On Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859 with the final edition published in 1872), ch. 1–4, 6, and 14. What are the philosophical ramifications of Darwin's theory of evolution? Our last reading ended with David Hume saying that given the order of nature, the idea of a Continue Reading …
Ep. 168: Darwin’s “Origin of Species” (Citizen Edition)
On Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859 with the final edition published in 1872), ch. 1–4, 6, and 14. What are the philosophical ramifications of Darwin's theory of evolution? Our last reading ended with David Hume saying that given the order of nature, the idea of a Continue Reading …
A Discussion of Thomas Nagel’s Mind & Cosmos
Today I had the pleasure of discussing Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False as part of a PEL Not School study group on the book. Joining me were Not Schoolers Neil Earnshaw and Jon Turner. We discussed our dissatisfaction with with Nagel's argument that evolutionary naturalism fails to explain Continue Reading …
Thump Thump or Pump Pump? Fodor’s Confusion Explained.
This is an animated but polite discussion between Jerry Fodor and Elliott Sober -- very interesting, and I think I understand Fodor a little better now (i.e., motivates what I believe to be his error --- other than the fact that he's worried about problematic teleological notions like function being necessary to natural selection as a theory). And I do believe I've come up with Continue Reading …
Fodor, Darwin, and the Philosophy of Science
I had been looking forward to Jerry Fodor's What Darwin Got Wrong (co-authored with Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini), not because I have anything against Darwin but because Fodor is a superb writer, the well-respected cognitive scientist who "laid the groundwork for the modularity of mind and language of thought hypotheses," and a worthy opponent of the idiocy of evolutionary Continue Reading …