Epistemology 50 words for snow 7: explanations and phenomena 18 Dec 20171 Mar 2019 Series Conceptual confusion The economics of cultural categories What are phenomena? What counts as sociocultural? Species Constructing phenomena Explanations and phenomena Anyone who has ever had a child knows the issue with indefinite “why?” questions. The interrogator asks why for every answer that is given, until the responder gets tired… Continue Reading
Epistemology 50 words for snow 6: constructing phenomena 11 Dec 20171 Mar 2019 Series Conceptual confusion The economics of cultural categories What are phenomena? What counts as sociocultural? Species Constructing phenomena Explanations and phenomena There is a naive empiricist view held by nobody on close inspection, that phenomena merely present themselves to the observer, and call for explanation. At least since Kant, such… Continue Reading
Cognition 50 words for snow 3: what are phenomena? 27 Sep 20171 Mar 2019 Series Conceptual confusion The economics of cultural categories What are phenomena? What counts as sociocultural? Species Constructing phenomena Explanations and phenomena If experienced observers are trained to observe natural phenomena in their environment, pace the “interference” of cultural accidents, what is it they observe? As I mentioned before, we are not… Continue Reading
Epistemology Pizza reductionism, emergence and phenomena 20 Sep 201227 Oct 2018 Debates over reduction in science are as old as philosophy of science, but in the 1960s, Ernest Nagel’s book The Structure of Science really set things going. Nagel argued that a goal of science was to reduce one theory to a more general and explanatory theory, so that one can deduce… Continue Reading
Philosophy More on phenomena 9 Jun 201122 Jun 2018 Semifinalist for the 3 Quarks Daily Philosophy Prize 2011 In my last post, I asked whether there was a foundation for my view that species are extra-theoretical phenomena. I have done some further reading, especially Michela Massimi’s book Kant and Philosophy of Science Today, which I will have to buy…. Continue Reading
Epistemology Species, phenomena and data 2 Jun 20112 Jun 2011 Just lately I have been trying to support my belief that species are not units of biological theory, but phenomena that call for explanation. Several things have followed from this: Species turn out on this view not to be causal entities, but rather epiphenomena of causal processes at the individual… Continue Reading
Ecology and Biodiversity The ontology of biology 3 – phenomena 14 Nov 200818 Sep 2017 As I have argued before, there is a class of objects in the biological domain that do not derive from the theory of that domain, but which are in fact the special objects of the domain that call for a theoretical explanation. The example I have given is mountain, which… Continue Reading
Logic and philosophy Vale Michael Ghiselin 17 Jun 202424 Jun 2024 Michael Ghiselin, who was the originator of (the modern) view that species are individuals, died on 14 June 2024. He was a very generous person with his time for antipodean philosophers. With his passing, the authors of the SAI thesis, as it is called, are both gone: he and his… Continue Reading
Philosophy Thoughts on classification 20 Mar 202323 Mar 2023 Species concepts and definitions in science As Robbie Burns once noted, the world is full of things. Philosophers and scientists alike ask whether that also means the world is full of kinds of things. One of the oldest philosophical questions in the western tradition is known by the somewhat opaque title, “The… Continue Reading
Cognition Thoughts on the Hard Problem 30 Jun 20201 Jul 2020 Most of you will already know that David Chalmers, the once-hirsute Australian philosopher of mind (only Rob Wilson seems to remain in the Hirsute Philosopher’s Club these days. God knows I never was) proposed what came to be known as the Hard Problem of Consciousness: The really hard problem of… Continue Reading