Random things 4 Jul 2007 Back from the drinking sessionconference, with many good thoughts. One in particular is due to the talk by Aiden Lyons at ANU on probability and evolution – after more than two decades trying to figure it out, I had to wait for a grad student to put it all neatly into perspective. His argument that there are at least three if not four senses or interpretations of probability and chance in evolution that – apart from anything else – prevents fitness being tautological, raises many more questions, but that is the nature of good papers. Another, in no particular succession, is whether we need to start a discipline of Unapologetics to counter really bad theological justifications of religion. I am also led by several papers, one by Peter Godfrey-Smith and another by Paul Griffiths and his collaborators Ed Machery and Stefan Linquist, both on the nature of innateness as a concept, and Paul’s paper also on a concept – of homology – to wonder if there may be the beginnings of a historical critical methodology for constructing the likely speciality-specific deviations of terms like this from “folk belief”, via the use of X-phi (experimental philosophy), developed initially by Stephen Stich. If we know pretty much what the naive folk concept is, then we have a good reason to think we can work out what semantic variables have been changed in the refiguring of a concept in a given discipline. Of course, there are complications – common sense is common only in the sense that it is what the wider culture receives from experts. So the current received meaning may already have been modified by the sciences (as in the concept of “species”). Food for thought. More as it occurs to me. Evolution General Science Humor Logic and philosophy Religion Social evolution Species and systematics
Administrative Oh ghods, I’m on TV 24 May 2008 Nothing is more excruciating to me than to see myself and hear myself. It’s even worse when I’m up against someone who presents so much better than I do. So watch Paul Myers (I think that’s how they spell his name) and me talk about Stuff at Bloggingheads.TV. The video… Read More
Evolution Lewes on Heredity, in 1856 22 Jun 2007 I’m putting this up because I will use it to discuss the history of species definitions in a forthcoming talk. It’s very interesting for a number of reasons, one of which is the species nominalism, and another that Lewes argues from evidence for biparental inheritance some years before Mendel, and… Read More
Humor Jon Stewart is the New Socrates 23 Oct 2007 According to a book mentioned by Greg Dahlman at blog.bioethics.net. He notes that this makes Stephen Colbert Plato. I think it makes Hilary Clinton Aristotle, and Richard Dawkins Epicurus, although the sequence is a bit messed up. Read More
Do you have any material on the concept of “unaplogetics?” And I want to thank you for the paper by Griffiths, Machery and Lindquist. PZ is going to give a talk here in Minnesota on the neural basis of religious belief, which some have recently been saying is “innate.” I look forward to seeing how the talk and the paper fit together.
I was thinking of collating those jibes which arouse theocons to gibbering rage and calling it Apoplectics…
John – are you going to post more on Lyons’ work? I’m interested in this, being an evolutionary biologist and a statistician and all that. Bob
John – are you going to post more on Lyons’ work? I’m interested in this, being an evolutionary biologist and a statistician and all that. Bob
The issue here is that Aiden’s work is still in progress. He’s giving a version at the ISHPSSB conference in a couple of weeks. But it would be problematic to post his arguments in detail before he does.