03.11.10

Against Physics as Ontologically Basic

Posted in argumentation, biology, epistemology, evolution, ontology, philosophy, physics, science at 12:42 am by nogre

1.  Biology is epistemically independent of physics:

Let’s assume that biology is not epistemically independent of physics, i.e. to know any biology we must first know something about physics.  However, consider evolution as determined by natural selection and the struggle for survival.  We can know about the struggle for survival and natural selection without appealing to physics — just as Darwin did when he created the theory — and hence we can fundamentally understand at least some, if not most, of biology independent of physics.

2.  Physics supervenes on biology:

Whatever ability we have to comprehend is an evolved skill.  Therefore any physical understanding of the world, as an instance of general comprehension,  supervenes on the biology of this skill.

3.  Biology is just as fundamental as physics:

If the principles involved in biology and physics are epistemically independent and each can be said to supervene on  the other, then neither has theoretical primordiality.

Therefore physics is not ontologically basic.

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[This argument was inspired by a discussion over at It's Only a Theory start by Mohan Matthen.

And I want it to be known that I HATE SUPERVENIENCE.  Basically if you use supervenience regularly then you are a BAD PERSON.  The only good argument that uses supervenience is one that reduces the overall usage of the word:  it is my hope that the above argument will prevent people from saying that biology supervenes on physics.  For every argument in which I thought that using supervenience might prove useful, I found a much, much superior argument that did not make use of the term.  I know you always live to regret statements like this, but right now I don't care.]

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02.24.10

Fodor May Yet Be Clever

Posted in argumentation, biology, evolution, philosophy, random idiocy, science, wild conjecture at 10:48 pm by nogre

I was trying to figure out what Fodor could have been thinking.  Here’s what I came up with:

1. If we are trying to figure out what Evolution has done, then we presuppose that Evolution is capable of doing something.
2. If Evolution is capable of doing something, then there must be some mechanism of Evolution that does the doing.

Now imagine yourself in the position of the mechanism of Evolution that does the doing, i.e. the mechanism that selects the traits that yield a higher fitness.

The question becomes: is it possible for you to select for a trait?

The answer is NO.

To understand why, consider what happens when we try to give an evolutionary explanation of something:  we are beset by a near infinite selection of different possibilities.  Only through careful study can we narrow down which traits are actually the ones that increase an organism’s fitness and, if we are in a historical context, only give a most likely candidate for such a trait.

Now imagine yourself back in the position of the mechanism.  The mechanism is stuck with the exact same sort of problem that we have when trying to figure out what it has done:  it has no more an ability to select a single trait than we have to figure out which trait it has selected with our first guess.  Whenever it tries to select for a trait, it may mistakenly also select for another trait that is not so good for the organism, or it may not have even recognized the trait it thought it was selecting for.

Therefore, since this mechanism can’t work, evolution is bunk.

OK.  Now let’s take a step back and look at this argument.  Basically there are two parts:  the first part is an argument that there is a mechanism that does the doing and the second part says the mechanism can’t have done anything.  When I saw Fodor speak on this topic, I believe (it was a while ago now) he spent a good deal of time on arguing for the first part and I didn’t really understand what he was up to.  Now it makes sense because if we accept that there is some mechanism that does the doing, then we may be committed to admitting to at least some amount of skepticism about evolution based upon the second part.  Getting even some skepticism about evolution would be a sufficiently large accomplishment, and so I figure this must be Fodor’s ultimate goal.

In light of this argument I offer this wild conjecture for your reading pleasure:

Replace “mechanism” with “agent”.  Now, instead of an argument against evolution, it is an argument against Intelligent Design.  Intelligent Design has the designer/ agent built directly into it, and this makes the argument much more knock-down:  There is no need to argue for the existence of a mechanism because it is right in the title, and since the intelligence of ID is something like our intelligence, it makes sense that it would suffer from the same problems that ours does.

What I think happened is that Fodor was sitting around thinking why intelligent design doesn’t work and realized that if he could make a strong enough argument that evolution also required some sort of agent, in the form of an evolutionary mechanism, then he could return a similar result.  Since having a technical reason for discounting ID wouldn’t make much of splash, Fodor dropped the argument against ID and pursued the argument against evolution.

Personally I kind of like this argument against ID.  If I ever run into some ID people, I may even bring it up.

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Fodor’s Intensional Criticism of Evolution

Posted in biology, evolution, philosophy, science at 11:35 am by nogre

Fodor’s intensional criticism of evolution is that the process of evolution is unable to make the necessary distinctions in selecting traits.   This is to say that evolution itself cannot  select for specific traits.  If evolution can’t select for traits, then we will definitely not be able to figure out what’s happening based on evolution.  Hence evolution is not a good theory.

Does evolution need a mechanism to select for certain traits?

No, there is no need for a mechanism which decides that it wants a certain trait and then systematically selects for that trait.

Instead evolution is more like a Plinko / Pachinko machine with moving pins and prize locations.   Organisms – the balls – live and die by bouncing off whatever exists in their environment – pins and prizes -.  Whoever happens to land in a good location gets to have their genes replicated.  In this setup there is no need to appeal to some evolutionary mechanism to select traits because  with the environment and organism described, the evolutionary traits that will be selected are probabilistically determined.

Our evolutionary explanations, then, describe the environment – the position of the Plinko pins and prizes – and the biology of the organism – the shape and location of the Plinko ball – to show why that organism ended up in a position to replicate.  If we want to describe how we evolved to have hands, for example,  we show how organisms that more consistently landed in the right locations had the traits that led to us having hands, and not because there was a mechanism to pick out ‘having hand traits’ at the start.

Therefore Fodor’s argument from intensionality is a straw man:  Evolution does not need to be able to make the distinctions that Fodor says it needs to make.  Hence there is no problem within evolution.

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For my take on what else Fodor got wrong, see my post What Fodor Got Wrong (which this argument actually presupposes), and the follow up Dismantling Fodor’s Argument.

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02.23.10

On Block and Kitcher on Fodor

Posted in argumentation, biology, evolution, fitness, news, philosophy, science at 12:13 pm by nogre

Ned Block and Philip Kitcher have posted a review of Fodor/Piatelli-Palmarini’s “What Darwin Got Wrong” (via Leiter).

It is a well executed, though flawed, counter to Fodor’s arguments.  First they give a nice rundown of the underdetermination issue I posted about here.

Then they discuss the “intensional fallacy”.  They argue that the crux of F & P’s argument can be seen as trying to split up the causal efficacious trait and the selected-for trait.  This means that F & P believe that there is no way to connect the evolutionary reason – the trait that increased an organism’s fitness – with our explanation of the trait that was selected-for.  Block & Kitcher argue that it is trivial to match the two up because

selection-for is a causal notion, and, since causation is extensional, so is selection-for.

Insofar as we believe that our explanation of the selected-for trait is extensional, i.e. truth-preserving when switching between different names of the same thing, we can say that we do pick out the causally efficacious trait.

Unfortunately Block and Kitcher sacrificed our normal concept of explanation to make this counter-argument.  They note that explanations are never normally extensional, but that we are making an exception in this case.  This is ok to do because

we thinking beings can give (intensional) explanations in terms of [one trait] rather than the other properties. In giving the explanation, we (thinking beings) describe the property in our preferred way.

I do not understand what is going on here.  Basically it looks as if “preferred way” is just a fancy way to say “own words”, but describing something in our own words doesn’t make it right.  Nor is it a reason to change what should count as an explanation.

Unless Block and Kitcher are prepared to give further justification as to why we should disregard our normal understanding of explanation, it looks as if their solution to Fodor’s argument is ad hoc.  They are using explanation* — which is a special kind of explanation that can be extensional — but they have not given a reason why explanation* should be preferred over of regular explanation (outside of causing Fodor trouble).  Without this reason, the use of explanation* is ad hoc, and hence the argument fails because it turns on an ad hoc premise: the assumption that explanation* can be substituted for explanation.

However, I did say above that Block and Kitcher’s argument is well executed:  My argument against using an ad hoc term-term* distinction is obscure compared to their argument and so, for the vast majority of people, it will appear that their argument is effective.  Overall this is a good thing: less nonsense needs to surround evolution (though I’ll be a little sad to see it go: I’m #1 in a Google search for “fodor what darwin got wrong“).

For my take on what Fodor got wrong, see my post What Fodor Got Wrong, and the follow up Dismantling Fodor’s Argument (also linked above in reference to underdetermination).  I’ll post something soon specifically addressing the intensionality issue:  Fodor’s Intensional Criticism of Evolution.

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12.31.09

Genetic Drift and the Uncertainty Principle

Posted in Relativity, biology, evolution, measurement, philosophy, physics, science at 4:48 pm by nogre

I have previously argued that the history of species must be treated like a evolutionary trajectory: we can only appreciate a species in a relative sense, just as we must evaluate physical trajectories relative to our own motion.

But what happens when we try to measure the very small in physics?  We find there is a limit to the precision at which we can measure, as given by the uncertainty principle.

This suggests that there may be some similar limit when it comes  to measuring small changes in species.  The more we try to pin down exactly what a species is, the less sure we will be about its future and the more we measure the direction the species is heading, the less sure we will be about exactly what constitutes that species.

If genetic drift is just another way of saying that we cannot pin down the exact genetic make-up of a species then drift may be considered to be an instance of the uncertainty principle.

and HAPPY NEW YEAR

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10.08.09

Sexual Reproduction, The Case for, Round 2

Posted in biology, evolution, fitness, philosophy, science at 7:24 pm by nogre

Let us assume that there are different kinds of adaptations.  Specifically, some are better than others in the long run:  some adaptations will only make a difference in an organism’s ability to reproduce viable offspring over a short period of time, whereas others will be beneficial for many generations.

In asexual reproduction there is no mechanism for distinguishing between a short term beneficial adaptation and a long term beneficial adaptation.  This subjects long term beneficial adaptations to being potentially overshadowed by short term beneficial adaptations and genetic drift:  if a short-term genetic change  sweeps through a population, some adaptations can be wiped out.  This sort of (selected for or not selected for) genetic drift would be tempered if it were forced to go across the different biologies of the two sexes.

With sexual selection there is a mechanism for selecting long term beneficial adaptations over short term ones.  Long term beneficial adaptations will have to be good for both sexes:  if an adaptation is beneficial to both the male and female – individuals with significantly different biologies – then it is more likely to be  good for the entire species.  Short term beneficial adaptations may only be good for particular individuals or one sex, depending on the mutation.  This makes it less likely for short term, provincial adaptations (or drift) to last because they won’t be as effective across different the different biological make-up of the two sexes.

Therefore by distributing mutations across two different sexes – two similar but different biologies – long term beneficial adaptations can be selected for.

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10.01.09

Sexual Reproduction

Posted in biology, evolution, fitness, game theory, philosophy, science at 11:20 am by nogre

Say you are a single celled organism.  To reproduce you have to double your size and then you need to split yourself in half.  Repeat indefinitely.

Now say you are a single celled organism that has the option to reproduce sexually.  To reproduce you need to increase yourself to 3/2 your original size and find a similar mate.  Then you both contribute 1/2 to the new organism and repeat indefinitely.

Asexual reproduction requires you to double in size; sexual reproduction requires only a 3/2 increase.  Therefore the turn-around time for sexual reproduction is inherently shorter than for asexual reproduction (assuming there are viable mates readily available).

Is there a selective benefit to a shorter turn around time for reproduction?  If the species must constantly be adapting to a changing environment (that would be everyone), then having a higher rate at which new mutations (and thence adaptations) are introduced into the population is critical.

Secondly, given that there is enough food but it takes time to collect, I count more offspring for sexual reproduction:

In sexual reproduction, there is an additional child from the first generation of children (as compared to asexual splitting) created in the same amount of time: At the +50% mark #1 & #2 mate to create #5, and #3 & #4 mate to create #6.  Then, at the 100% mark (or plus an additional 50%) #1 & #2 mate to create #7, #3 & #4 mate to create #8, and, at the same time, the initial children #5 & #6 mate to create #9.  #9 is also one generation ahead of the offspring of asexual replication.

Now, to be honest, I’m confused.  I don’t think that anything above is particularly complicated.  However, Wikipedia does not note this as a benefit of sexual reproduction.  It actually says that asexual reproduction is much faster.  This makes me think that I must have made a mistake or else someone would have added it.

The going theory appears to be that since every organism in an asexually reproducing species can give off children, then there is twice the potential for offspring.  This completely ignores any struggle that an organism might have that would prevent it from reproducing, or that work can be split with a mate making it easier to reproduce.

My main assumptions are, among others, that there already is a significant population of organisms, the organisms are not too fussy about their mates (no significant waste of energy searching for a mate),  energy / work is being split with the mate, and that the limiting factor has to do with gathering food.  I can’t see how, if these (reasonable?) assumptions hold, sexual reproduction isn’t the dominant, winning strategy.

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09.29.09

A Priori Against Physicalism

Posted in biology, ontology, philosophy, physics, science at 12:54 am by nogre

I saw that Richard Brown is working to defend physicalism against a priori arguments.  He says that most (all?) arguments use the same intuitions found in the zombie-knowledge arguments.

This got me to thinking about a priori arguments against physicalism and I came up with something different:

If physicalism is, as Dr. Brown says, “… the view that only physical things exist. Physical things are those things that are postulated by a completed physics,” then I wonder who made physics king?  I’d have to assume that there is something within science that specifies physics as most fundamental.

However, science itself, or more specifically philosophy of science, is discipline agnostic.  There is nothing within the basic structure of science to specify physics as the foundation.  Maybe it is biology that is fundamental, maybe it is psychology, maybe something else; the point is that there is no a priori reason to prefer one over any of the others.  If there is nothing that distinguishes physics as a ground for the other sciences, then there is no reason that physicalism should be taken as a fundamental philosophy.

At this point the physicalist would want to find some grounds for the claim that physics is fundamental.  This is problematic though: nothing could be used from within physics because that would be question begging.  On the other hand, if we try to justify physics as fundamental by appealing to something outside physics, then isn’t that thing that provides the justification more fundamental than physics itself?  If we have to justify the claim ‘physics is fundamental’ by appealing to something even more fundamental, then physics is no longer fundamental because it needs an outside justification.  Therefore any justification for physicalism is inherently question begging or self-contradictory.

I know I haven’t disproved physicalism; at best I’ve indicated that justifications for it are bad.  And if any justification is bad, then the position is indefensible.  Since most philosophers don’t like to hold indefensible positions, perhaps this is sufficient.

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09.14.09

Not quite Skynet

Posted in NYC, biology, evolution, game theory, internet, news, philosophy, products, random idiocy, technology at 10:33 pm by nogre

For those readers of mine, I’d like to open up a small opportunity.  Quite a bit of my time and effort has gone into revamping parts of the theory of evolution and I have previously mentioned here that I’ve taught myself to program and created a simulation.  Well, this isn’t completely true.

The short version is that I’ve made computers try to survive the real world.  By real world, I mean my program contains lots of little files that make decisions, and these decisions are about buying and selling stocks, based upon actual real-time data available on the internet.  The decision engines (or ‘orgs’, as I like to call them) that correctly predict the movement of the stocks make money and eventually replicate.  Those orgs that are unsuccessful at predicting stock movements lose money and die off.  The replication process is governed by genetic algorithms that include various mutations.

The short short version is that the program is a cross between a stock market program and a tomagotchi (digital pet).  You host a colony of organisms that survive by ‘eating’ (buy and selling) stocks; it acts as your own personal hedge fund.

Anyway, I could use a tester or two, so if anyone here wants to participate, send me an email.  I’ll get around to writing up more details about the program soon too.

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In other news,  I’ve finally gotten around to updating the NYC Area Philosophy Calendar.  Someone even sent me a nice email asking if I was still going to do it (before I got around to it.. busy busy) and another person even asked if they could start adding events.

Hmmm, interest in the calendar (it only took 2 years).  An actual object (program) that came from studying philosophy (original theory of biology, 2004.).  It’s taken some time but I feel like I must be moving up in the world.

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06.07.09

it runs

Posted in biology, evolution, philosophy at 9:23 pm by nogre

Although there really isn’t much to tell, I have successfully created a program that implements my theory of evolution.  It ran for the first time on Friday, and after some diagnostics on Monday, I’ll set it to automatically run and merely monitor progress (if any).

On a separate note, learning how to program something non-trivial was a good experience.  Being able to take my theory and create something from it was heartening.

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