No problem ;-) It happens...
> No, I haven't read it. Thanks for the recommendation, and I'll do my best
> to get to it soon.
It is a short book, but worth the read...
> > Third, there is the theory of common descent, which is a part
> > of the body of evolutionary theory, but is often what anti-
> > evolutionists object to..."I don't believe people came from
> > monkeys!" This is an assumption for most modern work on the
> > subject.
>
> I was aware that this is so, but I couldn't figure out how to put it into
> my discussion of the 8 points. Notice that I said "At least 8 ..." I agree
> with you that it's quite important, but it didn't seem necessary to the
> point(s) I was trying to make. Perhaps I was wrong about that.
I wasn't meaning to replace your categories, just add my own extras. ;-)
I'm not sure it is that important to this particular discussion, either.
> > > 5. 3 + 4 together (i.e., mutation + natural selection, in
> > > whatever way these may be understood) are the cause of *some*
> > > (but not all) changes in biological organisms.
> >
> > This is the neo-Darwinist position.
>
> I don't think so -- it seems to me that the neo-Darwinist
> position claims more than my # 5, that, in fact, the neo-
> Darwinist position is my #6 below. Or, as I'll show in a minute,
> at least Dawkins seems to conclude that both my #6 and
> #7 are true.
Dawkins seems to be located a bit to the adaptationist side, but I'd
agree that he represents an aspect of neo-Darwinism. However,
gauging 'what neo-Darwinism is' by what Dawkins thinks may be misleading.
[only selection and mutation are evolutionary processes]
> > No evolutionists believe this.
>
> Wrong. Dawkins holds this view.
Incorrect. I'm afraid this is a rather extreme mischaracterization. While
it *is* possible to argue (and often is, see _The High Table Debate_
thread on talk.origins ca.07/1996) that Dawkins is a 'panadaptationist,'
this is taken to apply to the factors Dawkins thinks are important and
interesting, not the only ones he thinks are operative. To quote a bit
from the thread:
Once more, from TBW, p. 312:
"Motoo Kimura and the other proponents of the neutralist theory of
evolution do not, as we saw, make any false claims for their theory.
They have no illusions about random drift being a rival to natural
selection as an explanation for adaptive evolution. They recognize
that only natural selection can drive evolution in adaptive
directions. Their claim is simply that a lot of evolutionary change
(as a molecular geneticist sees evolutionary change) is not adaptive."
p. 304: "From the sidelines my own hope is that the neutralists will
win, because this will make it so much easier to work out evolutionary
relationships and rates of evolution." p. 271: "It is just that the
neutralists think- rightly in my opinion- that such adaptations are
the tip of the iceberg; probably most evolutionary change, when seen
at the molecular level, is non-functional."
====
As you can see, Dawkins thinks, as per above, that a great
deal of evolution is neutral (non-selection driven). He
just thinks that adaptive evolution is the interesting part
and that selection is the process which explains that. He
doesn't think other processes are important in explaining it.
The other positions on the field would take a whole post to
deal with, but briefly, a couple are that there are other
processes which either supercede selection or proceed in
tandem, like self-organizing systems, teleology, and so forth.
Another view is that adaptive evolution is much less interesting
than Dawkins says, and that in fact more random or neutral
evolutionary processes are more interesting. I'll readily
admit that I lean more towards either of these two understandings
than towards Dawkins, but what everyone agrees on (right now)
is that first, there are many processes which drive evolution,
second, that adaptive evolution is the 'guts' of the order-forming
part of the evolutionary process, and third, that selection plays
a key (if not the only) role in adaptive evolution. Gould thinks
this, Mayr thinks this, Dawkins thinks this. Their disagreements
are very important to the details of the theory, but they (and
everyone else) agrees to the above.
> Richard Dawkins, *The Blind Watchmaker* (Norton, 1986):
> "EVOLUTION basically consists of endless repetition of
> REPRODUCTION. In every generation, REPRODUCTION takes the genes
> that are supplied to it by the previous generation, and hands
> them on to the next generation but with minor random errors --
> mutations. [p.56] ... Mutation is random with respect to adaptive
> advantage, although it is non-random in all sorts of other
> respects. It is selection, and only selection, that direct
> evolution in directions that are non-random with respect to
> advantage. [p. 312] ... The theory of evolution by cumulative
> natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in
> principle *capable* of explaining the existence of organized
> complexity. [p. 316]" (Emphasis in Dawkins's text.)
Perhaps it is now clear what Dawkins means by the above, what
he is *not* including as under the purview of selection, and
what some of the alternative ideas are with
> Darwin also believed it [minus a full understanding of mutation,
> which hadn't yet been incorporated into the view in his time]:
> "If it could be demonstrated that any complex [biological] organ
> existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous,
> successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely
> break down." (*The Origin of Species* 1859)
I'm not sure about the details of Darwin's commitment to selection.
It seems sure that he didn't ponder all the competing processes
we now know exist. (And why do you persist in leaving sex out of
the understandings of both Dawkins and Darwin? While Darwin assuredly
had nothing comparable to the modern understanding of mutation, he
understood sex--that's one of the key points in his theory, after all).
> "The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the
> *only* [my emphasis] theory we know of that is in principle
> *capable* [Dawkins's emphasis] of explaining the existence of
> organized complexity. ... *Cumulative selection* [Dawkins's
> emphasis], by slow and gradual degrees, is *the* [my emphasis]
> explanation, the only workable explanation that has ever been
> proposed, for the existence of life's complex design." [p. 317]
Right, but by now we've established that evolution does a lot more
(according to the theory) than cause complex designs.
> > > 8. Metaphysical naturalism must be accepted as the only (possible
> > > or intellectually credible) stance. (As opposed to
> > > metaphysical supernaturalism or theism.)
> >
> > Some believe this, however. This is a philosophical argument,
> > though, not one particularly identified with biological evolution--
> > why evolutionary theory instead of gravitational theory is
> > singled out by Johnson and others for objection in this regard
> > seems a bit mysterious.
>
> I can't speak for Johnson, but I suspect that the reason is that
> metaphysical naturalism in physics, plumbing, car repair, or
> computer science does not impinge on religious views about human
> origins and value, whereas metaphysical naturalism in biology
> does.
That could be. It has seemed to me, though, that naturalism in
physics should offer at least the same level of threat. (And,
in fact, it seems to for many people.) As someone else has pointed
out, there's "metaphysical" naturalism and "methodological" naturalism,
and the two are somewhat different. This is certainly true, but
I think most of the discussion in the area is regarding the procedural
or methodological type. One reason given by those opposed to
abandoning procedural naturalism is metaphysical naturalism, which
is certainly a valid line of argument, but not the only one out there.
Anyway...
[...]
> > However true that may be, it is hard to see how that impacts the
> > debate, since no evolutionists maintain either 6 or 7,
>
> I've already shown that your claim here is false -- some leading
> evolutionists [and, I suspect, nearly all of them, more or less]
> *do* maintain both 6 and 7.
Not quite... I think you'll find in listening and talking to evolutionists
that if you think your points 1-5 are compelling, you'll not be arguing
with them much about 6 and 7. (8, of course, will depend on the individual
and how argumentative they are :-))
> > and 8 is
> > a much broader base which everyone doing science, medicine, business,
> > interior decorating, plumbing, watch repairing, and political
> > campaign junketing takes as a working hypothesis.
>
> Yes and no. *Many* -- if not most -- of the most successful
> people working in medicine, business, and political campaigning
> adopt extra-naturalistic accounts and explanations (i.e.,
> spiritualistic ones) of phenomena and happenings in their fields.
> I suspect that the same is true of interior decorating. In the
> case of science, although metaphysical naturalism is adopted in
> *testing* hypotheses, some form of spiritualistic insight is
> responsible for at least some important hypothesis proposals.
We could be thinking of different things here. I agree that the
way scientific theories are invented is not by some mechanistic
process--they're dreamed up in ways that are still very mysterious.
(The best ones, that is; the more mundane ones are often quite
obvious ;-)) There is no doubt that this sort of inspirational
process informs many different fields, including science, but
there is, as yet, no compelling argument that these processes are
non-naturalistic.
> The American philosopher C.S. Peirce [the founder of pragmatism,
> and the greatest American philosopher ever], for example,
> discussed what he called "abductive inference." Abduction is the
> process by which we reason: `Such and such phenomena "p" are
> observed. If theory "T" were true, it would explain p. Thus we
> accept T (tentatively) as the explanation of p.' In explaining
> this process of abduction Peirce said that it works by "Divine
> inspiration."
:-) Unfortunately, perhaps, a lot of the inspiration goes away when
you specify the Unwritten Code of Theory Composition. :-) We expect
good theories to be expressed in a couple of lines or so, once the
constituent terms are understood. This places a very tight constraint
on what we consider 'abductively inferentially' true (if there is such
a thing :-)). That is, if I say "T='p should be observed'" no-one
will think it is inspired, much less believe it. We expect a whole lot
more from our theories, which takes away a lot of the leeway. There
is a great deal of mysterious awe about the fact that this process has
seemed to work at all, though! That's for sure!
> > I think we'll need more evidence than this that any evolutionists
> > believe that 6 or 7 is true.
>
> Wrong. I think I've given what amounts to a Q.E.D. proof that at
> least some prominent evolutionists believe that both 6 and 7 are
> true.
Perhaps the above has given a bit of pause to that...if not, we
can try to do more to nail it down.
[...]
> Yes, you're right. But notice that all these are just further
> specifications and descriptions of natural selection theory. So
> your point here doesn't go anywhere to denying that selection
> theory is the cornerstone of evolutionism.
No, these (drift, sex, etc.) are most emphatically *not* simply
further descriptions of selection. The theory of genetic drift,
for example, says that even in a completely neutral case, where
selection plays absolutely no role, differences in genetic distributions
will be amplified by binomial sampling error and become fixed in
the population. This is exactly *not* selection. As for sex,
while hopefully selection has something to do with it, it is no
more a part of natural selection than mutations are :-). It is
definitely true that Dawkins, for example, believes that selection
is the cornerstone of evolutionary theory. This is because he
thinks that a) adaptive evolution is the only kind worth thinking
about, and b) selection is the only mechanism in adaptive evolution.
Others (notably Gould) disagree with him on both counts (but still
maintain that selection is a cornerstone of the theory).
BTW, though, there is still an argument to be held without numbers
6 and 7. It seems that 8 is the primary point of contention here,
and that will do nicely to argue with 1-5, or at least some of the
folks who believe 1-5.
[...]
> them in their work. It's wrong to diminish such phenomena by
> trivializing them with words such as "consult horoscopes and read
> your palm."
You're right. I hope I've clarified above more about what I
was thinking. (Not to say many successful businessman *don't*
consult horoscopes...)
[method for non-naturalistic procedure]
> Yes, you're quite right in the points you make here. I thought
> that I was making the same -- or similar -- points in what I
> wrote in this section of my paper. Maybe I was not sufficiently
> clear in doing so.
It seemed to me you were arguing for an abandonment of naturalism
without pointing out some of the key parts which are missing in
going to something else. I could certainly have missed it, though.
[...]
> > Paradigm shifts in science have typically come from a new research
> > program gaining much more momentum than its competitors, and
> > simply sweeping them off the field.
>
> Yes, this is correct. I do not see this as my role, however. I'm
> not a working scientist, but a philosopher of science. As such, I
> take a critical stance toward what is offered to see whether it
> passes logical and methodological muster. (That sounds arrogant,
> as if philosophers set themselves up as arbiters of what's OK and
> what's not. I do not wish to be arrogant, but I do think that
> philosophy has a vital role here, and I think that philosophers -
> - some of them anyway -- have particular training that enables
> them to have special acuity and be of special service in this
> role.)
I agree with you, and I think philosophers do have something to offer.
Often they are brushed aside by people who do science, and I think
that's unfortunate. My opinion is that pretty good understandings have
been developed (I second your appreciation of Lakatos) of how science
proceeds, and that can enable an examination of that process, and can
lead to suggestions and critiques.
[non-naturalistic programs]
> There *is* a problem here, however. There's an ongoing tendency
> to define science as "that which deals with the metaphysically
> naturalistic." So long as we accept such a definition, either
> consciously or unconsciously, we won't be able to proceed on this
> front.
True enough. I think science has tended in the past to be sort of
a gobbling entity--as soon as it sees something that works, it
gobbles it up and morphs it into a scientific field. This is
interesting in itself, but I'm not sure what it says about the
above. I guess what it says is that, so far, all the successive
gobblings haven't resulted in a clear swing from methodological
naturalism. And, for science, that seems to mean a kind of
metaphysical naturalism, as scientific metaphysics tries to stick
close to methodological realities (which itself is sometimes a
problem). I think the upshot is that if a successful non-naturalistic
project is available, it could very well succeed in being integrated
into the whole of science. It is certainly true, though, that it
would have to overcome the procedural concerns of scientists (as
opposed to empirical concerns.)
Good talking with you!
-Greg