Even more FAPPery 8 May 2010 Richard Lewontin reviews FAPP in the New York Review of Books. It is a much more moderate review than many of the other reviews we have linked to. He ends up suggesting that biologists should not speculate on the origins of traits when such speculation is idle. However, like FAPP, he fails to tell us when that is, and is not. Douglas Futuyma on the other hand is much more dismissive in Science, and suggests that being experts in one field doesn’t make them competent in another. I am still wondering what we lose if we abandon the “selection for/selection of” distinction. If we do this, then FAPP’s concern resolves down to: “you can’t get intentionality out of the principle of NS”, which is rather like “you can’t get colour distributions out of a sorting process”; true but trivial. Evolution Philosophy Science EvolutionPhilosophy
Epistemology Believing and knowing 28 Apr 201129 Apr 2011 I was musing the other day, as I passed by a church school on a walk, on the difference between belief and knowledge. The teachers at that school must teach both. But, I thought, if they taught the wrong knowledge, a generation will arise in which knowledge will be corrupted… Read More
Metaphysics P-Angels 28 May 2010 There is a class of beings called P-Zeds, which are not unspellable atheist bloggers, but “philosophical zombies”, beings exactly like us in every way, but which lack consciousness. A P-Zed behaves just like you and I, and is identical at the physical level, but it has no self-awareness, reflexivity or… Read More
Epistemology Positivism about agnosticism 22 Nov 201122 Nov 2011 Following up from my last post on the logical and semantic aspects of agnosticism, I wish to make a comment regarding this ill-tempered piece by Jennifer Michael Hecht. It seems that one may not be an agnostic if one is a secularist or skeptic. Why? Because: Agnositicsm points this excellent… Read More
Please explain how FAPP’s concern would resolve down to: “you can’t get intentionality out of the principle of NS”.