🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <56j684$fni@staff.cs.su.oz.au>, danny@cs.su.oz.au (Danny) wrote:

: Jason Stokes <j.stokes@student.anu.edu.au> wrote:
: >By reductionist biologists I assume you mean the champions of the selfish
: >gene theory like Dawkins?  In biology there are eminent reasons for the
: >adoption of, as you put it, the reduction of all of "ecology, embryology
: >and evolution to molecular genetics", 
: 
: Really?  How much evolutionary biology have you read other than Dawkins?
: The huge majority of biologists who do functional biology, embryology,
: and ecology are just wasting their time, are they?

When did I say that?  I simply said that at the *fundamental* level,
biology is about competing replicators.  Likewise, at the *fundamental*
level, societies are composed of individual people.

: >not the least of which is that it
: >eliminates pernicious ideas like group selection 
: 
: Group selection is not "pernicious".  It is only pernicious when appealed
: to inappropriately.  (Even people like Maynard Smith accept that within
: a narrow range of parameters it can be significant.)

Group selection is bogus.  Groups do not replicate, so how can they be
selected on?  Selection does not work on groups, it works on genes.

Of course, differing groups create different selection pressures (that's
one major factor of speciation), but that's a far cry from the idea that
"adaptive" groups can be selected over "non-adaptive" groups. 

: Excuse me?  In what way do you need to abolish ecology in order to use
: Dawkins' extended phenotype idea (which, again, is really powerful
: *in some circumstances*).

Who said anything about abolishing ecology?

: >Faced with this, I
: >don't understand your charge of "reductionism" and I'm not even sure the
: >word "reductionism" is meaningful.
: 
: Does ANU teach philosophy of science?  Go grab a copy of the introductory 
: textbook on the subject and have a read....

I looked at this question some time ago.  I concluded that the word
"reductionism" is largely completely meaningless, and likewise "holism". 
I guess one example of "reductionism" is the behaviourist program to
eliminate all ideas of the mind from psychology, but I would prefer to
call it "mega-overambitious science."  I don't see any way of
distinguishing "reductionism" from the grand scientific tradition of
"parsimonous explanation."

: >I think you are committing the fallacy of composition.  In Dawkin's
: >theory, the fundamental unit is not a length of DNA, but a *replicator*. 
: 
: Which is a particular DNA sequence, no?  What are you getting at.

No, it is an abstract idea based on certain emergent properties that
certain DNA sequences have.  You seem to have difficulty distinguishing
between the abstract theoretical idea of a gene, and the particular
physical components that make it up.  It's really very simple, it's the
same as a piece of software on a disk is not "reducable" to differential
patterns of iron oxide.  Likewise a gene is a piece of information that is
not reducable to physics.  Also likewise, an "individual" in my philosophy
of society is not "reducable" to the particular atoms that make the
pattern up.  Your argument of "reductionism-ad-absurdum" really is bogus.

: In what sense is a sequence of DNA irreducible?  DNA sequences are
: composed of atoms, completely subject to the laws of physics...  Or are
: you some sort of vitalist, believing that non-physical forces are at
: work?

No, and I'm not really talking about DNA.  In evolutionary biology, DNA is
not studied as a length of DNA, but as an abstract thing that "self"
replicates (and has phenotypic expression).  Once more, this is idea that
is independent of physics.

: >In the same way, I'm not referring to the individual as a collection of
: >protein but as an *autonomous agent*.  As an autonomous agent, I think the
: >individual can rightly be considered the fundamental unit of society. 
: 
: And cells are fundamental units in functional biology.  And demes,
: villages, and continental plates are fundamental units in
: (respectively) population genetics, human geography, and geology.

Exactly, we are getting into the territory of *heirachical* reductionism. 
You are making the charge that I am reducing the whole of society to
individuals.  I am not.  What I am asking for is that the first building
step is examining to what extent individual rights are important, for
people to go against the pack.  At a higher level there are of course
questions of how we manage competing ethnic groups, nation states,
corporations etc, but in every one of those situations if we take a step
back from all the grand concepts that operate in those realms (ideas like
"sovereignity", "free markets", "ethnic identity" etc) and think once more
that our fundamental goal is maximising individual ah.. "actualisation"
than the picture can often become much clearer.

: Humans are not even remotely close to being autonomous: we are
: created by socialisation; we are dependent on the world for
: physical and other forms of sustenance; we are connected to the 
: rest of the universe by an immensely complicated causal web; etc.

But we make choices.  Even if we are influenced by others, we have
individual characteristics, individual wants. 

: >: States and communities, like them or not, are real entities -- just
: >: like continental plates and oceanic trenches.

: I don't see that censorship denies invididualism, though -- you can
: quite coherently believe that individuals are the only "real" entities
: and continue censor them.  

Well, my definition of a good, individualistic society is that individuals
are allowed to dissent or defy the majority in important ways, such as
freely expressing themselves.  In the words of Adlai Stevenson, "A free
society is one where it is safe to be unpopular."  I feel if you deny that
basic level of individualism, you are only one philosophical step away
from "paternalistic" societies like Malaysia or Singapore.

-- 
Jason Stokes: j.stokes@student.anu.edu.au

"Warning!  Some material in this story may not be suitable for children, especially the parts involving sex, which no one should know anything about until reaching the age of eighteen (twenty-one in certain states)."

-- Infocom -  "Leather Goddesses of Phobos".