Abstract
One key aim of Grafen’s Formal Darwinism project is to formalize ‘modern biology’s understanding and updating of Darwin’s central argument’. In this commentary, I consider whether Grafen has succeeded in this aim.
Notes
Page references, unless stated otherwise, refer to Grafen’s target article, ‘The Formal Darwinism project in outline’.
Though, interestingly, chemists do tend to describe these rearrangements in intentional terms. So perhaps there really is a link between ‘solving an optimization programme’ with respect to intrinsic structural properties and inviting certain forms of intentional language (for more detailed discussion of this issue, see Birch 2012).
Compare Dawkins (1986, 21): ‘We may say that a living body or organ is well designed if it has attributes that an intelligent and knowledgeable engineer might have built in order to achieve some sensible purpose, such as flying, swimming, seeing, eating, reproducing, or more generally promoting the survival and reproduction of the organism’s genes.’ In invoking the notion of a ‘sensible purpose’, Dawkins introduces an anthropocentric element to the definition of design that may well be unavoidable. Lewens (2005) makes a similar point.
See, for example, Kelemen (1999, 2004). For studies regarding projections of purpose and design in adults, see Lombrozo and Carey (2006), Kelemen and Carey (2007), Kelemen and Rosset (2009). Judgements about apparent design seem to vary across cultures (Casler and Kelemen 2008), and in general children attribute purpose and design far more promiscuously than adults (Kelemen 1999).
References
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Acknowledgments
I thank Anthony Edwards, Warren Ewens, Rufus Johnstone, Tim Lewens, Samir Okasha, Cedric Paternotte and John Welch for their extensive and very helpful comments.
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Birch, J. Has Grafen formalized Darwin?. Biol Philos 29, 175–180 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-013-9421-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-013-9421-z