Jul 27, 2023·edited Jul 28, 2023Liked by Max Borders
Thanks Max,
I think one of the more powerful fallacies pushed over the last couple of years was that "you are not an epidemiologist so how can you claim to know better than them?" It was quite obvious that besides the lies that were pushed through skewed statistics, many of the studies on viruses and vaccines appear to be relying on very unscientific methods. It is the same in my old discipline of economics. You don't have to be an economist to be able to see that the methods are unscientific. People literally tweak the analysis till they get the expected results, or to get grants, fame or expert income.
The study of philosophy sits above the study of epidemiology and economics, etc., in the Western tradition. That includes such things as Metaphysics, Logic and Epistemology. A basic understanding of such things as logic can indeed override the "expert" claims. Anyone can do that, anyone can question the epidemiologist and economist on a scientific basis.
I also want to add this on the topic of believing:
Great collections of fallacies - but you accidentally include one in your preamble: a variation on the teleological fallacy, whereby you presume to know the circumstances responsible for the emergence of specific biological or psychological features. We don't have access to these prehistories, and can only speculate on thin evidence, so it is always 'false expertise' that says "we're like this because it used to be like this". Case in point: social behaviour (including submissive behaviour) appears in mammals long before even proto-humans arrived. Evoking specific evolutionary backstories is almost always political rhetoric in disguise, so be on the watch for it!
Evolutionary psychology is non-teleological, so I'm struggling to understand how making inferences about the development of our sympathetic nervous systems and other associated fear centers would be a variation on any teleological fallacy. Ev psych is in some respects a metaphysical research program, but it's not clear how it's rooted in fallacy. Perhaps my error was in the term "caveman," which is intended as a loose catch-all term for our forebears. How far back our fear/submission instincts stretch prior to protohumans doesn't imply that modern humans don't continue to share those instincts. Indeed, where do I "presume to know the circumstances responsible for the emergence of..."? I don't need to know those circumstances to make general inferences about evolved dispositions. Indeed, it would silly to claim that our forebears didn't find themselves in "dangerous situations," and evolutionary anthropology of the sort offered by Cosmides and Tooby go very far indeed in explaining phenomena such as ingroup affiliation dynamics. Instead of "we're like this because it used to be like this," I'm arguing that "we're like this because we were once like this and we still are," given a generalized understanding of evolutionary fitness landscapes in which humans, proto-humans, and even proto-proto-humans would have found themselves. Thus I have not evoked any "specific evolutionary backstories," but rather sketched a general evolutionary framework for why humans experienced fear, and still do.
Don't know how much it's worth engaging with you on this, Max - my scepticism might just run deeper than yours in this domain. In brief, though, as much as there is any reliable story to tell here it is that humans experience fear because Cambrian chordates developed amygdala, which never ceased to be advantageous ever after. Everything we might want to say beyond this is going to shade into storytelling and yes, as much as the experts in these fields fervently deny it, it all necessarily ends up as teleological storytelling.
I wrote a whole book on this topic, The Mythology of Evolution - it's actually my most pirated ebook, which is a weird accolade! But the book certainly won't help with your project here at Underthrow, so run with whatever metaphysical extras suit you and I'll try to leave you to it on such matters. (I may not succeed... you have the decided liability of being very interesting to me! You could try being more boring, I suppose...? 😂)
Perhaps I could put my original point another way: your scepticism of experts is spot on. And because it is, please be careful not to give a free pass to those experts whose work happens to sit well with you. (This, after all, is how we ended up with worthless mandatory community masking protocols). To me, this is essentially same point I made previously, but I accept the criticism that it was not how I chose to express it the first time.
The only defence I can offer for my original comment is that I was rereading that very book of mine just this morning, looking at Kant's discussion of evolution for reasons connected to a rather different context, so all this was very much on my mind. It was just coincidence that you happened to open the door for me to bring it up here. Perhaps I should have known better. Both my comments this morning (here and elsewhere) touched upon metaphysical topics 'too honestly'... mayhap this is always a mistake.
If your view is that Darwinian thinking is teleological (that would be Lamarck), that evolution is mythology, and that Kant had anything meaningful to say on evolution (having died roughly when Darwin was born), I don't think we're going to get very far in the comments section, much less find a starting point for discussion elsewhere.
Evolution is not mythology, per se, but there is indeed a whole set of mythos that accretes around it - the 'ladder of progress' (much discussed and opposed by Stephen Jay Gould) is perhaps the most famous example, but there are many more. This is one of the most fraught scientific fields. I am not surprised that Popper was reluctant to admit it into his falsifiability-bounded notion of 'science' (although he eventually acceded some potential here).
And 'Evolution' was most certainly a topic prior to Darwin, for all that our recent bout of utter historical blindness likes to ignore it! Indeed, the reason that Darwin does not use the name 'evolution' anywhere in his work was precisely because he didn't want to get dragged into the prior discourse about evolution (hence his preferred term 'descent with modification'). Kant certainly has quite a lot to say about evolution in this earlier sense. He anticipates Darwin rather well. For instance:
"How do we know that in nature , if we could penetrate to the principle by which it specifies the universal laws known to us, there cannot lie hidden (in its mere mechanism) a sufficient ground of the possibility of organised beings without supposing any design in their production? would it not be judged by us presumptuous to say this?"
The problems with the mythic dimensions of the term 'evolution' was why Darwin was nervous about using this term - and avoided it (preferring, as I say, 'descent with modification').
I do, however, admit that the title of that book backfired on me and continues to do so - Christians saw 'evolution' and didn't want to read, atheists saw 'mythology' and didn't want to read. But there was something in that book for everyone, and it was a real pleasure collaborating with researchers in various evolutionary fields on the genuinely trickier corners of the topic. They really were the most co-operative of anyone I corresponded with in my brief dalliance with academia!
This question of teleology is one that we probably can't get at adequately in just comments, though. My philosophical mentor, Mary Midgley remarked once that it was a "strange one-legged kind of teleology where there are no ends, only means." She more than anyone influenced me on this specific aspect of these issues. She also recognised the resistance here:
"It is no surprise that the pettiness of many proposed evolutionary purposes put orthodox biologists off teleology altogether – produced, in fact, an advanced case of teleophobia"
All three of my 'imaginative investigations' are about mythos in different contexts (the arts, the sciences, and politics/ethics), and you of all people do have a stake in recognising and critiquing mythos, because undermining (and underthrowing) government mythos is a large part of your project here at Underthrow. I earlier said that the evolutionary mythos wasn't going to help you... now you have brought in some doubt about that by implying that you cannot proceed to converse with anyone who doesn't share your metaphysical grounds here. I hope I am misreading this!
I mentioned in an earlier comment 'fictionalism' - which in so much as I can be assigned to a school of philosophy, would be where I would inevitably end up. Fictionalists are more or less united by resisting the association of 'fiction/mythos' with falsity. Our position is that you cannot ever throw this off entirely, so pretending we can gets us into trouble. (There's a whole thread of twentieth century philosophy arguments here, but let's leave it aside.)
I cannot help to find it intriguing that you think it implausible that there would be a starting point for discussion if we did not share a common mythos on evolutionary topics... It is small wonder that politics has failed us if we truly now live in a situation whereby only metaphysical alignment justifies conversation. I have long feared this circumstance, the fracturing of any and all basis for discourse. It is this, more than anything, that I have made my battlefield.
"And 'Evolution' was most certainly a topic prior to Darwin, for all that our recent bout of utter historical blindness likes to ignore it!" My position, and I dare say the 'orthodox' position on evolution, is that despite some foreshadowing by a few thinkers, no one prior to Darwin had fully articulated evolution as non-teleological, which is why I thought it odd that you would accuse me of the teleological fallacy. The Kant quote is interesting, but sadly too vague to stand up to Darwin's articulation. Lamarck preceded Darwin and is the poster child of teleological evolutionary theory.
You'll also notice my term "metaphysical research program" above. That is a direct reference to Popper. It turns out, though, that since Popper, scientists have been able to *observe* evolution in any number of species that rapidly replicate. The two primary mechanisms of selection, natural and sexual selection, can also be demonstrated with genetic algorithms, but also with bacteria, fruit flies, etc. make Popper's insight moot.
I will grant that it might be possible that not all mutation is random in the traditional sense, the result is going to be the same -- that is -- there is either gene transmission or there is not. (This is the critical aspect of non-teleology.) When there is not, the associated properties of the gene will not be transmitted much less expressed. So your poking fun at ancient amygdalae, while amusing, rather misses the point--or so it seems to me. And I'm not sure what your mentor's comments add to the discussion here, though perhaps I'm misreading her. I understand she didn't like social darwinism or scientism, but neither do I (and neither did Herbert Spencer, who was smeared by 20th-century intellectuals after his death). Otherwise, "teleophobia" is rather the point of Darwin's dangerous idea: successful/unsuccessful gene transmission. :)
I also notice another pattern in your discourse: You seem to want to jump to a gotcha or aha related to my work to call me out. But when I directly address the gotcha, you like to change the subject or appeal to something of which a given reader is likely to have little knowledge. In other words, the subject change involves evoking something unrelated or perhaps tangentially related to the original claim. I'd think it would be important to summarize such for the uninitiated if you're going to call someone out.
In this instance, you claimed *aha, teleological fallacy* and when I point out there is no teleology here, you refer to myth somewhat offhandedly--(which I interpret as falsehood in the conventional sense as anyone would), but then you go on to explain that mythos is a-okay because of fictionalism! While I can get down with the idea that some truths are conveyed well in fiction and, indeed, myth, I am still left wondering why or how you would accuse me of teleological fallacy with respect to my priors. I am simply not familiar with fictionalism.
As always, I don't mind criticism. I think it's a healthy part of discourse. My only request is that any critic be prepared to show how the original criticism holds and why my replies are insufficient, not just appeal vaguely to things the reader probably hasn't encountered. In short, if you're going to call someone out, you should be prepared to make your case and make it fully.
Thanks for replying. The difficulty I keep having is that our discussions repeatedly run up against tangents that would require book-length digressions. Since I don't feel it is appropriate to say 'you now have to read this', I usually attempt to reframe on a (hopefully) clearer path across the disagreement rather than propose the additional reading the moment I realise the difference in our foundations is sufficiently great to create complications - as it most certainly is here! But this, as I'll express again below, creates an additional problem that I'll admit is unfamiliar to me.
I accept your position (the orthodox biology position) that Darwin pulled the rug out of teleology and therefore your claims cannot be read as teleological. I don't agree with it, for the reasons I explore in the book, or that Midgley covers in 'Why the Idea of Purpose Hasn't Gone Away'. But I cannot argue with you on this ground if teleology is a priori excluded for you in this area, because the question of the role of teleology in biology is the discussion we'd have to have, and for you it is necessarily excluded. Hence the back out on my part. Do you really think there is a path to a discussion between us here...? It doesn't look like it, although I have tried in good faith to engage here all the same.
Likewise, thanks for clarifying that for you 'myth' necessarily means false. This makes my talk of mythos necessarily confusing, and my attempts to illuminate by showing the background of my position presumably mystifying. I accept that your reading has become dominant in this century, alas. But in 1972, when Joseph Campbell wrote Myths to Live By, it certainly wasn't clear it was going to go this way - it seemed for a while it might go the other way, and there was nothing inevitable about the frankly disastrous path that was taken. Maybe there is no way back, but that would still not make me want to submit to the popular view - and on this, at least, you surely must understand that 'everybody does it this way' is never a convincing argument! 🙂
So all I can really do is apologise. Our exchanges routinely produce more heat that light, my attempts to engage in good faith come across as evasive to you and belligerent to me. If I cannot find the direct path through, I will typically try to reframe the point from one of the other angles available (there are always many such angles available). This, I suspect, is what you're reading as evasive. I also suspect that what I'm reading as belligerence is your frustration that I do not follow through on the original line of engagement. It's all rather unfortunate.
Again, I can only offer my unequivocal apologies for vexing you here - it is never my goal to frustrate. I'm always trying to find the path across to mutual understanding; often reframing is my go-to resort here - it has worked extremely well for me for nearly two decades. But clearly this is a disastrously ill-conceived play with you. I will try to remember this in the future. It is an important lesson for me, and I will try to learn it. I suspect it will help with other folks who have struggled with my conversations too, and for this I thank you.
My previous comment contains (for me) the explanation of the original criticism. You do not accept this criticism, nor even recognise it as a reinforcement of the criticism. What recourse do I have here but to apologise and withdraw? But, fool that I am, let me try one more time.
Teleology originates in Aristotle's philosophy. For Aristotle, the idea of purposes did not entail any kind of assertion of a creative god - Greek thought was not framed this way. Aristotle's teleology was a name for a kind of questioning about what particular things are for, what is their telos, their end or aim in the context of where they belong. As Aristotle himself pointed out, this kind of reasoning is indispensable and unavoidable in biology. The orthodox biology view that Darwin killed teleology confuses Aristotle's terms with the way teleology was being evoked in theology.
And here, I must say, it is awkward to say that Darwin killed teleology, which tends to mean Darwin killed intelligent design. Kant's arguments against intelligent design were stronger and had more immediate impact. Darwin categorically did not intend to engage here at all, for all that is how it his work is now routinely framed. The impact of Darwin's work is inescapably bound up in the forces that lead to the invention of the word 'scientist' and the loss of the original meaning of 'science', another hugely complex tangent - but I hope here it is okay to say 'the nuances of the history of Darwin's work is more complex than the popular conception'.
So, returning to the opening remark, you say precisely this:
"There were evolutionary advantages to this programming in the distant past, and some of those advantages persist. Our forebears frequently found themselves in dangerous situations. The tribe could quickly reduce its coordination costs if everyone had an instinct to rally behind a strong leader. Because that strategy worked in those ancient contexts, the submission germline survived. We're still mostly cavepeople, after all. So we inherited those instincts."
That for me clearly evokes teleological reasoning, in the sense I trace above. You claim that the reduction in co-ordination costs for proto-human tribes is the reason the submission germline survived. I countered (earlier, above, albeit in an unclear shorthand I probably should have recognised as inadequate) that this is an assertion that needs a stronger evidential base since submissive behaviour occurs in all fully social species (it is a different situation with, say, wasps and ants) and 'reduction in co-ordination costs' is only one of myriad possible explanations available here.
Certainly many of these fully social species survive today. Although of course, many of them also went extinct, even with the 'reduction in co-ordination costs'. The existence of an extant species is radically insufficient to justify the reasons for its survival. (This is Gould's central argument throughout his work.) We can speculate. You do speculate. You're far from alone in this! Yet this kind of speculation is essentially teleological in the sense I trace above. Hence my suggestion that your opening is adjacent to the teleological fallacy.
(Regarding my reference to Cambrian fishes - this for me is an important point, but it might require an equally long digression. The short point is 'since fear originates far earlier, and benefits so many species afterwards, there is a danger in reasoning about this biological faculty from a solely human perspective' - the advantage is well-proven and no human-specific scenario will be adequate precisely because of this backstory. Once again, to me this entails avoiding an area adjacent to teleological fallacy. Your mileage may vary.)
Conversely, for you, all this kind of reasoning appears to be expressly excluded from being teleological... for me it is clear that it must be, in the Aristotelian terms explained above. It seems I cannot convince you of this, but you surely cannot claim that I have not engaged in good faith here, nor attempted to explain why I hold the views that I do hold, however clumsily and ineffectually. I accept that these positions are not for you, and as far as I can tell nothing I present will shift your view here. At such an impasse, what is left to say...?
So what I will say, Max, is what I said above: I find your work extremely interesting. I want to help this project, if I can. But I am failing to do so, again and again. And this exchange helps make it clearer why. I still sense a possibility here, an intuition of the potential of a powerful alliance I have been unable to manifest a path towards, despite my best efforts. We are, as so many are these days, 'divided by a common language'. I still suspect we might do better if we could get together in a bar somewhere, somewhen! 🍻😁
I hope you find this response adequate to your needs. I reiterate my apology for what you read as obfuscation, which is only merely my good faith attempts to find alternative paths forward. I will endeavour to cease to try this 'change of venue' tactic in any future discussions we have, and again, I thank you for bringing this to my attention. This is a welcome new perspective that I expect will be helpful with others as well as with you.
May I request either that you don't reply to this, or save a reply until after the weekend, if you feel it is necessary. I suffer a fair degree of compulsiveness, as you surely have witnessed by now, and we have spent plenty of time talking already. I feel like we have both contributed everything we can here, and speaking for myself I learned something valuable from this exchange.
My respect for you is undiminished, and I am genuinely sorry that my interjections have proved so vexing. It is not, I hope it is clear, for wont of trying.
Thanks Max,
I think one of the more powerful fallacies pushed over the last couple of years was that "you are not an epidemiologist so how can you claim to know better than them?" It was quite obvious that besides the lies that were pushed through skewed statistics, many of the studies on viruses and vaccines appear to be relying on very unscientific methods. It is the same in my old discipline of economics. You don't have to be an economist to be able to see that the methods are unscientific. People literally tweak the analysis till they get the expected results, or to get grants, fame or expert income.
The study of philosophy sits above the study of epidemiology and economics, etc., in the Western tradition. That includes such things as Metaphysics, Logic and Epistemology. A basic understanding of such things as logic can indeed override the "expert" claims. Anyone can do that, anyone can question the epidemiologist and economist on a scientific basis.
I also want to add this on the topic of believing:
https://substack.com/@paxians/note/c-21474165?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=1vez4c
Great collections of fallacies - but you accidentally include one in your preamble: a variation on the teleological fallacy, whereby you presume to know the circumstances responsible for the emergence of specific biological or psychological features. We don't have access to these prehistories, and can only speculate on thin evidence, so it is always 'false expertise' that says "we're like this because it used to be like this". Case in point: social behaviour (including submissive behaviour) appears in mammals long before even proto-humans arrived. Evoking specific evolutionary backstories is almost always political rhetoric in disguise, so be on the watch for it!
Evolutionary psychology is non-teleological, so I'm struggling to understand how making inferences about the development of our sympathetic nervous systems and other associated fear centers would be a variation on any teleological fallacy. Ev psych is in some respects a metaphysical research program, but it's not clear how it's rooted in fallacy. Perhaps my error was in the term "caveman," which is intended as a loose catch-all term for our forebears. How far back our fear/submission instincts stretch prior to protohumans doesn't imply that modern humans don't continue to share those instincts. Indeed, where do I "presume to know the circumstances responsible for the emergence of..."? I don't need to know those circumstances to make general inferences about evolved dispositions. Indeed, it would silly to claim that our forebears didn't find themselves in "dangerous situations," and evolutionary anthropology of the sort offered by Cosmides and Tooby go very far indeed in explaining phenomena such as ingroup affiliation dynamics. Instead of "we're like this because it used to be like this," I'm arguing that "we're like this because we were once like this and we still are," given a generalized understanding of evolutionary fitness landscapes in which humans, proto-humans, and even proto-proto-humans would have found themselves. Thus I have not evoked any "specific evolutionary backstories," but rather sketched a general evolutionary framework for why humans experienced fear, and still do.
Don't know how much it's worth engaging with you on this, Max - my scepticism might just run deeper than yours in this domain. In brief, though, as much as there is any reliable story to tell here it is that humans experience fear because Cambrian chordates developed amygdala, which never ceased to be advantageous ever after. Everything we might want to say beyond this is going to shade into storytelling and yes, as much as the experts in these fields fervently deny it, it all necessarily ends up as teleological storytelling.
I wrote a whole book on this topic, The Mythology of Evolution - it's actually my most pirated ebook, which is a weird accolade! But the book certainly won't help with your project here at Underthrow, so run with whatever metaphysical extras suit you and I'll try to leave you to it on such matters. (I may not succeed... you have the decided liability of being very interesting to me! You could try being more boring, I suppose...? 😂)
Perhaps I could put my original point another way: your scepticism of experts is spot on. And because it is, please be careful not to give a free pass to those experts whose work happens to sit well with you. (This, after all, is how we ended up with worthless mandatory community masking protocols). To me, this is essentially same point I made previously, but I accept the criticism that it was not how I chose to express it the first time.
The only defence I can offer for my original comment is that I was rereading that very book of mine just this morning, looking at Kant's discussion of evolution for reasons connected to a rather different context, so all this was very much on my mind. It was just coincidence that you happened to open the door for me to bring it up here. Perhaps I should have known better. Both my comments this morning (here and elsewhere) touched upon metaphysical topics 'too honestly'... mayhap this is always a mistake.
Stay wonderful!
If your view is that Darwinian thinking is teleological (that would be Lamarck), that evolution is mythology, and that Kant had anything meaningful to say on evolution (having died roughly when Darwin was born), I don't think we're going to get very far in the comments section, much less find a starting point for discussion elsewhere.
Evolution is not mythology, per se, but there is indeed a whole set of mythos that accretes around it - the 'ladder of progress' (much discussed and opposed by Stephen Jay Gould) is perhaps the most famous example, but there are many more. This is one of the most fraught scientific fields. I am not surprised that Popper was reluctant to admit it into his falsifiability-bounded notion of 'science' (although he eventually acceded some potential here).
And 'Evolution' was most certainly a topic prior to Darwin, for all that our recent bout of utter historical blindness likes to ignore it! Indeed, the reason that Darwin does not use the name 'evolution' anywhere in his work was precisely because he didn't want to get dragged into the prior discourse about evolution (hence his preferred term 'descent with modification'). Kant certainly has quite a lot to say about evolution in this earlier sense. He anticipates Darwin rather well. For instance:
"How do we know that in nature , if we could penetrate to the principle by which it specifies the universal laws known to us, there cannot lie hidden (in its mere mechanism) a sufficient ground of the possibility of organised beings without supposing any design in their production? would it not be judged by us presumptuous to say this?"
The problems with the mythic dimensions of the term 'evolution' was why Darwin was nervous about using this term - and avoided it (preferring, as I say, 'descent with modification').
I do, however, admit that the title of that book backfired on me and continues to do so - Christians saw 'evolution' and didn't want to read, atheists saw 'mythology' and didn't want to read. But there was something in that book for everyone, and it was a real pleasure collaborating with researchers in various evolutionary fields on the genuinely trickier corners of the topic. They really were the most co-operative of anyone I corresponded with in my brief dalliance with academia!
This question of teleology is one that we probably can't get at adequately in just comments, though. My philosophical mentor, Mary Midgley remarked once that it was a "strange one-legged kind of teleology where there are no ends, only means." She more than anyone influenced me on this specific aspect of these issues. She also recognised the resistance here:
"It is no surprise that the pettiness of many proposed evolutionary purposes put orthodox biologists off teleology altogether – produced, in fact, an advanced case of teleophobia"
All three of my 'imaginative investigations' are about mythos in different contexts (the arts, the sciences, and politics/ethics), and you of all people do have a stake in recognising and critiquing mythos, because undermining (and underthrowing) government mythos is a large part of your project here at Underthrow. I earlier said that the evolutionary mythos wasn't going to help you... now you have brought in some doubt about that by implying that you cannot proceed to converse with anyone who doesn't share your metaphysical grounds here. I hope I am misreading this!
I mentioned in an earlier comment 'fictionalism' - which in so much as I can be assigned to a school of philosophy, would be where I would inevitably end up. Fictionalists are more or less united by resisting the association of 'fiction/mythos' with falsity. Our position is that you cannot ever throw this off entirely, so pretending we can gets us into trouble. (There's a whole thread of twentieth century philosophy arguments here, but let's leave it aside.)
I cannot help to find it intriguing that you think it implausible that there would be a starting point for discussion if we did not share a common mythos on evolutionary topics... It is small wonder that politics has failed us if we truly now live in a situation whereby only metaphysical alignment justifies conversation. I have long feared this circumstance, the fracturing of any and all basis for discourse. It is this, more than anything, that I have made my battlefield.
Hope these remarks are salutary!
Chris.
"And 'Evolution' was most certainly a topic prior to Darwin, for all that our recent bout of utter historical blindness likes to ignore it!" My position, and I dare say the 'orthodox' position on evolution, is that despite some foreshadowing by a few thinkers, no one prior to Darwin had fully articulated evolution as non-teleological, which is why I thought it odd that you would accuse me of the teleological fallacy. The Kant quote is interesting, but sadly too vague to stand up to Darwin's articulation. Lamarck preceded Darwin and is the poster child of teleological evolutionary theory.
You'll also notice my term "metaphysical research program" above. That is a direct reference to Popper. It turns out, though, that since Popper, scientists have been able to *observe* evolution in any number of species that rapidly replicate. The two primary mechanisms of selection, natural and sexual selection, can also be demonstrated with genetic algorithms, but also with bacteria, fruit flies, etc. make Popper's insight moot.
I will grant that it might be possible that not all mutation is random in the traditional sense, the result is going to be the same -- that is -- there is either gene transmission or there is not. (This is the critical aspect of non-teleology.) When there is not, the associated properties of the gene will not be transmitted much less expressed. So your poking fun at ancient amygdalae, while amusing, rather misses the point--or so it seems to me. And I'm not sure what your mentor's comments add to the discussion here, though perhaps I'm misreading her. I understand she didn't like social darwinism or scientism, but neither do I (and neither did Herbert Spencer, who was smeared by 20th-century intellectuals after his death). Otherwise, "teleophobia" is rather the point of Darwin's dangerous idea: successful/unsuccessful gene transmission. :)
I also notice another pattern in your discourse: You seem to want to jump to a gotcha or aha related to my work to call me out. But when I directly address the gotcha, you like to change the subject or appeal to something of which a given reader is likely to have little knowledge. In other words, the subject change involves evoking something unrelated or perhaps tangentially related to the original claim. I'd think it would be important to summarize such for the uninitiated if you're going to call someone out.
In this instance, you claimed *aha, teleological fallacy* and when I point out there is no teleology here, you refer to myth somewhat offhandedly--(which I interpret as falsehood in the conventional sense as anyone would), but then you go on to explain that mythos is a-okay because of fictionalism! While I can get down with the idea that some truths are conveyed well in fiction and, indeed, myth, I am still left wondering why or how you would accuse me of teleological fallacy with respect to my priors. I am simply not familiar with fictionalism.
As always, I don't mind criticism. I think it's a healthy part of discourse. My only request is that any critic be prepared to show how the original criticism holds and why my replies are insufficient, not just appeal vaguely to things the reader probably hasn't encountered. In short, if you're going to call someone out, you should be prepared to make your case and make it fully.
Hey Max,
Thanks for replying. The difficulty I keep having is that our discussions repeatedly run up against tangents that would require book-length digressions. Since I don't feel it is appropriate to say 'you now have to read this', I usually attempt to reframe on a (hopefully) clearer path across the disagreement rather than propose the additional reading the moment I realise the difference in our foundations is sufficiently great to create complications - as it most certainly is here! But this, as I'll express again below, creates an additional problem that I'll admit is unfamiliar to me.
I accept your position (the orthodox biology position) that Darwin pulled the rug out of teleology and therefore your claims cannot be read as teleological. I don't agree with it, for the reasons I explore in the book, or that Midgley covers in 'Why the Idea of Purpose Hasn't Gone Away'. But I cannot argue with you on this ground if teleology is a priori excluded for you in this area, because the question of the role of teleology in biology is the discussion we'd have to have, and for you it is necessarily excluded. Hence the back out on my part. Do you really think there is a path to a discussion between us here...? It doesn't look like it, although I have tried in good faith to engage here all the same.
Likewise, thanks for clarifying that for you 'myth' necessarily means false. This makes my talk of mythos necessarily confusing, and my attempts to illuminate by showing the background of my position presumably mystifying. I accept that your reading has become dominant in this century, alas. But in 1972, when Joseph Campbell wrote Myths to Live By, it certainly wasn't clear it was going to go this way - it seemed for a while it might go the other way, and there was nothing inevitable about the frankly disastrous path that was taken. Maybe there is no way back, but that would still not make me want to submit to the popular view - and on this, at least, you surely must understand that 'everybody does it this way' is never a convincing argument! 🙂
So all I can really do is apologise. Our exchanges routinely produce more heat that light, my attempts to engage in good faith come across as evasive to you and belligerent to me. If I cannot find the direct path through, I will typically try to reframe the point from one of the other angles available (there are always many such angles available). This, I suspect, is what you're reading as evasive. I also suspect that what I'm reading as belligerence is your frustration that I do not follow through on the original line of engagement. It's all rather unfortunate.
Again, I can only offer my unequivocal apologies for vexing you here - it is never my goal to frustrate. I'm always trying to find the path across to mutual understanding; often reframing is my go-to resort here - it has worked extremely well for me for nearly two decades. But clearly this is a disastrously ill-conceived play with you. I will try to remember this in the future. It is an important lesson for me, and I will try to learn it. I suspect it will help with other folks who have struggled with my conversations too, and for this I thank you.
My previous comment contains (for me) the explanation of the original criticism. You do not accept this criticism, nor even recognise it as a reinforcement of the criticism. What recourse do I have here but to apologise and withdraw? But, fool that I am, let me try one more time.
Teleology originates in Aristotle's philosophy. For Aristotle, the idea of purposes did not entail any kind of assertion of a creative god - Greek thought was not framed this way. Aristotle's teleology was a name for a kind of questioning about what particular things are for, what is their telos, their end or aim in the context of where they belong. As Aristotle himself pointed out, this kind of reasoning is indispensable and unavoidable in biology. The orthodox biology view that Darwin killed teleology confuses Aristotle's terms with the way teleology was being evoked in theology.
And here, I must say, it is awkward to say that Darwin killed teleology, which tends to mean Darwin killed intelligent design. Kant's arguments against intelligent design were stronger and had more immediate impact. Darwin categorically did not intend to engage here at all, for all that is how it his work is now routinely framed. The impact of Darwin's work is inescapably bound up in the forces that lead to the invention of the word 'scientist' and the loss of the original meaning of 'science', another hugely complex tangent - but I hope here it is okay to say 'the nuances of the history of Darwin's work is more complex than the popular conception'.
So, returning to the opening remark, you say precisely this:
"There were evolutionary advantages to this programming in the distant past, and some of those advantages persist. Our forebears frequently found themselves in dangerous situations. The tribe could quickly reduce its coordination costs if everyone had an instinct to rally behind a strong leader. Because that strategy worked in those ancient contexts, the submission germline survived. We're still mostly cavepeople, after all. So we inherited those instincts."
That for me clearly evokes teleological reasoning, in the sense I trace above. You claim that the reduction in co-ordination costs for proto-human tribes is the reason the submission germline survived. I countered (earlier, above, albeit in an unclear shorthand I probably should have recognised as inadequate) that this is an assertion that needs a stronger evidential base since submissive behaviour occurs in all fully social species (it is a different situation with, say, wasps and ants) and 'reduction in co-ordination costs' is only one of myriad possible explanations available here.
Certainly many of these fully social species survive today. Although of course, many of them also went extinct, even with the 'reduction in co-ordination costs'. The existence of an extant species is radically insufficient to justify the reasons for its survival. (This is Gould's central argument throughout his work.) We can speculate. You do speculate. You're far from alone in this! Yet this kind of speculation is essentially teleological in the sense I trace above. Hence my suggestion that your opening is adjacent to the teleological fallacy.
(Regarding my reference to Cambrian fishes - this for me is an important point, but it might require an equally long digression. The short point is 'since fear originates far earlier, and benefits so many species afterwards, there is a danger in reasoning about this biological faculty from a solely human perspective' - the advantage is well-proven and no human-specific scenario will be adequate precisely because of this backstory. Once again, to me this entails avoiding an area adjacent to teleological fallacy. Your mileage may vary.)
Conversely, for you, all this kind of reasoning appears to be expressly excluded from being teleological... for me it is clear that it must be, in the Aristotelian terms explained above. It seems I cannot convince you of this, but you surely cannot claim that I have not engaged in good faith here, nor attempted to explain why I hold the views that I do hold, however clumsily and ineffectually. I accept that these positions are not for you, and as far as I can tell nothing I present will shift your view here. At such an impasse, what is left to say...?
So what I will say, Max, is what I said above: I find your work extremely interesting. I want to help this project, if I can. But I am failing to do so, again and again. And this exchange helps make it clearer why. I still sense a possibility here, an intuition of the potential of a powerful alliance I have been unable to manifest a path towards, despite my best efforts. We are, as so many are these days, 'divided by a common language'. I still suspect we might do better if we could get together in a bar somewhere, somewhen! 🍻😁
I hope you find this response adequate to your needs. I reiterate my apology for what you read as obfuscation, which is only merely my good faith attempts to find alternative paths forward. I will endeavour to cease to try this 'change of venue' tactic in any future discussions we have, and again, I thank you for bringing this to my attention. This is a welcome new perspective that I expect will be helpful with others as well as with you.
May I request either that you don't reply to this, or save a reply until after the weekend, if you feel it is necessary. I suffer a fair degree of compulsiveness, as you surely have witnessed by now, and we have spent plenty of time talking already. I feel like we have both contributed everything we can here, and speaking for myself I learned something valuable from this exchange.
My respect for you is undiminished, and I am genuinely sorry that my interjections have proved so vexing. It is not, I hope it is clear, for wont of trying.
With unlimited love,
Chris.