Tom Settle

‘Fitness’ and ‘altruism’: Traps for the unwary, bystander and biologist alike

At one level, this paper is a lament and a warning. I lament biologists borrowing well-known terms and then drastically and awkwardly changing their meanings, and I warn about the mischief this does. Biologys public image is at stake, as is its general usefulness. At another level, I attempt to clarify the misnamed concepts, beyond what has been achieved in recent philosophical writings. This helps to account for the mischief, and to see how it might be avoidable. But the most important thing about the paper is that, at a third level, it is an argument against physicalism and materialism, especially those variants which deny the autonomy of organisms and the existence of intrinsic goods. Interpreting biology from the point of view of those denials leads to unsatisfactory and even bizarre results.

>How to avoid implying that physicalism is true: a problem for teachers of science

It is difficult to teach science without implying, in a broad sense, that physicalism is true. This is a problem for teachers, regardless of whether they accept or reject physicalism, as well as for students. Physicalism‐‐it used to be called materialism‐‐is not a single doctrine, but a family of doctrines. Six of these are described and it is argued that they are not logically favoured by science. Since alternative metaphysical schemes exist (e.g. Whiteheads) which are consistent with scientific facts, evidence which supports a scientific theory over rivals, even decisively, does not have the logical power to decide in favour of physicalism. Science teachings insinuation of physicalism can be avoided by deliberately stressing such uncontroversial features of science as: the unfinished nature of research; the use of idealizations in scientific theories; how all scientific theories at best only approach the truth; and that older theories are now known to be, strictly, false, although they still fit the f...

Applying Scientific Openmindedness to Religion and Science Education.

Mahners and Bunges two main theses are nearly correct as social reports but the extent to which they are wrong is philosophically very important. I draw attention to a philosophically superior way of viewing the essential relation between science and religion which can have a humane or benign influence upon how both science and religion are taught. On the one hand, science does not need to fight religion nor try to suppress it. A generous openness of mind, which distinguishes the critical rationality implicit in the advance of science, deserves to be applied without acrimony to any systems of thought that purport to explain the universe. On the other hand, religions have no need to fear the growth of scientific knowledge, provided science is not confused, as Mahner and Bunge confuse it, with its materialistic interpretation.

The Rationality of Science versus the Rationality of Magic

Assuming that it is rational for us in the West to reject magic, it may sensibly be asked how to assess the rationality of its continued practice within cultures different from our own. Answers to this question have varied considerably, revealing not only different views of magic, but also different views of science and, hence, of rationality. In this essay, I discuss various attempts to solve the problem of the rationality of magic, demanding of any theory of magic that it be consistent with findings in the field, and of any theory of rationality that it explain science as well as it explains magic. As a further constraint on theories of magic, I might demand also that solutions to the problem of the rationality of magic avoid insulting its practitioners. Since being rational is part of being human-although some people are more consistently rational in their behaviour than others, and none is rational all the time-it might be insulting to many people in cultures where magic fills a large segment of people’s lives (if it does not pervade every segment) to declare magic irrational. Now, no anthropologist wishes to insult the natives of the society he studies. Far from it. Whatever popular prejudice or opinion may aver to the contrary, and whatever the paternalist and colonialist attitudes of foreigners in primitive societies may suggest about the subordinate intelligence and sensibleness of the natives, anthropological studies never aim to impugn-indeed rather the reverse; they almost seem to aim not to impugn-the intelligence or sanity or good sense or human dignity of the generality of people studied. Anthropologists assume that there are not different intellectual types, corresponding to differences

Towards a theory of openness to criticism

The rationality of human behaviour is a perennial topic in the social sciences. In this article we turn the tables, so to speak, and discuss the rationality of the social sciences themselves. There is dispute about whether the rationality of the behaviour of people may properly be judged, favourably or unfavourably, solely by the standards of rationality assumed within their own culture; or about whether it can also be judged by the standards of observers-from outside the culture-such as social anthropologists or nosey philosophers. There is even dispute about whether it makes sense to appraise, let alone judge, the behaviour of members of one particular culture by the standards of another (cf. L6vi-Strauss 1963, Winch, 1958). These disputes suggest that traditional rationalism (TR for short), in its various guises, has been unable to accommodate both the behaviour of scientists and the behaviour of members of cultures alien to the West. Perhaps on this account, some social scientists have lapsed into a kind of relativism more or less by accident (Howard 1968, Nowell-Smith 1971). They allow quasi-rationality to the behaviour of members of alien cultures appraised by their own standards and they refrain from importing the supposedly stricter standards of science, the standards of TR. We reject relativism, though we shall not argue here for its rejection. More importantly, we also reject TR. We reject TR not only because it fails to account for the

Six Things Popper Would Like Biologists Not to Ignore: In Memoriam, Karl Raimund Popper, 1902-1994

To honour the memory of Sir Karl Popper, I put forward six elements of his philosophy which might be of particular interest to biologists and to philosophers of biology and which I think Popper would like them not to ignore, even if they disagree with him. They are: the primacy of problems; the criticizability of metaphysics (and thus the dubiousness of materialism); how downward causation might be real; how norms should matter to scientists; why dogmatism should be avoided; how genuine science is recognizable. I preface these six things with a brief discussion of Poppers early (but later recanted) mistakes concerning biology.

Comments on Farr's Paper (III) Is Popper's World 3 an Ontological Extravagance?

James Farr, in his interesting exposition (Farr 1983) of some of the fruitful peculiarities of Karl Popper’s underused proposals for method in the social sciences (including history), which, in his view and mine, afford improvements both over standard empiricist methods and over standard hermeneutical methods, mentions, but does not elaborate on, or discuss critically, Pbpper’s hypothesis that we are manipulating World 3 objects when we try to understand

You Can’t have Science as Your Religion!

To start with, neither Joseph Agassi nor I would quarrel over words. What, never? No, never! What, never? Hardly ever! Hardly ever with anyone, but certainly not with each other. But what does one do instead, when someone is using a word wrongly or misleadingly (as one thinks)? Well, various things according to circumstance. One strategy is to point out what is being glossed over in the usage one does not agree with. This is the strategy I shall use on Agassi. Another is to point out something of the price that has to be paid for maintaining the disputed usage (as I do with Mario Bunge in section 4). For example, when people use the word “truth” in the sense of “agreement among experts”, or in the sense of what works, the price is either that a new word has to be found to cover the sense that “truth” has carried for a thousand years of the conformity of beliefs to how things are; or, that conversation proceeds in some confusion. Let me address Agassi directly, for a moment, to explain the disagreement I have with him. Everyone else can read over his shoulder.

Are some Propensities Probabilities

This paper concerns presuppositions of the two extant propensity theories of probability: Peirce’s and Popper’s. Of course the frequency theory, the logical theory, and the subjective theory are more popular. By contrast with these theories, propensity theory digs deeply below the phenomenal surface, resembling in this respect what Bunge calls representational theories.

Human Freedom and 1568 Versions of Determinism and Indeterminism

This paper marshals a case against some popular versions of determinism and in favour of partial indeterminism. First, a variety of versions of determinism and indeterminism is displayed, from which a few are selected for closer examination. Secondly, a clash is exposed between determinism and a necessary condition of the sort of freedom we might like to think we have. Thirdly, it is argued that several versions of partial indeterminism chime better nowadays with science than does determinism, which thus loses the underpinning it has enjoyed in the modern period.