Philosophy@Utah State

Some of you may have been drawn into an argument Kleiner and I have been having about the role of teleological explanation in biology. Often, teleological explanation gets described in such a way as to imply that current states of a system should be explained by later states of a system: e.g., that an acorn grows into an oak because that later stage, being an oak, somehow pulls the little acorn in that direction. But that is evidently a mistaken view of how teleological explanation is supposed to work.

Well, how then is it supposed to work? In doing a little research, I came across an older essay (1970) by biologist Franciso Ayala (who lectured on our campus some few years ago) entitled, appropriately enough, “Teleological explanations in evolutionary biology,” and published in the journal Philosophy of Science. I’m going to offer an extended excerpt that I find very clear and helpful:

[...] In this generic sense, teleological explanations are those explanations where the presence of an object or a process in a system is explained by exhibiting its connection with a specific state or property of the system to whose existence or maintenance the object or process contributes. Teleological explanations require that the object or process contribute to the existence of a certain state or property of the system. Moreover, they imply that such contribution is the explanatory reason for the presence of the process or object in the system. It is appropriate to give a teleological explanation of the operation of the kidney in regulating the concentration of salt in the blood, or of the structure of the hand obviously adapted for grasping. But it makes no sense to explain teleologically the falling of a stone, or a chemical reaction.

There are at least three categories of biological phenomena where teleological explanations are appropriate, although the distinction between the categories need not always be clearly defined. These three classes of teleological phenomena are established according to the mode of relationship between the object or process and the end-state or property that accounts for its presence.

(1) When the end-state or goal is consciously anticipated by the agent. This is purposeful activity and it occurs in man and probably in other animals. I am acting teleologically when I pick up a pencil and paper in order to express in writing my ideas about teleology. A deer running away from a mountain lion, or a bird building its nest, has at least the appearance of purposeful behavior.

(2) In connection with self-regulating or teleonomic systems, when there exists a mechanism that enables the system to reach or to maintain a specific property in spite of environmental fluctuations. The regulation of body temperature in mammals is of this kind. In general the homeostatic reactions of organisms belong to this category of teleological phenomena. Two types of homeostasis are usually distinguished by biologists-physiological and developmental homeostasis, although intermediate situations may exist. Physiological homeostatic reactions enable the organism to maintain certain physiological steady states in spite of environmental shocks. The regulation of the composition of the blood by the kidneys, or the hypertrophy of a structure like muscle due to strenuous use, are examples of this type of homeostasis. Developmental homeostasis refers to the regulation of the different paths that an organism may follow in its progression from zygote to adult. Self-regulating systems or servo-mechanisms built by man are teleological in this second sense. The simplest example of such servo-mechanisms is a thermostat unit that maintains a specified room temperature by turning on and off the source of heat. Self-regulating mechanisms of this kind, living or man-made, are controlled by a feed-back system of information.

(3) In reference to structures anatomically and physiologically designed to perform a certain function. The hand of man is made for grasping, and his eye for vision. Tools and certain types of machines made by man are teleological in this sense. A watch for instance, is made to tell time, and a faucet to draw water. The distinction between this and the previous category of teleological systems is some-times blurred. Thus the human eye is able to regulate itself within a certain range to the conditions of brightness and distance so as to perform its function more effectively.

Teleological mechanisms in living organisms are biological adaptations. They have arisen as a result of the process of natural selection. The adaptations of organisms-whether organs, homeostatic mechanisms, or patterns of behavior-are explained teleologically in that their existence is accounted for in terms of their contribution to the reproductive fitness of the population. As explained above, a feature of an organism that increases its reproductive fitness will be selectively favored. Given enough time it will extend to all the members of the population.

Thanks to our friends at SHAFT, we will  have a Philosophy on Tap gathering Friday Dec 9 at 6:30pm.  Meet at the Factory Pizzeria for food, drink, and good philosophical conversation.  All are welcome.

Each term I try to offer a single “Readings and research” course so I don’t end up scattering myself over too many readings. I was going to offer one next term in philosophy of law, but I haven’t had any students express strong interest in that, whereas I have had some students express some other interests, so I’ve decided to make the subject David Hume’s philosophy. It’s only open to students who are near to finishing (or have finished) the classes required for the Philosophy major. If you think you’re interested, send me a note, or catch me for a conversation.

In Early Modern Philosophy we have come to Hume’s critique of causality (Enquiry, section 4). I have always had difficulty getting the nature of his critique straight in my mind. So I sat down to try to put it clearly, and came up with the following. Nothing new or original here – just what I hope is a clear articulation of one of Hume’s great insights.

We all know what happens in the story that begins, “David Hume came to a fork in the road….” The two tines of the fork are marked “relations of ideas” and “matters of fact,” which Hume regards as “the only two objects of human reason.” What makes a true relation of ideas true is the fact that when you try to deny it, you contradict yourself. What makes a true matter of fact true is … a good question. Hume would like to find an answer to it. He observes that every purported matter of fact is founded in one way or another upon cause and effect. From what we immediately perceive we infer a cause; from our memories, we infer a past event; from our past experience of two events being always conjoined, we infer the second from evidence of the first. And so on. So, he claims, if we want to know what makes true matters of fact true, we need to know what makes causal claims true. Hume then proceeds to demonstrate that general causal claims are not relations of ideas, since if you deny a causal claim, you will not thereby contradict yourself (though you will run the risk of sounding silly). But neither are general causal claims matters of fact, since … well, since why? Remember, we are trying to figure out what makes true matters of fact true. We don’t know the answer yet.

Hmm. Well, practically, what Hume ends up assuming is that a true matter of fact is true in virtue of accurately capturing what is present in our experience. So I eat some bread, and it nourishes me. I eat some more, and it nourishes me, too. The true matter of fact issuing from this experience is that the bread I have eaten on these two occasions has nourished me. But typically we also infer something much stronger: that the bread that I will eat in the future also will nourish me, or that bread always has nourishing qualities (under similar conditions). But these claims do not accurately capture what is present in my experience, if only for the reason that the future, let alone what “always” happens, is not present in my experience.

If this is enough to disqualify general causal claims as matters of fact, then Hume has succeeded in showing that causal claims are not objects of human reason. What does that mean? It does not mean that we should be skeptical of causal claims. It means we should not take ourselves to have any real understanding of why they are true. As he writes towards the end of part I of section 4:

Elasticity, gravity, cohesion of parts, communication of motion by impulse; these are probably the ultimate causes and principles which we discover in nature; and we may esteem ourselves sufficiently happy, if, by accurate inquiry and reasoning, we can trace up the particular phenomena to, or near to, these general principles. The most perfect philosophy staves off our ignorance a little longer: as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover to larger portions of it [namely, our ignorance]. Thus the observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in spite of our efforts to elude it or avoid it.

Here is an interesting review of the sorts of ways Nietzsche’s thoughts have been received in the U.S. One paragraph in the essay hits upon a worry I have had from time to time:

For all these reasons, Nietzsche often figures in American culture as a sinister guru of the violent and deranged. When Jared Lee Loughner, who murdered six people in his attempted assassination of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, turned out to be a close reader of Nietzsche’s The Will to Power, an old stereotype was confirmed. Indeed, the title of America’s best-known Nietzscheans goes to Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, the teenagers who in 1924 murdered a boy with a chisel because they took seriously the philosopher’s belief that the “Superman” is liberated from conventional notions of good and evil. (Their lawyer, Clarence Darrow, blamed the effect of Beyond Good and Evil on their impressionable minds in his 12-hour defence speech.) If you were to include fictional characters, Leopold and Loeb might have a rival in Howard Roark, the arrogant architect in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead.

The essay claims that the intellectuals influenced by Nietzsche tend not to be sinister and arrogant assassins. They carefully consider the ideas and incorporate them into further theory making (sometimes judiciously, sometimes not). It is the less studious who obsess over Nietzsche, buy a weapon, and await their opportunity to prove themselves the overman.

One might decry these would-be criminals and accuse them of misreading Nietzsche, but the fact is that Nietzsche’s powerful prose can get people in the mood for some pretty dark goings-on. This fact sometimes causes me to wonder whether it is morally irresponsible to turn young minds on to Nietzsche. I’ll be the first to admit that I myself am too timid to step beyond good and evil, and I really don’t want my neighbors to take that step. If, when I teach Nietzsche, I always face a certain probability of getting some people into a dark mental space where they might do dark things, should I back off and teach, I dunno, Emerson? Any thoughts?

For any die-hard reductionists out there, here’s an article on the promise of “neuroeconomics”:

Yet it is likely that one day we will know much more about how economies work – or fail to work – by understanding better the physical structures that underlie brain functioning. Those structures – networks of neurons that communicate with each other via axons and dendrites – underlie the familiar analogy of the brain to a computer – networks of transistors that communicate with each other via electric wires. The economy is the next analogy: a network of people who communicate with each other via electronic and other connections.

Well, good luck on that! Similarly, one might hope that we’ll all be better at using Excel spreadsheets if we start studying how electrons move about in the CPU.

On another note, here is an interesting interview with Michael Gazzaniga talking about the interplay between neuroscientific accounts and broader social structures, particularly in discussions of free will:

For me, it [the interplay between mind and brain] captures the fact that we are trying to understand a layered system. One becomes cognizant there is a system on top of the personal mind/brain layers which is yet another layer–the social world. It interacts massively with our mental processes and vice versa. In many ways we humans, in achieving our robustness, have uploaded many of our critical needs to the social system around us so that the stuff we invent can survive our own fragile and vulnerable lives.

This seems to me the way to go. We shouldn’t simply dismiss neuroscience, of course; but the interesting question is how the “bottom-up” causal story connects with the “top-down” causal story.

Our bowling teams determined that it is NOT morally permissible to eat meat. So bring on the tofurkey this year. On the brighter side, there ARE natural rights; so that is something to be thankful for!

From left to right: Harrison Kleiner, Maxfield Allen, Catherine Griffiths, Ryan Sanchez, Justin Solum, William Holloway, Erica Holberg.

This article discusses the difficulty Occupy Wall Street protestors have had in coming up with a series of demands.  One sees in their meeting minutes the difficulty (and frankly absurdity) of democratic processes that refuse structure.  Coming up with a list of demands is hard enough (especially when they are so keen on not marginalizing anyone that they want 90% consensus), but even the call for demands is controversial.  My favorite remark was this:

“Inherently, in asking for demands, you are accepting that there is a power greater than yourself, which is something that this movement is categorically against.”

Good luck with that whole “brotherhood of man” without any structure thing, what Occupiers are calling “this beautiful society we are creating in this park.”  This is a perfect example of why John Lennon’s song Imagine is so stupid. He asks us to imagine there is no heaven, no hell, no countries, no property, no religion too.  The assumption is that without these “alien forces” of civilization, life would all come up roses.  Sut such a view is utterly naive about human nature.  Wisdom of the ages – whether it be religious wisdom or the wisdom of the Greek tragedians like Sophocles and Aeschylus – knows that something has gone wrong with the human condition.  The cookie jar has been broken, things are not “all good” and won’t be fixed y just getting rid of things like the civilizing forces of things like rule of law and culture.

So yes, Lennon is a “dreamer”, as he admits in his song.  But a hopelessly idealistic one, idealistic to the point of absurdity.  For my part, in the city of man I prefer the structure of the rule of law.

Anyway, when I think of these movements and the issue of demands, I immediately think of this classic scene from Life of Brian.  After all, “What have the Romans [capitalists] ever done for us?!”  I love the demand made: “We are giving Pilate 2 days to dismantle the entire apparatus of the roman imperialist state.”  I wonder if the Occupy Wall Street demands are any less absurd.

Stance, an undergraduate journal of philosophy, is calling for papers, reviews, and ‘musings’ over the next 2-3 weeks. Click on the “Interested in presenting a paper at an UNDERGRADUATE PHILOSOPHY…” link over on the right for more details.