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 Morality and Evolution 7: Conclusion 22 May 201422 May 2014 [Morality and Evolution 1 2 3 4 5 6 7] So far I have made out the following arguments: Evolution does in fact debunk moral realism, as the fitness bearer for a moral claim is the agent in relation to others in their group, not the truth of the claim There is no Milvian Bridge, therefore,… Read More
Australian stuff The Economy Does Not Exist – thoughts prior to the Australian federal election 2019 7 Apr 20197 Apr 2019 In coming days and weeks we are again going to be bombarded with the usual clichés about the economy. This or that will be good for or bad for The Economy. As a philosopher of sorts, I have problems with this. Some background first. In the philosophy of the social… Read More
Biology Rise of the Planet of the Moralists 2: chains and trees 18 Oct 201122 Jun 2018 Rise of the Planet of the Moralists Series1: Introduction2: Chains and Trees 3: Clades and grades4: Predicting traits5: Social dominance and power Very famously, Darwin came up with the idea of the evolutionary tree. What is not often realized is that it is the tree that is more uniquely Darwin’s than natural selection, for which… Read More
Please explain how FAPP’s concern would resolve down to: “you can’t get intentionality out of the principle of NS”.