(rought draft)

1. Introduction.

For the purposes of this paper, I will define Utilitarianism (or Welfarism) as the claim that nothing except well-being has intrinsic value in order to distinguish it from other forms of Consequentialism.  In this paper, I will defend the Utilitarian claim that  there is nothing which can make one population (which I will equate with a system or state of affairs) have more intrinsic value than some other population which has an equal amount of well-being, pace Egalitarianism.  In order to argue for this conclusion, I will argue that the rightness of equality can be demonstrated under Utilitarianism whereas under Egalitarianism it is simply assumed.  A second argument could but will not be put forward along lines of parsimony: some moral theory, A, is better than any other moral theory, B, if A is able to explain the same data will fewer theoretical posits.

The structure of the paper will be as follows:  In part 2 I will first define and clarify the terms ‘resources’ and ‘well-being’ since a clear understanding of the differences and relationship between the two will be vital to my argument.  In part 3 I will put forth a Utilitarian argument for Egalitarian thinking by showing how Egalitarian intuitions follow from and are therefore explained by Utilitarianism combined with empirical data about the world as it actually is.  In Part 4 I will compare two possible populations, A and B, in order to illustrate two claims which the Utilitarian is committed to as well as set the stage for an Egalitarian objection to the stronger of these two claims.  In Part 5 I will introduce a third population, C, in order to present, in the strongest form, the Egalitarian claim that something other than well-being has intrinsic value by comparing A and C.  In Part 6 I will respond to this objection by demonstrating how Utilitarianism can account for our intuitions regarding A and C without having to invoke additional sources of intrinsic value.  I will conclude the paper in part 7 with a summary of the main argument of the paper.

1. Resources and Well-Being: Differences and Relationships

Resources, loosely speaking, are the things such as goods and services which contribute to a person’s well-being.  As such, resources have no intrinsic value, but are essentially instrumental in nature; they are what cause or contribute to well-being.  Whereas well-being has intrinsic value, resources are only valuable inasmuch as they contribute to well-being.  For simplicity, I will measure resources in terms of Resource Units (RU) and RU(i,j) will serve to denote the amount of RU required to increase a person’s well-being from i WU to j WU, terms which will be defined shortly.

Well-being, according to various different interpretations, could be any number of things: a mental state (happiness, pleasure, etc.), desire fulfillment or some properties which are objectively in a person’s interest regardless of their state of mind or particular desires.  For the purposes of this paper, however, the exact nature of well-being will be largely irrelevant so long as the distinction between well-being and resources is kept in mind.  Aside from the intrinsic/instrumental value distinction, one other difference between resources and well-being is important to note, namely that while it is easy to imagine the giving and exchanging of resources, the idea of giving and exchanging well-being makes little sense; mental states, desire fulfillment and/or objective interests are simply not the sort of things which can be given or exchanged.  Throughout this paper, well-being will be measured in terms of Well-being Units (WU).

Not only are the differences between well-being and resources important to appreciating this paper, but the relationship between the two is as well.  Each individual RU represents an equal amount of resources by very definition.  Similarly, each individual WU represents an equal amount of well-being by very definition.  However, the same amount of RU does not necessarily or even usually produce the same amount of WU.  How many WU some amount of RU produces will depend upon at least one factor, namely the initial well-being of the person receiving the RU.  Consider the case of our giving a small, inexpensive house to a millionaire versus our giving the same house to a homeless mother of two.  The increase in well-being of the homeless family would almost certainly be greater than that of the millionaire, all other things being equal.  This relationship can be spelled out as follows:  For all quantities of WU, i and j, and any constant, k, if i<j, then RU(i,i+k) is almost certainly less than RU(j,j+k).

For closure, let us define a few more terms.  Utilitarianism and Egalitarianism are both forms of Consequentialism.  Consequentialism holds that one must act so as to maximize the overall intrinsic value of some population.  To perform an action, according to the language I have been using, is equivalent to distributing resources in some way.  Thus, Consequentialism hold that one must distribute resources within some population so as to maximize its overall intrinsic value.

1. A Utilitarian Argument for Egalitarian Thinking

·         P1:  A given amount of RU usually produces a greater increase of WU in those with less WU than in those with more WU. (Empirical fact about the world)

·         P2:  Well-being is the only source of intrinsic value.  (Utilitarianism)

·         P3:  A given amount of RU usually has greater intrinsic value to those who have less WU than to those with more WU. (P1, P2)

·         P4:  A given amount of RU ought to be distributed so as to maximize intrinsic value. (Consequentialism)

·         P5:  A given amount of RU usually ought to be distributed to those who have less WU rather than to those who have more WU. (P3 and P4)

This argument is meant to show that, since we get the highest WU/RU ratio when resources are given to those with the least well-being, Utilitarianism maintains that, all other things being equal, those with the least well-being ought to have priority in the distribution of resources.  This, in turn, will lead to an equal distribution of well-being in the population.  Accordingly, Utilitarianism is compatible with Egalitarian intuitions regarding equality and the distribution of resources.  Furthermore, these intuitions can be shown to follow from and therefore be explained by Utilitarianism whereas under Egalitarianism they are simply posited, asserted or otherwise left unexplained.

1. Populations A and B: The Utilitarian Position

Let us illustrate the Utilitarian position by imagining two populations of equal size.  In population A half of the people have 100 WU while people in the other half have 200 WU.  Within population B, however, each individual has 100 WU.  According to Utilitarianism, as well as strong intuition, A is intrinsically better than B overall, a claim which can be unpacked as follows:

AB1:  All other things being equal, if it were equally possible to create A or B, we ought to create A.

AB2:  All other things being equal, if it were possible to do so, we ought to change B to A.

AB3:  All other things being equal, even if it were possible to do so, we ought not change A to B.

These claims, again, seem rather intuitive.  Utilitarianism is, however, committed to an even stronger position regarding A and B, namely that there is no respect in which B is intrinsically better than A.  To this the Egalitarian must objection.  Not only is such a claim not obviously true, but upon closer examination appears intuitively false.

1. Populations A and C: The Egalitarian Objection

The Egalitarian, briefly, believes that, in addition to the well-being of some population, equality of well-being within that population also has intrinsic value.  Accordingly, B is better than A in at least one respect, namely equality of well-being.  Furthermore, the Egalitarian grants that A is indeed intrinsically better than B overall all, but only because intrinsic value of the well-being gained in A surpasses the intrinsic value of the equality lost in A.

This claim can be clearly illustrated by comparing A with another population of equal size, C, in which each individual has 150 WU.  If well-being really is the only source of intrinsic value as Utilitarianism suggests, then neither A nor C is intrinsically better than the other overall.  Intuition, however, suggests otherwise, for C seems to clearly be preferable to A.  This claim can be spelled out by the following three claims:

·         AC1:  All other things being equal, if it were equally possible to create A or create C, we ought to create C.

·         AC2:  All other things being equal, if it were possible to do so, we ought to change A to C.

·         AC3:  All other things being equal, even if it were possible to do so, we ought not change C to A.

Let us be clear about the relationship which the A/C comparison is supposed to have to the original A/B comparison.  Utilitarianism is committed to the claim, not only that A is intrinsically better than B overall, but that there is no respect in which B is intrinsically better than A.  The Egalitarian objects that B is intrinsically better than A in some respect, namely equality of well-being, and argues as follows:  If C is intrinsically better than A overall, the B is intrinsically better than A with respect to equality.  C is intrinsically better than A.  Thus, B is intrinsically better than A with respect to equality.

1. A Utilitarian Explanation of Egalitarian Intuitions

The strategy which I will employ to defend Utilitarianism from the Egalitarian objection is a subtle one.  For starters, it must be remembered that the Utilitarian carries presumption in the matter, for we are addressing an objection to Utilitarianism rather than providing a Utilitarian objection to Egalitarianism.  Accordingly, I will attempt to show that the Egalitarian has not proven their claim that C is intrinsically better than A, and that their claim that B is intrinsically better than A in any respect is consequently unsupported.  In doing this, I will not attempt to attack or reject the intuitions which underlie AC1-3.  Instead, I will demonstrate how our Egalitarian intuitions in these cases actually follow from Utilitarian thinking. 

There are at least two ways in which Utilitarianism justifies such intuitions.  First, although such a claim will go almost entirely unsupported in this essay, it can be argued that if A and C described the distribution of resources rather than well-being, the Utilitarian would be committed to accepting claims AC1-3.  It is arguably due to our intuitions not being fine-grained enough to distinguish between resources and well-being that AC1-3 seem so compelling.  Second, and more important to the argument provided in section 3, it can be shown that the Utilitarian, while not committed to performing the acts described by AC1-3, is committed to endorsing the acts described by AC1-3.  This final point is what allows the Utilitarian to walk the fine line of explaining and endorsing our intuitions regarding AC1-3 while at the same time rejecting the explicit claims made.[1]

Let us now turn our full attention to the scenario described by AC1.  Beginning with an initial population in which one half has 100 WU and the other half has 150 WU, creating population A would consist in increasing the well-being of those with 150 WU by 50 WU while creating population C consists in an equal increase in the well-being of those with 100 WU.  According to P1, however, creating A almost certainly requires more RU than does creating C.  Accordingly, AC1 describes a scenario in which all other thins are almost certainly not equal which is just another way of saying that AC1 is rather implausible.

Let us approach this same point from another angle.  Let us suppose that in the case of AC1 all other things are equal and that the amount of RU involved in each case is held constant.  On the one hand, according to P1 it is highly unlikely that RU(100,150), the amount which would raise the half of the population with 100 WU to 150 WU, would be sufficient to increase the well-being of the other half from 150 WU to 200 WU.  Thus, Utilitarianism holds that it is almost certainly the case that RU(100,150) ought to be distributed to those with 100 WU, just as P5 suggests.  On the other hand, if we use RU(150,200) we get the same result, for giving that much RU to those with 100 WU will almost certainly increase their well-being by more than 50 WU.  Thus, Utilitarianism again requires that RU(150,200) be given to those with 100 WU just as P5 states.

Finally, let us address AC1 head on by assuming that, by some miracle, RU(100,150) actually is equal to RU(150,200) in this particular case.  It is at this point that the distinction between an act and the endorsement of that act comes into play.  Due to the extreme unlikelihood of the situation described by AC1 ever arising in the actual world, it makes for a very reliable rule of thumb to always create C rather than A as P5 suggests.  Thus, while strictly speaking Utilitarianism is neutral as to the performance of the act creating A or C, it is not neutral as to endorsement of the act of creating C over the act of creating A.  In other words, the Utilitarian position in this case is that of being committed to rejecting AC1 on epistemic grounds while at the same time being equally committed to accepting AC1 on moral grounds.  Again, it is because our intuitions are not fine-grained enough to distinguish between these two kinds of justification that AC1 seems more intuitively compelling than it actually is.

With these points in place from our treatment of AC1, the Utilitarian approach to AC2 and AC3 should be fairly obvious.  Our reply in each case consists of three parts:  First, it must be recognized that WU cannot be given or exchanged with anybody else, only resources can.  Second, as P1 suggests, the same amount of WU in any case of resource redistribution will usually not correspond to the same amount of RU and, contrary to AC1-3, all other things will usually not be equal.  Third, the less likely it is that all other things are equal, the more reliable P5 becomes as an Egalitarian rule of thumb, and the more strongly Utilitarianism commits us to endorsing the Egalitarian acts in question.  These same steps can be employed in the cases of AC2 and AC3.

In the case of AC2, the RU(150,200) subtracted from those at 200 WU would almost certainly increase those at 100 WU by more than 50 WU.  In the case of AC3, the RU(100,150) subtract from half of those at 150 WU would almost certainly not be sufficient to increase the other half of those at 150 WU by 50 WU.  In either case, as they would arise in reality where all other things are not equal, Utilitarianism would almost certainly dictate that the resources be distributed according to Egalitarian principles.   In the highly unlikely chance that such cases actually arise, the Utilitarian would still be morally required to endorse, but not perform(!) the Egalitarian act.

1. Summary and Conclusion

In this paper I have argued that well-being is the unique source of intrinsic value by showing how empirical facts about the world (P1) combined with Utilitarian thinking are able to account for our Egalitarian intuitions.  Furthermore, I have argued that Utilitarianism should be preferred to Egalitarianism since the former is able to explain our Egalitarian intuitions in a way which the latter cannot.  I illustrated this claim by first comparing populations A and B and then overcoming the Egalitarian objections which arose in response to a comparison between A and C.  In each case, a Utilitarian explanation was found which could account for our Egalitarian intuition without having to posit an additional source of intrinsic value.

[1] This line of thought closely parallels that of R. M. Hare in “What’s Wrong with Slavery?” in particular his claim that an “objection rests on an appeal to our ordinary intuitions; but that these are designed to deal with ordinary cases.  They give no reliable guide to what we ought to say in highly unusual cases.”

(This is a third draft of a paper which I am working on for my Philosophy of Consciousness seminar. It is also a paper which I may eventually use for my writing sample, so thoughtful criticisms are greatly appreciated.)

The Chinese Room and the Chinese Robot

as Distinct Thought Experiments

In his seminal paper, “Minds, Brains and Programs,”[1] John Searle noted with seeming amusement that his opponents could not agree on what the proper reply to his Chinese Room thought experiment should be.[2] The objective of this paper will not be to add to the confusion which surrounds Searle’s argument by defending a reply which has already been offered, or, worse still, by providing yet another reply to his argument.  Instead, my primary focus will be to describe where the debate between Searle and his interlocutors has gone astray as well as point out where Searle’s argument is in critical need of clarification.  More to the point, I will argue that both sides of the debate have failed to appreciate, if not recognize that there are two highly distinct thought experiments which are at play throughout Searle’s paper, each aimed at illustrating a very different point.  Once these separate thought experiments, along with their independent conclusions are properly isolated from each other, one can then clearly identify the points of difference between Searle and his opponents as well as the exact point at which each side in the debate begins to speak past the other.

Furthermore, it will be shown that the conclusion which Searle draws from the Chinese Room thought experiment is strongly motivated, but seemingly irrelevant to the question at hand from the computationalist’s perspective namely, this question being whether the instantiation of the proper program is sufficient for the creation of a mind.  On the other hand, the conclusion which Searle takes the Chinese Robot thought experiment, as I will call it, to illustrate does cut to very heart of the computationalist program.  It is unclear, however, whether this second conclusion is at all motivated by the Chinese Room or anything else.

The Schank Program and the Chinese Room

Searle’s Chinese Room argument, which I will equate with the Chinese Room thought experiment for the purposes of this paper, should be read as a response to various claims which were supposedly made by computationalists regarding a computer program designed by Roger Schank.  Both the nature of Schank’s program and the claims made about it, we will see, are at the very heart of the Chinese Room argument and therefore merit our close attention.  What Schank did was program a machine such that it could pass a Turing Test of limited scope.  It was designed to receive some story as input after which it would answer questions which were then put to it about facts which are not explicitly stated in the story.  In order to do this, the program would extract implicit information from the story by comparing it to a databank of information, with which the machine had been pre-programmed, according to a set of rules, with which it had also been pre-programmed.  Having thus extracted the relevant information from the story by implementing such a program, the machine would then proceed to give answers to the questions that had been put to it.

The following two claims which many computationalists made with respect to Schank’s program are the specific targets of Searle’s Chinese Room argument:

(1)               The machine implementing the Schank program can literally understand the stories which are presented to it.

(2)               What the Schank program does explains the ability of humans to understand stories which are presented to them.

For the purposes of this paper, we will limit our attention almost exclusively to the first of these two claims, for a detailed treatment of how the Schank program relates, if at all, to human understanding would take us far beyond the present scope.  For the sake of clarity, we will break down (1) into two distinct claims:

(1a)      The machine implementing the Schank program has a mind of some kind.

(1b)      The mind produced by the machine implementing the Schank program understands the stories which are presented to it.

It is important that we clearly understand how these assertions regarding the Schank program relate to the claim that the Turing Test is a reliable indicator of understanding within a system.  The Turing Test, which the Schank program was designed to pass, is claimed to indirectly establish (1a) by directly establishing (1b) according to the following reasoning: if something can behave as if it understands a story, then it must actually understand the story.  Since (1a) is taken to be logically entailed by (1b), so the reasoning goes, the ability of some system to pass the Turing Test is a reliable indication that it must have a mind.  One of the conclusions which Searle draws from the Chinese Room argument is that the Schank program is able to pass the Turing Test without actually understanding anything of the stories fed to it or even having a mind at all.  Consequently, the Turing Test is not a reliable indicator of understanding within a system.

Let us now consider Searle’s Chinese Room argument in greater detail.  Suppose that John Searle, who knows no Chinese whatsoever, is locked inside of a room.  (For the purposes of clarity I will refer to the man in the Chinese room as “John” while reserving the name “Searle” for the author of the Chinese Room thought experiment.)  Inside this room, John is equipped with a huge book filled with nothing but Chinese characters and another book filled with rules written in English, books which respectively correspond to the databank and the rules with which the Schank machine was pre-programmed.  John is then fed a second large batch of Chinese characters which, unbeknownst to him, contain some story analogous to that fed into the Schank machine.  John is then fed a third batch of Chinese characters which, still unbeknownst to him, contain questions about the story contained in the second batch.  John then proceeds to follow the rules provided in his English rulebook by comparing the second batch to the first batch in order to respond to the third batch with yet a fourth batch of Chinese characters which, unbeknownst to John, contain answers to the questions received in the third batch.  The conclusion which is drawn from this thought experiment is that, despite the fact that John is passing a Chinese Turing Test of limited scope by shuffling all these batches of Chinese characters in the proper manner, he understands nothing of the relevant stories, questions or answers.  Additionally, no matter which English rules John is supplied with and no matter how big and detailed the databank of Chinese information is, he will never come to understand the Chinese characters as anything more than ‘squiggle squiggle’ or ‘squoggle squoggle.’  Consequently, since the Schank program has nothing which John does not have in the Chinese Room, (1b) must be false.  It also seems extremely doubtful that we can seriously endorse (1a) in the case of the Schank machine either.

The primary conclusion which Searle draws from the case of the Chinese Room is that syntax is not sufficient for semantics, or, to put it another way, symbol manipulation does not guarantee the presence of meaning.  At this point, however, it behooves us to be clear about what this claim actually amounts to.  What the Chinese Room illustrates is that one cannot understand what Chinese characters mean solely in virtue of their formal relations to other Chinese characters, regardless of what formal relations these turn out to be.  The Chinese characters which are being passed to, from and within the Chinese Room are meaningless to John since, from his perspective, they reference nothing but more Chinese characters.  The Chinese character for ‘hamburger’ does not refer to actual hamburgers, for there are no hamburgers in the Chinese databank or English rules which John is supplied with.  Rather, the Chinese character for ‘hamburger’ refers to the Chinese characters for ‘food’, ‘beef’, ‘bun’, etc. which in turn refer to nothing other than still more Chinese characters.  “Syntax is not sufficient for semantics” in the case of the Chinese Room should be read as follows:

What The Chinese Room Shows:

The meaning of linguistic symbols cannot be understood by a mind solely in virtue of their formal relations to other linguistic symbols.

At this point we must be clear about what claims have and have not been refuted.  As noted, at least (1b) and perhaps (1a) seem to have been thoroughly refuted by the Chinese Room argument.  Accordingly, the claim that the Turing Test is a reliable indicator of understanding in a system has also been called into serious question since the Schank program passes the Turing Test without understanding anything.  It must, however, be recognized that computationalism does not logically entail any of the above claims.  The computationalist program has, strictly speaking, relatively little invested in the claims (1a), (1b) or that regarding the Turing Test.  The computationalist can certainly grant that it is possible for a machine to pass the Turing Test without implementing the right program, and accordingly hold that the Schank program is just such a case.  Searle has certainly undermined the claims made by some computationalists regarding the Schank program and the reliability of the Turing Test, but he has to this point done very little to undermine the claim which lies at the heart of computationalism, namely that implementing the right program in some physical system is sufficient for creating understanding in that system.  From the perspective of the computationalist, the specific conclusion which should be drawn from the Chinese Room is a (rather trivial) claim about language rather than the relation which may or may not hold between computation and the mind.  In the Chinese Room, as Searle has thus far described it, consciousness is a rather peripheral issue at best and as a result the computationalist can simply react with disinterested agreement.  At the very least, Searle owes the computationalist a more detailed explanation for why the latter has anything invested in the Chinese Room argument as it has been described thus far.

It is significant that Searle never provides such an explanation, nor does he spell out in much detail what conclusions can and cannot be drawn from the Chinese Room argument.  Rather, he leaves what conclusions he does draw in a less specific, and therefore more general form: “syntax is not sufficient for semantics”, “formal programs cannot produce understanding”, “symbol manipulation does not guarantee meaning”, etc.  At least some readings of these claims have certainly been established by the Chinese Room argument, but Searle has left it unclear what these readings are and whether such readings are at all relevant to the computationalist program. 

It is at this crucial point in his paper that Searle transitions from the relatively modest, yet ambiguously phrased conclusions reached in the Chinese Room thought experiment to a pointed criticism which clearly strikes at the very heart of the computationalist program:

“One of the claims made by the supporters of strong AI is that when I understand a story in English, what I am doing is exactly the same – or perhaps more of the same – as what I was doing in manipulating the Chinese symbols.  It is simply more formal symbol manipulation that distinguishes the case in English, where I do understand, from the case in Chinese, where I don’t.  I have not demonstrated that this claim is false, but it would certainly appear an incredible claim in the example.”[3]

It is with this last claim that Searle completely shifts the burden of proof onto the computationalist as well as the premises from which the latter must argue.  In other words, at this point in his essay Searle ceases to criticize computationalism and instead embarks on the task of defending the common sense conclusions reached in the Chinese Room argument from computationalist claims.  Since the computationalist supposedly thinks that our understanding of English is “exactly the same” as what happens in the case of the Chinese Room, and since the Chinese Room obviously does not understand anything, computationalism cannot be an accurate account of our understanding of English.  It is with presumption (apparently) on his side that Searle can make such claims as the following:

 “No reason whatsoever has been offered to suppose that [formal principles] are necessary or even contributory [to understanding], since no reason has been given to suppose that when I understand English I am operating with any formal program at all.”[4]

The strategy which Searle adopts throughout the remainder of his paper can thus be summarized as follows: The Chinese Room shows that syntax is not sufficient for semantics.  Computationalism is committed to the claim that syntax is sufficient for semantics.  Unless the computationalist can provide us strong reason to think otherwise, we can safely assume that his position is false.

The Robot Reply and the Chinese Robot

As noted earlier, the clearest and most compelling conclusion drawn from the Chinese Room seems to have little relevance to the computationalist program.  It is with deep suspicion, then, that we should read Searle’s claim that what the Chinese Room does and what the competent English speaker does are, according to computationalism, exactly the same.  In order to make the contrast clearer, let us juxtapose the Chinese Room and the competent Chinese speaker.  The most obvious difference between the two is that while the former never encounters any hamburgers, beef or buns with which to match up with the Chinese characters for ‘hamburger’, ‘beef’ and ‘bun’, the latter does.  The computationalist’s Robot reply, to which we now turn our attention, should be interpreted as an attempt to correct this important difference between the Chinese Room and the competent Chinese speaker, the same difference which exists between the Schank program and the competent English speaker.  If we had a machine which was exposed not only to Chinese characters, but the objects to which such Chinese characters referred as well, then we would have no reason to think that such a machine, when properly programmed, did not understand Chinese. 

Let us pause at this point to be more explicit about the exact nature of such a machine.  In his paper, Searle suggests that the Robot reply tacitly concedes that something in addition to proper computation (environmental interaction to be specific) is necessary for a machine to understand.  Such, however, is not the case.  The Chinese Robot does not need to literally interact with its physical environment; it only needs to be programmed for such interaction.  The program for environmental interaction is what is essential to the machine understanding language, not physical interaction with the environment, and such a program could be created by way of mere virtual interaction or false memories of environmental interaction for example.  The point is that when the computationalist refers to an interactive robot he need not be speaking of a robot which is literally mobile.  Indeed, throughout the remainder of this paper it will often to be more helpful to assume that the robot does not physically interact with its environment in any way beyond the mere exchanging of stories, questions and answers as in the case of the Chinese Room.

In response to the Robot reply Searle provides what I have been referring to as the Chinese Robot thought experiment.  Suppose we give the Chinese Room arms, legs, eyes, etc. such that it is now able to physically interact with its environment (even though we have just seen such things to be unnecessary, strictly speaking).  This, Searle suggests, does nothing to change things from the perspective of John who is still inside the Chinese Robot.  All these interactions (be they literal or merely virtual) only amount to more Chinese characters which, unbeknownst to John, correspond to the robot sitting down in a restaurant and ordering a hamburger.  The robot’s environmental interactions, from John’s perspective within the robot, are just so much more syntax and we have already seen that syntax is not sufficient for semantics.  If the Chinese Room does not produce the relevant understanding, then, according to Searle, neither does the Chinese Robot, for the latter is just a modified version of the former.

The main thesis of this paper, however, is that the Chinese Robot is not just a modified version of the Chinese Room, but is actually a completely different thought experiment altogether.  There are two significant differences between the two which are worth pointing out.  First, there is a difference between the two accounts as to what, if anything, the Chinese characters which John manipulates refer to.  In the case of the Chinese Room the Chinese characters were actually stories, questions and answers which John was reading but not understanding.  The case of the Chinese Robot is radically different, for in it the Chinese characters which John is manipulating no longer contain any stories, questions or answers but instead correspond to the robot reading stories, questions and answers.  In the former case, the Chinese characters are identical with the input/output of the system while in the latter the Chinese characters correspond to, but are not identical with the input/output of the system.  In the case of the Chinese Room, the characters are linguistic symbols which have linguistic meaning, meaning which John fails to understand as he reads them.  In the case of the Chinese Robot, however, the characters are no longer linguistic in nature and accordingly have no linguistic meaning which John fails to understand. 

This last point is in need of further elaboration and justification.  It can be illustrated, however, by how it is possible to modify the Chinese Robot thought experiment in ways which the Chinese Room does not tolerate.  Suppose we were to replace all the Chinese symbols which John is busy manipulating with 1’s and 0’s.  The Chinese Robot tolerates such a modification while the Chinese Room does not, primarily because the latter depends upon there being linguistic meaning in the Chinese characters which John fails to understand.  In the case of the modified Chinese Robot, however, the 1’s and 0’s refer to nothing other than more 1’s and 0’s and there is no reason to think that they need to refer to anything beyond this.  The same can be said for the Chinese characters which John manipulates within the Chinese Robot; while such characters certainly do not merely refer to more characters within their normal linguistic context, John’s environment within the Chinese Robot is not such a context.  Let us approach this point from a different angle by modifying the original Chinese Robot scenario in a different manner.  Suppose that we replace John with a competent Chinese speaker who takes over the manipulation of the Chinese characters within the robot.  While such a speaker would certainly understand what each Chinese character usually refers to, it would be abundantly clear to him that the symbols which he is manipulating refer to no such things, for the strings of characters are nothing but (Chinese) character-salad.  While it might be possible for Searle to hold out at this point by suggesting that the strings of Chinese characters actually describe the robot’s environmental interactions, it is not at all clear that the computationalist is committed to such a scenario.  Furthermore, if it actually were the case that the Chinese Robot translated the actions of the robot into the meaningful Chinese sentences which referred to such actions, then we would almost surely be correct in attributing a significant amount of understanding to the non-human system, contra Searle.  In summary, whereas the Chinese Room rests on the strong intuition that John fails to understand some meaning in the Chinese characters which is there to be understood, there is no such intuition in the case of the Chinese Robot because the Chinese characters in the that case have no meaning for a mind to understand.

The second important difference between the Chinese Room and the Chinese Robot will be important to our later discussion of the Systems and Combination replies which Searle engages in his paper.  In the case of the Chinese Room, the Chinese speaking system is or at least can be a subsystem of John while in the case of the Chinese Robot John is necessarily a subsystem within the Chinese speaking robot.  (This is to assume, of course, that the Chinese Robot actually reads and speaks Chinese, although Searle does not explicitly say such a thing.  Let us again modify the scenario a bit by positing that the Chinese Robot has come to learn to speak and read English.  Within such a scenario John would be totally unaware of such a change in the robot’s abilities, because any English communications are, from John’s perspective, just more Chinese characters being manipulated.)  Whereas in the case of the Chinese Room, the walls separating John from the world contribute nothing to the system, in the case of the Chinese Robot the walls (or skin) separating John from the world contribute a great deal to the system.  The fact that the Chinese Room is a subsystem within John accomplishes two things:  First, it makes it possible for John to internalize everything which is happening in that thought experiment.  Second, it motivates the intuition that the room cannot understand the stories without John also understanding them.  On the other hand, the fact that John is a subsystem of the Chinese Robot accomplishes the very opposite of the two things accomplished in the case of the Chinese Room: First, it prevents John from being able to internalize everything which is happening in the thought experiment.  Second, it motivates the intuition that the robot can understand the stories without John also understanding them.

Let us now clarify what the computationalist is and is not committed to in the case of the Chinese Robot.  According to computationalism, if John implements the correct program in the Chinese Robot, then the Chinese Robot will have a mind which understands Chinese.  On the other hand, computationalism does not seem committed to the claim that John must understand everything the robot does while he is inside it.  The two differences we just saw between the Chinese Robot and the Chinese Robot seem to support this last intuition at first glance.  In the case of the robot learning to speak and read English, whether John can do such things himself as a subsystem of the robot is seemingly irrelevant, for he can already do such things.  Furthermore, when the robot is reading stories written in Chinese we want to know whether the robot understands the stories, not John, for John is being presented with nothing more than character-salad, not meaningful stories which he fails to understand.  What is important to the computationalist is that the robot can order a hamburger when it wants one, not whether John as a subsystem of the robot can order a hamburger or can even recognize that the robot is ordering a hamburger.  Such intuitions, however, can hardly be said to constitute a compelling argument.

Not only is the Chinese Robot an entirely different thought experiment from the Chinese Room, but Searle takes it to illustrate an entirely different conclusion from that which the computationalist was willing to grant in the latter case.  Whereas the Chinese Room illustrates how linguistic symbols cannot be understood by a mind solely in virtue of their formal relations to other linguistic symbols, Searle wants to say that in the case of the Chinese Robot, “the robot has no intentional states at all.”[5]  We can thus describe the conclusion which Searle attempts to draw from the Chinese Robot thought experiment as follows:

What the Chinese Robot to Supposed to Show:

A mind which understands cannot be produced solely by the formal manipulation of symbols.

The Chinese Room draws a rather compelling conclusion about language and the conditions under which a mind can and cannot understand the meaning of linguistic symbols.  The Chinese Robot, on the other hand, is supposed to illustrate a largely unsupported conclusion about the mental and the conditions under which a mind which can understand is created by the manipulation of non-linguistic symbols.  Whereas consciousness was a peripheral issue at best in the case of the Chinese Room, it is at the very heart of the Chinese Robot thought experiment.  While both conclusions can roughly be paraphrased as “syntax is not sufficient for semantics”, such a gloss fails to do justice to the numerous and important differences which exist between the two thought experiments and their respective conclusions.  The most important difference which exists between the two is that the computationalist can happily accept the conclusion drawn from the Chinese Room but is, however, committed to rejecting the conclusion which Searle attempts to draw in the case of the Chinese Robot.  At minimum, Searle owes the computationalist a more detailed account of how the two claims are relevant to each other.

The Systems Reply and a Return to the Chinese Room

The debate surrounding the nature of the Systems reply and Searle’s counter-reply to it are laden with confusion.  What has largely gone unappreciated by the computationalist who offers the Systems reply is that their criticism is not properly aimed at the Chinese Room at all.  Searle, in turn, has been all too willing to follow the computationalist’s lead in his false assumption.  To repeat, the computationalist accepts the conclusion drawn from the Chinese Room and does not need to challenge it at all.  What the computationalist must challenge, however, is the conclusion which Searle attempts to draw from the Chinese Robot.  By assuming with the computationalist that the systems reply is aimed at the Chinese Room, Searle has been able to easily sidestep what is otherwise a legitimate reply to the Chinese Robot.

The systems reply basically amount to a denial of the conclusion which Searle attempts to draw in the case of the Chinese Robot.  The computationalist asserts that whether John understands Chinese (or anything else for that matter) is completely irrelevant to the question at hand, for computationalism does not claim that the manipulation of formal symbols creates understanding is some pre-existent mind.  Rather, the manipulation of formal symbols creates an altogether separate mind which is itself capable of understanding the linguistic meaning of Chinese characters.  Even if John does not understand Chinese within the robot, so long as he actually is implementing the right program (unlike the Schank machine), the system as a whole does have the relevant understanding.

Searle’s counter to the Systems reply comes in two parts and each part clearly assumes the computationalist to be challenging the Chinese Room rather than the Chinese Robot.  First, Searle suggests that we allow John to internalize everything which is happening in the case of the Chinese Room by memorizing all rules, databanks, etc., thereby allowing John to approximate the entire physical system.  This modification, however, is not by itself enough to undermine the Systems reply, for it is still possible that in the case of the Chinese Room “there are really two subsystems … one understands English, the other Chinese, and ‘it’s just that the two systems have little to do with each other.’”  Note carefully how this all presupposes the Chinese Room thought experiment for, as we have seen, it is impossible for John to internalize the entire system in the case of the Chinese Robot.  Indeed, we will soon see that whatever success Searle can claim from the Chinese Robot depends upon John not being able to internalize the entire system.  Let us first return to the remainder of Searle’s counter to the Systems reply, which is really quite compelling so long as one reads the Systems reply as being aimed at the Chinese Room rather than the Chinese Robot:

 “Not only do [the two subsystems] have little to do with each other, they are not even remotely alike.  The subsystem that understands English (assuming we allow ourselves to talk in this jargon of ‘subsystems’ for a moment) knows that the stories are about restaurants and eating hamburgers, he know that he is being asked questions about restaurants and that he is answering questions as best he can by making various inference from the content of the story, and so on.  But the Chinese system knows none of this.  Whereas the English subsystem know that ‘hamburgers’ refer to hamburgers, the Chinese subsystem knows only that ‘squiggle squiggle’ is followed by ‘squoggle squoggle.’ All he knows is that various formal symbols are being introduced at one end and manipulated according to rules written in English, and other symbols are going out at the other end.  The whole point of the original example was to argue that such symbol manipulation by itself couldn’t be sufficient for understanding Chinese in any literal sense because the man could write ‘squoggle squoggle’ after ‘squiggle squiggle’ without understanding anything in Chinese.”[6]

Note well the fact about the Chinese Room which Searle takes to motivate his conclusion: The English subsystem understands the meaning which is there to be had while the Chinese subsystem does not.  Searle thus concludes that since the Chinese subsystem is merely a program and cannot possibly have the relevant understanding, in order for the English subsystem to have the relevant understanding that it clearly has it must be more than a mere program.  From Searle’s perspective, the Systems reply misses the entire point of the Chinese Room thought experiment.

To the computationalist, however, Searle’s counter-reply misses the entire point of their objection.  Both sides are now speaking past one another due primarily to the failure of both sides to recognize that the Chinese Robot is an entirely different scenario from that of the Chinese Room and it is the former which is the proper target of the Systems reply, not the latter.  Of course John fails to understand the meaning which is there to be had in the case of the original Chinese Room, the computationalist has already granted this.  In the case of the Chinese Robot, however, there is no such failure on John’s part, for the Chinese characters which he is manipulating do not have any meaning for John to understand. 

Before moving on to consider Searle’s attempt at addressing both the Robot reply and the Systems reply at the same time, let us first pause to review the nature of the debate surrounding the Systems reply.  Searle takes the objection to be aimed at the Chinese Room and easily refutes it accordingly.  When one recognizes, however, that the Systems reply is properly aimed at the Chinese Robot, Searle’s counter-reply simply begs the question, his assertion that the relevant intentional states are not being created in the case of the robot is supported by little, if any argumentation.  The only argument which he seems to offer in support of this conclusion is that of the Chinese Room which does not have any clear relevance to the case of the Chinese Robot from the computationalist’s perspective.  Until Searle can offer some explanation as to why the Chinese Room supports his conclusions regarding the Chinese Robot, the Systems reply will have gone largely unchallenged.

The Combination Reply

To summarize, the computationalist claims that in the case of the Chinese Room, if John is equipped with a rulebook and databank which contains both Chinese characters as well as their referents, he would understand Chinese in the relevant sense.  To this Searle replies that John would still not understand Chinese in the case of the Chinese Robot, to which the computationalist points out that he never claimed otherwise, for he was talking about the Chinese Room, not the Chinese Robot.  However, the computationalist continues, in the case of the Chinese Robot, if John is implementing the right program (a program which would be completely different from that implemented in the Chinese Room), the entire system would understand Chinese.  To this Searle replies that the Chinese Room could not understand Chinese unless John did as well and, in the Chinese Robot, John does not understand Chinese, to which the computationalist points out that he was talking about the Chinese Robot, not the Chinese Room.  It is up to Searle to provide an argument for why the Chinese Robot cannot understand Chinese unless John does as well.  It thus seems that Searle has been playing a shell game of sorts with the computationalist.  The former refuses to acknowledge the powerful replies which the latter has offered to each thought experiment by pointing out that neither reply is powerful enough to address both thought experiments at the same time. 

The computationalist can, however, turn this shell game against Searle.  As the latter understands it, the aspect of the Chinese Room that motivates his conclusion that syntax is not sufficient for semantics is the fact that John fails to grasp the meaning which is there to be had in the stories, questions and answers.  To preserve this failure within any thought experiment two things must, therefore, be present: meaning and ignorance of this meaning.  In the case of the Chinese Room the computationalist grants that meaning is present, but sees no reason for why ignorance must remain once we allow John to connect Chinese characters to their referents.  In the case of John while he is inside the Chinese Robot, on the other hand, the computationalist grants that there is indeed ignorance, but sees no reason to believe that there is any meaning which John fails to understand.  Finally, in the case of the Chinese Robot itself, the computationalist grants that meaning is present but sees no reason to believe that there is not any understanding on the part of the robot.  Thus, it seems difficult to see how Searle can consistently maintain the necessary meaning and ignorance within a single thought experiment in order to motivate the conclusion he wishes to draw.  Until Searle can provide such an account, computationalism will not appear to be threatened by his argument.

This tension can also be expressed in terms of the subsystem dilemma.  In the case of the internalized Chinese Room, ignorance is maintained by making the room a subsystem of John: John is never able to link up the memorized Chinese characters with their referents, which he also has memories of, because the system never references these latter memories.  When the computationalist points out that this isolation of Chinese characters from their referents is not necessary, Searle formulates the Chinese Robot where ignorance is maintained by making John a subsystem of the robot: John is never able to link up the relevant Chinese characters with their referents because he is never exposed to the latter.  Thus we have Searle affirming both of the following:

                     i.     The Chinese speaking system fails to understand because it is a subsystem of John. (The Chinese Room)

                   ii.     John fails to understand because he is a subsystem of the Chinese speaking system. (The Chinese Robot)

The computationalist thus finds himself is a rather comfortable position for, unless Searle can provide an argument to the contrary, the latter cannot affirm both (i) and (ii) without contradicting himself.  If Searle affirms (i), then the computationalist comes back with the Robot reply.  If Searle then attempts to counter-reply with an appeal to (ii), he contradicts himself.  If, on the other hand, Searle affirms (ii), then the computationalist responds with the Systems reply.  In this case, if Searle attempts to counter-reply with an appeal to (i), he contradicts himself.

It is with this conundrum in mind that we turn our attention to the Combination reply which is, from Searle’s perspective, an attempt on the part of the computationalist to run both the Robot and Systems replies at the same time.  In the language that we have been using in this paper the Combination reply should be seen as an attempt to apply the Systems reply to its proper target, the Chinese Robot.  If the Chinese Room and Chinese Robot thought experiments really are in conflict with each other as I have argued we should expect any attempt on Searle’s part at running both arguments at the same time to result in confusion, contradiction and/or question begging.

Searle’s response is therefore striking:

“I entirely agree that in such a case we would find it rational and indeed irresistible to accept the hypothesis that the robot had intentionality, as long as we knew nothing more about it…

“But as soon as we knew that the behavior was the result of a formal program, and that the actual causal properties of the physical substance were irrelevant we would abandon the assumption of intentionality…

“The only real locus of intentionality is the man, and he doesn’t know any of the relevant intentional states; he doesn’t, for example, see what comes into the robot’s eyes, he doesn’t intend to move the robot’s arm, and he doesn’t understand any of the remarks made to or by the robot.  Nor, for the reasons stated earlier, does the system of which the man and robot are a part.”[7]

There are two aspects of Searle’s counter-reply which deserve our attention.  The first is that this is a clear case of begging the question.  When the computationalist suggests that a particular instantiation of their program works Searle rejects such a proposition precisely because it is an instantiation of the computationalist program.  A less cynical interpretation of Searle’s reply would be to see it as a failure on Searle’s part to recognize the limited nature of the conclusions which can be drawn from the original Chinese Room thought experiment.  It is because Searle draws such an ambiguous conclusion from the Chinese Room that he has assumed presumption on the matter and consequently asserts with confidence that John is the only locus of intentionality in the system.  From the perspective of the computationalist, however, such presumption on Searle’s part is unwarranted, for he has provided no compelling reason to think that the original Chinese Room has any relevance to the question at hand.  The most charitable reading of Searle’s response, however, is that Searle has not yet clearly articulated the connection which he sees between the point illustrated by the Chinese Room and that which the Chinese Robot is supposed to illustrate.

The second point to notice about Searle’s counter to the Combination reply is how the final paragraph in the passage quoted completely fails to appreciate the inconsistencies we have just discussed.  It is true that within the Chinese Robot John does not understand anything of relevance, but this is because there does not seem to be anything of relevance to be understood; John is manipulating character-salad, not meaningful stories, questions and answers.  While the computationalist certainly grants that John sees nothing which comes into the robot’s eyes, the robot, however, does see such things and Searle has provided no clear argument for why the robot cannot come to understand in virtue of this fact.  The only reasons which Searle provides are those “given earlier.” These “reasons given earlier,” however, were aimed at the Schank’s program and the original Chinese Room argument, and Searle has failed to show how such reasons are at all relevant to the question which the Combination reply addresses. 

Conclusion

Searle’s (in)famous Chinese Room thought experiment purports to demonstrate that machines cannot come to have minds capable of understanding solely in virtue of implementing the right program.  It is not at all clear, however, that the Chinese Room actually supports such a strong conclusion.  In order to save his conclusion from the Robot reply which the computationalist brings against the Chinese Room, Searle changes the subject at hand by invoking an entirely different thought experiment in the Chinese Robot.  The Chinese Robot and the conclusion which Searle takes it to support, however, simply beg the question from the perspective of the computationalist who immediately returns with the Systems reply.  Finally, in order to diffuse the Systems reply which the computationalist brings against the Chinese Robot, Searle again changes the subject at hand by returning to the original Chinese Room argument.  Searle has thus been able to elude the criticisms of the computationalist by trying to force them to refute two entirely different thought experiments with a single reply.  Searle is almost surely right in thinking that such a thing cannot be done, but it remains for him to demonstrate why the computationalist need do such a thing.

Let us conclude by reflecting upon the force of Searle’s arguments as they apply to the Chinese Robot.  It should be kept in mind that in this paper no efforts have been made at directly refuting the point which Searle takes the Chinese Robot to illustrate.  Rather, this paper should be read an attempt at clarifying the debate surrounding Searle’s argument as well as a request for Searle to further clarify his own claims in this debate.  Four points are in special need of clarification:  First, what, relevance does the Chinese Room, where our intuitions are so clear and compelling, have to the Chinese Robot, where our intuitions are so confused and conflicted?  Second, must John understand the stories, questions and answers put to the Chinese Robot if the latter does?  Third, does computationalism allow for the Chinese Robot to understand the stories without John also understanding them?  Finally, does John understand the relevant stories when he is implementing the right program within the Chinese Robot?

- Jeffrey Giliam

[1] Searle, John.  “Minds, Brains, and Programs,” The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3, 1980.  Reprinted in Cummins, Robert and Cummins, Denise Dellarosa eds. Minds, Brains, and Computers: The Foundations of Cognitive Science An Anthology.  2000.

[2] Ibid. 142.

[3] Ibid. 142.

[4] Ibid. 142.

[5] Ibid. 145.

[6] Ibid. 143-144.

[7] Ibid. 146-147.

Soon after the publication of Origin of Species, Charles Darwin wrote the following in a letter to Hugh Falconer:

“You were very antagonistic to my views on species.  I well knew this would be the case.  I must freely confess, the difficulties and objections are terrific; but I cannot believe that a false theory would explain, as it seems to me it does explain, so many classes of facts.”[1]

The purpose of this paper will be to place this significant statement within its proper context so as to fully appreciate Darwin’s reasons to holding to his theory in the face of “terrific difficulties and objections.”  In order to do this I will describe the intellectual climate in which Darwin presented his theory, specifically as it pertained to the philosophy of science.  I will then proceed to demonstrate how Darwin’s argument in Origin of Species is a direct product of such an environment.  In conclusion I will make explicit the relations which Darwin’s intellectual context had to the statement quoted above as well as note how a proper understanding of Darwin’s arguments can clarify the debate which has followed in the wake of Origin of Species.

Isaac Newton and Vera Causa

Throughout the 19^th century, and especially throughout the British Isles, the paradigm case of how science should be practiced was that of Isaac Newton.  While it would take us well beyond the scope of this paper to fully articulate the extent to which this was the case, it suffices to say that scientists strove to make their reasoning and theories more “Newtonian”, for it was the less-Newtonian of two theories which was treated as the disposable one.  The philosophy of science at the time can thus be seen as an attempt to establish what it was, exactly, which made Newton’s science so great.  In virtue of what had Newton’s thinking accomplished what none had before him?

The answer which had emerged triumphant was that Newton’s science had been a vera causa argument.  By this, it was meant that Newton explained physical phenomena by tracking their true causes.  To explain something scientifically, is to provide a hypothetico-deductive model such that when one knew the initial conditions of some system, given the relevant forces and (true) causes which the explanation posits, one could predict how the system would behave. Furthermore, it was precisely because such explanations appeal to the true causes that they were seen as being counter-factually robust, meaning that they could describe what the system in question would have done had the initial conditions been different. 

What the scientist was aimed at, then, was discovering the true causes which governed any system which they were studying.  What the philosophers of science were aimed at, on the other hand, was discovering how the scientist could know whether they had discovered the true causes underlying the system in question or not.  Within this intellectual context, Darwin was presented with essentially two distinct, though not incompatible answers to the philosopher’s question.  One of these vera causa arguments, that of John Herschel, was largely empiricist in nature while the other, that of William Whewell, was largely rationalist in nature. 

Before we consider each of these arguments, let us first grasp what kinds of explanations the vera causa arguments were intended to exclude.  Vera causa arguments of both the empiricist and rationalist flavors are aimed primarily at avoiding ad hoc explanations in science.  Very roughly, an ad hoc explanation is one which does not describe the true causes at work in a system.  As such, ad hoc explanation are not counter-factually robust in the appropriate way.  While an ad hoc explanation may give an explanation of sorts regarding why some system behaves the way it does, if it says anything at all about how the system would have behaved under different conditions, it is usually wrong.  In other words, ad hoc explanations tend to be more like descriptions rather than the hypothetico-deductive explanations such as Newton provided in the case of physics.

An example of the ad hoc explanations which Newton replaced would be those of Aristotle.  The answer to why objects fell to the earth and why the planets move as they do was based in the natural tendencies of the objects in question.  Matter, in some sense, “belongs” on the earth and therefore falls to it when released.  Similarly, it is, in some sense, “natural” for the planets to move as they do.  Of course many discoveries had been made regarding the nature of terrestrial (Galileo, Descartes) and celestial (Kepler, Brahe) motion prior to Newton, but these explanations differed from those of Newton.  None of these prior theories had gotten at the true causes or forces which were the underpinning of their mathematical models.  There was no reason why Galileo’s and Kepler’s particular mathematical relations should hold rather than some others.  In other words, their models were, to some extent, not counter-factually robust.

According to Herschel, the safest way to avoid ad hoc explanations is, whenever possible, to only appeal to and generalize from forces and causes which one already knows to exist.  A clear illustration of such a method can be seen in Isaac Newton’s theory of universal gravity.  We know that in the case of terrestrial objects gravity acts as a force which causes a certain amount of motion.  From this, Newton can thus be seen as proceeding by way of analogy from the causal explanations, which we know work in the case of terrestrial objects, to using those same causal explanations in the case of celestial objects.  Accordingly, Herschel’s vera causa method amounts to an admonition for scientists to extract their causal explanations from past experience, since that is the most reliable source of true causes which they have available to them.  The closer the analogy between the domain from which the scientist is trying to extract their causal explanation and the domain to which they are trying to project such an explanation, the more reasonable it is to suppose that the causal explanation used in the former accurately depicts the causal relations which actually exist in the case of the latter.

“If the analogy of two phenomena be very close and striking, while, at the same time, the cause of one is very obvious, it becomes scarcely possible to refuse to admit the action of an analogous cause in the other, though not so obvious in itself.”[2]

Whewell’s version of the vera causa argument differs from that of Herschel in a number of important respects.  Whereas in the case of the latter, the scientist avoids ad hoc arguments by drawing their explanations from experience, in the case of the former the scientist avoids ad hoc explanations by projecting their explanations onto experience.  More specifically, we have reason to believe that an explanation is not ad hoc when it successfully provides information regarding questions which the explanation was not aimed at answering.  The more surprising the accurate information is in the case of his explanation, the more sure the scientist can be that his explanation is not ad hoc in nature.  Whewell calls this “jumping together” of scientific domains the “Consilience of Inductions”:

“[The consilience of inductions] is exemplified principally in some of the greatest discoveries.  Thus it was found by Newton that the doctrine of attraction of the sun varying according to the inverse square of the distance, which explained Kepler’s third law of proportionality of the cubes of the distances to the squares of the periodic times of the planets, explained also his first and second laws of the elliptical motion of each planet; although no connection of these laws had been visible before…

“The theory of universal gravitation, and of the undulatory theory of light, are, indeed, full of examples of this Consilience of Inductions… The history of the undulatory theory was a succession of felicities.  And it is precisely the unexpected coincidences of results drawn from distant parts of the subject which are properly described.”[3]

In the case of Newtonian physics, the theory explained not only the motion of terrestrial bodies, but also provided significant information about the motion of celestial bodies as well.  It is significant that whereas in the case of Herschel’s vera causa argument one in limited in the direction of application, for one must reason by analogy from the obvious to the unknown.  In the case of Whewell’s account, however, there is no such limitation.  One could just as easily reverse the situation described above with the same effect: Newtonian mechanics explained not only the motion of celestial bodies, which it was aimed at explaining, but also provided significant information about the motion of terrestrial bodies as well. 

With respect to rationalist version of the vera causa argument, it does not matter which of these two accounts of Newtonian mechanics was actually the case, historically speaking.  What matters was that Newton’s theory allowed the motion of terrestrial bodies and celestial bodies to be brought together in a way which had never been anticipated prior to him.  In other words, the confidence which the scientist could have in Newton’s theory was not in how well it predicted terrestrial movement, for Galileo and Descartes had already made significant strides in this domain.  Nor was it due to how well the theory predicted celestial movement, for Kepler and Brahe had already done quite well in this regard as well.  The confidence which Newton theory merited was not even due to the combination of the two.  Rather, the greatest achievement in Newton’s work, according to Whewell’s reasoning, was the unification of the terrestrial with the celestial, something which no theory prior to Newton’s would have led one to expect.  Whereas in the case of Herschel the confidence which could be placed in an explanation was proportional to how close it remained to past experience, for Whewell it is proportional to the degree that the explanation successfully moves beyond past experience.

“The evidence in favor of our induction is of a much higher and more forcible character when it enables us to explain and determine cases of a kind different from those which were contemplated in the formation of our hypothesis.  The instances in which this has occurred, indeed, impress us with a conviction that the truth of our hypothesis is certain.  No accident could give rise to such an extraordinary coincidence.  No false supposition could, after being adjusted to one class of phenomena, so exactly represent a different class, when the agreement was unforeseen and uncontemplated.  That rules springing from remote and unconnected quarters should thus leap to the same point, can only arise from that being the point where truth resides.”[4]

Charles Darwin and Vera Causa

Whereas Charles Darwin famously described his Origin of Species as one long argument, it is possible to somewhat isolate three relatively distinct arguments at play within the text which contribute to the work as a whole.[5]  The first is a deductive argument for natural selection inspired largely by Malthus: IF there is variation within a population, and IF there is heredity, and IF there is a struggle for life, THEN the more fit and adapted will survive while the less fit and maladapted will not.[6]  This is an argument for the existence of natural selection.  A second argument which plays a significant role in Darwin’s work is an empiricist vera causa argument from analogy: artificial selection has created many different forms and kinds in domesticated life, therefore the many forms and kind of life found in nature can be explained by natural selection.  This is an argument for the capacity of natural selection to produce the changes and differences within populations.  The final argument which can be discerned in Origin is a rationalist vera causa argument from the consilience of inductions: natural selection unifies the facts from many domains which would otherwise remain isolated from each other absent natural selection.  This is used as an argument to establish the claim that not only is natural selection capable of producing changes and differences within populations, but that it actually has been responsible for such things.  It should be noted how the rationalist vera causa is more encompassing in its conclusion than is the empiricist vera causa argument, just as the latter is in turn more encompassing in its conclusion than the Malthusian argument from deduction is.

Let us consider how Darwin implements each of the vera causa arguments within the text of Origin of Species.  In order to do this it will serve us well to first consider the rather ad hoc explanation which Darwin took himself to be overthrowing: special creation.  In the case of the geographical distribution of biological taxa and relative similarities and differences between species, special creation is, according to Darwin, an entirely ad hoc explanation.  To some degree, the theory answers the questions at hand, but it provides absolutely no information beyond this very specific question.  In the case of Aristotelian physics it was unclear whether things fell to the ground because they “belong” there or we simply say that things “belong” on the ground because they fall.  In other words, the scientist is left with no reason to suppose that the “belonging” is a true cause or not.  Similarly, it is unclear whether biological taxa are distributed as they are because the Creator wanted them distributed thusly, or whether we simply say that the Creator wanted biological taxa distributed as they are because they are so distributed.  The biologist has no reason to believe that the desires (or even the existence!) of the Creator is actually a true cause.  This is the explanation which Darwin attempts to replace with his theory of natural selection.

Within the text of Origin of Species one can scarcely miss Darwin’s strong appeal to the analogy between artificial selection in breeding and natural selection in the wild.  This strategy makes perfect sense when interpreted as an implementation of Herschel’s empiricist version of the vera causa argument.  Darwin demonstrates how artificial selection is the obvious cause of change and variety in the case domesticated breeding.  He then proceeds to draw as strong of a parallel between selection as it operates in the domesticated context and how it operates in nature.  It is possible that species with all their variety and differences were created by a Creator just as it is possible that they were produced by natural selection.  The conclusion which should thus be drawn, by Herschel’s account, is that natural selection should be favored over special creation since we already know that selection both exists and is capable of creation whereas the same cannot be said for a special creator.

The entire second half of Darwin’s work is an appeal to the rationalist vera causa argument.  He makes this all but explicit in his notebook from which the work was eventually drawn: “Absolute knowledge that species die and other replace them. – Two hypotheses: fresh creation is mere assumption, it explains nothing further; points gained if any facts are connected.”[7]  In the Origin of Species Darwin argues that natural selection, which he has already shown, by way of deductive argument, to exist and, by way of analogy with artificial selection, to be a competent force of nature, that this force actually is responsible for the variety within and among species.  To establish this he makes an appeal, breathtaking in it scope, to the consilience of inductions.  With natural selection in place, not only can we explain the origin of different species, but we can also explain the geological and geographical distribution of taxa as well as the mutual affinities, morphology, embryology and rudimentary organs across species.  The immense scope of this consilience should not be lost on us: while the consilience wrought by Newton unified the terrestrial with the Celestial, that wrought by Darwin unified more than half a dozen theretofore distinct domains.

Charles Darwin and Hugh Falconer

Let us now return to the passage with which we began this paper:

“You were very antagonistic to my views on species.  I well knew this would be the case.  I must freely confess, the difficulties and objections are terrific; but I cannot believe that a false theory would explain, as it seems to me it does explain, so many classes of facts.”

There are two points which I find striking about this passage.  The first has to do with the structure of the debate between Darwin and his critics after the publication of Origin of Species.  Most critics aimed their criticisms at the empiricist vera causa argument by attempting to demonstrate that the analogy between artificial selection and natural selection was not very close: the latter is directed and has produced limited change and variety while the latter is not directed and is supposed to have created vast amounts of change and variety.  Accordingly, so the argument goes, natural selection cannot have been responsible for producing the data in question since it is not capable of having done so.  Darwin, on the other hand, argues that considering the vast amount of consilience.  Accordingly, so the argument goes, natural selection must have been capable of producing the data in question since it is actually responsible for the data in question.  The two parties are arguing from relatively distinct premises.

The second and final point which I wish to make is that the debate surrounding evolution by natural selection and special creation has, to this day, largely followed the same structure.  All anti-Darwinian criticisms, if not nearly so, are aimed at the competency claim which Darwin argued for in the first half of his book by way of his empiricist vera causa argument.  While many of the Darwinian counter-replies to these points are also aimed at the competency claim as well, these counter-replies are almost universally motivated by the overwhelming consilience wrought by Darwin and his theory.  Indeed, the very reason why it is so difficult for the evolutionary biologist to imagine natural selection being overthrown is precisely because it is so difficult to imagine some other theory which could possibly unify so many different domains as natural selection has done.

[1] Darwin, F. 1887.  The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Including an Autobiographical Chapter, I:455

[2] Herschel, J. 1831. Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, 149

[3] Whewell, W. Novum Organon Renovatum: Being the Second Part of the Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, 88-99

[4] Whewell, W. Novum Organon Renovatum: Being the Second Part of the Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences 87-88.

[5] Ruse, M. 1979. The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw, 198.

[6] Darwin, C. 1859.  On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, 127.

[7] De Beer, G. 1960-76. Darwin’s Notebooks on Transmutation of Species, P. 104

My Philosophy of Mind professor is apparently in the midst of an eliminativist crisis in terms of phenomenal consciousness.  His argument is basically as follows:  1) There would be absolutely no difference between those individuals which actually have phenomenal consciousness and those individuals who labor under the false belief that they have phenomenal consciousness.  2) Phenomenal consciousness is far more metaphysically strange than is a false-phenomenal-consciousness-belief making mechanism in the brain.  3) Thus, the eliminative position is preferable to the alternative.

In order to make clear what he does and does not have in mind, consider how the eliminativist handles the case of Mary the color scientist.  When Mary is released from her colorless lab, she certainly does learn lots of new things, all of them false.  She didn’t learn about phenomenal consciousness in the lab because she only learned true things about conscious experience.  While I do not think that this really handles all the questions at hand, it must be admitted that this is a rather snappy reply.

Of course the most repulsive aspect of this position is idea of a biologically innate “false-belief maker” which is responsible for the fact that essentially all people labor under the delusion that they are NOT zombies.  I think we can do better than mere repulsion on this point, however; I think we can turn this into an actual objection.  If anything is supposed to characterize our phenomenal experience it is its rich, fine-grained nature.  The objection which I have to the eliminativist position described above is this: it seems extraordinarily unlikely that our false beliefs could possibly be fine-grained enough to account for all of our purported phenomenal experience.

The natural reply which I’m sure my professor would provide to this would be that he does not deny the fine-grained nature of access consciousness and it is access, rather than phenomenal consciousness which accounts for the fine grained nature of consciousness in general.  The problem with this response is that it is no longer clear what exactly it is that we are eliminating. 

After all, it is my position that there is nothing more to phenomenal consciousness than fine grained access consciousness.  In other words, it somebody is able to discern by way of access consciousness the all the features which constitute the experience of being burned by a stove, there is nothing leftover which is in need of explaining.  Put yet another way, phenomenal consciousness simply is fine-grain, largely automatic access consciousness and nothing more.

Given my professor’s hypothetical counter-reply, it is no longer clear wherein our positions differ all that much from each other aside from his positing a false-belief maker.  Notice, it is his denial of any kind of phenomenal consciousness which requires a false-belief maker.  On the other hand, it is my granting phenomenal consciousness by another name that makes such an innate false-belief maker superfluous.  Indeed, the real false-belief maker in this situation is not the biologically innate neural structure in humans, but rather the practice of philosophy.  It is only by utterly isolating phenomenal consciousness from access consciousness that we have any problem here at all.

In his essay “Three Kinds of Adaptationism” Peter Godfrey-Smith argues that the debate surrounding adaptationism actually consists of three distinct and logically independent debates.  In this paper I will consider the three adaptationist positions which Godfrey-Smith sees are at stake in such debates as well as his argument for their logical independence of one another.  I will then argue that Godfrey-Smith’s argument is based in premises which are not accepted by all parties in such debates and thus serves to confuse rather than clarify the issues at hand.   I will then attempt to salvage a modified form of Godfrey-Smith’s argument so as to make it acceptable to all sides of the adaptationism debate and thereby achieve his goal of “classification and clarification.” (Godfrey-Smith, 1)

·         Three Adaptationisms

There are, according to Godfrey-Smith, three distinct adaptationist positions which are logically independent of each other.  Before considering his argument for this claim, it is important that we understand what these adaptationist positions are.  Briefly, they are

• Empirical Adaptationism (EA): Adaptation due to natural selection is ubiquitous throughout the biological world.
• Methodological Adaptationism (MA): In their research, biologists ought to assume adaptation due to natural selection.
• Explanatory Adaptationism (XA): Adaptation/design due to natural selection is the answer to the most important questions in biology.

Empirical adaptationism is the position that natural selection has been the primary causal power in evolutionary history.  Because natural selection has been uniquely powerful, adaptation is ubiquitous throughout the biological world.  EA, then, is an adaptationist claim about the biological world, both past and present, which thus lends itself to empirical investigation.  Whether the biological world has been shaped largely by natural selection to the exclusion of other evolutionary forces or not is a question which simply cannot be resolved from the armchair.

Methodological adaptationism suggests that the most efficient way to study biology is to assume some degree of adaptation or optimization.  Assumptions of optimality in biology, it is argued, serve to effectively organize the biologist’s investigation and research of the biological world.  MA, then, is a normative judgment about how the practice of biology ought to be carried out and normative claims do not lend themselves to empirical investigation.

Explanatory adaptationism holds that, regardless of how powerful natural selection has been in comparison to other evolutionary forces, natural selection is the unique answer to the most important questions in biology, namely those surrounding adaptation and design.  XA, according to Godfrey-Smith, is a position about biologists as people rather than biology, for questions regarding adaptation and design are important from a cultural or philosophical perspective, not a biological or even a scientific one, strictly speaking.  Accordingly, XA is a factual claim about biologists, not biology.

·         The Logical Independence of Adaptationisms

While Godfrey-Smith certainly acknowledges that some of these adaptationist positions may find support from the other positions, he claims that all three positions are logically independent of one another.  In other words, it is possible to accept or deny any combination of the three adaptationist positions without contradicting oneself.  In order to demonstrate this logical independence, he provides numerous examples of how each position could be, or actually is accepted while at the same time denying the other two.  Thus, each adaptationist position stands or falls independently of the other two.

Central to Godfrey-Smith’s argument are the following premises:

(1)        EA is a factual claim about biology.

(2)        MA is a normative judgment about the practice of biology.

(3)        XA is a factual claim about biologists.

It is the logical independence of ‘is’ and ‘ought’ which allows him to separate MA from EA and XA.  Additionally, it is the logical independence of factual claims regarding different domains, in this case that of biology and that of biologists, which allows Godfrey-Smith to separate EA from XA.  His argument can thus be said to have the following structure:

(4)        Normative judgments are logically independent of factual claims.

(5)        MA is logically independent of both EA and XA. (1, 2, 3, 4)

(6)        Facts about biology are logically independent of fact about biologists.

(7)        EA is logically independent of XA. (1, 3, 6)

(8)        EA, XA and MA are all logically independent of one another. (5, 7)

·         Dennett’s Adaptationism

Godfrey-Smith’s objective in arguing for the logical independence of the three adaptationist positions is to better articulate the differences between and within adaptationist and anti-adaptationist camps.   One adaptationist who he repeatedly attempts to classify according to his three positions is Daniel Dennett.  What Godfrey-Smith does not seem to recognize, however, is that Dennett’s brand of adaptationism does not tolerate the distinctions which have been drawn, and this leads him to misinterpret Dennett on a number of counts.  According to Dennett, all three adaptationist positions are logically entailed by the very nature of biology and as such are not logically independent of each other.  By understanding Dennett’s rejection of Godfrey-Smith’s premises, and modifying the latter’s account as needed, we can thereby provide a better scheme for classification and clarification than has been provided.

Central to Dennett’s adaptationism is the difference between “the physical stance” and “the intentional stance.”  The physical stance is that of viewing the world or some part of it as matter in motion; it is the stance which physical scientists necessarily adopt in their approach to the world.  The intentional stance, on the other hand, is that of viewing that patterns which emerge in (what is from the physical stance) the same matter in motion with the idealizing assumption of an optimizing agent in place.  For Dennett, all forms of teleology (including design, adaptation, purpose, meaning, function, etc.) exist in the natural world only when it is viewed from the intentional stance complete with its idealizing assumption of optimality.  In the case of biology, the biologist views natural selection an optimizing agent constrained by time pressures and limited by a total lack of foresight.  All biological systems, in turn, are the designed products of this optimizing agent.

Godfrey-Smith thus misinterprets Dennett as merely attempting to “explain the occurrence of design, purpose and meaning” within a naturalistic worldview. (Godfrey-Smith, 14) If such were the case, the former would be completely right is viewing this as a philosophical question rather than a biological one, strictly speaking.  What Godfrey-Smith does not recognize is that adaptationism, according to Dennett, is logically entailed by the very existence of a biological world.  In other words, without the optimizing assumption of adaptationism, there is no teleology in the world to study.  Inasmuch as there is no teleology in the world to study, there is no biology to study either, for there is no biology independent of all teleology.  Put yet another way, a system is only biological inasmuch as it is viewed as the product of an optimizing agent, in this case natural selection.  Since viewing biology as the designed product of this optimizing agent just is adaptationism, any attempt to do away with adaptationism is logically equivalent to doing away with biology altogether.  To drop all assumptions of optimality is to abandon the intentional stance, the level at which biological systems exist, in favor of the physical stance, the level at which only physical systems exist.

Accordingly, Dennett rejects premises (1), (2) and (3) in Godfrey-Smith’s argument on the grounds fail to appreciate the logical relationship which exists between biology and assumptions of optimality.  The adaptationist claim, for Dennett, is not a factual or a normative one at all, but rather a logical one.  This logical relationship can be seen by considering Dennett’s views regarding Godfrey-Smith’s three positions:

Adaptation due to natural selection is ubiquitous throughout the biological world (EA) because it is logically impossible for the biological world to exist independent of all adaptation.

In their research biologists ought to assume adaptation due to natural selection (MA) because it is logically impossible to do otherwise.

Adaptation/design due to natural selection is the answer to the most important questions in biology (XA) because all questions and answers in biology logically presuppose an optimizing agent and natural selection is this agent.

For Godfrey-Smith, EA, XA and MA get their logical independence in virtue of being either normative claims or factual claims about disjunctive domains.  Once all three adaptationist positions are seen as logical rather than factual or normative claims their logical independence of each other breaks down.  (8) must be rejected, for the teleological nature of biology logically entails EA, MA and XA.  (Dennett, 260-268, 277-286)

·         Revising Adaptationisms

There are two approaches which Godfrey-Smith could possibly take at this point.  One approach would be to object to Dennett’s account of biology and its logical entailments.  Such a move, however, would take us well beyond the scope of this paper.  Furthermore, such a thing would do nothing to further Godfrey-Smith’s primary goal.  His purpose is not to engage any particular position in the adaptationism debates, but rather to classify and clarify them.  A better approach, then, would be to modify Godfrey-Smith’s account in a way which preserves the distinctions which he attempts to draw while at the same time incorporating Dennett’s position. 

The way in which Godfrey-Smith can do this is by recognizing that the adaptationist positions which are logically entailed by Dennett’s account of biology are rather weak ones.  Even if it is the case that all biological systems are the logical consequences of an optimizing process, this need not entail that each individual biological system is in fact optimized.  This fact allows for modified versions of each adaptationist position which are still logically independent of one another:

o       EA*: Most biological systems are more than the mere products of natural selection, they are adaptations which were selected for by natural selection.

o       MA*: Biologists ought to assume that biological systems are not only the mere products of natural selection, but are adaptations which were selected for by natural selection.

o       XA*: Adaptation/design due to natural selection is the answer to the most important questions in biology. (Same as XA.)

EA* moves beyond the position that all biological systems are the products of the selecting process (which is a logical truth for Dennett), and makes the stronger claim that most biological systems were actually selected for by of natural selection.  This later claim surely is a factual claim about the biological world.  MA* similarly moves beyond the logical truth that all biology is done with adaptationist assumptions in place, to the claim that such assumptions ought to be applied directly to all biological systems.  This is clearly a normative claim which is not logically entailed by the nature of biology.  EA*, according to Dennett, is a logical truth which seems to resist reformulation, though we will see that such a reformulation is unnecessary and perhaps undesirable for Godfrey-Smith’s purposes. 

Given these modified descriptions of the three adaptationist positions, we can now make an argument for the logical independence of each position:

(1*)           EA* is a factual claim about the biological world.

(2*)           MA* is a normative judgment about the practice of biology.

(3*)           XA* is a logical claim about biology in general.

(4*)           Normative judgments are logically independent of factual claims.

(5*)           MA* is logically independent of EA*. (1*, 2*, 4*)

(6*)           Normative judgments are logically independent of logical claims.

(7*)           MA* is logically independent of XA* (2*, 3*, 6*)

(8*)           Factual claims are logically independent of logical claims.

(9*)           EA* is logically independent of XA* (1*, 3*, 8*)

(10*)       EA*, MA* and XA* are all logically independent of one another. (5*, 7*, 9*)

(1*), (2*) and (3*) preserve the basic concept in each of Godfrey-Smith’s adaptationist positions as well as their logical independence from each other while at the same time incorporating Dennett’s form of adaptationism.  An interesting consequence of accepting the revised adaptationist positions is that it is no longer clear that Dennett, who is viewed by Godfrey-Smith as the strongest of adaptationists, defends EA* of MA* all that strongly.  Many, but certainly not all, of Dennett’s seemingly extreme and indefensible assertions are no longer relevant (Godfrey-Smith, 6-7, 15) and he is certainly willing to temper his positions concerning EA* and MA* in the face of anti-adaptationist arguments. (Dennett, 265)  Such a clear view of Dennett is exactly what Godfrey-Smith hoped to provide by isolating the three kinds of adaptationism in the first place. 

·         Conclusion

Godfrey-Smith’s attempt to clarify the debate surrounding adaptationism in general by demonstrating the logical independence of three distinct adaptationist positions fails.  His failure to find premises that all sides of the debate(s) can agree upon only serves to further misunderstanding and confusion.  We can, however, slightly modify the premises of his argument in such a way that all parties can accept them.  With such modified premises in place, we can achieve the goal which Godfrey-Smith set out for himself of classification and clarification.

Bibliography:

Dennett, Daniel C.: The Intentional Stance (1987)

Godfrey-Smith, Peter: “Three Kinds of Adaptationism” in S. H. Orzack & E. Sober (eds.), Adaptationism and Optimality (2001)

In his paper “The Case for Animal Rights” Tom Regan argues from a roughly Kantian perspective that animals have intrinsic value equal to that of humans and as such should cease to be used as mere resources for others.  In this paper, I will detail both Regan’s position as well as the argument which he mounts in its favor.  It will be shown that though his argument is valid, it is not sound, being based on a number of unacceptable premises.  Whether attempts at replacing the unacceptable premises with more appropriate ones provide a legitimate defense of animal rights or not is left as an open question.

·         An Outline of Regan’s Argument

Regan’s is an unabashed appeal to reason, for according to him reason dictates the “total dissolution of commercial animal agriculture” along with all other institutions and practices which treat animals as mere means to our ends. (p. 196) In order to demonstrate this, Regan first argues that we do, in some sense, have some direct duties toward animals.  This argument will not be discussed in this paper.  Regan then proceeds to demonstrate that Kantian, as opposed to Utilitarian ethics provides the more compelling account of morality for humans.  This argument will also not be addressed in this paper.

Where we will engage Regan is in the third and most crucial point which he attempts to make, namely that animals should (pace the anthropocentric Kant!) be included within this Kantian account of morality.  Having concluded that the Kantian account of morality is the most rational one, he argues that the scope of such an account cannot be limited to humans in any rationally defensible manner.  Indeed, once we understand the reason for which we extend intrinsic value to all humans, we will be rationally compelled to extend intrinsic value to many non-human animals as well.

·         The Intrinsic Value of Humans

Let us examine the structure of this argument in more detail.  The first part of Regan’s two-part argument is concerned with describing Kantian ethics as it applies to humans:

(1)               All humans have intrinsic value.

(2)               All those who have intrinsic value have it equally.

(3)               All and only those which have some relevant property, X, have intrinsic value.

(4)               Any property, Y, which is not common to all humans is not X. (1, 3)

One is tempted to immediately reject premise (2) for surely we do not grant equal intrinsic value or equal rights to all humans.  It is not at all obvious that we grant such things to minors, the mentally challenged, criminals or the comatose.  This, however, is to misunderstand what Regan means by intrinsic value.  To have intrinsic value is for an individual to not have the status of a thing which exists as a mere resource for others. (p. 200) Surely all humans have intrinsic value in this sense of the term, for it would be unthinkable for us to farm or experiment on minors, etc.

The third premise is meant to convey the idea that there is some property in virtue of which some things have intrinsic value while others do not.  Put another way, intrinsic value can be said to supervene upon some property, X, or that this property grounds intrinsic value.  Kant, for example, held that humans and humans alone had intrinsic value in virtue of their having the properties of reason, autonomy and intellect.  Regan, we will soon see, will argue against such an anthropocentric account.  While Regan disagrees with Kant’s particular choice in X, he agrees that there must be some X which does in fact ground intrinsic value; it just happens that X is not reason, autonomy or intellect.

There is two criteria which any X must meet in order to adequately ground intrinsic value, the first of which is relevance.  Regan suggests that whatever similarity it is that grounds intrinsic value in all humans, it should be “crucial” and “basic”.  This criterion serves to block any attempts at grounding intrinsic value in properties which have little, if any, relevance to it.  Thus, the property of belonging to one particular species rather than another is disqualified, for such a thing seems entirely irrelevant to the grounding of intrinsic value.  While all members of some species might have some property, X, which does in fact ground their intrinsic value, it is X which we thus are interested in, not that of belonging to the species which instantiates X.

Given that all humans have intrinsic value, and given that there must be some relevant property in virtue of which all humans have intrinsic value, it must be concluded that whatever X turns out to be, it must be instantiated by all humans.  This is the second criterion which any suitable X must meet.  If some property, Y, is not instantiated by all humans then to assign intrinsic value according Y is a form of discrimination and is, therefore, immoral.  A long list of Y’s, which have at some time (incorrectly) been taken by some to be X, comes easily to mind: sex, religion, race, bloodline, age and, most importantly, reason, autonomy and intellect.  All humans have intrinsic value, but none of these properties are instantiated by all humans.  Consequently, none of these properties can reasonably be said to ground intrinsic value.

One can object that while it is true that not all humans have reason, autonomy or intellect, they potentially have it and this grounds their actual intrinsic value.  The response which Regan has ready at hand to this objection, however, is that such people do not actually have intrinsic value.  Potentially instantiating X can only ground potential intrinsic value, and some non-actual X can only ground non-actual intrinsic value.  This is simply not good enough, for we grant that an infant has actual, not merely potential intrinsic value. 

The first half of Regan’s argument seems relatively uncontroversial, which is exactly what he intends.  It is because this account of intrinsic value is so uncontroversial in the case of humans that it serves, by way of reason, to extend the same intrinsic value to animals.  I will eventually argue, however, that extending the account to include non-humans serves to highlight significant problems with (2) and (3).  Before we consider these problems, let us first discuss the second half of Regan’s argument.

·         Extending Intrinsic Value to Non-humans

Regan’s argument continues by offering a suitable X which he takes to ground intrinsic value in all humans:

(5)               The property of being the “experiencing subject of a life” is the only relevant X which is common to all humans.

(6)               All experiencing subjects of a life have equal intrinsic value. (2, 3, 5)

Contrary to Kant, the properties of reason, autonomy and intellect (relevant though they may be) are not common to all humans and thus cannot be taken to ground intrinsic value.  There is, however, another property which is relevant as well as common to all humans, and therefore can ground intrinsic value:

“The really crucial, the basic similarity … between those human beings who most clearly, most noncontroversially have [intrinsic] value … is simply this: we are each of us the experiencing subject of a life, each of us a conscious creature having an individual welfare that has importance to us whatever our usefulness to others.” (p. 200-201)

Being the experiencing subject of a life, according to Regan, is the property which grounds intrinsic value in all humans in virtue of being both relevant and common to all humans.  Furthermore, since many non-human animals are also the experiencing subjects of a life as well, they too have intrinsic value equal to that of humans.  Consequently, since we would never dream of allowing humans to be treated as mere resources for others due to their intrinsic value, we must similarly refuse to treat these non-human animals as mere resources as well.

·         The ‘Humans Without Lives’ Objection

There are two counter-examples which suggest that Regan’s account must be revised, if not rejected altogether.  The first counterexample regards those humans which cannot be said to be the experiencing subjects of a life.  People who are in comas (be they terminal or not), the recently deceased, unborn children, nor the (hypothetical) cryogenically frozen can be said to actually be experiencing a life and yet they each seem to have some intrinsic value.  We would certainly never treat such “people” as mere resources for other.  Given that Regan’s proposed X does not satisfy (3) or (4) it would seem, by Regan’s own logic, that we should instead view it as yet another Y.

One is tempted to suggest that such people are the potential experiencing subjects of a life, but such an appeal to potential would undermine the reply which Regan was forced to use against the anthropocentrist in the cases of reason, autonomy and intellect.  If potential X’s cannot ground actual intrinsic value, then Regan’s X fails to ground the intrinsic value of some humans.  If potential X’s can ground actual intrinsic value then there is no reason why one cannot limit intrinsic value to humans after all.  Perhaps Regan can appeal to the past life experienced by the comatose, deceased and cryogenically frozen in order to ground their continued intrinsic value.  One wonders, however, why it is possible for the past experiences to ground present intrinsic value when future experiences were unable to do so.

This objection calls (5) into question, which thereby undermines (6) as well.  A modified version of Regan’s argument can, however, be salvaged from the ‘humans without lives’ objection:

(7)               Any relevant property, Y, which is found only in humans, is not common to all humans.

(8)               Any relevant property, Y, which is found only in humans, is not X. (4, 7)

(9)               Some non-humans have intrinsic value. (1, 3,

(10)           Some non-humans have intrinsic value equal to that of humans. (2, 9)

The crucial premise in this argument is the claim that any relevant property which is found only in humans, will actually exclude at least some humans as well.  It is precisely because this premise holds in the case of reason, autonomy and intellect that Kant’s account fails by Regan’s lights, thereby extending intrinsic value to non-human animals.  The new argument suggests that even if Regan’s choice in X no more meets his criteria than does Kant’s, there must still be some X which not only does ground not only the intrinsic value in all humans, but also that of many non-humans.  This position, however, is no better than that of the anthropocentrist who maintains that there is some property that all and only humans have which grounds their intrinsic value.  Both positions are merely faith statements for or against (7), neither of which compels our rational assent. 

Rather than accept either of these positions, a more defensible move, if only for the sake of moving the conversation forward, would be to deny one of the premises on which the argument is being carried out, in this case (3).  Rather than that hold that there is a unique property (or set of necessary and sufficient conditions) upon which intrinsic value supervenes, one can appeal to Wittgensteinian family resemblance in holding that intrinsic value supervenes on a cluster of properties, many combinations of which are jointly sufficient to ground intrinsic value but no one of which is individually necessary.  What these properties are and which combinations are sufficient to ground what amount of intrinsic value in which individuals are all questions which take us well beyond the scope of this paper.  It suffices to say that such an account is not compatible with Regan’s argument as he presents it in virtue of its rejection of (3). 

·         The ‘Jellyfish’ Objection

A second counterexample to Regan’s account is that of those animals, both human and non-human, which cannot be said to clearly experience or not experience a life such as jellyfish, worms, ants, unborn children, etc.  Wherever Regan may draw the line between the white of the genuine experiencers and the black of the non-experiencers, it will be a vague and somewhat arbitrary decision, for gray comes in many shades.  To hold that each and every individual on the white side has equal intrinsic value while all those which lie on the black side, have none at all seems extreme and untenable.  Nevertheless, the (2), on which both (6) and (10) rely, as well as Regan’s definition of intrinsic value, seem to commit him to just such a position.  Allowing for degrees of intrinsic value is exactly what Regan is trying to exclude for it allows the anthropocentrist to place the value of animals below that of humans in some way.  Regan’s premise (2) necessarily commits him to this seemingly absurd position. 

It is worth clarifying what is and is not at stake in this second objection.  The criticism is not that we do not know where to draw the line between those things which have intrinsic value and those which do not.  Regan rightly notes that he is not committed to knowing any such thing.  What Regan is committed to, however, is the existence of a definite line in nature which distinguishes all those which have intrinsic value, fully and equally, from those which do not have it at all.  It is this position, one which Regan is committed to, which is coming under fire. 

In response, Regan might possibly reply by saying that we do not actually use such borderline animals as resources, thereby making the ‘jellyfish’ objection practically irrelevant.  This, however, would be to change the subject entirely.  The issue at hand is whether animals have intrinsic value equal to humans or not.  Whether we actually violate the intrinsic value of some animal is altogether irrelevant.

It should be noted that this objection works equally well against (10) as it does against (6), for both conclusions are derived from (2) which is being rejected.  Regan might object that in rejecting (2) we are thereby denying that all humans have equal intrinsic value.  There does not, however, seem to be any contradiction in claiming that this question is also entirely independent of (2).  Reason does not compel us to accept that, since all humans have equal intrinsic value, all things that have intrinsic value must have it equally as well. 

It is also worth noting that the cluster theory detailed above does not seem committed to such an all or nothing position.  Certain combinations of properties may ground more intrinsic value in humans than other combinations do in non-humans.  Again, what these properties or combinations of properties are as well as which ones ground Regan’s idea of intrinsic value in which animals are question which fall beyond the scope of this paper.

·         Conclusion

Regan argues that the best account of human morality, namely a form of Kantian ethics, also provides compelling reason to grant to all animals which are the experiencing subject of a life intrinsic value equal to that of humans.  Such a conclusion, however, suffers from two serious forms of counterexamples which lead one to reject the premises on which Regan bases his argument.  Intrinsic value need not be an all or nothing affair nor does it need to be grounded by some property which is instantiated in all humans.  A better account would likely have intrinsic value supervening upon clusters of properties which are jointly sufficient, but not individually necessary, to ground intrinsic value.

Bibliography:

Regan, Tom “The Case for Animal Rights” reprinted in Environmental Ethics: Concepts, Policy, Theory ed. Joseph DesJardins (1999)

The systems objection, which I take to be identical (or at least nearly so) with the virtual mind reply, suggests that the Chinese Room argument is entirely beside the point. When Searle says “It seems to me quite obvious in the example that I do not understand a word of the Chinese stories,” the computationalist merely need reply, “So what?” The English speaker has a representation of Chinese-speaking syntax, a phenomenon which is entirely independent of the representation which is supposed to be created by the latter. This confusion of representation/consciousness/understanding of syntax and the syntax of representation/consciousness/understanding is the primary motivation which makes Searle’s conclusion so ‘obvious’ or intuitive.

The irrelevance of the understanding of the English speaker can be illustrated by simply replacing him with a Chinese speaker or, for the sake of convenience, make the English speaker run an English-speaking program rather than a Chinese-speaking program. Let us follow Searle’s example in calling the man in the room ‘John Searle.’ It is important to note that when one asks the English Room what its name is, it will not answer ‘John Searle.’ The name which will be given will be that of the program which John is running (let us call it ‘Al’), not the program which (supposedly) is John. John, in as much as he understands anything, will see the interaction between Al and the outside interlocutor as a conversation between two intelligences, neither of which is him. In order to better appreciate this point, we will have to clarify another ambiguity which lies in Searle’s account.

Before we do this, however, lets first point out that the difference between the program which John is running, Al, and the program which is John is an illustration of the difference between the representation of syntax and the syntax of representation. Once that this difference is appreciated, the fact that John understands nothing in the Chinese Room setup becomes entirely irrelevant, for even if he did understand the symbols which he was manipulating, we have no more (or less) reason to believe that Al understands anything. John’s understanding is completely independent of, and therefore completely irrelevant to the understanding of Al.

Of course both of these situations, the Chinese Room and the English Room which I have set up, are almost certainly wrong. The fact that the input and output of a program are Chinese characters gives us no reason to assume that the program itself runs on some syntax composed of Chinese characters. While Searle never claims any different, this points to a significant gloss in Searle’s account: what is the nature of the program which he is running in the Chinese Room? Sure, it gives Chinese output in response to Chinese input, but what happens between the two? This is hardly a trivial point since this is where the relevant understanding (Al’s as opposed to John’s) is supposed to happen. If all we are concerned with is John’s inability to understand the input and output of the Chinese Room, all we have said is that John does not understand Chinese. We have said nothing at all about the program itself or its formal structure.

To recap, John’s instructions are in English. The input and output are Chinese characters. But what is the actual syntax which the Chinese speaking program is running on? Searle’s Chinese Room has both the input/output and the syntax as being Chinese characters, but this only serves to confuse the issue. Let us, instead, change the scenario a bit in a way which the Searle’s response to the Robot reply seems to demand: let us suppose that the syntax of the program is entirely different from the form of the input/output. His counter-reply seems to merit such a distinction, for he suggests that the sensory input/output of the robot is just more Chinese characters. If this is so, then John, from inside the Chinese robot, has no way to distinguish between sensory input which originates from Chinese characters, trees, robot-breathing or, more importantly, spoken or written English. In other words, we could have an English Room in which the English-speaking John runs a program written in a syntax composed of Chinese Characters.

Let us now ask Searle’s all important question: Does John understand? The answer is both yes and no, but neither answer is at all relevant. It is for this reason that I suggested that when John runs the English Room scenario he would likely not understand very much. Inasmuch as John could understand the input/output (since they are written in English), he would merely understand it as a conversation between two intelligences, neither of which is him. One intelligence would reside outside the room. The other intelligence would be that in, or responsible for the program which he is running. Whether John understands the input/output or the syntax of the program is entirely independent of whether the program responsible for the input/output is intelligent or not.

The Chinese Room is not merely intended as a refutation of Strong AI, but also as demonstration of the unreliability of the Turing Test for intelligence.  According to John Searle, the Chinese Room passes the Turing Test without being intelligent in the relevant sense, therefore passing the Turing Test is not sufficient for having intelligence.  It is, partially, for this reason that Searle reintroduces all the chauvinistic and prejudicial preconditions for intelligence (I will use the terms ‘intelligence’, ‘conscious’ and ‘understanding’ rather interchangeably) that Turing attempted to dispose of with his test in the form of causal powers.

There are (at least) two ways in which the Turing Test can be salvaged from Searle’s criticisms.  First, one can attempt to show that the Chinese Room actually is intelligent in the relevant sense after all.  (I personally find the virtual mind approach quite compelling.)  This, of course, would amount to a refutation of the Chinese Room argument altogether. 

While I am not at all persuaded by the Chinese Room argument, as a functionalist I see this approach as being deeply problematic.  The Chinese Room argument is aimed at showing that any and all programs that pass the Turing Test are, by themselves, insufficient for consciousness.  The denial of this conclusion does not entail that every program which passes the Turing Test is, therefore, conscious.  Consider two definitions of the “right” program which the man in the Chinese Room is running:

1. The Behavioral Definition: The right program has the proper input/output relations, regardless of what formal relations hold between the two.
2. The Functional Definition: The right program has both the proper input/output relations as well as the proper formal relations between two.

The functionalist is committed to the claim that anything which instantiated the functionally right program is conscious and any thing which is conscious instantiates the functionally right program.  Nevertheless, there are many programs which are behaviorally right, and therefore pass the Turing Test, without being functionally right.  Thus, the functionalist seems committed to the claim that the Turing Test does not serve as a reliable indicator of intelligence.

There is, however, another way for to save the Turing Test, or something very close to it, from Searle’s criticisms which not only does not deny the strength of the Chinese Room argument but also allows the functionalist to place more confidence in the test.  This approach is to accept that the Turing Test is a reliable indicator of intelligence but not a reliable locator of intelligence.

Consider the case of communicating with a friend by way of walkie-talkie.  Strictly speaking, the walkie-talkie is passing the Turing Test!  The same can be said for a telephone, instant messenger programs, mailboxes, etc.  When we communicate through these mediums, we are completely convinced that we are indeed communicating with some intelligence, exactly the reaction which the Turing Test suggests we should have.  Nevertheless, we are not, for a second, tempted to think that the mediums are where the intelligence resides.

Let us now turn our attention to the Chinese Room which, by definition, passes the Turing Test.  To deny that there is any intelligence, understanding or consciousness anyway is far too strong of a claim.  After all, how in the world is the room passing the test in the first place?  Where did Searle’s rule book come from?  The proper conclusion for Searle to draw from the Chinese Room argument is “Yes, the outside interlocutor is indeed communicating with an intelligent entity, but the man inside the room is not it.  The intelligence with which the interlocutor is communicating is the author of the rule book.”  Thus, Searle can still hold that instantiating the proper program is not, in itself, sufficient for intelligence while at the same time accepting the Turing Test as a reliable indicator of intelligence.

The functionalist, on the other hand, can tell a very similar story.  Even if the Chinese Room instantiates a program which is merely behaviorally right, as opposed to functionally right, the functionalist can claim that behaviorally right program is simply the product of some functionally right program, namely the author of the behaviorally right program.  Thus, the functionalist can claim that while passing the Turing Test does not logically entail the unidentified presence of some intelligent being, is serves, in practice, as a highly reliable indicator (but not locator!) of such.

Let us now consider the case of the Chinese Room which instantiates a functionally right program.  While the functionalist is (it seems) compelled to grant intelligence to this Chinese Room, the question of where the program came from still lingers.  Even if we grant that the room is now intelligent, is it not a sort of derived, second class intelligence?  Isn’t the real intelligence in the programmer after all?

The proper response to this question is that the difference between real and derived intelligence makes no difference since ALL intelligence is derived.  This point, I take it, is similar to Dennett’s rejection of intrinsic intentionality.  Humans, according to the functionalist, are intelligent in virtue of the program they are running in their brains.  Where did this program come from?  The answer is from our biology (by way of natural selection), our culture (by way of shared knowledge and language) and our personal experience with the world.  Human intelligence is no less derived than is that of the functionally right program in the Chinese Room.

Here is the outline of a presentation I am going to give tonight in my Philosophy of Mind seminar:

1. The Chinese Room

a. The thought experiment: Searle is trapped in a room equipped with a book (written in English) which contains the proper “program” for manipulating Chinese symbols in a way which allows him to pass the Chinese Turing Test.  Thus, he behaves as if he understood Chinese without actually understanding Chinese.

b. What does the computer have which Searle in his Chinese Room lacks?  Nothing.

c. What does a competent Chinese speaker have that computer, therefore, lacks? Understanding.

2. Searle’s conclusions

a. The syntax of a program by itself is neither constitutive of nor sufficient for semantic content while minds do have semantic content.

b. The purely abstract, formal syntax of a program is causally inert while minds do have causal efficacy.

3. Objections:

a. There actually is understanding in Searle’s Room.

                                                             i. The Systems reply: the entire system understands Chinese.

1.       Searle:  Allow me to internalize all the rules, there is still no understanding.

                                                            ii. The Virtual mind reply: Searle confuses the syntax of representation with the representation of syntax.  The shuffling of represented syntax at the level of the man creates a second mind (this one for the entire system) at an entirely different level.

1.       Searle:  This is a bit speculative and metaphysically extravagant.

b. The right program is not being instantiated.

                                                             i. What makes a program the “right” one?

1.       Behavior:  The proper input/output relations make a program the right one.

2.       Function:  Both the input/output relations as well as the formal relations which hold between the two make a program the right one.

3.       Searle: I can have whatever formal program you like and the point still stands.

                                                            ii. The Robot reply: If we allowed the Chinese Room some form of sensory input, it could attach meaning to its symbols.

1.       Searle:  The sensory input would just be more, meaningless syntax (The Matrix).

                                                          iii. The Brain simulator reply: If we simulate every neuron firing on a Turing Machine it will understand.

1.       Searle:  Simulation is not duplication.  The Turing Machine only models rather than instantiates the proper causal properties.

c. The program is not being instantiated in the right way.  (Searle’s point.)

                                                             i. The Instantiation reply: The symbols need to be the efficient causes which bring the machine from one computational state to another.  What is supposed to matter is the causal dynamics among the symbols not between the symbols and some operator.

1.       Searle:  This is to (at least) partially concede that causal powers matter.  Beyond this, however, the symbols are still without content.

                                                            ii. The Neural-Net reply:  A properly trained neural-net is the way which the right program must be instantiated.

1.       Searle:  Any neural-net program can be run on a serial machine, taking us back to the original problem.

2.       Searle:  Consider an enormous Chinese gym in which a vast army of people are performing the proper program.  There is still no understanding of Chinese.

4. The Biggest Problems:

a. If one recognizes the difference between the syntax of representation and the representation of syntax, it is difficult to see how the argument gets off the ground at all.  Perhaps a non-linguistic thought experiment might be more compelling?

b. It is not clear that strong AI is as committed to the total isolation of syntax from all causal considerations as Searle suggests it is.

c. It is unclear what role, if any, causal powers are supposed to play in the Chinese Room Argument.  Is it just an ad hoc addition aimed at preventing counterexamples?  What connection, if any, is supposed to exist between causal powers and semantic content?

Many have seen a glaring problem with Searle’s use of the Chinese Room Argument, namely that it shows too much.  If we place the necessary conditions for the mental too high, we run the risk of thereby disqualifying human-mentality.  It is with this very idea in mind that Searle embraces a seemingly vague position in which biological matter has some undefined and undescovered capacity to cause mental states, whatever those are for Searle.  This appeal to our “causal powers” is essentially the only vangaurd which Searle has against the brain-simulator reply.

The brain-simulator reply to the Chinese Room Argument, it will be remembered, suggests that if we simply program a computer which simulates the neural firings of the brain, down to the last neuron, we simply have no basis for claiming that such a computer does not understand language or is not access-conscious in the same way humans do/are.  Searle’s counter-reply is that such a position is to confuse simulation with duplication.  Sure a computer can simulate a neural processes down to the last neuron, but since such a program does not involve the same causal powers it does not amount to the actual duplication of mental states.  Just as computer simulations of storms cannot get us wet, so too computer simulations of brain cannot be conscious.

This response, however, brings to light an inconsistency in Searle’s thought surrounding neural-networks.  After all, connectionist networks are not instantiations of the Chinese Room sicne they are not Von Neumann machines; there is no central processor which reads and writes symbols. Since a neural-net has no symbols, Searle’s Chinese Room Argument simply does not apply.

To this, Searle objects.  All neural-nets, he argues, can be run on Universal Turing machines, and therefore are subject to his argument.  The problem with this response, however, is that Searle is confusing simulation with duplication.  A Universal Turing machine can certainly be said to simulate a neural-net, but it is unclear, at best, that it can actually duplicate one in the relevant sense.  In other words, Searle needs to clarify why a neural-net which can be simulated on a Universal Turing machine falls prey to the Chinese Room Argument while a biological brain which can also be simulated on a Universal Turing machine does not.

Of course the most obvious counter-reply would be an appeal to causal powers.  This appeal seems to wear very thin within the present context, however.  It was precisely because a Universal Turing machine merely simulated rather than duplicated the causal processes in the brain that the causal powers seemed important.  Why cannot the neural-net escape the Chinese Room argument since a Universal Turing machine merely simulates rather than duplicates its causal powers?  What is it that is simulated or duplicated in one case but not the other?

Last year I put out quite a few posts concerning John Searle’s Chinese Room Argument.  Well, I’ve returned to the subject to find that my comments and criticisms miss the point to some degree or another.  Since I will be writing a decent sized paper on the subject over the next few weeks, you can expect to see a few posts of varying length in the near future.

Like most, I disagree with the Chinese Room Argument.  This is about the most uncontroversial thing anybody can say on the subject.  As soon as one attempts to move beyond a mere statement of disagreement, the waters tend to muddy.  While I certainly plan to articulate a number of points where I see the argument going astray, in this post I merely wish to breifly address what I see as the main flaw in the argument.

Searle makes the serious mistake of confusing the syntax of representation with the representation of syntax.   A Chinese speaker in a room is representing various sentences according to the syntax which underlies the Chinese language.  Searle, while locked in the room with his program, is simply representing the syntax which underlies the Chinese language according to the syntax which underlies the English language.  Consequently, nobody should expect him to understand Chinese, for this is not hte syntax of the representation scheme which he is implementing.

Furthermore, it is unclear, at best, to me whether the representation of the Chinese syntax by means of token-physicalism, could ever provide the basis for a Chinese mind of any kind.  It certainly seems possible that type-physicalism could provide the stability for the implementation of such a program, but token-physicalism just seems too unstable.  Thus, not only should we not expect Searle to not understand Chinese, we should not expect there to by any kind of virtual Chinese mind either.

(This is a rought draft of a paper which I am writing for my environmental ethics class.)

In his book The Ultimate Resource Julian Simon presents a number of arguments in support of claim that natural resources are infinite. In this paper I will limit my attention to his argument by induction from history. First I will attempt to clearly articulate what Simon’s thesis actually is. Second, I will consider which arguments are crucial for Simon’s case. Finally, it will be argued that the inductive inferences which Simon makes are unreliable due to their being drawn from a biased as well as only partially relevant sample of history. A less biased view of history, I will conclude, supports the conservationist’s position.

v How Resources are Infinite.

It is important to understand what Simon means by this claim. He does not mean that oil reserves, etc. are limitless, for oil reserves are not resources. Rather, resources are those services or functions which oil reserves perform for us, namely that of being a reliable source of energy. Accordingly, Simon’s position is that oil reserves are but one among many actual or potential sources of the same, infinite resource.

We should also be clear about what Simon means by claiming that such resources are infinite. By ‘infinite’ Simon means to say that given any resource, with time its availability will continuously increase along with a corresponding decrease in scarcity and cost. Consider three possible claims which Simon could possibly be making:

I. Natural resources cannot be proven to be limited, even in principle.

II. The scarcity/cost of resources can, in principle, continuously decrease with time.

III. The scarcity/cost of resources will, in practice, continuously decrease with time.

It is important to understand how strong Simon’s thesis is, in order to see where is differs from the conservationists which he so strongly opposes. For instance, the conservationist would likely agree with I. Many conservationists would also agree with II as well. What the conservationist will not agree to is III, and this is where Simon parts ways with them: “The long-run trends make it very clear that the costs of materials, and their scarcity, continuously decline with the growth of income and technology.” (Simon, 62)

Simon sees the historical record as supporting his rather bold claim. History, he claims, demonstrates that societies are constantly engaged in a battle against scarcity/cost which can be modeled thusly:

· As the population of the society increases, so, in the short run, does the scarcity/cost of resources.

· The rise in cost created by scarcity spurs the society into innovative action.

· While most attempts at innovative action fail, within a free society a solution to the problem of scarcity/cost will eventually be found.

· Once a solution is found to the problem of scarcity, the resource becomes less expensive than it was before the problem arose.

Simply put, the problem of scarcity/cost is simply the increase of scarcity/cost in a society. The solution to this problem, accordingly, is simply a decrease in scarcity/cost in a society. The problem is solved, according to Simon, by way of innovative action, by which he means scientific and technological advances. If Simon’s model is understood as simply suggesting that science and technology have given society the ability to decrease scarcity/cost it become difficult to disagree with him.

The idea that technological innovation can make resources, as Simon defines them, less scarce/costly seems, therefore, like a safe premise on which to base the following argument which is, hidden premises aside, taken to be deductively valid:

P1 Society is able to overcome the problem of scarcity/cost by means of technological innovation.

P2 Society’s capacity for technological innovation will continuously increase with time.

P3 Society’s capacity to overcome the problem of scarcity/cost by means of technological innovation will continuously increase with time.

This argument, however, is not being challenged by the conservationist. This argument only supports position II at best, and the conservationist is not committed to rejecting II. Just because society will have a greater ability to overcome some problem of scarcity/cost in the future than it has in the past, says nothing about how well it will, in actuality, fair against such problems in the future.

In order to move beyond the conservationist’s position (I and II), Simon argues inductively:

P1a Society has continuously overcome the problem of scarcity/cost by means of technological innovation.

P2a Society’s capacity to overcome the problem of scarcity/cost by means of technological innovation will continuously increase with time.

P3a Society will continuously overcome the problem of scarcity/cost by means of technological innovation in the future.

While this argument is not deductive in nature, it is a strong inductive argument. The future is expected to resemble the past, based on a reason which is relevant to such an inference. Furthermore, the argument leads to a conclusion with which the conservationist is committed to rejecting. This, then, is the argument which we will spend the rest of the paper discussing.

v The Problem of Sample Bias

Inductive inferences are only strong to the extent that they are, among other things, drawn from unbiased and relevant data samples. Simon’s appeal to history displays neither of these features. Accordingly, in will be argued that an unbiased sample of history demonstrates that society has not overcome the problem of scarcity/cost in any relevant sense. Let us first turn our attention to the problem of sample bias.

“Society has continuously overcome…” Who, exactly, is P1a about? If Simon simply means “it has continuously been the case that some society or another has overcome the problem of scarcity/cost” then we surely must agree with Simon. Such an interpretation of P1a, however, undermines the conclusion drawn in P3a. Most conservationists are willing to admit that some form of society will be able to overcome the problem of scarcity/cost; he does not expect the extinction of all societies. This reading of P1a, therefore, is too weak for Simon’s purposes since it does not allow him to move beyond the conservationist position. Another reading of P1a would be that “society has never failed to overcome the problem of scarcity/cost.” This interpretation, however, is too strong, for it is abundantly clear that many societies have indeed failed to overcome the problem of scarcity/cost. This reading should also be rejected.

Simon is thus caught between two extremes, both of which he must reject. If he claims that society’s historical record of overcoming the problem of scarcity/cost is too good, then the premise upon which his conclusion is based is false. If, on the other hand, he waters down his premise too much, his conclusion becomes trivial. The question, then, is to what degree society has succeeded in overcoming the problem of scarcity/cost. Such a question, Simon would agree, can only be answered by an appeal to the historical record.

Simon’s account of society’s interaction with the problem of scarcity/cost throughout history is extremely biased in that he views human history from a winner’s perspective. Coming from a society which has successfully and continuously overcome the problem of scarcity/cost, it is easy to assume that such triumphs are the rule rather than the exception. The same can be said for Simon’s readers and anybody else who is alive today within some society; for the very fact that a person is alive today within a society shows that, by very definition, their ancestors were able to overcome the problem of scarcity/cost. Since the loser’s perspective no longer exists, it is too easy to underestimate, or even forget about it altogether.

How common is the loser’s perspective? This question is simply another way of asking to what degree society has overcome the problem of scarcity/cost. The answer is this question is that we are not sure. There is simply no way of knowing with much confidence how often societies have failed to overcome the problem of scarcity/cost throughout history. We do, however, know of some instances. In his influential book, Collapse, Jared Diamond describes how the problem of scarcity/cost has led to the downfall of the numerous societies throughout human history: Easter Island, Pitcairn Island, the Maya, the Anasazi and the Greenland Norse. Modern examples of societies’ inability to solve the problem of scarcity/cost can also be found in the cases of Rwanda and Haiti. While we have no reason to assume rampant failure across human history, we have no more reason to assume rampant success either.

v The Problem of Sample Relevancy

The other condition which must be met for Simon to successfully draw inductive inferences from human history is that the samples must instantiate the relevant feature which we are projecting into the future, namely that of being able to overcome the problem of scarcity/cost. While it is certainly granted that the historical trend for winning societies has been that of reducing scarcity/cost, it is not clear that they have overcome the same kinds of scarcity/cost problems which society will soon face. To be specific, there are three relevant differences between the problem of scarcity/cost as it has been overcome in the past and the problem as it presents itself now.

The first difference is that of variety. Until relatively recently, the shortage of resources consisted primarily of a shortage of food, water and, to some degree, shelter. The problem of scarcity as it now presents itself, however, includes not only food, water and shelter, but a shortage of living space, medical supplies and (especially) energy as well. Societies’ track record for dealing with a shortage of energy is essentially non-existent thereby preventing reliable generalizations to be drawn.

The modern problem differs from that of history in that historical instances of society running out of some specific material which served some function is rare. Indeed, the only instances which come to mind in which a society ran out of some material are those which are mentioned by Diamond in his book. It would seem, then, that generalizations drawn from history in this aspect suggest the very opposite of what Simon wishes to establish.

Finally, the modern problem of scarcity/cost differs from that of history in scope. In the past, whenever a society was confronted with a problem of scarcity/cost, they had the option of migrating to some other location in which there was no such problem. In other words, societies throughout history did not solve the problem of scarcity/cost so much as avoid it or simply leave it behind them. The global scope of the present problem, however, precludes such an option, especially as it concerns food and water sources.

v Summary

The problem of sample bias shows that generalizations about society’s past success at overcoming the problem of scarcity/cost are speculative and unreliable at best. This casts doubt on the truth of P1a. The problem of sample relevancy casts further doubt on the inductive inference from P1a to P3a, as it was shown that society had never overcome the problem of scarcity/cost in a relevant manner. While it may be possible, in principle, that a solution to the problem of scarcity/cost will be found (position II), we have no assurances that such will be the case.

At this point Simon can protest that these same arguments serve to undermine any kind of inductive inferences to the conservationist’s conclusion that society is unable to overcome the problem of scarcity/cost in the future. If the historical record is indeed biased as well as largely irrelevant, then the conservationist’s position is no more supported by history than is Simon’s.

Such an objection, however, is to largely misunderstand the conservationist’s position on two accounts. First, the conservationist assumes presumption in the debate by maintaining that their position is the less risky of the two; if we are not sure whether society will be able to solve the problem, it is best that society take measures to not confront the problem at all. In other words, our inability to draw reliable inferences is interpreted as a reason for the conservationist position which is one of caution in the face of ignorance. Second, the conservationist sees prevention of the scarcity/cost problem as being an actual solution to the problem of scarcity/cost. Foresightful prevention is a form of avoiding the problem, and history has shown that such a strategy has been successful.

Bibliography

Simon, Julian: The Ultimate Resource (1981) reprinted as “Natural Resources are Infinite” in Environmental Ethics: Concepts, Policy, Theory edited by Joseph DesJardins (1999)

Diamond, Jared: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2004)

(This is a rough draft of a paper I am writing for my phil. of biology class. Comments and criticisms are certainly appreciated.)

In this paper I will describe and argue for a position which I will call selective relativity. I follow C. Kenneth Waters in arguing that the debate surrounding which is the uniquely correct level at which selection operates derives in part from a deep-seated conceptual confusion. This confusion is in not realizing that all notions of fitness, selective force, etc. follow from rather than constrain the biologist’s identification of a unit of selection. The only things which constrain the biologist’s choice in unit are pragmatic concerns and I will defend this claim against gene-centrist arguments and counterexamples. Finally, I will demonstrate that all such objections are based in the same conceptual confusion mentioned above.

· Units of Selection as a Pragmatic Choice

With his theory of special relativity, Albert Einstein demonstrated that the very idea of a uniquely correct inertial frame of reference was completely meaningless. The only reason one could have to think otherwise, it was shown, was due to a conceptual confusion in thinking that some concepts could be applied independent of an inertial frame of reference from which they are necessarily derived. If we call the inertial frame of reference “X” and the concepts of velocity, length, simultaneity, etc. “Y”, his ideas can be formulated as follows:

a) Y only has meaning with respect to some X.

b) After X is in place, Y follows logically from it.

c) Truth and falsity can only be applied to Y with respect to some X, which is held constant.

d) Holding Y constant while varying X leads to confusion and error.

e) There is no uniquely correct X.

f) Different X’s with their corresponding Y’s are simply different descriptions of or perspectives on the same physical phenomenon.

g) The scientist’s choice in X is constrained solely by pragmatic concerns.

These exact same points hold within evolutionary biology if we simply redefine Y as forces of selection, evolutionary fitness, etc. and X as the frame of reference which is created by drawing a conceptual line between some selected unit and it surrounding, selecting environment. I suggest, then, that the “units/levels of selection” debate is based in the same conceptual confusion upon which the debate concerning the absolute inertial frame in reference was, namely in not recognizing (a) and (b). Accordingly, searching for the correct unit of selection in evolutionary biology will be no more profitable than the physicist’s search for the cosmic ether was.

The argument presented above for selective relativity is explicitly an argument from analogy: in physics, points (c) – (g) follow from the truth of (a) and (b), therefore, since (a) and (b) hold true in evolutionary biology points (c) – (g) must follow as well. In his paper “Tempered Realism about the Force of Selection” C. Kenneth Waters argues to the same end, but by different means: “Only after this division [between unit and environment] is made can we speak meaningfully about the forces of selection and the levels at which they impinge.” (Waters, 571) Due, however, to limitations space and scope, a detailed analysis of his arguments will not be given here. What concerns us for the time being is primarily a firm grasp of selective relativity, (c) – (g), and the premises upon which it is founded, (a) and (b), in order to defend the view from gene-centric criticisms. Such criticisms, it will be shown, are primarily aimed at producing counterexamples, especially to (g).

· Additional Constraints

The gene-centrist’s argument that the individual gene is the proper unit of selection as opposed to the individual organism depends upon (g) being false for one reason or another. One way of viewing selective relativity is in terms of what Wilson calls “cheap individualism” only generalized to all level and units (Wilson, 67); selection as it applies to the gene, gene-complex, cell, trait, organism or group is valid in every case by very definition. What the gene-centrist objects to is not that some unit is the correct one simply by definition, for Williams’ argument for gene-centrism makes this very move. (Williams, 44; Dawkins, 33) Rather, he objects to the claim that every unit wins by definition. Thus, in order to make their argument that the gene and only the gene is the correct unit of selection stick, they must assume that X is constrained by something beyond mere pragmatic concerns.

This something else is stability. Y correctly applies to some X only if X is sufficiently stable across numerous generations.

“One necessary condition [for natural selection] is that the selected entity must have a high degree of permanence and a low rate of endogenous change, relative to the degree of bias (differences in selection coefficients)… [there must be] a favorable or unfavorable selection bias equal to several or many times its rate of endogenous change.” (Williams, 43, 44)

The gene-centrist claims that the only biological entity which is able to meet this criterion of stability is the individual gene, or something close to it. It is only genes which are sufficiently stable across numerous generations in virtue of their being replicators, entities which achieve multi-generational longevity by way of replicating themselves with high fidelity and fecundity. (Dawkins, 191) With the sole exception of the individual gene, all other biological entities are too ephemeral to meet this criterion and therefore do not qualify to be X.

This account contradicts selective relativity on a number of points; at least (e), (f) and (g) to be specific. According to the gene-centrist, since X is constrained by the stability criterion, X is not constrained solely by pragmatic concerns. While he does not go so far as to argue that there cannot possibly be any other biological entity in addition to the gene which passes the stability criterion, it is argued that in actuality the gene is the uniquely correct X. Furthermore, since the individual gene is the uniquely correct X, all other potential X’s must be describing the physical phenomenon incorrectly, meaning that they are describing a distinct physical phenomenon altogether as being true.

It should be noted that the gene-centrist’s criticism does not directly address the premises or the structure upon which the argument for selective relativity rests. Nowhere does the gene-centrist argue that (a) or (b) is not the case. Rather, a counterexample is provided to (e), (f) and (g) which are supposed to be the consequences of (a) and (b). If the gene-centrist’s claims are true, then this would be strong reason to believe that something must be wrong with either the structure of the argument or its premises. The gene-centrist will likely reject the application of the of the argument to evolutionary phenomenon since to reject the structure of the argument itself would be to undermine special relativity as well. I will respond to the gene-centrist’s counterexample by demonstrating that it is a paradigm case of the conceptual confusion which selective relativity is aimed at avoiding.

· Conceptual Confusion

The gene-centrist’s argument violates the premises upon which our argument from analogy is built, (a) and (b), and therefore falls prey to the predicted confusion and error, (d). Let us first consider how it violates (a) and (b). Here is Williams’ full quote:

“The essence of the genetical theory of natural selection is a statistical bias in the relative rates of survival of alternatives (genes, individuals, etc.). The effectiveness of such bias in producing adaptation is contingent on the maintenance of certain quantitative relationships among operative forces. One necessary condition is that the selected entity must have a high degree of permanence and a low rate of endogenous change, relative to the degree of bias (differences in selection coefficients).” (Williams, 43)

The stability of the selected unit is necessary, according to Williams, in order to ensure the statistical bias produced by various relationships. Thus, what is required for evolution by natural selection is not merely the stability of the selected unit. If such were the case then one could indeed simply look for the most stable biological entity as the gene-centrist does. Rather, what is required is stability in the relationship between the selected unit and its selecting environment. Accordingly, the necessary stability cannot simply be read off of the selected unit alone. Instead, stability, operative forces and bias are all aspects of Y which must follow from rather than constrain by preceding X.

This tendency to see Y as being, to some degree, independent of any X leads the gene-centrist to make a fundamental error in their argument against those who see selection as operating at the level of the organism. One unit, the organism, is seen as being in an unstable relationship with the environment which corresponds to that particular unit. This relationship is then compared to that which another unit, the gene, has with an environment that does not correspond to it, namely that of the organism. (The common appeal to interactors/vehicles is all too helpful in facilitating this confusion.) Once the individual gene is seen within its own corresponding environment (which includes not only the environment external to the organism, but everything which is internal to the organism while remaining external to the individual gene as well) the stability of the unit/environment relationship no longer appears near as stable as it once did. As the gene-centrist himself is wont to point out, each generation the individual gene finds itself in a completely different genetic environment due to the genetic shuffling native to sexual reproduction. In other words, once one sees stability as an aspect of Y which follows from X rather than the other way around not only does the counterexample to selective relativism vanish, but the gene-centrist’s argument against selection at other levels loses its force as well.

· Replication, Reproduction and Instantiation

There still remains significant work to be done, however, in order to fully dissolve the gene-centrist’s argument against selective relativity. While the gene-centrist’s appeal to stability may rest upon a conceptual confusion, the above response seems a little too quick and easy to conclude that, pragmatic concerns aside, there are no constraints at all on the unit of selection. It certainly seems that replication, or at least reproduction is essential to being a unit of selection and this is what the gene-centrist’s criticism is really getting at. If such is the case, then replication or reproduction would indeed be constraints to X in addition to those of pragmatic concerns. Thus, (g) still seems to be in trouble.

This objection gets its strength from two sources of conceptual confusion: (1) the failure to appreciate the type/token distinction, and (2) the mistake of viewing some aspect of Y as existing independent of some X. Let us first address the lack of appreciation for the type/token distinction. Individual tokens of some gene last no longer than the organisms which carry them. The supposed longevity of the type GENE lies in its ability to be tokened, by way of replication, with sufficient frequency in the population. There is no reason why this same reasoning cannot also be applied at the level of the organism. Thus, the type DOG achieves its multigenerational longevity by being tokened, this time by way of reproduction, with sufficient frequency in the population. The supposed stability of both cases follows from simply holding the type constant across generations and nothing more.

With such a view in mind, we are now equipped to address the confusion of viewing some X as following from some aspect of Y rather than the other way around or as viewing Y as having meaning independent of some X. Fitness and selective forces, according to the type/token account of replication and reproduction, are simply the relationships which hold between the frequency with which a type is tokened and the frequency with which the type ceases to be tokened within some population; fitness is simply the growth rate of tokening-frequencies. By this account, it is irrelevant how a type comes to be tokened, just so long as it is tokened. (Harms) Accordingly, fitness and selective force, as aspects of Y, generalize to non-reproducing types as well. In fact, to be a type which is tokened in some population simply is to be a potential X along with some Y which necessarily follows from it. In fact, it is in virtue of every X being a type rather than a token that every X meets the stability criterion.

An example which demonstrates how non-reproducing X’s can have corresponding Y’s is in order. Consider the case of the queen-bee and the worker-bee. There are a number of types at work in this phenomenon which can be correctly described from any number of perspectives. The swarm of bees interacts with its environment in order to created more swarms of bees. The individual bees are interacting with their individual environments in order to create more individual bees. The queen is interacting with her environment of workers in order to create more queens. The individual worker is interacting with his environment composed of other workers and a queen in order to create more workers by way of the queen. The bee-genes are interacting with their genetic environment, which includes all the other individual bees along with their corresponding bee-genes, in order to create more bee-genes. Strangest of all, the individual bee hive is interacting with its environment, which consists of all the bees, to create more bee hives! The genes replicate, the queens reproduce, the workers do neither, the swarm splits and the hive gets built. Each X has its own corresponding Y which logically follows from it and describes the frequency with which X is tokened. No particular X is uniquely correct in this account, for each X simply describes the same phenomenon from a different perspective.

· Conclusion

Concepts such as fitness, selective force, stability, etc. follow from rather than constrain the biologist’s choice in unit of selection and all arguments for some unit(s) of selection to the exclusion of any others rest on a conceptual confusion about this point. The scientist’s identification of a unit of selection is constrained solely by pragmatic matters, such as whether he has an interest in the unit or how difficult it is for him to define, identify and/or quantify the unit, not on whether the potential X is a replicator or a reproducer. Viewing natural selection from different units of selection is simply viewing the same phenomenon from different perspectives and searches for the uniquely correct unit of selection are tantamount to quests for cosmic ether.

Bibliography

Dawkins, Richard (1989) The Selfish Gene, 2^nd ed.

Harms, William (2004) Information and Meaning in Evolutionary Processes

Waters, C. Kenneth (1991) “Tempered Realism about the Force of Selection”. Philosophy of Science, 58 (1991) pp. 553-573

Williams, George C. (1966) Excerpts from Adaptation and Natural Selection. Reprinted in Sober, Elliot ed. (2006) Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology

Wilson, David Sloan (1989) “Levels of Selection: An Alternative to Individualism in Biology and the Human Sciences”. Reprinted in Sober, Elliot ed. (2006) Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Given the non-essential nature of evolutionary biology this question really has no uniquely true answer. Consider a similar question: Which is the primary unit in natural selection, the chicken or the egg? This, roughly speaking, is the difference between the organism centrists (the chicken) and the gene centrists (the egg). The former says that eggs (genes) are what chickens use to make more chickens. The latter says that chickens are what eggs use to make more eggs. In this post we will consider the gene-centrist’s primary argument for why their view is the uniquely true one.

C. Kenneth Waters argues, as we saw in a recent post, that neither the egg’s-eye-view nor the chicken’s-eye-view is uniquely true to the exclusion of the other. Just as velocity is a concept which only makes sense after a frame of reference has been established, so too selective forces only make sense after a unit of selection has already been established. To continue the parallel, just as the inexistence of any absolute frame of reference in physics does not make all relative frames of reference of equal pragmatic value, so too the inexistence of any absolute or true unit of selection does not make all units of selection equally useful for the purposes at hand. Waters fully acknowledges this.

This, however, does not seem to do justice to the powerful arguments which the gene-centrists present against the phenotype or the group as being possible units of selection. The reason why the gene must be the level at which natural selection operates is not merely due to the pragmatic value of such a frame of reference. Rather, argues the gene-centrist, the gene’s-eye-view is the uniquely true one for the simple fact that the gene is the only unit which meets the necessary prerequisites in order for natural selection to function at all.

In his book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins repeats and elaborates upon a number of arguments produced by George Williams for the gene-centered view of evolution. Let us consider first the reasons why the former holds that groups (populations) and phenotypes cannot be seen as the units of selection. Briefly, populations are not discreet enough entities in that they lose their identity by constant blending. Phenotypes, on the other hand, are each unique thereby failing to provide the stability necessary for natural selection to have any effect. In short, both the phenotype and the group are too ephemeral.

In contrast, genes have three features which no other units have:

1. Longevity in the form of copies of themselves.

2. This longevity is accomplished by way of replicative fidelity.

3. They also have fecundity in producing numerous copies of themselves.

Dawkins takes these conditions to be absolutely necessary given the nature of natural selection. Charles Darwin, it will be remembered, held that variation, heritability and a struggle for survival were together necessary and sufficient for natural selection to produce adaptive change. This, however, is not entirely true as Darwin himself acknowledged to some degree. What natural selection requires is a significant degree of stability in the unit of selection in that the rate of variation must be comparably slow compared to the rate of heritable reproduction in order for selective pressures to have any sustained effect. As Williams put it,

“The essence of the genetical theory of natural selection is a statistical bias in the relative rates of survival of alternatives (genes, individuals, etc.). The effectiveness of such bias in producing adaptation is contingent on the maintenance of certain quantitative relationships among the operative forces. One necessary condition is that the selected entity must have a high degree of permanence and a low rate of endogenous change, relative to the degree of bias (differences in selective coefficients). Permanence implies reproduction with a potential geometric increase.”

This stability is accomplished, Williams and Dawkins argue, only by genes in the form of their making highly accurate copies of themselves within populations and throughout generations. Indeed, Williams defines a gene as “any hereditary information for which there is a favorable or unfavorable selection bias equal to several or many times its rate of endogenous change.”

Notice that the gene centrist does not merely argue that phenotypes and populations do not have a high degree of evolutionary fitness. Rather, they argue that phenotypes and populations do not meet the necessary criteria to have evolutionary fitness in any meaningful sense of the word. Evolutionary fitness is a trait which only sufficiently stable replicating entities have and neither phenotypes nor populations are such things. The term “evolutionary fitness” no more applies to them than it does to clouds in the sky.

Thus, the only entities which can have any kind of evolutionary fitness are replicators with a high degree of fidelity, fecundity and longevity. These constraints eliminate all other potential units of selection (species, groups, phenotypes, traits, cells and possibly even gene-complexes), leaving the gene’s-eye-view as the only viable and therefore true option.

There are two responses which the relativist can provide to such an argument. First, one can argue that what matters in terms of replication is not fidelity in physical replication but rather fidelity is functional replication, loosely defined. Thus, a daughter can be seen as a father’s way of eventually creating more fathers some times down the line. A second response would be to simply deny any essential role to replication whatsoever. Population dynamics only cares about the frequency of any type within a population, regardless of how this frequency increases or decreases. These responses will be pursued in greater detail in future posts.

Usually I tend to steer clear of political topics on this blog.  I’m not that well informed and I figure I would just make myself look even stupider than I already am.  It is with this in mind that I would like to ask three questions to those who support the war in any form:

1. What, exactly, constitutes “winning” the war in Iraq?
2. At what price (in terms of American/Iraqii lives and money) does winning cease to be worth it?
3. At any given time, who should decide whether continuing the war is still worth the price?

I don’t mean these questions to serve as some sort of substitute for an actual argument, nor do I want to debate the answers to these questions.  I simply want to understand the “other” position a little better.

Does selection operate at the level of genes, gene-complexes, traits, organisms or groups?  In this post I will discuss Waters’ claim, put forth in his article “Tempered Realism About the Force of Selection”, that an explanation at any of these levels is no more uniquely true then are those at any other level.  Each level redefines not only the unit of selection, but the relevant environment as well.  Thus, selection at any of the levels is simply a different way of telling the same story so to speak.  Such a view of selection, however, does require a weaker form of realism as to selective forces.

Imagine the following physical scenario in which two negatively charged particles (A and B) which are stationary and interact with a single free-floating and positively charged particle (C):

             (A-)                                         (B-)

                                    (C+)

There are two ways of describing the force that will be acting upon C:  We can say that C will experience two forces, one pulling it toward A and the other pulling it toward B.  We can also say, however, that C will experience a single force pulling it straight between A and B.  In one account C experiences two forces while in the other it experiences a single force.  Which account is the right one?  Is C subject to one force, two forces, or even three forces?  The fact of the matter is that in terms of predictive success and pragmatic value the two proposed explanations are exactly equal to each other. 

We might be inclined to think that explanation with two forces is somehow more “real” than is the explanation with only one force if only because the latter is simply an artificial composite of the former.  But what guarantees do we have that the former is not itself an artificial composite of some other explanation of some more basic level?  The A-B-C system is indeed composite of the A-C, B-C and A-B systems, but is not each of these simply a composite of other constitutive systems as well?  In the A-C system, C is subject to a single force.  In the B-C system, C is subject to a different force.  In the A-B-C system, C is subjected to yet another different force.  The force which is acting upon C is determined by how we define the system in question.

This debate about which is the uniquely true physical force acting upon C is exactly how C. Kenneth Waters perceives the debate regarding units of selection in biology to be.  Consider the difference between gene selectionism and gene-complex selectionism.  The former say that natural selection acts upon the individual gene while the latter claims that it works on the gene-pair.  Waters claims that both accounts are exactly the same in terms of predictive power.  The differences in each model emerge from the fact that they are each working within different systems.  Just as velocity must be defined with respect to a frame of reference, so too selective forces must be defined with respect to the where the line is drawn between the selected unit and its environment.

It will be remembered that the only way in which the gene-complex selectionists can claim that gene selectionism is inadequate is by viewing the latter as acting in an environment defined by the former.  Such a criticism, however, does not really attack gene centrism on its own terms.  Gene selection does not happen only in the environment which lies beyond the gene-complex, but rather operates in an environment which lies within the gene complex but beyond the gene itself.  In other words, the gene which a particular gene is paired with is included in the environment.  There is no reason why gene selectionism should not be able to describe a genes fitness as being dependent upon the gene which it happens to be paired with.  Thus, in the example of the gene for sickle cell anemia, this same gene has a different fitness when paired with a copy of itself than it does when paired with another gene, just as an altruist has a different fitness when interacting in an environment full of fellow altruists than it does in an environment full of non-altruists.  Thus, the selective forces which act upon the gene-complex can be seen as artificial composites or functions of the selective forces which act upon the individual gene of which it is constituted.

What Waters’ argues is that such an account generalizes to any and all of the proposed units of selection.  Selective pressure is a function of the fitness of the selected unit and the environment which is accordingly defined by the unit in question.  Thus,

“It makes no sense to argue that selection is impinging on one level and not the other(s)…

“The choice between genic models or higher level models is a choice between where to draw the conceptual divide between the environment and the selected domain…

“Only after this division is made can we speak meaningfully about the forces of selection and the levels at which they impinge…

“We can no longer maintain that a true description of a selection process provides a uniquely correct identification of the operative selective forces and the levels at which each impinges…

“This conclusion stands regardless of whether there are practical advantages to using one of the models.”

I completely agree with Waters’ thus far.  This point, however, is where Waters’ ends without considering many of the objections which quickly arise, particularly from the gene-centrist position.  Dawkins argued that the reasons for gene centrism were that only genes have the necessary fidelity, fecundity and longevity.  By choosing the individual of the group of the selected domain, these things do not somehow gain fidelity, fecundity or longevity.  In other words, while it may be the case that gene centrism can no longer claim exclusive truth on the matter, this does not make individual or group selection any more plausible. 

While such an objection falls beyond the scope of Waters’ paper, it does not fall beyond the matters which I wish to address.  In the next post I will argue that selection can and does act at the individual and group levels.

This post will be the first is a short series dedicated to the units of selection debate in evolutionary biology.  In this post I will recount the history of the debate including the major trend setters and the arguments which they presented for their own ideas concerning the level at which natural selection acts.  This will set the stage for later posts in which I will present my own positions on this as well as other related matters in biology and evolution.

Central to Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species is the idea that natural selection operates at the level of the individual organism.  It is individual organisms which are selected for breeding in artificial selection and since his version of natural selection was largely and argument from analogy with artificial selection it too was an account of individual selection.  More specifically, due to the geometric increase of individual organisms combined with the inevitably limited supply of resources, some individual organisms would tend to be more fit due, presumably, to the traits which they had inherited from their parents and who therefore have more access to resources.  Darwin did, however, find some exceptions to this rule of individual selection primarily in the colonies of the social insects.  He reconciled this discrepancy by suggesting that the entire colony acts as if it were one single organism.

This suggestion, however, paved the way for other forms of group selection.  Notice that it is due to the “altruistic” nature of insect colonies, in which workers are working not for the reproduction of their sterile selves but for the “good of the colony” that forced Darwin to posit a form of group selection.  This rationale simply opened the doors to more accounts of group selection as more and more account of natural altruism came pouring in.  Whenever there was an individual sacrificing itself in some way for the good of the group, there group selection was supposed to be happening.

In 1966 George Williams published his Adaptation and Natural Selection, in which he argued that parsimony dictates against explanations in terms of group selection.  As I have recently argued, since individual selection is always at work due to the limitation in resources, one can never have group selection without individual selection as well.  Thus, if a phenomenon can be explained completely and solely in terms of individual selection, then adding group selection to the account contributes no explanatory power whatsoever.  Thus, in his book Williams argued that individual or gene selection (he vacillates between the two through out his book) should be the primary explanation and that group selection should only be appealed to as a method of last resort.

A decade later, in his book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins took Williams’ account even further.  In contrast to Dawkins, Williams wavered between individual selection and gene selection while allowing for the rare occurrence of group selection as well.  Dawkins, on the other hand, argued that selection only happens at the level of the gene and seeing things from the gene’s-eye-view can account for all forms of both individual selection as well as group selection.  Genes, and not organisms or groups, were the only biological entities which had the longevity, fidelity and fecundity of replication which was essential to the selective process.

Throughout the 1980’s, however, Sober and Lewontin argued strongly and repeatedly against the views of Williams and Dawkins.  Viewing natural selection from the perspective of the individual genes does not take into account the important roles which the gene-pairs play in nature.  Consider the well known case of the sickle cell anemia gene in which having one set of the gene in question, which is recessive, gives the carrier a protection from malaria but having both pairs gives the carrier sickle cell anemia.  What matters here is not the fitness of the individual gene, but rather the fitness of the gene-complex or gene-pair.

During the 1990’s group selection also saw a bit of a comeback primarily in the work of David Sloan Wilson who developed a number of statistical models in which altruism in individual organisms could arise under some circumstances due to group selection.  His primary argument was that individual selection has only beat out group selection by mere definition by the methods which biologists adopt in their account.  When the biologist considers fitness across the entire population rather than across individual groups within the population, individual selection wins by fiat.  Such an approach does not even allow for the possibility of group selection for there are no groups under such a view.  Thus, to say that selection operates on the individual rather than the group in such a context is not to say anything of interest at all.

In the 21^st Century other efforts have been developed to overthrow the gene’s-eye-view account of natural selection.  Jablonka and Lamb, for example, argue that gene selectionism all but ignores the importance of developmental biology.  They claim that the latter demonstrates that what matters are not individual genes or even individual gene-complexes but rather the traits which such things partially contribute to in the developmental stages of the organism.  Gene development, they argue, is a largely canalized process which is influenced by numerous gene-complexes which are scattered through out the genome, epigenetics and other environmental factors; the isomorphic relation which Dawkins’ model seems to presuppose simply does not exist.  Since traits can change without any corresponding change in the genome and the genome can change without any corresponding change in the traits, the gene’s-eye-view is inadequate.

In the next post, I will consider the claim of C. Kenneth Waters that each of these accounts is, or at least could be just as true as the others.  Each account is simply another way of carving up the same world into replicators and an external environment.  I will save a more detailed description for then.

There seems to be a new series of videos released on YouTube called Mr. Deity. The four vids which they have released so far are all well worth watching. Sure, they are more than a little sac religious, but they do so in a pretty playful and non-confrontational manner.
Mr. Deity and the Evil

Mr. Deity and the Really Big Favor

Mr. Deity and the Light

Mr. Deity and the Messages

I’m a big fan of the blog Dangerous Idea.  Whether it is in spite of or because of my disagreement with Vic on almost every issue he posts about, I just love to read whatever it is that he has to say.  Recently, he posted on C. S. Lewis’ trilemma argument for the divinity of Christ and Richard Dawkins’ rebuttal to it.  (Interestingly enough, my Dad sent me a copy of the argument quite independently about a week later.)  While I think Vic brought up some good points regarding Dawkins’ arm chair speculations on the matter, I simply must put forth my own reasons for thinking the trilemma argument to be largely, if not entirely bogus.

Here is the relevant passage from Lewis’ Mere Christianity:

“A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse… But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Let us first grant that the argument has significant intuitive appeal.  If any person today were to call himself the Son of God, he would indeed be labeled a lunatic or a liar.  Furthermore, I would certainly be disinclined to call such a man a great moral teacher, much less the actual Son of God.  By the same reasoning it would seem that the infidel is thereby committed to seeing Jesus as nothing less than a lunatic, liar or both.  Since most people are not willing to call Jesus a liar or lunatic, the Christian argues, we are therefore compelled to accept Jesus at his word; he was/is actually the Son of God.

The same reasoning, however, can be applied to a number of other people and the claims which they have made.  All who reject the prophetic claims of Muhammad must also be committing to judging him a lunatic or a liar.  The same can be said for all non-Mormons about Joseph Smith (the church’s founder) or Gordon B. Hinckley (the church current prophet).  Either Hinckley is a liar, a lunatic or a prophet of God.  (In fact, some Mormons actually do use this argument, but usually as it applies to Smith.) 

Consider further the (in)famous case of Apollonius of Tyana.  He was alleged to have been miraculously born, to perform miracles including healing the sick and raising the dead, to deliver divine teachings, to claim the power to foresee the future and at the end of his life to have ascended into heaven to live with the gods forever.  Are we committed to calling this man a liar, lunatic or prophet?  By what criterion to we condemn Apollonius but not Jesus?  It would seem that we have no more and no less reason to attribute malevolence or insanity to this man than we do Jesus.  The point is that something must be wrong with the trilemma argument for there are simply too many counterexamples.

What exactly is wrong with the argument, however, is not so easy to put one’s finger on.  I see at least three possibilities which are open to the infidel:

1.      Jesus was a great moral teacher, was not a liar and was a bit insane.

2.      Jesus was a great moral teacher, was not insane and was a liar.

3.      Jesus was a great moral teacher, was not a liar, was not a lunatic and was simply wrong.

Of course C. S. Lewis would almost certainly be uncomfortable with each of these positions, but it must be admitted that they are all at least possible.  Being a scoundrel or a little crazy does not necessarily preclude one’s being a great teacher of anything, morality included.  In this post, however, I will not consider (2) so as to better engage the Christian claim.  I will simply note that no matter how much the Christian does not like (2), it is nevertheless a possibility.

What I wish to focus on instead is the difference between being wrong and being insane.   By what criteria do we draw a distinction between the two?  Let us consider some examples of the claim “I am X”:

·         I am the Son of God.

·         I am King.

·         I am able to foresee the future.

·         I am a garbage man.

·         I am a liar.  (Gotta love the paradox.)

·         I am the smartest person I know.

·         (Shouting) I am not angry!

·         I am a humble person.

·         I am a good singer.

Let us suppose (hypothetically speaking of course! ;-P) that in reality I am none of the X’s which I have just claimed to be.  Furthermore, let us assume that I sincerely believe each of the above claims to be true.  It seems obvious that in many cases my being wrong does not entail my insanity or my malevolence.  In other cases (the first three for example) such an entailment does seem to follow.  But what is the difference between the two types?

One possible response is that we judge some claims to be crazy due to their being so much less probable than those claims which are merely wrong.  While this response seems to be pointed in the right direction, I suggest that it is not good enough.  First of all, the Christian’s appeal to probability seems more than a little self-defeating.  Second, and more importantly, such a response does not do justice to the question at hand.  We do not call people crazy simply because their claims are/seem vastly improbable.  If a man were to claim that it will rain in Sacramento, California on August 12, 2007 (an incredibly improbable claim) I would not judge him to be insane.  Joe Namath’s prediction that the Jets would win the Super Bowl did not make him crazy either.  There must be more to the story.

Another possible response is that we judge the crazy claims to be so due to their being more self-serving than the wrong claims.  This, however, suffers from a number of counterexamples as well.  For instance, the claim that I am the smartest person I know seems just as self-serving as is the claim that I am King, and yet the former does not seem near as crazy as does the latter.  Furthermore, my claiming myself to be the devil incarnate would be seen as being just as self-serving as it would sane.  In fact, it could be argued that Jesus’ claim was anything but self-serving, thereby undermining the trilemma argument.  There must be more to the distinction between being wrong and being insane.

The difference, I suggest, lies in the reasons which we have for a given belief.  I may believe that I can foresee the future based on a number of occasions when I have foreseen the future to some extent.  I may also think that I am a good singer because my voice sounds fine to me and nobody has ever told me any different.  Accordingly, Joseph Smith and Muhammad may have thought themselves to be prophets due to some very emotional experiences and Jesus may have thought himself to be the Son of God due to what he was told in a dream/vision.  What makes some claims/beliefs crazy is not just what the claims are but our reasons for them.

All beliefs (at least those in question) are presumably held for one reason or another.  Indeed, if there was no particular reason for a belief it is then that we would judge it to be insane.  What I wish to argue is that this apparent exception is actually the rule.  There are three necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for insanity:

                                     I.      The belief must be inappropriate in that it is not what a normal person believes due to its being improbable, unhealthy, immoral, etc.

                                  II.      The belief must be held with a significant degree of conviction in that the purported belief is not merely a hunch, a façade or a lie.

                               III.      The belief must not be appropriately supported by any or enough reasons.

Lewis’ argument can be reformulated as follows:  Jesus claimed himself to be the Son of God, which meet condition (I).  We can either claim him to be lying, in which case he could not be a great moral teacher, or we can believe that he sincerely believed himself to be the Son of God, which would meet condition (II).  If we accept that he was not a liar, then his belief was either appropriately supported, in which case he would really be the Son of God, or his belief was not appropriately supported, which would thus meet condition (III) making him insane.  Thus, given that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, we are forced to choose between him being a liar, a lunatic or Lord.

Notice, however, the large role which ‘appropriate’ plays in the definition of insanity.  This is because insanity is not an objective feature which we read off of people or beliefs.  Rather, it is a quality which we impose upon people, beliefs or reasons for their not being “normal” in some relevant way.  The fact is that every individual deviates from the norm in some way and to some degree; the line which separates normal from insane is not only largely arbitrary but is also in constant flux across different cultures and different times.  This arbitrariness and fluctuation in what is appropriate is exactly what Lewis’ trilemma argument is missing.  Specifically, it is entirely possible that what we judge to be inappropriate may be radically different from what some other culture judges to be inappropriate. 

Jesus’ belief and/or his reasons may have been completely appropriate within his cultural context.  After all, it was not terribly unusual for mortal individuals to be called gods of some form or another.  In fact, it is not at all clear what exactly the historical Jesus meant in claiming himself to be the Son of God, if he made such a claim at all.  Furthermore, dreams, visions, divinations and the like were also judged to be legitimate or at least appropriate sources of knowledge.  Neither of these things can be said for the individual who makes similar claims for similar reasons within our own cultural context.

The problem with Lewis’ argument is that one man, Jesus, and his beliefs are being held to norms which never applied to him while he was alive.  It is because the argument appeals to our own particular sense of appropriateness that the trilemma argument has such a strong intuitive appeal to it.  Nevertheless, the infidel is not at all committed to seeing Jesus as a liar or a lunatic since the latter’s claims may have been far less inappropriate in his own cultural context than we judge such claims to be in our contemporary context.

Parsimony is not identical with mere simplicity and attempts to establish such an equation usually end up poorly.  In this post I will illustrate how parsimony functions as a rule which effectively establishes priority in scientific explanations.  In order to do this, I will use the examples of competing hypotheses for biological design and the level at which natural selection operates.  While parsimony plays a near parallel role in these two debates, I will also explore a small but significant difference between the two cases.

Let us first consider the two competing explanations for biological design in the natural world: Darwinian evolution and Creationism, both of which I will leave rather vaguely defined.  The former has a rather elaborate explanation for biological design in natural selection, an explanation which unquestionably works to a large degree.  The latter, on the other hand, says that the Creator, for His own inscrutable purposes, played some causal role in the process.  If the principle of parsimony simply stated that the simplest explanation is the best, then the latter would unquestionably be the ‘best’ explanation.

That is not, however, what the principle of parsimony states.  Rather, it holds that one should avoid the multiplication of explanatory entities as much as is possible; that one should drop whatever explanatory entities are not absolutely necessary, all other things being equal.  Furthermore, the principle of parsimony does not arbitrate which theory is ‘best’ in the sense of being true.  Indeed, to claim that the simplest explanation is the true one would be quite ridiculous.  Parsimony is not an indicator of truth, but is rather an indicator of presumption.  The more parsimonious of two theories is, all other things being equal, the preferred one.  (I have defended such claims at greater length here.)

Now we are in a better position to evaluate the competing hypotheses for biological design.  (Over)Idealizations aside, the Darwinian invokes one explanatory entity, namely natural selection.  The Creationist, on the other hand, invokes not one, but two explanatory entities, namely the Creator and natural selection.  It is important to note that the Creationist does not deny that natural selection happens or is responsible for amount of biological design.  The denial of such would be a remarkably irresponsible position to take and most Creationists are better than that.  Rather, they are claiming that natural selection explains some biological design, but not all of it; the Creator explains the rest. 

Consequently, the Creationist is clearly multiplying explanatory entities.  This, however, is not enough to see the Creationist position as a clear violation of the principle of parsimony.  The principle of parsimony only plays any kind of role in arbitrating between two hypotheses which are otherwise explanatorily equal.  If natural selection is able to explain just as much of the relevant empirical data as Creationism can then the former clearly carries presumption.  If, however, the two hypotheses really are explanatorily equal, then the multiplication of explanatory entities is simply superfluous; the Creator hypothesis simply does no explanatory work.  It is for this very reason that Creationists are at pains to demonstrate that for one reason or another natural selection is not able to adequately explain the relevant scientific data.  (Of course it can be argued that teleological explanations carry little to no scientific explanatory weight whether all things are equal or not.  Nor do arguments by the elimination of alternatives for that matter.)

A similar case can be made for debate surrounding level of selection in Neo-Darwinian evolution.  Some biological traits, it is/was thought, suggest that selection happens at the level of the group while other traits suggest that it happens at the level of the individual.  In his highly influential book Adaptation and Natural Selection, George Williams makes a strong appeal to parsimony in order to argue for the methodological priority of explanations which invoke only selection at the individual level.  The role which parsimony plays in this argument closely parallels that which it plays in the Darwinian/Creationist debate. 

One hypothesis appeals to individual selection while the other appeals to group selection and individual selection.  Notice that individuals are metaphysically prior to groups in that it is logically impossible to have a group of individuals without having individuals as well.  Similarly, there cannot be group selection without there also being individual selection at work as well.  Thus, if both hypotheses are explanatorily equal in their ability to cover the relevant scientific data then the former clearly carries presumption.  If such is indeed the case, then group selection does no explanatory work whatsoever and should therefore be abandoned.  On the contrary, if individual selection is not able to adequately cover the relevant appearances, then parsimony plays no role in the debate, just as Williams correctly acknowledges.

While the two debates have a great deal in common with one another, they also differ in one small but important respect.  The example of selection levels was an instance of metaphysical priority in that group selection could not logically play any causal role without individual selection also playing such a role.  Such, however is not the case in the example of biological design, for natural selection and the Creator can logically play causal roles independent of one another.  Nevertheless, I want to suggest that natural selection is epistemologically (as opposed to metaphysically) prior to the Creator in that we know the former plays a causal role while no such thing can be claimed for the latter.

Thus, in the case of group and individual selection there were only two options which were logically open: individual selection by itself or individual and group selection together.  In the case of biological design, however, there are three possibilities which are logically open:

1. Natural selection by itself
2. The Creator by Himself
3. Both natural selection and the Creator together

We must conclude, then, that (1) is preferable to (2) due to its epistemological priority, and (1) is preferable to (3) assuming the principle of parsimony to be applicable.