Conceptions of adaptation have varied in the history of genetic Darwinism depending on whether what is taken to be focal is the process of adaptation, adapted states of populations, or discrete adaptations in individual organisms. I argue that Theodosius Dobzhansky’s view of adaptation as a dynamical process contrasts with so-called “adaptationist” views of natural selection figured as “design-without-a-designer” of relatively discrete, enumerable adaptations. Correlated with these respectively process and product oriented approaches to adaptive natural selection are divergent pictures of organisms (...) themselves as developmental wholes or as “bundles” of adaptations. While even process versions of genetical Darwinism are insufficiently sensitive to the fact much of the variation on which adaptive selection works consists of changes in the timing, rate, or location of ontogenetic events, I argue that articulations of the Modern Synthesis influenced by Dobzhansky are more easily reconciled with the recent shift to evolutionary developmentalism than are versions that make discrete adaptations central. (shrink)

We trace the history of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, and of genetic Darwinism generally, with a view to showing why, even in its current versions, it can no longer serve as a general framework for evolutionary theory. The main reason is empirical. Genetical Darwinism cannot accommodate the role of development (and of genes in development) in many evolutionary processes. We go on to discuss two conceptual issues: whether natural selection can be the “creative factor” in a new, more general framework (...) for evolutionary theorizing; and whether in such a framework organisms must be conceived as self-organizing systems embedded in self-organizing ecological systems. (shrink)

Using the evolution of the stickleback family of subarctic fish as a touchstone, we explore the effect of new discoveries about regulatory genetics, developmental plasticity, and epigenetic inheritance on the conceptual foundations of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. Identifying the creativity of natural selection as the hallmark of the Modern Synthesis, we show that since its inception its adherents have pursued a variety of research projects that at first seemed to conflict with its principles, but were accommodated. We situate challenges coming (...) from developmental biology in a dialectic between innovation and tradition, suggesting on the basis of past episodes that even if developmental plasticity and epigenetic inheritance are aligned with its principles the Modern Synthesis will be significantly affected. (shrink)

Aristotle’s biological teleology is rooted in an epigenetic account of reproduction. As such, it is best interpreted by consequence etiology. I support this claim by citing the capacity of consequence etiology’s key distinctions to explain Aristotle’s opposition to Empedocles. There are implications for the relation between ancient and modern biology. The analysis reveals that in an important respect Darwin’s account of adaptation is closer to Aristotle’s than to Empedocles’s. They both rely on consequence etiological considerations to evade attributing the purposiveness (...) of organisms to chance. Two implications follow: Darwinian explanations of adaptation are as teleological as Aristotle’s, albeit differently; and these differences show how deeply resistant Aristotle’s version of biological teleology is to descent from a common ancestor. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Prudence: Classical Virtue, Postmodern PracticeDavid DepewPrudence: Classical Virtue, Postmodern Practice. Ed. Robert Hariman. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 337. $65.00, cloth."This volume," writes the editor, "is one contribution to the contemporary revival of interest in the concept of prudence" (ix). What interest? Notably, that of latter-day "virtue ethicists," whose discontents with the algorithmic decision-making procedures of modernism have given wings to a hope (...) that we (considered as members of some sort of imagined polis) will return to the context-sensitive "practical wisdom" of the ancients. (Prudentia is Cicero's Latin translation of the Greek phronesis, practical wisdom.)In theory, this line of reasoning was supposed to break the mold of contemporary politics. In practice, it has been captured by the political right. Virtue ethicists and civic republicans like Benjamin Barber have been outflanked by "virtuecrats" such as Bill Bennett (he of the gambling habit), the pompous columnist George Will, and Amitai Etzioni, the neo-corporatist founder of the Communitarian Party. It should be said right away, then, that few, if any, of the contributors to this collection are sympathetic to this sort of thinking. Admittedly, they share with virtuecrats a critique of rule-governed forms of decision-making, whether deontological or utilitarian, especially when these procedures masquerade as ways of "operationalizing" morality. Such calculi are indeed creatures of the institutional cultures of business firms and bureaucracies, which have increasingly affected law and politics. In addition, the authors of this volume are no less inclined than right-leaning virtuecrats to rake through intellectual history in order to come up with something relevant to the present and future. "There is a looking backward in order to see more clearly a mentality that is overlooked and undervalued in the present" (20). But they do so with a view to seeing what will come up when management of the topic of prudence is taken away from philosophers and reconnected (as it was from antiquity [End Page 167] until the nineteenth century) with the art of rhetoric, considered as an array of teachable discursive practices that are helpful in identifying and commending appropriate responses to contingent circumstances. The most salient features of the volume follow: a shift of the center of gravity from Aristotle to Cicero (ix), and a consideration of how, through rhetorical performances that involve the construction of a visible, embodied self, that strangest of creatures, a post-modern prudence, might be brought forth.I am pleased to report that changes of meaning in the collection's key term are discernible as we move from Cicero's prudentia to Machiavelli's prudenzia, and from the prudence that Edmund Burke invoked to justify American independence against his government's blind, imprudent rule-following to the quite different, and indeed incompatible, prudence that the Americans actually ended up with by the Jacksonian period, which is explored here by James Jasinski and Christine Oravec. Still, greater attention to the first great fracture in the concept, as phronesis moved across the Adriatic and became prudentia, would have made it clearer that, if there is to be a post-modern prudence, whether on terms set forth here by Maurice Charland or Hariman, or elsewhere by others, it cannot conceivably be seen as emerging out of a continuous root stock that managed to cross two seas intact, but as invented by doing repeated violence to a term, in part by providing it with a handsome pedigree that must be fitted up for the occasion.At this point let me register my only complaint. In spite of some useful remarks about Aristotle's notion of phronesis by Hariman and Charland, the volume lacks a systematic treatment of the Greek notion of practical wisdom (phronesis) even as a foil. This makes it difficult to see that the notion of phronesis was diversely interpreted by fourth-century Greeks; that Cicero's assimilation of phronesis to a Latin term already loaded with local associations—the subject of an informative essay by Robert Cape—might not preserve the Greek notion intact; that to the extent that Cicero does preserve aspects of Greek phronesis, his version is probably closer to Isocrates' rhetoric-friendly... (shrink)

I argue that Darwinian evolutionary theory has a rhetorical dimension and that rhetorical criticism plays a role in how evolutionary science acquires knowledge. I define what I mean by rhetoric by considering Darwin’s Origin. I use the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis to show how rhetoric conceived as situated and addressed argumentation enters into evolutionary theorizing. Finally, I argue that rhetorical criticism helps judge the success, limits, and failures of these theories.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Prudence: Classical Virtue, Postmodern PracticeDavid DepewPrudence: Classical Virtue, Postmodern Practice. Ed. Robert Hariman. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 337. $65.00, cloth."This volume," writes the editor, "is one contribution to the contemporary revival of interest in the concept of prudence" (ix). What interest? Notably, that of latter-day "virtue ethicists," whose discontents with the algorithmic decision-making procedures of modernism have given wings to a hope (...) that we (considered as members of some sort of imagined polis) will return to the context-sensitive "practical wisdom" of the ancients. (Prudentia is Cicero's Latin translation of the Greek phronesis, practical wisdom.)In theory, this line of reasoning was supposed to break the mold of contemporary politics. In practice, it has been captured by the political right. Virtue ethicists and civic republicans like Benjamin Barber have been outflanked by "virtuecrats" such as Bill Bennett (he of the gambling habit), the pompous columnist George Will, and Amitai Etzioni, the neo-corporatist founder of the Communitarian Party. It should be said right away, then, that few, if any, of the contributors to this collection are sympathetic to this sort of thinking. Admittedly, they share with virtuecrats a critique of rule-governed forms of decision-making, whether deontological or utilitarian, especially when these procedures masquerade as ways of "operationalizing" morality. Such calculi are indeed creatures of the institutional cultures of business firms and bureaucracies, which have increasingly affected law and politics. In addition, the authors of this volume are no less inclined than right-leaning virtuecrats to rake through intellectual history in order to come up with something relevant to the present and future. "There is a looking backward in order to see more clearly a mentality that is overlooked and undervalued in the present" (20). But they do so with a view to seeing what will come up when management of the topic of prudence is taken away from philosophers and reconnected (as it was from antiquity [End Page 167] until the nineteenth century) with the art of rhetoric, considered as an array of teachable discursive practices that are helpful in identifying and commending appropriate responses to contingent circumstances. The most salient features of the volume follow: a shift of the center of gravity from Aristotle to Cicero (ix), and a consideration of how, through rhetorical performances that involve the construction of a visible, embodied self, that strangest of creatures, a post-modern prudence, might be brought forth.I am pleased to report that changes of meaning in the collection's key term are discernible as we move from Cicero's prudentia to Machiavelli's prudenzia, and from the prudence that Edmund Burke invoked to justify American independence against his government's blind, imprudent rule-following to the quite different, and indeed incompatible, prudence that the Americans actually ended up with by the Jacksonian period, which is explored here by James Jasinski and Christine Oravec. Still, greater attention to the first great fracture in the concept, as phronesis moved across the Adriatic and became prudentia, would have made it clearer that, if there is to be a post-modern prudence, whether on terms set forth here by Maurice Charland or Hariman, or elsewhere by others, it cannot conceivably be seen as emerging out of a continuous root stock that managed to cross two seas intact, but as invented by doing repeated violence to a term, in part by providing it with a handsome pedigree that must be fitted up for the occasion.At this point let me register my only complaint. In spite of some useful remarks about Aristotle's notion of phronesis by Hariman and Charland, the volume lacks a systematic treatment of the Greek notion of practical wisdom (phronesis) even as a foil. This makes it difficult to see that the notion of phronesis was diversely interpreted by fourth-century Greeks; that Cicero's assimilation of phronesis to a Latin term already loaded with local associations—the subject of an informative essay by Robert Cape—might not preserve the Greek notion intact; that to the extent that Cicero does preserve aspects of Greek phronesis, his version is probably closer to Isocrates' rhetoric-friendly... (shrink)

454 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34:3 JULY x996 Under Ebert appeals to Aristotle's Topics to show that the questioner in a dialectical discussion is not committed to views affirmed by the respondent.4 Yet to avoid the consequence that nothing in such a discussion can be attributed to Socrates , Ebert distinguishes between two kinds of questions: ques- tions that do not commit the questioner to a response and questions that do, such as, "Do you/we agree that p?" - (...) Ebert then shows that the above Pythagorean fallacies are stated only in questions - Yet at 76d~- 3 Socrates says "tblxokoy/ioa~tev" in reference to an important step of the recollection argument. Ebert can only bizarrely assert that while "We agree that p" commits Socrates to what is said, "We agreed that p" does not . In addition, while Ebert repeatedly maintains that we can "possibly" or "perhaps" infer something about Plato from Socra- tes' commitment to a view , he never explains why we should. One can quarrel with this provocative little book, but one should not ignore it, especially if one still reads the dialogues as straightforward presentations of Platonic doctrine. FRANCISCO J. GONZALEZ Skidmore College Eugene Garver, Aristotle's "Rhetoric": An Art of Character. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1994. Pp. xxi + 325 . Cloth, $53.95- Paper, $18.95. This book is a.. (shrink)

John Reiss is a practicing evolutionary biologist (herpetology) who by his own account happened to be in the right place (Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology) at the right time (the 1980s) to hear echoes of the debate about sociobiology that had been raging there between E. O. Wilson and, on the other side, Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin (xiv). Reiss is not concerned with sociobiology, at least in this book, but with the adaptationism that Gould and Lewontin saw in (...) the sociobiologists’ approach to cooperative behavior. At Harvard, Reiss was guided by Pere Alberch, in whose laboratory Gould’s stress on developmental constraints was being transformed into a now influential version of the Evo-devo movement (xiv, 327). On Alberch’s view, which Reiss accepts, variation in the rate, timing, placement, and intensity of gene products during the ontogenetic process, rather than mutation in structural genes, constitutes the proximate source of the phenotypic variation on which natural election works (327-29). Reiss does not think that Evo-devo, at least as he construes it, does away with natural selection. Rather, he seeks to identify the role played by selection in retaining or eliminating the variation generated in the developmental process. Selection, he argues, enables organisms, populations, species, and other lineages to maintain the presumptively adapted conditions of existence to which their very persistence already testifies. “Adaptedness,” Reiss writes, “is not a product of evolution; it is a condition for evolution” (22). He thinks that this fact, as he takes it to be, belies the adaptationist assumption that organisms are collections of independently optimal adaptations that arise by way of concerted spurts of directional selection. “It is a mistake,” he writes, “to atomize organisms and to explain each part as the solution of a problem raised by the environment” (295). (shrink)

Darwinism, Democracy, and Race examines the development and defence of an argument that arose at the boundary between anthropology and evolutionary biology in twentieth-century America. In its fully articulated form, this argument simultaneously discredited scientific racism and defended free human agency in Darwinian terms. The volume is timely because it gives readers a key to assessing contemporary debates about the biology of race. By working across disciplinary lines, the book's focal figures--the anthropologist Franz Boas, the cultural anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, the (...) geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, and the physical anthropologist Sherwood Washburn--found increasingly persuasive ways of cutting between genetic determinist and social constructionist views of race by grounding Boas's racially egalitarian, culturally relativistic, and democratically pluralistic ethic in a distinctive version of the genetic theory of natural selection. Collaborators in making and defending this argument included Ashley Montagu, Stephen Jay Gould, and Richard Lewontin. Darwinism, Democracy, and Race will appeal to advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and academics interested in subjects including Philosophy, Critical Race Theory, Sociology of Race, History of Biology and Anthropology, and Rhetoric of Science. (shrink)

The essays in this book discuss the originally proposed Baldwin effect, how it was modified over time, and its possible contribution to contemporary empirical...

The Darwinian concept of natural selection was conceived within a set of Newtonian background assumptions about systems dynamics. Mendelian genetics at first did not sit well with the gradualist assumptions of the Darwinian theory. Eventually, however, Mendelism and Darwinism were fused by reformulating natural selection in statistical terms. This reflected a shift to a more probabilistic set of background assumptions based upon Boltzmannian systems dynamics. Recent developments in molecular genetics and paleontology have put pressure on Darwinism once again. Current work (...) on self-organizing systems may provide a stimulus not only for increased problem solving within the Darwinian tradition, especially with respect to origins of life, developmental genetics, phylogenetic pattern, and energy-flow ecology, but for deeper understanding of the very phenomenon of natural selection itself. Since self-organizational phenomena depend deeply on stochastic processes, self-organizational systems dynamics advance the probability revolution. In our view, natural selection is an emergent phenomenon of physical and chemical selection. These developments suggest that natural selection may be grounded in physical law more deeply than is allowed by advocates of the autonomy of biology, while still making it possible to deny, with autonomists, that evolutionary explanations can be modeled in terms of a deductive relationship between laws and cases. We explore the relationship between, chance, self-organization, and selection as sources of order in biological systems in order to make these points. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary and systematic collection of essays explores pragmatism in relation to three key episodes in American culture: Progressivism, Positivism, and Postmodernism.

Recognition that biological systems are stabilized far from equilibrium by self-organizing, informed, autocatalytic cycles and structures that dissipate unusable energy and matter has led to recent attempts to reformulate evolutionary theory. We hold that such insights are consistent with the broad development of the Darwinian Tradition and with the concept of natural selection. Biological systems are selected that re not only more efficient than competitors but also enhance the integrity of the web of energetic relations in which they are embedded. (...) But the expansion of the informational phase space, upon which selection acts, is also guaranteed by the properties of open informational-energetic systems. This provides a directionality and irreversibility to evolutionary processes that are not reflected in current theory.For this thermodynamically-based program to progress, we believe that biological information should not be treated in isolation from energy flows, and that the ecological perspective must be given descriptive and explanatory primacy. Levels of the ecological hierarchy are relational parts of ecological systems in which there are stable, informed patterns of energy flow and entropic dissipation. Isomorphies between developmental patterns and ecological succession are revealing because they suggest that much of the encoded metabolic information in biological systems is internalized ecological information. The geneological hierarchy, to the extent that its information content reflects internalized ecological information, can therefore be redescribed as an ecological hierarchy. (shrink)

This translation of Carlo Michelstaedter’s _Persuasion and Rhetoric_ brings the powerful and original work of a seminal cultural figure to English-language readers for the first time. Ostensibly a commentary on Plato’s and Aristotle’s relation to the pre-Socratic philosophers, Michelstaedter’s deeply personal book is an extraordinary rhetorical feat that reflects the author’s struggle to make sense of modern life. This edition includes an introduction discussing his life and work, an extensive bibliography, notes to introduce each chapter, and critical notes illuminating the (...) text. Within hours of completing _Persuasion and Rhetoric, _his doctoral thesis, 23-year-old Michelstaedter shot himself to death. The text he left behind has proved to be one of the most trenchant and influential studies in modern rhetoric, a work that develops Nietzschean themes and anticipates the conclusions of, among others, Martin Heidegger. Publication of the book in English is an event of great magnitude for students of Italian philosophy, rhetoric, and literature as well as the culture of Mitteleuropa. (shrink)

The book is an extended study of the problem of consciousness. After setting up the problem, I argue that reductive explanation of consciousness is impossible , and that if one takes consciousness seriously, one has to go beyond a strict materialist framework. In the second half of the book, I move toward a positive theory of consciousness with fundamental laws linking the physical and the experiential in a systematic way. Finally, I use the ideas and arguments developed earlier to defend (...) a form of strong artificial intelligence and to analyze some problems in the foundations of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

[This is an edited version of a keynote talk at the conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) on November 28, 2022, with some minor additions and subtractions.] -/- There has recently been widespread discussion of whether large language models might be sentient or conscious. Should we take this idea seriously? I will break down the strongest reasons for and against. Given mainstream assumptions in the science of consciousness, there are significant obstacles to consciousness in current models: for example, their (...) lack of recurrent processing, a global workspace, and unified agency. At the same time, it is quite possible that these obstacles will be overcome in the next decade or so. I conclude that while it is somewhat unlikely that current large language models are conscious, we should take seriously the possibility that successors to large language models may be conscious in the not-too-distant future. (shrink)

There is a long tradition in philosophy of using a priori methods to draw conclusions about what is possible and what is necessary, and often in turn to draw conclusions about matters of substantive metaphysics. Arguments like this typically have three steps: first an epistemic claim , from there to a modal claim , and from there to a metaphysical claim.

This chapter analyzes aspects of the relationship between consciousness and intentionality. It focuses on the phenomenal character and the intentional content of perceptual states, canvassing various possible relations among them. It argues that there is a good case for a sort of representationalism, although this may not take the form that its advocates often suggest. By mapping out some of the landscape, the chapter tries to open up territory for different and promising forms of representationalism to be explored in the (...) future. In particular, it argues for a nonreductive, narrow, and Fregean variety of representationalism, which contrasts strongly with more widely explored varieties. It concludes with some words about the fundamental relationship between consciousness and intentionality. (shrink)

Does consciousness collapse the quantum wave function? This idea was taken seriously by John von Neumann and Eugene Wigner but is now widely dismissed. We develop the idea by combining a mathematical theory of consciousness (integrated information theory) with an account of quantum collapse dynamics (continuous spontaneous localization). Simple versions of the theory are falsified by the quantum Zeno effect, but more complex versions remain compatible with empirical evidence. In principle, versions of the theory can be tested by experiments with (...) quantum computers. The upshot is not that consciousness-collapse interpretations are clearly correct, but that there is a research program here worth exploring. (shrink)

In the Garden of Eden, we had unmediated contact with the world. We were directly acquainted with objects in the world and with their properties. Objects were simply presented to us without causal mediation, and properties were revealed to us in their true intrinsic glory.

Why is two-dimensional semantics important? One can think of it as the most recent act in a drama involving three of the central concepts of philosophy: meaning, reason, and modality. First, Kant linked reason and modality, by suggesting that what is necessary is knowable a priori, and vice versa. Second, Frege linked reason and meaning, by proposing an aspect of meaning (sense) that is constitutively tied to cognitive signi?cance. Third, Carnap linked meaning and modality, by proposing an aspect of meaning (...) (intension) that is constitutively tied to possibility and necessity. (shrink)

What happens when machines become more intelligent than humans? One view is that this event will be followed by an explosion to ever-greater levels of intelligence, as each generation of machines creates more intelligent machines in turn. This intelligence explosion is now often known as the “singularity”. The basic argument here was set out by the statistician I.J. Good in his 1965 article “Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine”: Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far (...) surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an “intelligence explosion”, and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make. The key idea is that a machine that is more intelligent than humans will be better than humans at designing machines. So it will be capable of designing a machine more intelligent than the most intelligent machine that humans can design. So if it is itself designed by humans, it will be capable of designing a machine more intelligent than itself. By similar reasoning, this next machine will also be capable of designing a machine more intelligent than itself. If every machine in turn does what it is capable of, we should expect a sequence of ever more intelligent machines. This intelligence explosion is sometimes combined with another idea, which we might call the “speed explosion”. The argument for a speed explosion starts from the familiar observation that computer processing speed doubles at regular intervals. Suppose that speed doubles every two years and will do so indefinitely. Now suppose that we have human-level artificial intelligence 1 designing new processors. Then faster processing will lead to faster designers and an ever-faster design cycle, leading to a limit point soon afterwards. The argument for a speed explosion was set out by the artificial intelligence researcher Ray Solomonoff in his 1985 article “The Time Scale of Artificial Intelligence”.1 Eliezer Yudkowsky gives a succinct version of the argument in his 1996 article “Staring at the Singularity”: “Computing speed doubles every two subjective years of work.. (shrink)