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you can read adaptationism as saying that environments select creatures for their fitness; or you can read it as saying that environments select traits for their fitness. It looks like the theory must be read both ways if it’s to do the work that it’s intended to: on the one hand, forces of selection must act on individual creatures since it is individual creatures that live, struggle, reproduce and die. On the other hand, forces of selection must act on traits since it is phenotypes – bundles of heritable traits – whose evolution selection theory purports to explain. It isn’t obvious, however, that the theory of selection can sustain both readings at once.
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The crucial test is whether one’s pet theory can distinguish between selection for trait A and selection for trait B when A and B are coextensive: were polar bears selected for being white or for matching their environment? Search me; and search any kind of adaptationism I’ve heard of.
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"The best way through Clark’s book is to start by reading the foreword by David Chalmers and the paper by Clark and Chalmers that is reprinted as an appendix. These are short, informal presentations of the so-called ‘Extended Mind Thesis’ (EMT), of which the rest of the book is an elaboration and discussion. "
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the mind v. world dualism is untenable.
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Otto’s notebook is (or may come with practice to serve as) an ‘external memory’, literally a ‘part of his mind’ that resides outside his body.
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Jerry Fodor vs. Elliot Sober: Who Got What Wrong? Fodor and Sobor discuss Fodor's book on Bloggingheads.tv
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Jerry Fodor vs. Elliot Sober: Who Got What Wrong?
Unfortunately it looks like Fodor’s thinking hasn’t evolved in the last two years, and I could just lightly edit what I wrote before to critique their latest piece. But that would be boring.
Much of the vast neo-Darwinian literature is distressingly uncritical. The possibility that anything is seriously amiss with Darwin's account of evolution is hardly considered. Such dissent as there is often relies on theistic premises which Darwinists rightly say have no place in the evaluation of scientific theories. So onlookers are left with the impression that there is little or nothing about Darwin's theory to which a scientific naturalist could reasonably object. The methodological scepticism that characterises most areas of scientific discourse seems strikingly absent when Darwinism is the topic. - opinion - 03 February 2010 - New Scientist
Daniel Dennett commentary on Fodor, “Against Darwinism” January 29, 2007
in list: Evolution
I would like to invite discussion on my paper, On Fodor on Darwin On Evolution, which is a critique of Jerry Fodor's Hugues Leblanc Lectures at UQAM on "What Darwin Got Wrong" (Fodor, forthcoming; Fodor&Piatelli-Palmarini). Reponses follow.
Blackburn and other react to Fofor's Why Pigs Don't Have Wings
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here is the philosopher of biology Elliott Sober’s solution to the problem, which he gave in 1984, and which is basically the same as Fodor’s own implicit proposal: ‘“Selection of” pertains to the effects of a selection process, whereas “selection for” describes its causes. To say there is selection for a given property means that having the property causes success in survival and reproduction.’ If a property doesn’t cause success in survival and reproduction, but is linked to one that does, then there is no selection for that property.
Coyne and Kitcher react to Fodor's Why Pigs Don't Have Wings
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Whiteness and camouflage (along with protein balances and forms of genetic material) are candidates ‘for’ natural selection because they figure in the causal history of the changes in the bears; being a Thursday’s cub isn’t a candidate because it doesn’t play a comparable causal role.
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The rival mechanisms Fodor cites are supplements to natural selection, not replacements.
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This started out to be a paper about why I am so down on evolutionary Psychology (EP), a topic I’ve addressed in print efore. (see Fodor, 19xx; 19xx). But, as I went along, it began to seem that really the paper was about what happens when you try to integrate Darwinism with an intentional theory like propositional attitude psychology.
Jerry Fodor has a lively and thoughtful review of Andy Clark's new book Supersizing the Mind in the latest issue of the London Review of Books. The paper is in effect a critique of the extended mind thesis, targeting Andy's and my joint paper "The Extended Mind", Andy's book, and my foreword to the book. Fodor makes two or three interesting objections to the extended mind thesis. (fragments of consciousness)
There is a gap between the mind and the world, and (as far as anybody knows) you need to posit internal representations if you are to have a hope of getting across it. Mind the gap. You’ll regret it if you don’t. (Jerry Fodor review of Clark)
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Is what my robot does when it ‘decides’ to change course a sort of thing which if it had happened inside the robot, ‘I would have had no hesitation in accepting as part of [a] cognitive process?’
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But how am I to understand the hypothesis that it would (or wouldn’t) have changed course if it had collided with the couch in my head?
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"Fodor’s co-author, Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, the distinguished professor of cognitive science at the University of Arizona --who's handling the biology for the book -- is intrigued by origin of form and recently agreed to pick up where Fodor left off." (Scoop)
in list: Evolution
Fodor reviews Dennett's Freedom Evolves in LRB
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Dennett's way of getting agents into a deterministic world depends on selling you an instrumentalist account of agency. Roughly, instrumentalism is the view that theories and explanations are (just) devices for making predictions; their predictions are the only claim they make to correspondence with the world. Accordingly, their predictions exhaust their content. I think Dennett's (usually tacit) instrumentalism is close to the heart of his philosophy. It is ubiquitous in the present book, and it takes a variety of forms.
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Agency doesn't, therefore, require creatures that actually act out of their preferences. It doesn't even require creatures that actually have preferences. All it requires is creatures that behave as though they had and whose behaviour is therefore interpretable 'from the intentional stance'
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