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Nagel on ID

In my recent posts on Paley, and elsewhere, I’ve been pretty critical of ID theory. But I’ve always acknowledged that the ID folks have been treated disgracefully by most naturalists and Darwinians. Most, but not all. If you haven’t yet heard, Thomas Nagel has recommended Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design as one of the “best books of the year” in the Times Literary Supplement. Some of Nagel’s fellow naturalists are very very upset about it. Just wait ‘til they read Jerry Fodor’s next book. As I’ve noted before, non-fundamentalist naturalists like Nagel and Fodor are the ones theists need to take the most seriously, precisely because (as I emphasized in the posts on Paley) they realize that a challenge to Darwinism is not a challenge to naturalism per se. Still fun to watch the fundamentalist naturalists squirm, though…

Comments (36)

I'm having trouble not laughing aloud, here, at this repeated phrase in one of the above posts:


Arrogance is the keyword here, I'm sure.

Yup.

Brian Leiter saying that Nagel embarrasses the profession is like a a whore accusing George Michael of being promiscuous.

If Leiter is so concerned about embarrassments to the profession, he should take his colleague Martha Nussbaum to the woodshed: http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9406/opinion/opinion.html

Oh, that's right, she lied under oath in order to defend homosexual behavior. So, it's okay.

After reading that article, Thomas Aquinas, I want to give a paraphrase of Barry Goldwater: lying in the defense of getting whatever you want is no vice!

Gotta love this gem.

Does Nagel have any biological training? None that I could see. Does he know anything about evolution or abiogenesis? Not if he thinks Meyer has any valid contribution to make. Did he bother to check if biologists think Meyer's book is a good contribution to the literature? I doubt it. Did Nagel spot all the phony claims Meyer makes about information? I doubt it again..

I take it then that we will see similar complaints when say a biologist with no training in philosophy of science who knows nothing about religious epistemology or arguments for Gods existence writes a book on God being a delusion. I take that it will be insisted that people check what Philosophers of religion say about the book and take there word on whether its a good contribution to the literature. I take it too that people will be outraged when phony claims about say Aquinas cosmological argument are put in this book.


From the article:

He has never made any contributions, or manifested any expertise, in the philosophical fields most relevant to assessing the issues raised by Meyer's work, such as philosophy of biology;

There's a philosophy of biology??

The Chicken

Matt nailed it.

I've read swaths of Meyer's book, though not the whole thing. I'm fairly certain that BL has not read any of it. BL casually appeals to pre-organic evolution as the "solution" to the problems Meyer's book confronts. But that's another "just so" story that connects the data in a way congenial to BL's naturalist narrative. Surprise! Because BL rejects "first philosophy" he assumes that good philosophy is just following philosophical naturalism (or what he calls "scientific reasoning," whatever the hell that means). But the problem with that approach to philosophy is that it begs every important question. It takes a project like Meyer's and claims that it is "refuted" because someone like BL can just plug in an ad hoc hypothesis or postulate some unobserved physical thing that "does the trick." So, BL is shocked, shocked, shocked, I tell you, when someone has the temerity to call into question--not just this or that argument--but the whole damned thing. Sorry Brian, but even a red diaper baby should be able to smell his own sh*t. If I were a betting man, I would say that more people in Brian's old neighbor and among his parents' friends--Trotskyites and Stalinists--were responsible for propping up intellectually indefensible points of view than all the Evangelical Christians that he loathes.

The Texas Taliban never built a gulag, but Brian's family's friends did. Now, go and put on a Pete Singer album and take a shot of vodka.

I think you mean "Pete Seeger album," Aquinas -- or has Peter Singer followed his Princeton colleague Cornel West's lead in putting out CDs? Please say no...

Pre-organic evolution. Talk about a contradiction in terms.

MC, yes, I'm afraid there _is_ such a thing as philosophy of biology. There is also philosophy of physics. (Much better, IMO. In fact much of what is thought of as mainstream philosophy of science tends to focus on physics.) So far as I know, chemistry has yet to rate its own special branch of philosophy, though, so I think you're safe.

[Hangs head low] Philosophers hate us [heavy sigh]. The chemist slinks away...

The Chicken

Aha! I'm a physical chemist which is closer to a physicist than an organic chemist. Maybe there's hope, yet.

In any case, let me be the first person to write a philosophy of chemistry, which , logically, should be developed before a philosophy of biology, right? Today, I would like to propound on the incredible uses of the letter C in chemistry.

The Chicken

Chicken, anything you can do, I can do meta...

>badum-ching!

That was an Ortho-dox Para-phrase of a Meta-physical joke, right. If you understand this comment, thank an organic chemist near you. I may be the only person on the planet to have published a review of a mathematics joke book in a peer reviewed journal, by the way.

Actually, aren't biological entities talking about the philosophy of biology a little ironic?

Back to the seriousness...

The Chicken

You are quite right, Professor Feser. I meant "Pete Seeger," unrepentant commie that he is.

Speaking of Singer, strangely, I've heard that he indeed has a forthcoming folk album. Interesting tidbits:

He's using the the famous Beatles dead-baby cover: http://www.esquire.com/media/cm/esquire/images/butcher-cover-beatles-061808-lg.jpg

LOL!

Prof. Feser wrote:

Chicken, anything you can do, I can do meta...

>badum-ching!

I missed the obvious reply:

No, you Kant
Yes, I Cann*

*Rosemarie Cann is a philosopher of language.

The Chicken

What has struck me about Darwinism is the ceaseless elasticity of that theory. Or rather the elasticity, the twists,turns, and bends that are effortlessly applied to it by those defenders of the script.
No Mendel? No problem, we'll just glue him on. Thomas Hunt Morgan actually questioning the early tenants of Darwinism, no problem. We'll just glue him on right after Mendel.
Fifty years of additions and revisions to the initial work of Crick and Watson, etc & so on.

And of course every couple of years a new "missing link" is found.
You just can't lose with that kind of flexibility. Maybe that's why you're seeing "evolution" used a little more and Darwinism a little less.

But then evolution is only another word for change, and Lucretius and Heraclitus had already noticed that. It is after all,an important principle that counts also.

Nagel's skepticism regarding evolution has been on display at least since The View From Nowhere, so I'm not sure why people are so shocked by his comments.

Darwinism has nothing whatsoever to say to the origin of life issue, which is what Meyer's book is about. Darwinism assumes biological entities that reproduce on which natural selection operates.

Lydia:

Darwinism has nothing whatsoever to say to the origin of life issue, which is what Meyer's book is about. Darwinism assumes biological entities that reproduce on which natural selection operates.

Well, see it depends on who's asking. If a skeptic casts aspersions on the Darwinian story by bringing up the gaping hole at the origin of life, the Darwinist will attempt to disassociate the two by saying "Darwinism has nothing whatsoever to say to the origin of life issue. Darwinism assumes biological entities that reproduce on which natural selection operates" so as to prevent Darwinism from being dragged down by the albatross around its neck that is the origins of life.

On the other hand, if the skeptic says "Darwinism has nothing whatsoever to say to the origin of life issue. Darwinism assumes biological entities that reproduce on which natural selection operates" then the Darwinist will cite far-fetched (and probably incoherent) speculation about "pre-biotic evolution" so as not to cede an inch to the idea that the Darwinian worldview can't explain absolutely everything.

Too true. Another of these "I can say it, but you can't" things.

Darwin may say nothing about the origin of life but it's safe to say Darwinists do. Or should I say materialists in general, Crick's intro of panspermia into the world of ideas, loosely defined, as an example.

The whole thing is a farce. Did not what used to be called the "husbandman" understand cross breeding, or did Nature give us mules? A case in point.
Darwin came along, as did Wallace BTW, at about the right time. A time propitious to argumentation advantageous to skepticism, to what seemed the final push to religion.
Wallace wouldn't quite do, being a believer. If I recall, Louis Agassiz was another sacrifice on the altar of a resuscitated paganism. So the hero's mantle passed to Darwin.

And history? To borrow a line from GB Shaw,"History? History will do what it always does, it will lie to us."
If you will allow for a moment of passing cynicism.
Faith finds various forms, but allowing for the vagaries of an Age only some warrant praise and others scorn. We hope truth persists.

Lydia,

You keep on referring to prebiotic evolution as being somehow incoherent. Can you demonstrate the incoherency at all? I assume too that you have some familiarity with the literature in biology that utilizes such a term; a quick search through journals in biochemistry shows that it's fairly common. After all, it would be comically immodest for a philosopher with no training or familiarity in/with biology to make such an assertion,

Cheers,
Kevin

Actually, my mistake, you said pre-organic evolution. That said, I think we need to get clear on one key point, do you mean pre-organic in the sense of prior to organisms, or pre-organic in the sense of prior to organic compounds in chemistry?

1. Leiter criticizes Nagel for being out of field when opining about Meyer's book. Leiter also disrespectfully dismisses Meyer's book. I checked Leiter's CV and didn't find anything that shows that he is in field when it comes to Philosophy of Science (PoS). I can only conclude a) that Leiter is a hypocrite and b) that Leiter is a crank. Nagel, though out of field, properly cedes authority to Meyer, so he evades the charge of crankdom. I didn't see Leiter criticizing any other choices for best book for being out of field--only ID. Hence, Leiter is also showing that he is an ideologue posing as a philosopher. Sorry, Prof. Leiter, but that is the truth.

2. There's been some discussion about origins of life and Darwinism. These are two theories that should dovetail. If they do, that strengthens both theories. If they don't, then both are weakened.

3. I have heard that there is at least one philosopher working on a philosophy of biology. I suspect that the reason that physics and biology were chosen first has to do with the controversial nature of cosmology and Darwinism.

4. Chicken, I loved P chem! In fact, my physics thesis was about how reflectance data could, in some situations, be used to generate absorption spectra. No sample required!

5. Where is there any meaning in "evolution"? "Gene pools change over time" is trivial and uncontroversial. "Species" is a vague term. Deep time was established on top of a host of discredited geological theories, including Lyellian Uniformitarianism, so chronostratigraphy is in disrepair, though work is being done on it. The Modern Synthesis is kaput, though its components (natural selection and genetic inheritance of mutations) have meaning--we're just not sure of the degree of significance that they have. Where are the mechanisms and definitions? Seems to me that a question about mechanisms is at the heart of the ID question.

Disclosure: BA (chemistry), MS (physics, with thesis in classical optics), philosophical interests especially in PoS (especially experimental philosophy, demarcation, and scientism), epistemology of phenomena, and epistemology of testimony, work: computer programming

Yes, kevin, I meant "prior to organisms." And what I meant was that in the Darwinian sense, you have to have organisms before evolution can take place, therefore evolution prior to organisms is incoherent.

Obviously, people who talk about it therefore mean instead some _extremely_ loose (aka "weak") analogue to the Darwinian process which doesn't require organisms and in which "reproduction" (for example) therefore means something different from what it means in Darwinian biology. For the successful occurrence of any such process solving the ool problem, you may if you prefer substitute "invocation of the tooth fairy" for "incoherent."

And, yep, I'm working totally out of field. How dare laymen have opinions on these subjects? We should just shut up and listen to experts in the field like Brian Leiter. Oh.

And what I meant was that in the Darwinian sense, you have to have organisms before evolution can take place, therefore evolution prior to organisms is incoherent.

Obviously, people who talk about it therefore mean instead some _extremely_ loose (aka "weak") analogue to the Darwinian process which doesn't require organisms and in which "reproduction" (for example) therefore means something different from what it means in Darwinian biology. For the successful occurrence of any such process solving the ool problem, you may if you prefer substitute "invocation of the tooth fairy" for "incoherent."

So why not take the charitable interpretation from the get go for "pre-organic evolution" rather than assert that it is incoherent? After all, (I hope that) you don't do the same for talk of stellar evolution, or linguistic evolution. Unless of course, your revisionary attitudes run towards astrophysics and linguistics as well as biology.

As a second point, what do you believe is required for natural selection? Would you agree that there needs to be a population, that is capable of reproducing, has variability of traits, as well as heritability of traits, and some kind of selective pressure imposed by the environment? At what point does a self-replicating molecule such as RNA fail to exhibit what is necessary for this process? Do you think viruses are incapable of reproduction in a sense necessary for this process?

And, yep, I'm working totally out of field. How dare laymen have opinions on these subjects? We should just shut up and listen to experts in the field like Brian Leiter. Oh.

I've never said that laymen can't have opinions on specialized subjects.

I did say it is immodest for laymen to criticize a field on which they have little to no understanding of the technical details in that field. Two different things Lydia, you should realize that. Once in a while it may be appropriate for someone to criticize a specialized discipline with little or no understanding, however such a criticism is audaciously bold. There's no getting around that point.

What guarantee do you have that I don't think that it is immodest of Leiter to advance the point he's making? Or did you just make a faulty assumption? Or, since we're on the topic of assumptions, since when has it ever been true that for someone to tell that it would be wisest to listen to experts in a field, they themselves must be an expert in that field?

OOL studies and mechanisms

Leslie Orgel wrote a paper about requirements for real mechanisms involving metabolic cycles: "The Implausibility of Metabolic Cycles on the Prebiotic Earth", http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.0060018

David Coppedge wrote the Cliff Notes for Orgel's paper: http://creationsafaris.com/crev200801.htm#20080126a

Disclosure: I also took 5 college courses in biology.

Disclosure: I also took 5 college courses in biology.

So what? You could have failed each one. Or none of them could have had anything to do with evolutionary theory or abiogenesis. And moreover, I only have your assertions to prove it. Pardon me for being unimpressed.

Kevin,

You are being rude. You had no reason to make any comment whatsoever about my disclosures. I wasn't relying on them for any argument to authority. The only purpose for them is in case someone might wonder why I might seem to speak as though I were knowledgeable about a subject.

Disclosure: My academic experience is very rusty.

Well, kevin, "bold" has never been something I have a problem with. But I'm happy to be less bold. Steve Meyer is a philosopher of science, not a scientist, but he certainly knows a lot more about the biology than I do. He discusses the Oparin pre-biotic natural selection theory on pp. 272-77 (including the Dobzhansky line about a "contradiction in terms" on p. 275) and the RNA world in Chapter 14. I'm sure you and I will both find them interesting. I'm writing an article on an entirely different topic in the meanwhile.

TomH,

You are being rude.

I assumed that the disclosures were attempting to convey a sense of a authority, my apologies.

What guarantee do you have that I don't think that it is immodest of Leiter to advance the point he's making?

Well, do you think it?

1. Leiter criticizes Nagel for being out of field when opining about Meyer's book. Leiter also disrespectfully dismisses Meyer's book. I checked Leiter's CV and didn't find anything that shows that he is in field when it comes to Philosophy of Science (PoS). I can only conclude a) that Leiter is a hypocrite and b) that Leiter is a crank. Nagel, though out of field, properly cedes authority to Meyer, so he evades the charge of crankdom. I didn't see Leiter criticizing any other choices for best book for being out of field--only ID. Hence, Leiter is also showing that he is an ideologue posing as a philosopher. Sorry, Prof. Leiter, but that is the truth.

Does Leiter's CV still include the jobs he was offered but rejected? A few years ago he used to include them. That's like including an album of your ex-girlfriends next to your wedding album, with the label, "Could have nailed these babes, but chose not to." When I first saw the "turned down jobs" category on his CV, I thought, "This guy's a real a**hole, though the expansiveness of his egoism cannot be adequately captured by the term `as*h*le' by itself." So, I coined the phrase, "deep sphincter." Like in the sentence, "Brian Leiter is a deep sphincter a**h*le."

You may credit Tommy Aquino for this phrase.

We try to keep this blog family-friendly, Mr. Aquinas. If you know what I mean. Please, back off on that stuff.

Kevin,

Your gracious apology is gladly accepted.

That's "Fr. Aquinas," Dr. McGrew! :-)

Of course, I will restrain myself. No use upsetting the kiddies by placing images of Leiter in their minds.

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