December 28, 2005
New paper: Neglecting the naturalism in Quine's naturalized epistemology: Lessons from Kim's failed critique
I have a new paper online. This is an expanded version of a section I from my dissertation that I've done at one conference, and will be doing at another (the Central Division APA) in April. Here's the abstract:
Jaegwon Kim's influential argument against Quine's naturalized epistemology is examined, and shown to neglect crucial aspects of Quine's basic philosophic approach, methodological naturalism. First, Kim suggests that Quine presents a false alternative between the Cartesian quest for certainty and naturalized epistemology, arguing that Quine ignores normative alternatives to Cartesianism. Kim's critique fails here, because he mischaracterizes the scope of Quine's project: his naturalism, particularly via his indeterminacy of translation thesis, has the effect of ruling out far more alternatives than Kim suspects. Second, Kim suggests that Quine's putative rejection of normativity is a problem for the evaluation of cognitive outputs, but Kim ignores Quine's behaviorism, which obviates his need for a normative interpretive theory of beliefs. It is suggested that debating about the naturalism's relation to normativity is superfluous: to critique naturalized epistemology, it is necessary to attack the basic naturalistic motivation that fuels the indeterminacy thesis and associated principles.
I'm looking to submit this for publication soon, so I welcome comments.
UPDATE: Left comments on a sympathetic blog entry by Majikthise.
Posted by Ben at 08:41 PM | Comments (0)
December 20, 2005
Letter to The Atlantic Monthly on modularity theory
I sent the following letter to The Atlantic in response to an article by Yale psychologist Paul Bloom.
I agree with Paul Bloom (December Atlantic) that the basic error in supernatural belief is the undue separation of mental from physical properties. Ghosts, immortal souls and God do not exist, because there are no souls without bodies: the mental depends on the physical for its existence. I also agree that it is our capacity to separate mental and physical properties that makes this error possible. However I think that Professor Bloom's explanation for that capacity is dubious.Bloom believes that infants possess separate neurological systems (what psychologists call "modules") for processing thoughts about the mental and the physical. Since the systems are separate and confined to their own subject matter, this is supposed to explain why their outputs needn't be correlated in the way they ought to be.
But this explanation seems exceedingly baroque. Why do we need separate modules for the mental and the physical to explain the possibility of imagining the separation of the two properties? If someone erroneously believes that men can fly, and separates the
"flight" property from birds while projecting it onto men, does this mean there is a special, separately evolved "flight" module?Why not just chalk up the possibility of this separation to the general human capacity for abstraction, which permits us to imagine just about any two properties in isolation? It makes far more sense to say that our general power of abstraction evolved independently, owing to its obvious survival advantage as the source of rational thought, leaving in its wake the tolerable side-effect of the possibility of erroneous abstraction.
My explanation above does nothing, of course, to explain the pervasiveness of the religion error. But, I think, neither does the Bloom's theory. Why, after all, are he and his friends able to resist the innate lure of Cartesianism, while others cannot? Granted, social pressure cannot explain the possibility of belief in an error, but it can explain its motivation—and that can explain the pervasiveness. People believe in religion, I think, not primarily because it is comforting (often it is not), but because they fear social disapproval. God isn't a biological accident; He's a result of peer pressure!
To prepare the letter, I actually read most of Bloom's book, Descartes' Baby. It's a good example of a modularity theory of folk psychology, which my dissertation project is quite opposed to. This is a good topic to start my blog with, because it shows why one needn't resist the supernatural by resorting to naturalization. That is exactly what is happening with Bloom. He wants to explain away theistic belief, so he naturalizes it via a biological mechanism. The trouble is that he also would need to naturalize his own atheism. And why won't that explain it away?
Oh, and by the way, Bloom says that he thinks his six-year old son is wrong to think that thinking is what he does, while his brain just "helps him out." I think his son is right. We don't need to reject the commonsense view of the mental in order to reject the Cartesian dualist view that the mind is separate from the body. And we shouldn't. This is a general theme of my dissertation: first person observation trumps naturalization proposals any day.
Posted by Ben at 04:45 AM | Comments (0)
Letter to the NYT Magazine on the science wars
I sent the following letter in response to this article by Jim Holt in the NYT Magazine:
Jim Holt (Dec. 11) maps the politicized landscape of American science, and argues it has been shaped by cynical evasion of well-known scientific facts. This may be true in certain cases, but I fear that Holt too often confuses scientific fact with scientific "consensus." The list of theories he defends against conservative skepticism is a mixed bag. For example, there is a radical difference between the theory of evolution and the hypothesis of manmade global warming. The first is supported by vast and diverse evidence from geology, paleontology, and anatomical morphology; its explanatory power in molecular biology and population genetics is unrivaled. The second is supported by computer models with vastly simplified assumptions and statistical correlations of questionable context; its explanatory power is anecdotal. To question the first requires evasion; to question the second, merely reasonable doubt. The only common element between the two is that each is supported by some "consensus." If politicized science is the problem, a political definition of scientific validity is not the solution.
Posted by Ben at 04:41 AM | Comments (0)
December 11, 2005
Coming soon, a new philosophy blog
This time for real.
Posted by Ben at 03:42 AM | Comments (0)