Ryan McIntire
May 16, 2007

Philosophy 355 (Philosophy of Science): Take Home Final

1.Science and Evolutionary Change. Kuhn argues that evolution, like scientific change, is not making progress toward any ultimate goal. I agree with Kuhn; natural selection is environmentally subjective. A successful creature with a 'high fitness value' in one environment may have a very low fitness value if circumstances changed. Because environments are not ever necessarily stable, I believe that there is no 'finished' product of evolution. Characteristics that make a creature successful in the status quo may not be desired characteristics in the future if environmental changes occur. This is why it becomes so hard to define evolutionary fitness  it can be any trait that yields reproductive success. 
	Tom Bethell wrote about evolutionary fitness in Darwin's Mistake where he says that natural selection is not a creative force, it is merely tautological. Creatures who survive, survive. However, after further investigation I do not consider the possible tautology of evolutionary fitness to be a problem (more on this in 4B). Darwin's theory of evolutionary progress and Kuhn's theory of scientific change seem to be compatible. Natural selection made no promise of absolute progress or goals of ending perfection. The evolutionary fitness of creatures (scientific progress of humans) is fully dependant on the environment (current paradigm) they are living in, and favorable traits (relevant puzzles) are the focal point of their development.
2.Sociobiology. Sociobiology is natural selection applied to social behaviors. If certain behaviors lead to reproductive success, it seems reasonable that they could be selected for (given that those behaviors are depicted in the genetic code) and passed on through generations. For example, being the guy who always makes fart jokes at the most inappropriate times could prove to be a disadvantage when trying to reproduce. This social behavior could theoretically be selected against, because all of the genes being passed on do not feature the fart-jokes-at-worst-times trait. 
	This all hinges on the assumption that social behaviors are contained within our genetic code and aren't simply learned from our environments after birth. This is the most significant problem with sociobiology in my view, but there are ways to get around it. A sociobiologist might concede that many social behaviors are unlikely to be written in our genetic code, but consider this: the behaviors we learn after birth come largely from our parents. If your parents likes to make fart jokes at inappropriate times, you may learn this behavior from them. Those who make fart jokes at inappropriate times may be less likely to reproduce than those who don't. This leads us to the conclusion that most parents will not be teaching their children to make fart jokes at inappropriate times, and so the behavior will not be passed on.
	E.O. Wilson defined sociobiology as 'the systematic study of the biological basis of all forms of social behavior, of all kinds of organisms, including man' (247). Now, in our learned-behavior scenario, are we still talking about sociobiology? Biology is half of the word  we can't be talking about sociobiology if we remove the biological basis for explaining our behaviors. When the parents pass on behaviors after birth instead of through genetics, we aren't talking about the biological basis for social behavior  we are talking about the social basis for social behavior: psychology. 
3.Morality. Darwin argued that morality should be explained in just the same way as the hand or the eye, as an adaptation, a product of natural selection, and I agree with him. Behaving in certain ways towards other creatures may yield higher, lower, or no change in that creature's reproductive fitness. John Mackie (Law of the Jungle) and Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene) both agree that being a grudger can yield success in some situations, and be beaten in others. The result is dependant on the structure of the society the creature lives in. 
	The most significant objection to a Darwinian view of morality would be to argue that our genetic code does not contain morality at all. If moral behaviors are learned and not inherent, they cannot be passed on in the same way other traits can. The only response to this objection I can think of is that behaviors are passed on socially rather than biologically. Natural selection still applies: if a parent teaches a child a behavior that leads to a lack of evolutionary fitness and the child never reproduces, he will never have a chance to teach that behavior, it disappears. If that behavior is an advantage and the creature is reproductively successful, his offspring may learn it from him. This is how behaviors can be selected for and against through natural selection without the use of genes. 
4.Tautology Problem. In Darwin's Mistake, Tom Bethell wrote about evolutionary fitness, claiming that natural selection is not a creative force, it is merely tautological. He is not the first or last person to bring up the tautology problem, and the basic argument goes like this: Darwin's claim is basically a circular argument. In natural selection, only the fittest survive. Logically, our next step is to define fitness. Darwin can only define fittest as the creatures that survive. In essence, Darwin's argument is that only creatures who survive, survive. Bethell and many others claim that there is no criterion of fitness independent of survival. 
	The best way for a Darwinian to respond to this problem is to take a step back and remember that natural selection is not actually about simple survival, but reproduction. The fittest creatures are not the ones who live to an old age, they are the ones who feature physical (and possibly mental) characteristics which, given environmental circumstances, are advantageous to reproduction. If Darwin's argument was truly circular, we would not be able to make any accurate predictions about natural selection. Imagine that we knew all of the details of an ecosystem. Every environmental factor accounted for, all species studied extensively. It seems plausible that we could make a prediction as to which creatures are fittest in that specific environment  those who collect the most food, are strongest, fastest, or any other attribute that would be an advantage in that environment. 
	Darwin couldn't simply say the strongest survive because in some environments, physical bulk and strength could theoretically be a disadvantage. Fitness is not impossible to define; it's just environmentally subjective.  With our new definition of fitness, those who feature characteristics which, given environmental circumstances, are advantageous to reproduction combined with Darwin's original statement survival of the fittest, we get survival of those who feature characteristics which, given environmental circumstances, are advantageous to reproduction. Bethell and others could still respond to this by questioning the definition of survival. Did Darwin mean survival in a literal sense, or survival of the genes passed down from generation to generation? The latter could possibly be defined as reproductively successful, and we might be back to a tautology again.
5.Intelligent Design. Michael Behe defined irreducible complexity as a single system which is composed of several well-matched interacting parts that contribute to basic function, wherein the removal of any one of those parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. To explain irreducible complexity, he used an example of a mousetrap. The interacting parts of a mousetrap are the base, catch, spring, and hammer, and if any one of them is removed from the mousetrap it no longer functions. Behe and other ID advocates claim that natural selection cannot produce irreducibly complex systems. His reasoning behind this is that, during the construction of the irreducibly complex system, you absolutely need to know the final function of the system in order to construct its specific parts. There would be no reason for natural selection to create a mousetrap without a spring, nothing would select for the base, catch, or hammer as they would provide nothing and burden the creature. Only after the mousetrap is fully assembled does it become an advantage and can be selected for. Natural selection should have selected against all of the individual, useless parts of the mousetrap, not knowing the end result. Behe and others have used the biological examples of the eye and flagella as proof of irreducibly complex systems in nature. 
	By now, the scientific community has come up with plausible evolutionary explanations for each of Behe's examples, but I do not think listing a bunch of just-so stories is the best way to refute Behe's claim. There are numerous examples, and a good response would refute them all. A better response, in my view, is that evolution does not always work upwards in complexity. Evolution can simplify a creature, removing features from a complex system which contains many unnecessary parts that were once useful. Scientists have shown that organisms sometimes exhibit redundant complexity at a molecular level, where all of the materials for constructing the end result are already present and do not need to be selected for. It's like carving out a pumpkin  all the materials are already inside, and you only need to remove them to make a design that is irreducibly complex. The difference is that nature does not require a designer to remove the inside of its genetic pumpkin. 
6.Can a Darwinian be a Christian? In answering this question, I want to make a distinction. It is easy to be a Darwinian and believe in a divine entity, these are not incompatible beliefs in any way. The incompatibility comes from the related beliefs you hold true in following that deity  a literal interpretation of the Bible for example. I think I can say without a doubt that the Bible is incompatible with evolutionary theory. 
	The most basic tenet of Christianity is the belief in Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God. Belief in the existence of a messiah sent by God is not incompatible with Darwinian theory  it's not even related. However, in believing that the Earth is 6000-10000 years old you may run into a few compatibility issues. Evolution of all the species we have discovered through fossil records could not have happened in that amount of time. The workaround for the Darwinian Christian is this: God did it. He put the fossils in the ground and artificially created natural selection. You could argue that all of the scientific evidence we collect is created by God, and he's simply testing our faith. 
	Arthur Peacocke suggested that no modern religion, such as Christianity, has intellectual integrity or believability unless it accepts evolution. If Peacocke said scientific integrity instead of intellectual integrity, I would agree with him. But I do not agree that the raw believability of a religion is comprimised if it does not accept evolution. As an agnostic I fully accept the possibility that all of our scientific victories,  discoveries, evidence, and explanations were crafted by a divine being for us to find. I also fully accept the possibility of Henderson's Flying Spaghetti Monster, but that's beside the point. 
	Peacocke also tells us that evolution is a 'disguised friend' of Christianity, and that God would 'delight' in the diversity of evolved life. I will agree with Peacocke here if he excludes the Bible from his view of Christianity. Ethically and spiritually, evolution can be fully accepted and compatible with a belief in any deity, but when you bring a book full of outrageous claims into the discussion you have conflict. Those who accept the Bible as a book of stories that teach moral and spiritual lessons can accept or reject evolution on its own merits. The conflicts between Christianity and Darwinism we see should not (key word: should) stem from a belief in God vs. a belief in evolution, they stem from literal interpretation of the Bible and its incompatibility with anything else.