Epistemology Notes on Novelty 8: Conclusion – Post evo-devo 15 Jan 201221 Jun 2018 Notes on Novelty series: 1. Introduction 2. Historical considerations – before and after evolution 3: The meaning of evolutionary novelty 4: Examples – the beetle’s horns and the turtle’s shell 5: Evolutionary radiations and individuation 6: Levels of description 7: Surprise! 8: Conclusion – Post evo-devo With the growth of developmental genetics, it is possible to… Continue Reading
Epistemology Notes on novelty 6: Levels of description 7 Jan 201221 Jun 2018 Notes on Novelty series: 1. Introduction 2. Historical considerations – before and after evolution 3: The meaning of evolutionary novelty 4: Examples – the beetle’s horns and the turtle’s shell 5: Evolutionary radiations and individuation 6: Levels of description 7: Surprise! 8: Conclusion – Post evo-devo And having come to know that it is, we inquire… Continue Reading
Metaphysics The nature of stochastic events in a block universe 26 Oct 201126 Oct 2011 Recently I had a paper accepted for Zygon in which I argued that God could create a universe with Darwinian accidents as a block universe. For those who have mercifully escaped the rigours and tribulations of the philosophy of time, a block universe is the entirety of the universe over… Continue Reading
Metaphysics Zombies of qualia and intentionality 16 Sep 201116 Sep 2011 Peter at Conscious Entities has a nice discussion of the above distinction I hadn’t thought of before (h/t Brandon): p-zombies that lack qualia and those that lack intentionality, and whether we think the latter is why there are no former. We know we have intentionality, so we think that to… Continue Reading
Administrative I’m a 3QD Philosophy Prize semifinalist 12 Sep 201122 Jun 2018 You no longer can vote for me, but I made the cut for this post on phenomena, so I think you should go read some cool philosophy posts while we wait for the editors to pick six entries to send to Pat Churchland for a final judgement… So, this being… Continue Reading
Biology The taxonomy of disease 7 Sep 20117 Sep 2011 A letter in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery has argued that it is time to reform the taxonomy of disease. The authors are Ismail Kola, head of a pharmaceutics company, and Sir John Bell, Regius Professor at Oxford. The taxonomy of disease (technically called nosology) is an old one. Of course… Continue Reading
Epistemology The principle of charity, qualia, and philosophy 6 Sep 20116 Sep 2011 I’ve hurt my back, so I aim to rant a little. When I teach critical reasoning just about the first thing I teach is the principle of charity. It has many formulations: This policy calls on us to fit our own propositions (or our own sentences) to the other person’s… Continue Reading
Evolution Evolution quotes: Diderot 14 Aug 201115 Aug 2011 It seems that nature has taken pleasure in varying the same mechanism in a thousand different ways. She never abandons any class of her creations before she has multiplied the individuals of it in as many different forms as possible. When one looks out upon the animal kingdom and notes… Continue Reading
Biology Domains, disciplines and levels 10 Aug 201110 Aug 2011 I have to get this out of my head so I can go do some real work (like finding some real work). Next time someone wants me to do metaphysics, they better come armed with a cheque. So if, as I have argued, reduction is one-layered in ontological terms, however… Continue Reading
Biology Downward Causation 9 Aug 201122 Jun 2018 The final claim for there being an ontological sense to emergence is “downward causation“, a phrase coined by the evolutionary epistemologist Donald Campbell in the 1970s. The idea here is that emergence is real because higher-level (or bigger, composite) entities cause changes in the properties and dynamics of their parts…. Continue Reading