What I want to do is write up my theories about the causal structure in evolution;  it will get done regardless, but it will get done faster and better if I have help.  So I am looking for a place that does philosophy of science, biology and physics, but anywhere willing to fund my writing about these topics will be considered.

Any and all information, thoughts, wishes, questions, condemnations, etc., are encouraged.  Leave a comment below or send me an email at noahgreenstein@noahgreenstein.com.

Last Words

WTF.  satoshi kon falls to cancer.  dammit.

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Go watch Paranoia Agent.  i used to have the picture of maromi as my desktop background.

What I started thinking about was that each goal in soccer is something very special, more special than any single thing to any other game in another sport.

As I thought about this over the last few days the NBA finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics have been going on.  [Full discloser: I don't love basketball, though this may have something to do with the Knicks being horrible.]  However, I only watch the last quarter of those games.  Sure great plays happen all game, but it always seems to come down to who can make the biggest plays at the end.  There is a great quote by Jordan which is something like, “It is not enough to play well, you have to have something left to finish with.”  The game goes to whichever player or whichever team makes the plays at the end; the first three quarters are just a preamble.

Putting this all together, watching soccer is like watching the last 10 minutes of a basketball game, but for the full 90+ minutes.  The individual or team plays that lead to a goal are like the critical brilliant plays that Bryant makes at the end to edge out the other team.  It is this brilliance that can happen at any moment which makes soccer so exciting.

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“).

[EDIT:  I've put up a new analysis (24 March 2010) of Fodor's argument here: Hypotheses Natura Non Fingo.  It also includes a review of the responses of Block, Kitcher and Sober ]

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.

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.