Yet those who wish to help their neighbors are well advised to spend a little time discovering just what it is that those neighbors do, and those who wish to illuminate should be sensitive to charges that they are kicking up dust and spreading confusion. What Darwin Got Wrong shows no detailed engagement with the practice of evolutionary biology, nor does it respond to the many criticisms that have been leveled against earlier versions of its central ideas. In this latter respect, the authors resemble the creationist debaters who assert that evolution is incompatible with the second law of thermodynamics, hear detailed refutations of their charge, and repeat their patter in the next forum."
That's it in a nutshell. I'll be less polite: Fodor and Co. don't even know what they're talking about, because they know nothing about hte practice of evolutionary biology. Nor about the paleontological recorrd, most likely.
I should have added, I view Tomkow as arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. In other words, it's scholasticism. It makes sense on its own terms, but in the end it doesn't deepen our knowledge of evolution, not does it really tell us anything at all.
Hi Art, You say that Fodor and Tomkow both use "philosophical logic well but completely misses the point of what evolutionary biology is actually about in practice," and you may well be right. I haven't read Fodor carefully enough to comment. But couldn't one say much the same about those who use Darwin to explain just about everything in terms of "survival"? And what is evolutionary biology in practice? You can't do astrophysics without taking Einstein into consideration. You do plenty in biology without even thinking about natural selection. Mendel hit upon genetics with nary a though of his British contemporary.
One reason I liked Block and Kitcher's review was that it answers two of your questions very well, by way of explaining how Fodor misses the boat on those very questions: what is evolutionary biology in practice; and that explaining everything in Darwin in terms of "survival" is quite off the beam. They spend a lot of time on this in the review, actually, because they're key points in their rebuttal. (They explain it better than I can, probably.)
"Survival" extends only so far as to describe which inherited traits in an organism allow it to be able to reproduce, to pass those traits on; the fallacy is that somehow this is deterministic or intentional, i.e. you cannot determine the value of a trait towards the organisms survival till it proves itself in practice, because the environmental conditions are also a factor.
Also, evolutionary biology in practice looks at all the traits that are inherited that seem to have been useful for survival, but is cautious about saying "this trait here was why the organism avoided predation and was able to reproduce," when in fact that trait may have been a secondary trait that just happened to accompany the trait that allowed reproduction. In other words, they don't jump to conclusions about which trait was the essential one, and which one was the secondary one. And sometimes it's a synergy, in which more than one trait matters, depending on the local environmental conditions.a
And you're right, there's lots to biology that isn't about evolution. Even Darwin wasn't certain that natural selection was THE prime force for evolutionary change; he thought it might have been mixed in with some others. Mendel's research into genetics wasn't synthesized with Darwin till much later, which is when the whole field of evolutionary biology began to be taken seriously. Then all this was combined with the paleontological record in geology to look for what we could find out about evolution in the past. Darwin's really major contribution was the insight that even within the vast diversity of living organisms on this planet, we are all related, and all have common ancestors; what was so controversial was the suggestion that you and I and a bird and a cuttlefish are somehow all related, which was a very strange idea in Darwin's own time.
I should add, too, that even though Darwin hedged his bets about natural selection, saying he wasn't totally sure, his successors have shown that he was right after all. That's what the synthesis with Mendelian inheritance led to, along with the geological record. What also seems to be true is the process of natural selection is not linear and narrative, the way a story is; there are occasions when it's a very complex process; this has led some of Darwin's successors to expand on and complexify the theory; for example, Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium, which postulates that evolution proceeds not as a smooth straight line but in fits and starts, with periods of relatively little change punctuated by periods of rapid change. Again, environmental pressures are always going to be a factor herein.
The refutation by Block and Kitcher is the most cogent one I've read so far, and points out how the whole exercise that Fodor et al. undertake is flawed. In some ways, the flaws in Fodor's reasoning that Block and Kitcher point out are directly applicable to Dawkins' equally flawed reasoning regarding theology.
ReplyDeleteInteresting, Art. What do you think of Terry Tomkow's post?
ReplyDeleteI think Tomkow makes exactly the same logical mistakes that Block and Kitcher point out that Fodor makes: namely, that he uses philosophical logic well but completely misses the point of what evolutionary biology is actually about in practice.
ReplyDeleteIn other words: I don't buy Tomkow's defense of Fodor because Tomkow uses the same kind of philosophical argument that Fodor uses, which Block and Kitcher have already shown is invalid and doesn't apply to evolutionary biology.
Here's the two most relevant paragraphs from Block and Kitcher:
"Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini are not biologists. Fodor is a leading philosopher of mind and cognitive scientist, best known for his ideas about the modularity of mind and language of thought; Piattelli-Palmarini is a cognitive scientist. They do not have new data, new theory, close acquaintance with the everyday practice of evolutionary investigations, or any interest in supplying alternative explanations of evolutionary phenomena. Instead, they wield philosophical tools to locate a “conceptual fault line” in contemporary Darwinism. Apparently unshaken by withering criticism of Fodor’s earlier writings about evolutionary theory, they write with complete assurance, confident that their limited understanding of biology suffices for their critical purpose. The resulting argument is doubly flawed: it is biologically irrelevant and philosophically confused. We start with the biology."
That's completely valid. Having been trained as a scientist, and having studied biology among other sciences, I find B&K's description of how the scientists actually regard their science to be dead on accurate.
And here's the other key point that B&K make:
"Describing the issues this way simply restates in technical philosophical terms the basic charge: in the face of spandrels, evolutionary theory requires that there be a process that makes discriminations that natural selection cannot make. So the entire argument depends on the authors’ claim about the intensionality of selection-for. Are they right about this?
In a word, no. In the only way that matters for evolutionary biology, selection-for is extensional rather than intensional—and this suffices for making sense of the use made in evolutionary thinking of the notion of selection-for and correlative notions such as adaptation and biological function."
In translation into ordinary laymen's terms, this basically means that Fodor is making a priori assumptions about intension that are not supported by observation nor by research. Fodor wants to dismiss evolutionary bioligy (which he really knows nothing about) by the rules of philosophy—but they're not the same domains of learning, and don't function by the same rules.
Block and Kitcher very politely point this out in their closing paragraphs:
"Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini take the role of philosophy to consist in part in minding other people’s business. We agree with the spirit behind this self-conception. Philosophy can sometimes help other areas of inquiry. Yet those who wish to help their neighbors are well advised to spend a little time discovering just what it is that those neighbors do, and those who wish to illuminate should be sensitive to charges that they are kicking up dust and spreading confusion. What Darwin Got Wrong shows no detailed engagement with the practice of evolutionary biology, nor does it respond to the many criticisms that have been leveled against earlier versions of its central ideas. In this latter respect, the authors resemble the creationist debaters who assert that evolution is incompatible with the second law of thermodynamics, hear detailed refutations of their charge, and repeat their patter in the next forum."
That's it in a nutshell. I'll be less polite: Fodor and Co. don't even know what they're talking about, because they know nothing about hte practice of evolutionary biology. Nor about the paleontological recorrd, most likely.
I should have added, I view Tomkow as arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. In other words, it's scholasticism. It makes sense on its own terms, but in the end it doesn't deepen our knowledge of evolution, not does it really tell us anything at all.
ReplyDeleteHi Art,
ReplyDeleteYou say that Fodor and Tomkow both use "philosophical logic well but completely misses the point of what evolutionary biology is actually about in practice," and you may well be right. I haven't read Fodor carefully enough to comment. But couldn't one say much the same about those who use Darwin to explain just about everything in terms of "survival"? And what is evolutionary biology in practice? You can't do astrophysics without taking Einstein into consideration. You do plenty in biology without even thinking about natural selection. Mendel hit upon genetics with nary a though of his British contemporary.
One reason I liked Block and Kitcher's review was that it answers two of your questions very well, by way of explaining how Fodor misses the boat on those very questions: what is evolutionary biology in practice; and that explaining everything in Darwin in terms of "survival" is quite off the beam. They spend a lot of time on this in the review, actually, because they're key points in their rebuttal. (They explain it better than I can, probably.)
ReplyDelete"Survival" extends only so far as to describe which inherited traits in an organism allow it to be able to reproduce, to pass those traits on; the fallacy is that somehow this is deterministic or intentional, i.e. you cannot determine the value of a trait towards the organisms survival till it proves itself in practice, because the environmental conditions are also a factor.
Also, evolutionary biology in practice looks at all the traits that are inherited that seem to have been useful for survival, but is cautious about saying "this trait here was why the organism avoided predation and was able to reproduce," when in fact that trait may have been a secondary trait that just happened to accompany the trait that allowed reproduction. In other words, they don't jump to conclusions about which trait was the essential one, and which one was the secondary one. And sometimes it's a synergy, in which more than one trait matters, depending on the local environmental conditions.a
And you're right, there's lots to biology that isn't about evolution. Even Darwin wasn't certain that natural selection was THE prime force for evolutionary change; he thought it might have been mixed in with some others. Mendel's research into genetics wasn't synthesized with Darwin till much later, which is when the whole field of evolutionary biology began to be taken seriously. Then all this was combined with the paleontological record in geology to look for what we could find out about evolution in the past. Darwin's really major contribution was the insight that even within the vast diversity of living organisms on this planet, we are all related, and all have common ancestors; what was so controversial was the suggestion that you and I and a bird and a cuttlefish are somehow all related, which was a very strange idea in Darwin's own time.
I should add, too, that even though Darwin hedged his bets about natural selection, saying he wasn't totally sure, his successors have shown that he was right after all. That's what the synthesis with Mendelian inheritance led to, along with the geological record. What also seems to be true is the process of natural selection is not linear and narrative, the way a story is; there are occasions when it's a very complex process; this has led some of Darwin's successors to expand on and complexify the theory; for example, Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium, which postulates that evolution proceeds not as a smooth straight line but in fits and starts, with periods of relatively little change punctuated by periods of rapid change. Again, environmental pressures are always going to be a factor herein.
ReplyDelete