Métaphysique de la science/Metaphysic of Sciences

Métaphysique de la science: un colloque organisé par Maximilian Kistler. Il se tiendra les 1 et 2 décembre 2008, à l'Université de Grenoble (amphithéâtre MSH).

Metaphysics of Science: workshop organised by Maximilian Kistler. The workshop will take place à the University of Grenoble (France), 1/12/2008 and 2/12/2008 (amphithéâtre MSH).


Version française:
La science contemporaine semble nous procurer des connaissances toujours plus vastes : la physique nous révèle la nature des constituants ultimes de la matière et de l’univers à grande échelle ; la biologie, la psychologie et l’économie découvrent la constitution des êtres vivants et des sociétés ainsi que les régularités gouvernant leur évolution et de leurs interactions. Cependant, il est difficile d’interpréter ce que ces théories scientifiques nous disent de la réalité : la métaphysique de la science cherche à construire un cadre conceptuel qui nous mette en mesure de le faire. Ce colloque sera l’occasion de poser les questions suivantes : est-il rationnel de penser que les objets étranges que sont les photons et autres quarks postulés par la physique existent réellement, ou est-il plus judicieux de les considérer comme des fictions utiles ? S’ils existent réellement, nombre d’autres questions se posent. Les constituants ultimes des objets matériels ont-ils une nature distincte des lois de la nature qui déterminent leur évolution et leurs interactions, ou leurs propriétés intrinsèques sont-elles des « pouvoirs », de sorte que les lois font partie de leur identité même ? Qu’est-ce qui est plus fondamental : les objets individuels ou leurs relations ? Qu’est-ce que la causalité ? Y a-t-il des espèces naturelles ? La nécessité que les lois de la nature imposent à l’évolution des choses est-elle différente de la nécessité logique ?
Pour avoir accès au programme, il suffit de cliquer sur "more?".


English version:
Contemporary science seems to provide us with ever greater knowledge. Physics purports to give us the nature of the ultimate constituents of matter and of the universe at large; biology, psychology and economics disclose the make-up of living beings, as well as the patterns of their evolutions and interactions. But it is hard to interpret what these scientific theories tell us about reality. Metaphysics of Science aims at constructing a conceptual framework, within which we can make sense of contemporary science. Here are some issues that will be addressed at this conference: Is it rational to believe that photons, quarks and other strange objects postulated by physics really exist, or are they rather useful fictions? If we take them to be real, other issues arise: are the ultimate constituents of reality distinct from the laws of nature that determine their evolution and interactions, or are their intrinsic properties rather powers, so that those laws are inseparable from the very nature of the fundamental properties? What is more fundamental: individual objects or their relations? Are there any natural kinds? Is the necessity imposed on the evolution of natural systems by laws of nature different from logical necessity?

Interested? Click on "more?".


Session 1 (lundi 1er décembre, 09 h 00 – 13 h 00): Structural Realism, Natural Kinds

9h Allocutions de bienvenue et ouverture :
# M. le Président de l’université Pierre Mendès France (UPMF)
# Denis Vernant, directeur de PLC, UPMF
# Max Kistler, UPMF

* 9h30 Nigel Leary (Birmingham), How Essentialists Misunderstand Locke
* 10h30 Philipp Keller (Genève)/ Stephan Leuenberger (Glasgow), Structural Realism: the Worst of Both Worlds?
* 11h30 pause
* 12h00 Michael Esfeld (Lausanne)/Vincent Lam (Lausanne), Structural Realism and Causation

* 13h00 -14h15 Buffet


Session 2 (lundi 1er décembre, 14 h 15 – 19 h 30): Dispositions, Powers, Reduction

* 14h15 Kevin Mulligan (Genève), Tropes, Time and Modality
* 15h15 Olivier Massin (Genève), Varieties of Impenetrability (Courage Olivier!)
* 16h15 pause
* 16h30 Stephen Mumford (Nottingham), Modelling Powers as Vectors
* 17h30 Claudine Tiercelin (IUF, Paris XII), Are All Properties Essentially Dispositional?
* 18h30 Christian Sachse (Lausanne), Simplify Complexity - an Argument from Selection for Biology

Session 3 (mardi 2 décembre 9 h 00 – 13 h 30): Mind and Psychology

* 9h00 Simone Gozzano (L’Aquila), Do Mental Properties Have Identity Conditions?
* 10h00 Reinaldo Bernal Velasquez (Grenoble), Epistemic Externalism and the Ontology of Science
* 11h00 pause
* 11h30 Pascal Ludwig (Paris IV), Are Phenomenal Concepts Transparent?
* 12h30 Markus Schrenk (Nottingham), Stimulus Necessity

* 13h30 – 15h00 Buffet

Session 4 (mardi 2 décembre 15 h 00 – 19 h 30): Causation and Laws

* 15h00 Paul Noordhof (York), Property Causation
* 16h00 Helen Beebee (Birmingham), Laws, Dispositions and the Necessary a posteriori
* 17h00 pause
* 17h30 Francis Longworth (Birmingham), The Disjunctive Theory of Causation
* 18h30 Matt Tugby (Nottingham), A Dispositional Account of Causation

Source: Philosophie, Langage et Cognition.

Terence Tao, blogging and Mathematics

Terence Tao is Professor of Mathematics at UCLA.

His new book, Structure and Randomness, is excerpted from his excellent weblog "What's new"".

Terence Tao est professeur de Mathématiques à UCLA.

Son dernier livre, Structure and Randomness, est la version papier des billets publiés sur son excellent blog: What's new.

Christine Clavien on Evolutionary Ethics

30/10/2008: a lecture about Evolutionary Ethics by Christine Clavien, post-doc at the University of Lausanne, took place at Lyon 3 University, in the seminar organized by Denis Forest.

Christine Clavien did an excellent presentation of evolutionary ethics. You can find here the notes I took during the conference. I invite you to visit her homepage and the page devoted to her work (free access to many papers).

This is the english version of "Éthique évolutionniste: Christine Clavien".

1) Social Darwinism

a-Major Theses:

* The effect of evolution is selecting the best beings: the survival of the most fit is considered as a factor in the improvement of race (the weakest are eliminated). (Eugenism thesis.)

* The human race is divided into races. (Polygenic thesis.)

* The biological characters are more determinant than the environment. (Thesis of hereditarianism: Galton, inherited from Lamarck.)

* The relationship between individuals is basically the conflict. (Thesis of Struggle for life.)

b-The socio-political applications:

* The "laissez-faire" strategy: it is primarily an anti-"welfare state" policy (based on the principles of charity and solidarity, the WF allows the reproduction of the weakest).

* Intervention: from eugenic policy (promoting the development of the "better beings" and preventing the reproduction of the "lowest beings") to the policy of the destruction of the individuals (or races) considered as the weakest.
As we can see, it is difficult to associate Darwinism with any specific political doctrine.

* Imperialism: justification of colonization.


2) Problems with social Darwinism

* Evolution does not select the best in absolute terms, but those who are the most fit with an environment. "The selection can not produce perfection, because in the competition for reproductive success among members of a population, it is only needed to be better, there is no need to be perfect. "(Mayr, 1989).

* The polygenic argument is false and the differentiation of races based on criterion located at the individual level (color, shape of the face) is inadequate to characterize a race. These are minor characters in terms of organization and functioning of human beings.

* Biological causality is not determinism. "The animal that results is not the most perfect design conceivable, nor is it merely good enough to scrape by. It is the product of a historical sequence of changes, each one of which represented, at best, the better of the alternatives that happened to be around at the time. "(Dawkins, 1999: 46). Example: pandas eat bamboos; in order to help them to eat, evolution has selected a bone at the location of the thumb. But with this bone, they are clumsy. A real articulated thumb would have been undoubtedly much more convenient.

* In a hostile environment, animals are not necessarily in conflict: the emperor penguins, when it is very cold, form a very compact group, in "tortoise formation", in order to limit contact with cold air. And so that the peripherical penguins do not succumb, a rotation takes place between the individuals who are at the periphery and the individuals who are at the centre.


3) Evolutionary Ethics

a-A method:

* Evolutionary ethics (EE) is not social Darwinism. It does not draw any socio-political conclusions from his theses. While the social Darwinism is usually use to justify theories and socio-political policy, EE is entirely theoretical.

* EE is not a set of statement, but a (scientific) methodology applied to the field of moral philosophy. It is not a different theoretical option from those in the field of moral philosophy.

* With the help of other disciplines (biology, evolutionary psychology, game theory ...), EE is trying to understand the role of evolution in moral behavior and moral beliefs.


b- The 4 domains of ethics and evolutionary ethics:

One can distinguish 4 areas in Ethics: meta-ethics, applied ethics, descriptive ethical and normative ethics.

* Meta-ethic: branch of ethics that addresses the ontological nature of moral objects. EE does not seem to have decisive data or theory in this domain, because the evolutionary ethicists defend all positions in the spectrum of ethics.

* Applied Ethics: branch of ethics which addresses the application of moral standards. Because of the excesses of social Darwinism, evolutionary ethicists avoid this aspect.

* Descriptive ethics: branch of ethics which adresses the genesis of behavior and moral beliefs. The evolutionary approach assumes that morality is the result of a natural process of evolution. It is the stronghold of EE: it reaches "satisfactory" explanations of certain moral behaviors, including altruism.

Example: the reproduction of kamikazes bees (Hamilton (William), "The Genetical Evolution of Social Behavior (I and II)", Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7, pp.1-52). We know that in a swarm of bees, most of them are sterile. The behavior of the kamikaze bees can be explained by the fact that they are dedicated to the community. The problem is how the property to be sterile in kamikaze bees could be selected instead of contributing to the extinction of these bees? In fact, since the bees have only, technically speaking, a single set of chromosomes (they have the same mother and no father), they have a common heritage with their sisters. That is why it is more interesting for the bees to protect their sisters rather than to trying to preserve themselves. By sacrificing themselves, they lose their genetic material, but they save the one of their sisters. This type of selection may be applied to men: genes that induce altruistic behavior may be selected by evolution because they are interesting, especially when they are reciprocal (especially in the context of parental love).

But as Christine Clavien demonstrated in her presentation, being able to explain the reciprocal altruism is not enough if our aim is explained morality in all its aspects.

According to C Clavien , there are two trends of explanation about the origin of morality:
1) Morality is a selective advantage, it answered a need that arose during human evolution, particularly in the context of a life in the middle of a community. This position is supported by Richards (1986 Richards, "A defense of evolutionary ethics," Biology and Philosophy, 1 (1986), pp. 265-293)

2) Several characters have evolved independently, but led by association, to morality. This position is defended by Stitch, Rottschaeffer, Prinz.

* Normative ethics: a branch of ethics that addresses the justification of moral judgments. EE does not solve the problems of ethical standards in a definitive manner, due to the dubious passage of facts to normative standards.

1) Reducing the "ought to" to the "to be". Moore has revealed that it is misleading to define the moral good (well) in descriptive terms (the pleasant, the desirable ...) because they do not belong to the same category.

2) Reduction of the "to be" to the "ought to". Hume noted that authors of moral philosophy tend to pass to remarks about facts to normative conclusions without any justification. Factual premises can not lead to a normative conclusion.

Even with this difficulty EE has its advantages. It helps to denounce the illusion of ethics: it cannot base all its statements on absolute standards. It must give up the search for ultimate foundations, it must seek the best possible reasons. And according to C. Clavien, EE can help moral philosophy in this quest.


4) Ethics and the quest for evolutionary basis of morality

To support their position, philosophers refer to common sense or fundamentals intuitions.

But a growing number of empirical data on human moral psychology contradicts the existence of those shared moral intuitions. These data are provided by the trolleybusology "(Appiah, 2008):

* 1st experience: you are the witness of the scene that follows. A trolleybus whose brakes no longer work is moving with celerity on a road where five hikers are. Beside you is a switch with a joystick, which can change the trajectory of the trolleybus. But if you change the trajectory, the trolley will go onto a sidetrack on which a railway worker is doing some repairs, who will surely be crushed by the trolleybus. Do you choose to pull the joystick?

* 2nd experience: the same trolleybus advances in the direction of hikers. This time, you are next to a big man on a bridge, over the sidetracks. If we push the man on the sidetracks, it will stop the trolley, saving the lives of five hikers. Do you choose to push the big guy?

Common sense leads to contradictory judgments because a majority of respondents chose to sacrifice the railway worker, but a majority refuses to push the big man on the sidetracks.

The brain of the interviewed subjects were scanned, using the brain imaging technique, during experiments on the trolleybus, by Greene and his colleagues (2001). The results of the experiment show that emotional engagement influence moral judgments: pushing a man provokes emotional reactions stronger than simply pressing buttons on a joystick.

The theorists of evolution can explain such phenomenon. At the time the social instincts were formed, human beings lived in small communities, where it was important to help members of this group. It is very likely that emotional altruistic mechanisms have been established for close relatives. According to this explanation, it is understandable that we have difficulty in accepting to push a person over a bridge.

Such an explanation requires to abandon the foundation on common sense, but to recognize that the relevant moral criteria depend on the lifestyle of the species.

I thank Christine Clavien for her excellent presentation, for her kindness and for allowing me to publish my summary of her conference.


Bibliography:
-Appiah, A. 2008. Experiments in Ethics. Mary Flexner Lectures. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
-Arnhart, L. 1998. Darwinian Natural Right : The Biological Ethics of Human Nature. Suny Series in Philosophy and Biology. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
-Boehm, C. 2002 (2000). Conflict and the Evolution of Social Control. Katz, L.D. (eds.), Evolutionary Origins of Morality : Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives (pp. 79-101). Thorverton: Imprint Academic.
1997. Impact of the Human Egalitarian Syndrome on Darwinian Selection Mechanics. The American Naturalist, 150 pp.100-21.
-Clark, L.L. 1981. Social Darwinism in France. The Journal of Modern History, 53 pp.D1025-D44.
-Darwin, C.R. 1871. La Descendance De L'homme Et La Sélection Sexuelle, translated by Barbier, E. Paris: C. Reinwald.
-Dawkins, R. 1999. The Extended Phenotype : The Long Reach of the Gene. Rev. ed. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press.
-Galton, F. 1869. Hereditary Genius : An Inquiry into Its Laws and Consequences. London: Macmillan.
-Greene, J.D., Sommerville, R.B., Nystrom, L.E., Darley, J.M., and Cohen, J.D. 2001. An Fmri Investigation of Emotional Engagement in Moral Judgment. Science, 293 pp.2105-08.
-Hamilton, W.D. 1964. The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour. I & Ii. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7 pp.1-52.
-Hume, D. 1991. Traité De La Nature Humaine. Paris: GF-Flammarion.
-Mayr, E. 1989 (1982). Histoire De La Biologie : Diversité, Évolution Et Hérédité, translated by Blanc, M. Paris: A. Fayard.
-Moore, G.E. 1998 (1903). Principia Ethica, translated by Gouverneur, M. and Ogien, R. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.
-Pearson, K. 1912. Darwinism, Medical Progress and Eugenics : The Cavendish Lecture, 1912 : An Address to the Medical Profession. London: Dulau.
-Prinz, J.J. 2009. Against Moral Nativism. Murphy, D. and Bishop, M. (eds.), Stich and His Critics (pp. 381-96). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell
-Richards, R.J. 1987. Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior. Science and Its Conceptual Foundations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1986. A Defense of Evolutionary Ethics. Biology and Philosophy, 1 pp.265-93.
-Roberts, S. 1979. Order and Dispute : An Introduction to Legal Anthropology. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
-Rottschaefer, W.A., and Martinsen, D. 1990. Really Taking Darwin Seriously: An Alternative to Michael Ruse's Darwinian Metaethics. Biology and Philosophy, 5 pp.149-73.
-Ruse, M. 2002. A Darwinian Naturalists Perspective on Altruism. Post, S.G. (eds.), Altruism and Altruistic Love : Science, Philosophy and Religion in Dialogue (pp. 151-67). Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
1984. The Morality of the Gene in Sociobiology and Philosophy. Monist, 67 pp.176-99.
-Spencer, H. 1879. The Data of Ethics. London ; Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate.
1864. The Principles of Biology. London [etc.]: William and Norgate.
-Sripada, C., and Stich, S.P. 2006. A Framework for the Psychology of Norms. Carruthers, P., Laurence, S. and Stich, S.P. (eds.), The Innate Mind: Culture and Cognition (pp. 280-301). Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press.
-Trivers, R.L. 1971. The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 46 pp.35-57.
-Williams, G.D. 1993. Mother Nature Is a Wicked Old Witch. Nitecki, M.H. and Nitecki, D.V. (eds.), Evolutionary Ethics (pp. 217-31). Albany: State University of New York Press.
-Wilson, D.S. 1975. A Theory of Group Selection. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 72 pp.143-46.
-Wright, R. 1995 (1994). L'animal Moral : Psychologie Évolutionniste Et Vie Quotidienne, translated by Béraud-Butcher, A. Paris: Michalon.
-Wright, S. 1932. ''the Role of Mutation, Inbreeding, Crossbreeding and Selection in Evolution. (eds.), Proceedings of the 6th International Congress of Genetics (pp. 356-68).


Christine Clavien on Evolutionary Ethics by Mikolka/Christine Clavien est mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Paternité-Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale-Pas de Modification 2.0 France.

Experimental Philosophy and Drama

Eugene Mirman nous introduit à la philosophie expérimentale.

An introduction to Experimental Philosophy, by Eugene Mirman.



Source: Experimental philosophy (weblog).

Premier billet de Florian Cova/welcome to Florian Cova

Florian Cova est nommé rédacteur d'Inquiries. Nous lui souhaitons le meilleur.
Premier billet: Badiou sur la philosophie française.

Florian Cova is a new contributor to Inquiries. Welcome! We wish him the best!
First post: Badiou sur la philosophie française (in french only, for the present time).

Badiou sur la philosophie française

Comparez : la philosophie française présentée par Alain Badiou et la philosophie continentale en général présentée par Kévin Mulligan. Deux visions assez différentes : d'un côté la philosophie française comme moment représentant l'universel philosophique, de l'autre la philosophie continentale comme maladie.
Ce qui est intéressant, c'est que Badiou tente d'y formuler quelles sont les opérations propres à la "french philosophy" (on pourrait presque dire : la méthode française du philosopher, Badiou les qualifie "d'opérations méthodiques"). Elles sont selon lui au nombre de 4 :


1) Chercher du côté allemand une façon de repenser les rapports entre concept et existence. Soit : essayer de construire un pont au-delà du gouffre qui sépare concept et existence (gouffre énoncé par Kant).

2) Voir dans la science quelque chose "de plus" qu'une simple connaissance. Voir ce qu'il y a dans la science d'actif, de créatif.

3) Engager la philosophie dans la politique ("chercher à changer le rapport entre le concept et l'action").

4) Moderniser la philosophie : suivre les transformations modernes de l'art, de la culture et de la société.

Curieusement, il n'y a là rien de véritablement "méthodique", quoiqu'en dise Badiou. Les deux premiers points représentent plus des "programmes de recherche", dans lesquelles on se donne une thèse préalable ("il n'y a pas complète séparation entre le concept et l'existence", "l'art n'est pas que connaissance mais aussi action") et comme but de la défendre et de l'approfondir : ce sont des "programmes de recherche", et non des méthodes. Les deux derniers points, enfin, semble plutôt fixer le rôle du philosophe dans la société, pas les méthodes à utiliser pour y parvenir.

La philosophie française cherche donc encore sa méthode.

An Interview with David Armstrong about W. Sellars

David Armstrong, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Sydney, is a philosopher of mind, a metaphysician and an epistemologist. He received the Pufendorf Prize in 2004.
In 2002, during a symposium devoted to David Lewis, Andrew Chrucky interviewed David Armstrong, who was a participant, about Wilfried Sellars. (Full text of the interview).

David Armstrong, Professeur Émérite de l'Université de Sydney, est un spécialiste de philosophie de l'esprit, de métaphysique et d'épistémologie.
En 2002, pendant un colloque à la mémoire de David Lewis, Andrew Chrucky eut un entretien avec l'un des participants: David Armstrong. (Texte de l'entretien, en anglais).

Andrew Chrucky: When did you first meet Wilfrid Sellars?
David Armstrong: I met him when I came to the U. S. for first time in 1962. I was teaching for a semester as an Assistant Professor at Yale.

Chrucky: Did you have any interaction with him then?
Armstrong: Yes, I saw quite a bit of him. With his permission I audited his seminar. I have forgotten what it was about -- perhaps on the mind -- but that's a guess. One interesting thing about the seminar was how clear he was. He made a very good impression on me. Sellars is a difficult author to read as everybody knows, but he was beautifully clear in his seminar. I vividly remember one thing. To the student who was giving a paper he said: "What's your slogan? You have to have a slogan that will catch people's attention." I don't think I'm giving you the exact words, but that was the line of thought -- that you needed headlines.

Chrucky: I understand that he believed that every philosopher has a picture in the back of his mind, and that you can literally find the picture and put it diagrammatically on the side, in the margins, as you read.
Armstrong: Ah, that's interesting. I hadn't heard that.

Chrucky: A lot of people have said that he used diagrams in class on the blackboard.
Armstrong: I don't remember. He may have done so. But that didn't stick in my mind; what did stick in my mind was how easy it was to understand him in his seminars.

Chrucky: So, by the time you took the seminar, was he already well known?
Armstrong: Oh, yes! I knew of his reputation before I came there, and he was very pleasant. My wife and I went out to his house on at least one occasion and met him and his wife. He gave me quite a lot of time, and I talked to him about various things. I was just beginning to try to develop a reliability theory of knowledge, and I suggested to him: if you just continue to get things right on a certain matter, that would be enough for knowledge. And I remember him saying to me, "You wouldn't really call that knowledge, you'd only call that smowledge" -- small knowledge.

Chrucky: That's very good.
Armstrong: I thought it was a clever remark. But I thought, well that is what I want to do, make it small. I wanted to make knowledge a somewhat down to earth affair.

Chrucky: When was your next encounter with Sellars?
Armstrong: I don't think I encountered him in the flesh again till 1980. But let me back up a bit. After 1962, I was working on the philosophy of mind, working on my book The Materialist Theory of the Mind, and one of the things that I was reading and thinking about was his three essays on the philosophy of mind, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind." And I found that material very useful and very stimulating in writing my book.

Chrucky: So, I see, there was some direct influence?
Armstrong: Yes, there was some direct influence . . . but I'm afraid I can't tell you what the details were. But those three essays impressed me at the time and certainly went into my thinking.

Chrucky: You also mentioned yesterday the Manifest/Scientific Image distinction. Was that also influential?
Armstrong: No, I think that was a bit later. I am not sure just when I first read his paper "Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man" . . . That essay is also extremely clear, unlike so many of his writings which are very difficult. That distinction between the Manifest Image of the world as it appears to our senses, and the Scientific Image that is gradually being articulated, stuck in my mind, and has been in my mind ever since, and I have worked with it. I thought: yes, and the problem in epistemology is: how do we get from the Manifest Image to the Scientific Image? Especially since, as it were, we have to work inside the Manifest Image to get the sensory evidence that leads us to revise that image itself. There is a bit of conflict and difficulty there: how is it done? Anyway, I've always dwelt with these two Images ever since I read that article.

Chrucky: What I know of your philosophy, you agree with Sellars that the measure of reality is science.
Armstrong: Yes. Certainly. I think knowledge has three pillars. The first pillar is what I call the Moorean truths -- the basic truths of common sense - things like: we are awake now, we are in a hotel, in Chicago; and all the innumerable things that we know of that sort. And I think that Moore's argument that we are much more certain of these sorts of things than we are certain of any skeptical argument to the contrary is a very good point. But, then, with that in hand, we go on to science -- the a priori sciences of mathematics and logic with their special ways of working, but above all to the empirical sciences -- they are the foundations for all our further knowledge.

Chrucky: I think that you are very compatible with Sellars.
Armstrong: Sure.

Chrucky: You both respect science.
Armstrong: I follow him in his Scientific Realism.

Chrucky: Where do you think you diverge from him?
Armstrong: Well, one very big divergence we have is about the problem of universals. Sellars was a Nominalist, and a fairly thoroughgoing Nominalist. All the problems about sorts, kinds, properties, relations, and so on, get kicked up into the linguistic apparatus by Sellars -- he uses those elaborate mechanisms involving the dot-quotes, and so on. And I have no sympathy with that at all. I think that there really are objective properties and relations in the world, that things have properties, stand in relations . . . and that's my view of the thing. But it is not a Sellarsian view.

Chrucky: I have been trying to understand what the problem of universals is, and how to formulate the problem. The way I have come to formulate it -- and I think this is the Sellarsian problem, which I think he takes from C. D. Broad -- it is basically a question of ontological commitment. And the criterion of ontological commitment would be determined by the subject of your sentence. So, if you have a sentence like "The apple is red," all you're committed to here is apples. But if you say "Redness has a certain property," then you are committing yourself to redness. The way I understand Sellars' approach to the problem of universals -- it's simply the question: Can you translate sentences that contain references to abstract terms like "redness" into sentences that do not? As to the existence of properties and relations in the world, I do not see in Sellars a denial of this. It is simply restricted to that question of translating sentences.
Armstrong: But given these translations he thought you were not ontologically committed to properties and relations.

Chrucky: Right. That's his criterion.
Armstrong: I regard myself as committed to them.

Chrucky: You would accept sentences like: "Redness is . . . " and not bother translating?
Armstrong: Yes. Well, I don't really do it in terms of translation. I describe myself as a Scientific Realist about universals. I think it's up to science to tell us a posteriori, on the basis of our best science, what are the true properties of things and the true relations in which things stand. This is a big difference. My theory is not a Platonic theory, its more an Aristotelian theory, if that's what Aristotle held: universals in re, in the things. These things are to be discovered a posteriori under the guidance of science, and it's not our language that tells us what universals there are. So that's my big difference with Wilfrid.

Chrucky: Let me ask you about something that I found a problem with in Sellars, and I thought your book, Belief, Truth and Knowledge, took a correct stand on this. It has to do with cognitions. It seems to me that Sellars focused on human cognition, and everything he says seems to be relevant only to human cognitions. But, after all, we are also animals, and what he has to say about animal cognitions, although it is also plausible, I find that he doesn't connect the two, that he doesn't connect human cognitions with animal cognitions. And there is a kind of separation where you get a tendency to read Sellars as a linguistic idealist, which is exactly what I think Rorty does.
Armstrong: Yes, well I am not expert enough in Sellars' philosophy to say that, but I am very much on the side of seeing the human mind as on a continuum with the animal mind. Down through the chimpanzees, down to the most elementary creatures that perhaps just have perceptions and are driven by certain routines.

Chrucky: This is exactly what I found compatible with my way of thinking what you were doing -- seeing this continuum. But in Sellars, although in separate places what he says is correct, there is a lack of merging of these things.
Armstrong: We are evolved animals, we are evolved from animals with simpler mental structures, and so on down and down and down, until you reach creatures that have no mental structures at all.

Chrucky: Would you say that humans operate on this animal level as well as on . . .
Armstrong: Sure, sure. We're animals. I didn't know that was in dispute between Wilfrid and me! I thought he would just grant that.

Chrucky: In my dissertation, that was the main problem that I found.
Armstrong: Well, you know his work in a way that I don't.

Chrucky: Well, just because we are talking about interpretations of Sellars, I am thinking of Rorty because I think he set analytic philosophy into a post-modern trend, and it has to do with his interpretation of Sellars. I'm wondering: What's your take on Rorty?
Armstrong: Not a very favorable one . . . not a very favorable one. I really have no time for linguistic idealism and the playing down of truth.

Chrucky: You would call it linguistic idealism?
Armstrong: Assuming that that phrase is right . . . I was just going along with it. What I certainly don't like about Rorty is the denial of truth, the notion of truth, and objectivity. I believe that science and mathematics gets us to objective truth.

Chrucky: And so did Sellars. You mentioned to me an encounter which you had with Sellars later on, and you mentioned Moby Dick.
Armstrong: Oh, yes, that was in 1980. I was lecturing for a semester at the University of Texas at Austin, and various people were coming in for a week and I think it was organized by Herb Hochberg, and one of the philosophers who came was Sellars, who was a friend of Hochberg's. And we had some nice conversations there. I was rereading Moby Dick - it seemed a good thing to do while in America. And I mentioned to Wilfrid that I'd been doing that, and he said, "Oh, yes, I reread it every four or five years."

Chrucky: Interesting. You are going to have me thinking about this for a while. Is there some other encounter?
Armstrong: No, I met him once or twice in conferences. I remember half an hour with him at a bar, but I don't remember anything particular. I think you pretty much got my relations with Sellars. They were not extensive, but they were very pleasant and I value what there was.

Chrucky: I myself had a long conversation with Sellars only once. This was at Haverforth. Sellars, Chisholm, and [Ernest] Nagel came together for an NEH summer conference. I just crashed on it, because I was then studying Sellars and wanted to hear him. There was a criticism made of his Manifest Image by Alan Donagan. The criticism was that different cultures have different Manifest Images, and these Manifest Images include a religious world view, so the criticism was: how can he talk about a common Manifest Image when there are many Manifest Images? So I asked: How do you respond to that? He said something to the effect: "Well, I am not interested in the religious component. I am abstracting from the common sense view certain features of it which are not common, such as religious world views -- I leave these out of the picture."
Armstrong: Well, that sounds like a good reply. Such an abstraction makes sense.

Chrucky: Right. I thought it was.
Armstrong: He was talking about the ordinary world as one moves around in it.

Chrucky: One of the things that troubled me was Sellars' roots -- what was his intellectual background?
Armstrong: His father, of course.

Chrucky: Yes, certainly. By the way, was his father influential on you?
Armstrong: No, but he did write me one letter at one point when he was a very old man, I think after I had met Wilfrid. I have one letter from him which I still have filed away with my papers -- but I don't remember very much of it. But I do remember Wilfrid saying, "I am very much my father's son, philosophically." And, of course, Roy Wood Sellars was a Nominalist. And I think that influenced Wilfrid. I always thought, from my stance, that was a rather unfortunate influence! I thought: I am sorry he is a Nominalist because I don't agree with that.

Chrucky: What I have come to believe is that he was influenced not only by his father . . . and he recognizes explicit influence by others: Carnap, Wittgenstein, Ryle . . . But I think the hidden one, which he mentions once in a while -- but when he does mention him, he forms a big chunk of his world view: this is C. D. Broad.
Armstrong: Ah, that's interesting.

Chrucky: Now I have a greater appreciation of Broad because of this -- because of trying to understand the influences on Sellars -- to the extent that I have created a web site for C. D. Broad. What I did in my introductory essay is to call him the default philosopher of the century.
Armstrong: Hmm, that's an interesting remark. I don't know Broad as well as I should, but I am sure that from what I know that he was an excellent philosopher.

Chrucky: What I do like about him is that he has the clarity of G. E. Moore, but not . . . You see, Moore has a tendency to be too picky, and it becomes tedious. You want to ask him to speed up his exposition.
Armstrong: I greatly like Moore's "Defense of Common Sense."

Chrucky: Yes.
Armstrong: That seemed to me to be very good. But, yes, Broad seems to advance the topics which he takes up.

Chrucky: There is a similarity between you and Broad in the following respect. The reason I called him the default philosopher of the century is because I think he has a grand dialectical approach -- in fact I call the site "Philosophical Alternatives from C.D. Broad". For example, for the mind-body problem, in the book Mind and Its Place in Nature, he gives seventeen alternative views on the mind-body problem. I don't know of any one else who did such a thing. And reading your work, you also have this dialectical approach where you examine alternatives and give credit to alternative views.
Armstrong: I did not do anything in such a comprehensive way for the mind-body problem, but I think I have done it in a reasonably comprehensive way for the problem of universals.

Chrucky: Yes.
Armstrong: I tried to set out the various varieties of Nominalism and varieties of Realisms.

Chrucky: Its very wonderful to read it . . . your taking care of various alternatives. . . . Let me move on to something else. What I would want to know from a philosopher if I were an ordinary person. Probably the first things I would want to know is: Are you religious in any way?
Armstrong: No. I'm not.

Chrucky: What is your take on religion?
Armstrong: I have the greatest respect for it. I think it may be the thing that many people need, and it enshrines many truths about life. But I do not think it is actually true.

Chrucky: So, it expresses truth in some metaphorical way?
Armstrong: In some metaphorical and symbolic way, I think it grasps at truth. And I think it gives hope and comfort to many.

Chrucky: I am not much into religion as a subject, but perhaps someone like Bultmann who was demythologizing religion is someone you would find favor with?
Armstrong: I am quite happy with religion going on the way it is. I don't want to alter the religions. That's not my interest. But I suppose that if you are considering what is the truth behind religion then it would have to be demythologized.

Chrucky: How do you view the state of the world? Right now there seems to be a rise in fundamentalism all over.
Armstrong: Yes.

Chrucky: You know Iran became a theocracy, and there seems to be a Christian-Islamic confrontation going on. How does one resolve this? Is there a philosophical way of looking at it?
Armstrong: No. I don't think so.

Chrucky: Is there a need for dialogue? . . . so that religions confront one another, or is this hopeless?
Armstrong: I don't really know. I really don't have any views on this point. I think of myself as in the Christian and Jewish tradition, and in the tradition of Greece. Matthew Arnold thought of Hebraism and Hellenism as the twin poles of Western culture. I see myself as a person in the stream within that culture, and I think it may perhaps be the best tradition of thought and life that has so far been evolved. Certainly I don't think we should be apologetic about it.

Chrucky: When I think of your work, there is one thing that I don't think about in connection with your work . . . and that is ethics.
Armstrong: Yes, well I've done no work at all in moral or political philosophy. I've had my opinions . . .

Chrucky: Why is that?
Armstrong: My mind doesn't seem to naturally work on it. It seems to work on problems of philosophical psychology, and mind, on perception, and on epistemology, and on metaphysics. I never found a pressing need to be a philosopher about other matters. I have quite strong opinions and I have occasionally written on particular matters. But I don't feel any particular urge to work philosophically on these other areas -- perhaps that's a fault -- I sometimes think it might be.

Chrucky: I felt like you do. But several years ago I started being very perplexed with ethical problems, with social and political problems.
Armstrong: Well, I think a lot about social and political problems, but I don't think of them as a philosopher. I've got an intellectual biography that talks a bit about these matters. It is about fifty pages. It ends in 1984 when the book was published. But it probably covers the most interesting part of my life. The younger part of people's lives is usually the most interesting part. It was published in D. M. Armstrong, (Profiles, Vol. 4). Ed. Radu J. Bogdan, Reidel 1984. [It contains a 'Self-Profile'; 'Replies' and 'Bibliography of D. M. Armstong' with abstracts of books and major articles up to 1983.] It was not a successful book -- the series was not very successful, but I enjoyed writing my autobiography. I think that may give you better clues to my intellectual formation

Chrucky: I don't have it, but I will look for it.
Armstrong: I will send you my vita if you like, by email

Chrucky: Talking about e-mail and the internet, I personally feel overwhelmed by computers -- I mean in a good way. I mean I am amazed. I am stupified by this phenomenon of the internet.
Armstrong: Yes, it's amazing. It's truly changing the whole nature of intellectual life.

Chrucky: How has it impacted on you?
Armstrong: Well, I wrote my last two books on a computer, and now I couldn't go back -- and I can hardly type, I peck away.

Chrucky: But it doesn't matter, because if you make a mistake, so what? You can always correct it.
Armstrong: I wish I could actually type. David Lewis told me: fairly early that he just decided he had to learn to type properly. I wish I had done that myself. But I went straight from ballpoint to computer. I had been producing written manuscripts that unfortunate secretaries had to type out. I was just an old-fashioned academic. For a very bad month I was struggling to come to some terms with computers.

Chrucky: I can sympathize with that. . . . You know Sellars used the computer in many instances as a model for his philosophy of mind. He used chess and computers: those were the two things he used as models.
Armstrong: Although I am a materialist, I am a bit careful about comparing the mind to a computer. But I do think the model of a computer is useful in understanding mental states that don't involve any current mental activity. Consider beliefs and know-hows, and long-term purposes, and so on. They are there in the mind even when you are soundly asleep. That is easier to understand if you think of the situation inside a fully programmed but currently shut down computer.

Chrucky: Well, this is why when we talked about animals, this is relevant. . . . You know you are reminding me of [Hector-Neri] Castaneda. He had this notion of some kind of mind . . . I was impressed by some of the thought-experiments he had. . . . There was something he called Privatus. . . . Well, he defended a private language thesis when it was unpopular to defend.
Armstrong: I never saw anything wrong with a private language. It was one of the great bores of philosophy. You know that terrible bores sweep over the philosophical world, in particular the world of analytic philosophy. We don't talk nonsense like Derrida and others do, but we do get into very boring ruts. And one of them was the private language argument, which I characterize as the bore of the fifties. And then there was the indeterminacy of translation, which was more or less the bore of the sixties or the seventies. There are these ruts that people get stuck in, cuds which people just chew over and over. But they don't seem ever to get anywhere.

Chrucky: Popularity seems to have a role . . . like with Derrida . . . it sweeps people up. . . . But Castaneda was one of the few who resisted this. . . . You concentrated on metaphysics and epistemology?
Armstrong: Yes, and philosophy of mind and perception. You know I started off in perception, but I spent a bit of time in epistemology. And since about 1970 or so, metaphysics has been my interest. You will see from my autobiography, my teacher at the university was John Anderson. He was a very big influence, as he was on a number of others: John Mackie, for instance.

Chrucky: Do you think Anderson needs to receive more focus?
Armstrong: Yes, although it has to be admitted Anderson is very hard to read for people who were not educated by him. He has, however received quite a lot of attention in Sydney, where he was the main intellectual influence for many years.

Chrucky: What was his background?
Armstrong: He was a Scotsman.

Chrucky: I mean philosophically.
Armstrong: Right! He came from Absolute Idealism, and he tried to be more absolute than the Absolute Idealists and found himself a Realist. And then he heard Samuel Alexander lecture on Space, Time, and Deity. He hadn't the slightest interest in deity, but space, time and the categories were fine; and, following Alexander, he sometimes presented his Realistic metaphysics as a transformation on Kant. Kant thought that space, time and the categories, such as causality, were forms imposed on reality by our minds. But Alexander's idea was that they were real, out there, and were the forms of reality. Anderson took that up. He had a very domineering personality, and had views on everything. He introduced me to the notion of social pluralism.

Chrucky: What is social pluralism?
Armstrong: It's the idea that in society there are lots of different social movements, struggling with each other, in an uneasy tension with each other, and you can't expect to get a unified view. He was very critical of the notion of the common good. In my Profile I give a thumbnail sketch of the sort of atmosphere that Anderson created around himself in Sydney.

Chrucky: Turning to materialism. C. D. Broad distinguished a variety of materialisms on the basis of three categories: Delusive Theories, Reductive, and Emergentist. He opted for some version of materialism, and he opposed Reductive Materialism and opted for Emergent Materialism, and you know this is Sellars' position, and this is why I say that Sellars was influenced by Broad. Sellars too called himself an Emergent Materialist . . . but he also had other labels . . . Non-Reductive Materialist.
Armstrong: I am a Physicalist, you see. I think the world is operating according to the laws of physics. That's my guess.

Chrucky: Sellars and his colleague Meehl wrote a paper "The Concept of Emergence" in which they made a distinction which [Herbert] Feigl, by the way, picked up and used -- that was the physical-1 and physical-2 distinction, where they characterized physical-2 as what you would call Physicalism, those things which are in space and time and operate by causal laws. But they said this was not enough to characterize everything in the universe. There were emergent traits.
Armstrong: I am not an Emergentist. Emergentism is a perfectly good hypothesis, and it might be true. But the lottery ticket I am taking is that it is not true.

Chrucky: Let me then ask you this question which is found in C. D. Broad ["Mechanism and Its Alternatives," Chapter 2 of Mind and Its Place in Nature]. He says that from the properties of Hydrogen and Oxygen, taken singly or in combination in other compounds, you cannot deduce the properties of water.
Armstrong: That's a technical matter, which one has to go to modern physics to answer, I suppose. I think it was probably true when Broad wrote . . . but is it still true today? There are very good physicists, such as Steven Weinberg, and many others who think that the reductive view is the way to go. The laws of physics, they think, come down to the operation of quite a small number of fundamental forces - it was four for a while, although now there is talk of a fifth. The general idea is that physics is running the whole show. That is an anti-Emergentism view. My sympathies go that way.

Chrucky: Let me ask you this in a hypothetical manner. You are saying that its possible that physics as it is today could predict the properties of water from . . .
Armstrong: I don't know.

Chrucky: I don't either.
Armstrong: I don't know whether that can really be done. But I think that many physicists think that this sort of deduction can be done in principle, whether in fact anyone can ever do it.

Chrucky: Then the issue becomes: if it can be done in principle, then there is no need of emergence; it is a needless hypothesis.
Armstrong: Yes.

Chrucky: But if in principle, this cannot be done, then emergence is needed. That would be your position?
Armstrong: Yes. But I am no authority. Physicists have to tell us what is the actual situation.

Chrucky: So the decision between a Reductive and an Emergent Materialism, for you, is an empirical matter?
Armstrong: Yes, to be made by science. But my own guess . . . I lean towards the Reductive view, which may be hopelessly wrong, of course; and Emergence may be the way. Philosophers are always guilty of laying down the law about how reality is for a priori reasons. We know that we're not supposed reason from a priori principles to the nature of the world, but we cannot help doing it. Empirical philosophy, as I see it, should be a criticism of a priori theorizing about the nature of the world.

Chrucky: Is there room anywhere in your view of things for the synthetic a priori?
Armstrong: Perhaps. There may be some a posteriori necessities, as [Saul] Kripke says -- though that's arguable. But the synthetic a priori . . . no, I am dubious about that.

Chrucky: I will move to a grander question. I am very impressed by Curt Ducasse's book Philosophy As Science. I put it on the Internet because I was so impressed by it. I want the whole world to read it. I guess I was under the Oxford, Wittgenstein, verificationist view that philosophy's business is conceptual analysis. But when I read Ducasse, he said, no, there is a subject matter of philosophy: it's not just analysis. There is a subject matter, and its values. Yes, and then it seemed so obvious. For example, in logic we want values -- we want validity. That's a value.
Armstrong: Oh, I see.

Chrucky: This is true of the various areas of philosophy. But he was rather radical in his view of metaphysics, because he had the same view in metaphysics that its a matter of values ["A Defense of Ontological Liberalism"]. During this convention, I heard someone talking about Carnap and the criterion of existence, and he was pushing a pragmatic view of ontological commitments. And I thought: This fits quite well with Ducasse's view. It's a matter of values. Does what exists have to be in space and time? That's your value, you see.
Armstrong: I don't like talking about value there much. I think it's better to talk about one's hypothesis. I don't think "value" is the right word here. I don't think I'd agree with Ducasse there. Is truth a value? Thinking people value getting truth, or what they think is truth. But does that make truth a value? I think that truth is correspondence to reality. It's just that there is a little problem in discovering what corresponds to reality.

Chrucky: I value truth. It's not just a value, but it is a value. I do want truth. But once you think how things are true, you get into some other business than value.
Armstrong: Well, I think maybe we should call this a day, if you don't mind.

Chrucky: Thank you very much.

Source: Ditext.

An interview with Claude Lévi-Strauss

En 1972, peu de temps avant son entrée à l'Académie, Claude Lévi-Strauss accorde un entretien à Jean José Marchand, alors chargé des archives à l'ORTF. Voici le résultat de cet entretien (7 vidéos).

In 1972, one year before his election at the Académie française, Claude Lévi-Strauss was interviewed by Jean-José Marchand, who was in charge of the Archives at the ORTF. Here is the result (7 videos, in french only).

Éthique évolutionniste: Christien Clavien

Jeudi 30/10/2008 eut lieu à l'Université Lyon 3 une conférence faite par Christine Clavien, en post-doc à l'Université de Lausanne, dans le cadre du séminaire des doctorants en Philosophie organisé par Denis Forest.

Christine Clavien a fait une excellente présentation de l'éthique évolutionniste. Vous trouverez ici les notes que j'ai prises pendant la conférence. Je vous invite aussi à consulter sa page personnelle et la page consacrée à ses travaux en libre accès.

Ceci est la version française de: Christine Clavien on Evolutionary Ethics.

1) Darwinisme social

a- Les thèses principales :

*L’évolution va en direction de la sélection des êtres les meilleurs : la survie des êtres les plus adaptés est considéré comme un facteur d’amélioration de la race, car les plus faibles sont éliminés. (Thèse de l’eugénisme.)

*L’espèce humaine est divisée en races. (Thèse du polygénisme.)

*Les caractères biologiques sont plus déterminants que l’environnement. (Thèse de l’héréditarianisme, chez Galton, hérité de Lamarck.)

*Le rapport entre les individus est fondamentalement le conflit. (Thèse du Struggle for life.)

b- Les applications socio-politiques :

*Le « laissez-faire » : il s’agit principalement d’une politique anti « État-providence » (reposant sur les principes de charité et de solidarité, l’E-P permet aux plus faibles de se reproduire).

*L’interventionnisme : de la politique eugéniste (favoriser le développement des meilleurs et empêcher la reproduction des plus faibles) à la politique de destruction des individus (ou des races) considérés comme les plus faibles.
Le darwinisme ne correspond donc pas à une doctrine politique déterminée.

*L’impérialisme : justification des colonisations.


2) Problèmes du darwinisme social

*L’évolution ne sélectionne pas les meilleurs de manière absolue, mais les plus adaptés à un environnement (en fonction de la « fitness »). « La sélection ne peut produire la perfection, car dans la compétition pour le succès reproductif entre les membres d’une population, il suffit d’être supérieur, il n’est pas nécessaire d’être parfait. » (Mayr, 1989).

*La thèse polygéniste est fausse et la différenciation des races en fonction de critère situé au niveau individuel (couleur de peau, forme du visage) est insuffisante pour caractériser une race. Ce sont des caractères mineurs au point de vue de l’organisation et du fonctionnement des organismes humains.

*Le biologique n’est pas un déterminisme. « The animal that results is not the most perfect design conceivable, nor is it merely good enough to scrape by. It is the product of a historical sequence of changes, each one of which represented, at best, the better of the alternatives that happened to be around at the time.” (Dawkins, 1999: 46). Exemple : les pandas s’aident pour manger le bambou d’un os qui s’est développé à l’emplacement du pouce. Mais ils sont assez gauches. Un vrai pouce articulé eût été sans aucun doute beaucoup plus pratique.

*Même dans un milieu hostile, les animaux n’ont pas nécessairement des rapports conflictuels : les manchots empereurs, en cas de grands froids, se mettent en formation « tortue », en groupe très compact, pour limiter les contacts avec l’air froid ; et, afin que les manchots à l’extérieur du groupe ne succombent pas, une rotation se met en place, entre les individus qui sont à la périphérie et les individus qui sont au centre.


3) Éthique évolutionniste

a- Une méthode :

*L’éthique évolutionniste n’est pas le darwinisme social. Elle ne tire aucune conclusions socio-politiques de ses thèses. Alors que le darwinisme social vise généralement à justifier des thèses et des pratiques socio-politiques, l’éthique évolutionniste est entièrement théorique.

*L’éthique évolutionniste n’est pas un ensemble systématique de thèse, mais une méthode appliquée au champ de la philosophie morale. Elle n’est donc pas une option théorique différente de celles qui se trouvent dans le champ de la philosophie morale.

*Avec l’aide d’autres disciplines (biologie, psychologie du développement, théorie des jeux…), l’éthique évolutionniste essaie de comprendre le rôle de l’évolution dans les comportements moraux et les croyances morales.


b- Les 4 domaines de l’éthique et l’éthique évolutionniste :

On peut distinguer 4 domaines en éthique : métaéthique, éthique appliquée, éthique descriptive et éthique normative.

*Métaéthique : branche de l’éthique qui s’interroge sur la nature ontologique des objets moraux. L’éthique évolutionniste ne semble pas avoir des apports décisifs de ce point de vue, car les éthiciens évolutionnistes défendent toutes les positions du spectre éthique.

*Éthique appliquée : branche de l’éthique qui traite de l’application des normes morales. A cause des dérives du darwinisme social, les éthiciens s’abstiennent de se prononcer sur ce point.

*Éthique descriptive : branche de l’éthique qui s’interroge sur la genèse des comportements et des croyances morales. L’approche évolutionnaire postule que la morale est le résultat d’un processus naturel d’évolution. C’est le point fort de l’éthique évolutionniste : elle arrive à des explications satisfaisantes de certains comportements moraux, notamment l’altruisme.

Exemple : la reproduction des abeilles kamikazes (Hamilton (William), « The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour (I and II) », Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7, pp.1-52). On sait que, dans un essaim d’abeilles, la plupart est stérile. Le comportement des abeilles kamikazes s’explique directement : elles sont dévouées à la communauté. Le problème qui se pose est le suivant : comment la propriété d’être stérile chez les abeilles kamikazes a-t-elle pu être sélectionnée au lieu de contribuer à l’extinction de ces abeilles ? En fait, puisque les abeilles n’ont, techniquement parlant, qu’un seul et même ensemble de chromosomes (elles ont la même mère et n’ont pas de père), elles ont un patrimoine commun extrêmement élevé avec leurs consoeurs. C’est pourquoi il est plus intéressant pour les abeilles de protéger leurs consoeurs plutôt que de chercher à se conserver. En se sacrifiant, elles perdent leur matériel génétique, mais elles sauvent celui de leurs consoeurs. Ce phénomène de sélection par parentèle peut s’appliquer aux hommes : des gènes qui induisent des comportements altruistes peuvent être sélectionnés par l’évolution, car ils sont intéressants, surtout quand ils sont réciproques (notamment dans le cadre de l’amour parental).

Mais comme l’a souligné Christine Clavien dans son exposé, le fait de pouvoir expliquer la réciprocité, l’altruisme et quelques autres comportements moraux n’est pas suffisant. On ne peut pas dire qu’à ce jour l’éthique évolutionniste explique l’ensemble de la moralité.

Selon C Clavien, il y a deux grands mouvements d’explication de l’origine de la morale :
1) La moralité est un avantage sélectif, elle répond à un besoin qui est apparu au cours de l’évolution humaine, notamment dans le cadre de la vie en communauté. Cette position est soutenue par Richards (Richards 1986, « A defense of evolutionary ethics », Biology and Philosophy, 1 (1986), pp. 265-293)

2) La moralité est un effet dérivé d’une ou de plusieurs autres adaptations. Plusieurs caractères ont évolué de manière indépendante, mais on conduit, par association, à la morale. Cette position est défendue par Stitch, Rottschaeffer, Prinz.

*Éthique normative : branche de l’éthique qui traite de la justification des jugements moraux. L’éthique évolutionniste ne permet pas de résoudre les problèmes de l’éthique normative de manière définitive, à cause du passage douteux du factuel au normatif.

1) Réduction du ought to be au descriptif. Moore a bien mis en évidence qu’il est fallacieux de définir le bien moral (le bien) en termes descriptifs (le plaisant, le désirable…), car ils n’appartiennent pas à la même catégorie.

2) Réduction du factuel au normatif. Hume a remarqué que les auteurs de philosophie morale ont tendance à passer de remarques factuelles à des conclusions normatives sans justification. Des prémisses factuelles ne peuvent pas conduire à une conclusion normative.

Cette difficulté a tout de même un avantage. Elle permet de réduire les ambitions et dénoncer les illusions de l’éthique normative : elle ne peut pas fonder de manière absolue les normes, elle doit renoncer à chercher des fondements ultimes, elle doit chercher les meilleures raisons justifiantes possibles. Et selon C Clavien, l’éthique évolutionniste peut l’aider à les formuler.


4) Éthique évolutionniste et quête du fondement de la morale

Pour soutenir leur position, les philosophes s’appuient souvent sur l’idée que les éléments de base postulés sont évidents ou relèvent du sens commun.

Mais un nombre croissant de données empiriques sur la psychologie morale humaine contredit l’existence d’intuitions morales partagées. Ces données sont fournies par la « trolleybusologie » (Appiah, 2008) :

*1ère expérience : vous êtes le témoin de la scène qui va suivre. Un trolleybus dont les freins ne fonctionnent plus se dirige à une vitesse effrénée sur la voie que cinq randonneurs sont en train de traverser. À côté de vous se trouve un aiguillage, avec une manette, qui permet de changer la trajectoire du trolleybus. En appuyant sur la manette, on peut changer la trajectoire du trolleybus. Mais, ce faisant, le trolleybus se dirigera sur une autre voie sur laquelle un cheminot en train de faire des réparations, qui sera à coup sûr écrasé par le cheminot. Choisissez-vous de tirer la manette ?

*2nde expérience : le même trolleybus avance en direction des randonneurs. Cette fois-ci, vous êtes à côté d’un gros homme, sur une passerelle qui surplombe la voie. Si on pousse l’homme sur la voie, il arrêtera le trolleybus, sauvant ainsi la vie des cinq randonneurs. Choisissez-vous de pousser le gros homme ?

Le sens commun conduit à des jugements contradictoires, car une majorité des sujets interrogés choisissent de sacrifier l’homme seul, mais une majorité refuse de pousser le gros homme sur la voie.

Greene et ses collègues (2001), lors des expériences sur le trolleybus, ont scanné, à l’aide de la technique d’imagerie cérébrale, les cerveaux des sujets interrogés. Les résultats de l’expérience montrent que l’engagement émotionnel influence les jugements moraux : pousser un homme provoque des réactions émotionnelles plus fortes que le simple fait d’appuyer sur les boutons d’une manette.

Les théoriciens de l’évolution peuvent expliquer ce type de phénomène. À l’époque où les instincts sociaux se sont formés, les êtres humains vivaient en petites communautés, dans lesquelles il était important d’aider les membres de ce groupe, les personnes proches. Il est donc très probable que des mécanismes émotionnels altruistes se soient mis en place en faveur des individus qu’on côtoie. En fonction de cette explication, il est compréhensible que nous ayons des difficultés à accepter de pousser un individu sur une voie.

Une telle explication oblige à renoncer au fondement sur le sens commun, mais surtout à reconnaître que les critères pertinents en moral dépendent du mode de vie de l’espèce.

Je remercie Christine Clavien pour son excellent exposé, pour sa gentillesse et pour m'avoir autorisé à publier mon résumé de sa conférence.


Bibliographie
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Éthique évolutionniste: Christine Clavien by Mikolka/Christine Clavien est mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Paternité-Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale-Pas de Modification 2.0 France.

Psychological Nativism (I): Chomsky and Cognitivism

Chomsky, in the first chapter of Reflections on Language (1975), deals with the following problem: How is it possible that, despite the fact that men have not organized and limited experiences, they can develop belief systems that are a) converging b) pragmatically correct c) very complex? For Chomsky, only through an assumption of innateness can we find a solution. Chomsky holds that men manage to build belief systems with a, b, c characteristics, because 1) it assumes that our belief systems are determined by biological structures, which "intend" men to knowledge, 2) it states that structures are "appropriate to the nature of things."
I will consider Chomsky's arguments and statements in this chapter.

This is the english version of L'innéisme psychologique (I): Chomsky et les capacités cognitives



1) Empiricism and rationalism:
Before formulating a solution to the problem, Chomsky begins by comparing two philosophical and scientific traditions, empiricism and rationalism.

a) Empiricism:

Chomsky, referring to the empirical, does an analysis of the psychological behaviourism. He highlights 3 typical characteristics of empiricism:
(E) The environment is the determining factor in the explanation of behaviors:
On a souvent abordé l’étude du développement de la personnalité, des schémas de comportement et des structures cognitives par des voies très différentes. On affirme, en général, que, dans ces domaines, l’environnement social est le facteur dominant."(P 19) (All quotations will be in french: I do not have the original with me, and I will not try to translate Chomsky in his own language! Sorry.)

(C): The characters of species are the product of a historic building:
« Les structures de l’esprit qui, dans leur développement, échappent au temps sont considérées comme arbitraires et contingentes ; il n’y aurait pas de « nature humaine » en dehors de ce qui se développe comme produit spécifiquement historique. » (P 19)

(G): The principles for cognition are general:
« Selon ce point de vue, typique de la spéculation empiriste, quelques principes généraux d’apprentissage, communs pour l’essentiel à tous les organismes (ou à quelques groupes importants d’entre eux), suffisent à rendre compte des structures cognitives acquises par les êtres humains. Ces structures comprennent les principes qui règlent et contrôlent le comportement humain. » (p 19)

b) Rationalism:

By rationalism, Chomsky means the psychological movement derived from the philosophical tradition: psychological inneism or psychological nativism.

Here follows the principles of innateness according to Chomsky:
« Ou pour le dire dans une formulation moins paradoxale, nos systèmes de croyance sont ceux que l’esprit, en tant que structure biologique, est destiné à connaître. Notre interprétation de l’expérience est déterminée par nos caractéristiques mentales. Nous atteignons la connaissance lorsque les « idées intérieures de l’esprit lui-même » et les structures qu’il crée s’adaptent à la nature des choses. » (p 16)

The proposition is a little vague. It can be paraphrased as following:
*for any individual i of a species E,
*then its belief system C is based on
*a faculty for the analysis and the collection of data (FD)
*and a faculty with the formal properties for development of beliefs (FC), that is biologically "grounded"
*so that i can make beliefs about an object O iff O can be percepted by FD and iff i has the necessary conditions for knowing O.

Therefore, individuals obtain complex and convergent belief systems not only with collected data but with a rational faculty.

c) Empiricism as an obstacle:

Chomsky does not hide his contempt for empiricism:
«L’audience dominante de l’empirisme dans la période moderne, en dehors des sciences naturelles, doit s’expliquer par des raisons sociologiques ou historiques. Cette position ne peut guère se recommander de preuves empiriques, ni de sa vraisemblance intrinsèque, ni de sa puissance explicative. Je ne crois pas qu’elle puisse attirer un chercheur capable de se défaire de la mythologie traditionnelle et d’aborder les problèmes avec un œil neuf. Elle est plutôt un obstacle, un barrage insurmontable à des recherches fructueuses, tout comme les dogmes religieux ont fait obstacle par le passé aux sciences naturelles. » pp 21-22

Empiricism as an obstacle to scientific research! It sounds like Bachelard. Chomsky argues that empiricism is a dogma, an opinion, an authority without justification, without rational arguments.

The problem now is to know 1) how he manages to demonstrate the superiority of rationalism; 2) how he thinks he can answer the question set out in the introduction (features a, b and c of the belief systems); 3) how answers to problems 1 and 2 are linked; 4), why language can make a decisive part in this debate.

2) Demonstrations of the validity of the hypothesis of innateness.

Chomsky does not demonstrate directly that the assumption of innateness is best to solution to the cognition problem. He uses three proofs (the ridiculous, the modus ponens tollendo, th epoverty of the stimulus) before finishing by a direct proof.

a) The "ridiculous argument":

Chomsky is very controversial, even a little aggressive, towards the empiricist tradition. Besides the passage quoted in 1-a, we can highlight other passages where he attacks empiricism, less with rational arguments than with rhetorical goals (playing with emotions):

« Bien que nombre d’idées directrices de la tradition rationaliste soient plausibles et que celle-ci présente sur des sujets cruciaux des affinités avec le point de vue des sciences naturelles, elle a souvent été rejetée ou méconnue dans les recherches sur le comportement et les processus cognitifs. C’est un fait curieux dans l’histoire intellectuelle de ces derniers siècles que le développement physique et le développement mental aient été abordés par des voies tout à fait différentes. Personne ne prendrait au sérieux une proposition qui dirait que l’organisme humain apprend à travers l’expérience à avoir des bras plutôt que des ailes, ou que la structure de base d’organes particuliers est le résultat d’expériences fortuites. On considère plutôt comme allant de soi que la structure physique de l’organisme est déterminée génétiquement, même si, bien évidemment, la variation de coefficients comme la taille, la vitesse de développement, etc., dépend partiellement de facteurs externes. » p 18

The "ridiculous argument" is against two characteristics of empiricism: (E) or the statement that the environment is the determining factor, and (C) or the statement that cognitive phenomena are historically built.

The comparison between natural science and cognitive science is very striking. But it is based on a strange premise: all the natural sciences are rationalists and are not indebted to the empirical tradition. I am very suprised to learn that physics is more indebted to the rationalist approach of Descartes than to Newton empiricism.

b) The modus ponens tollendo:

This argument has a little more formal rigor: either a or b, not b, thus a (modus ponens tollendo). This argument is not made explicitly, but we can rebuild it from the constant rejection of the empiricist tradition by Chomsky: either rationalism or empiricism, empiricism is false, then we must admit the truth of rationalism.

This argument is not very convincing: it is possible that both theories are all false.

c) The argument of the poverty of stimulus:

This argument has several forms with Chomsky. Here are two versions:

1) Short version:
« Une langue humaine est un système remarquablement complexe. Pour un être qui n’y serait pas spécifiquement destiné, ce serait un exploit intellectuel remarquable que d’arriver à connaître une langue humaine. Or un enfant normal acquiert cette connaissance au terme d’une mise en contact relativement brève et sans apprentissage particulier. » p 12

2) Long version:
«Ainsi, il est clair que la langue acquise par chaque individu est une construction riche et complexe qui, malheureusement, est loin d’être déterminée par les faits fragmentaires dont nous disposons. C’est pourquoi les recherches scientifiques sur la nature du langage sont si difficiles et obtiennent des résultats si limités. La pensée consciente ne possède aucune connaissance préalable (ou, pour rappeler Aristote, elle ne possède qu’une connaissance préalable insuffisamment développée). Elle est ainsi mise en échec par le caractère limité des faits dont elle dispose et confrontée à un bien trop grand nombre de théories explicatives possibles, qui sont contradictoires entre elles tout en étant adéquates aux données. (…) Et pourtant, les individus d’une communauté linguistique parlent, pour l’essentiel, une même langue. Ce fait ne peut s’expliquer que par l’hypothèse selon laquelle ces individus utilisent des principes très restrictifs qui fondent la construction de la grammaire. De plus, il est bien clair que l’homme n’est pas fait pour apprendre une langue plutôt qu’une autre ; le système des principes est donc nécessairement une propriété de l’espèce. Et des contraintes fortes doivent nécessairement opérer pour restreindre la diversité des langues. Il est naturel que dans la vie quotidienne on ne soit attentif qu’aux différences entre les gens et que l’on néglige les régularités structurelles. Mais lorsqu’on cherche à comprendre quelle sorte d’organisme est réellement l’être humain, d’autres exigences s’imposent. » pp 20-21

I rebuild the argument as follow:

Premises:
(A) There are linguistic universals.
(B) Children / individuals have limited experience of applications of these universals, insufficient to encounter them all and to know the correct application.
(C) Children / individuals use the same universals and apply them correctly.

Conclusion:
(D) So the experience is not sufficient to explain the learning of a language, we must be assumed that there is an innate ability for knowing the language universals.

This argument will provide some answers to problems 2, 3 and 4 set out at the end of Part 1.
* (2) features a, b and c: the premise necessarily lead to the formation of a beliefs system convergent (a), correct (b) and complex (c).
* (3) the superiority of rationalism: because of premises (A) and (B), empiricism is insufficient. Using the modus ponens tollendo, it leads to the superiority of rationalism.
* (4) the role of linguistics: for Chomsky, learning a language is a prime example of the superiority of a rationalist. He suggests to extend the rationalist approach in the language to all the cognitive sciences.

Can we accept the argument of poverty of the stimulus? Formally, it is indisputably correct. The only way to discuss it is to analyze the premises. What seems the most questionable is the assertion that children and individuals have only partial access to all universals. What Chomsky means by "limited experience", "unorganized"? Is he saying that we do not find in the entire corpus available (written or oral) certain applications of universals? Is he saying that the experiences of some linguistic universals are impossible and can therefore be find only in the innate biological structures of individuals? There is no convincing demonstration of the inability of the experience of some universals or certain applications of universals in Chomsky. And I really do not see how we could seek to test the inability of the experience of linguistic universals in individuals.


3) from the building of beliefs to a learning theory:

The direct proof of the validity of the hypothesis of innateness is in an experiment of thought with an imaginary researcher searching for a learning theory. By pretending to seek only the characteristics of this theory, he tries to convince its readers that the assumption of innateness is the only way to meet the criteria set by learning theory and implicitly responding to the problem we exposed initially.

a) Experience of thought 1: The researcher and his quest.
He describes the framework of an experience of thought as follow:
-Let be a researcher who seeks a theory of learning TA.
-He gives himself an organism O and a cognitive domain D.
-He tries to find a theory of learning of O in D: TA (O, D).
-For example, he is looking for a theory of language learning for men (H): TA (H, L).

b) Experience of thought 2: changes in the variables.

Chomsky proceeded by changing variables on TA (O, D).

-Is there a TA (O, D) which is valid, whatever O and whatever D?
«Prenons les êtres humains H comme O et les rats R comme O’ ; le langage L comme D et le parcours de labyrinthe P comme D’. S’il y avait une réponse même très approximative de la question 1, on s’attendrait à ce que les êtres humains fassent preuve, dans le parcours de labyrinthes, tout autant que dans le langage, d’une capacité d’apprentissage supérieure à celle des rats. (…) En réalité, il semble que les « rats blancs sont même capables de battre des étudiants dans ce type d’apprentissage » -l’apprentissage des labyrinthes. » pp 28-29.

It suggests that 1) in the same O, learning depends on D; 2) in different O, the same D is based on different abilities.

-Is there a TA (O, D) which is valid for a single O, but for all D? To say otherwise, Chomsky asks if all learning capacities among all individuals of one O is the application of general principles. Chomsky's response is rather disappointing: it is an idea dogmatic and there is no reason to expect the existence of these abilities.

-Is there a TA (O, D) is valid, if we keep the same O and if we collect D ', D'', D'''..., all D which have common characteristics?
«Il est raisonnable de supposer qu’il existe pour D, dans les limites de la capacité cognitive de O, un ensemble de schèmes qui définit la classe des structures cognitives susceptibles d’être acquises. » (p 32). Chomsky thinks it is the most acceptable solution. The researcher assumes that for a given O, there are various D to build complex, convergent and correct systems, that can be known through a TA (O, D).

c) Experience of thought 3: learning a language:

-The researcher asks: what is TA, if O is human being (H) and if D is the language (L). TA (H, L)?
Let be a child learning to build questions from A, in English:
A: The man is tall-Is the man tall?
-The researcher may interpret this as follows: « L’enfant traite la phrase déclarative en commençant par le premier mot (i.e. de gauche à droite) et en allant jusqu’à ce qu’il rencontre la première occurrence du mot « is » (…) ; il antépose alors cette occurrence de « is » pour produire la question correspondante (…) » p 42. This hypothesis involves only an analysis of words and the property "first" applied to a sequence of words.

But this assumption is wrong:
B: The man who is tall is in the room-Is the man who tall is in the room?
And, according to Chomsky, children do make this mistake and formulate correctly:
C: The man who is tall is in the room-Is the man who is tall in the room?

It compells the researcher to build another hypothesis: «L’enfant analyse la phrase déclarative en syntagmes abstraits ; ensuite il repère la première occurrence de « is » (etc.) qui suit le premier syntagme nominal ; puis il antépose cette occurrence de « is » pour former la question correspondante. » (p 43). Unlike the first hypothesis that is explaining the use of a language by child, with a "rule independent of the structure", the second case involves a" rule dependent of the structure", because the child analyse words and syntagms or structural elements.

The rule-dependent structure can not be drawn from the experience, according to Chomsky. It is innate. TA (H, L) is the theory that explains 1) all the cognitive structures that are not learned, that determine what is possible or not possible linguistically (Universal Grammar which defines the principles and the properties of languages) and 2) the mechanisms for implementing these principles.

d) The problems:

-What conclusions can be drawn from the argument? The formulation of TA (H, L) permits 1) a description of what may be a resolution of the problem of learning theories; 2) to hold a thesis which aims to replace the empiricist dogma.

-First problem. It can be summarized by the formula taken from Cid: "To fight without risk is defeating without glory. "I mean that the presentation of empiricism made by Chomsky is so low, if not grotesque, that we cannot help thinking that he triumphs a too easily. His treatment of language experiences of individuals in an environment is not rigorous. It relies more on a personal intuition than on actual work. One can not help but think that his argument neglects the role of environment in learning and the use of language mechanisms. It is possible that the behaviourism is a psychological interpretation which is unsatisfactory, but you can not imply that the environment is not decisive in the learning and use of linguistic principles because of the fact that the behaviourism fails to interpret adequately the role of environment.

-Second-problem. What means "innate"? It may mean that the principles and mechanisms are genetically encoded. Chomsky made a comparison between the ability to see which would be completely genetically encoded, and the ability to have a language. I am not sure that this comparison is appropriated. Indeed, the visual capacity is partially encoded, but not completely: interaction with the environment has a role to play. The boundary between what is encoded and what results from the interaction with the environment, in terms of development, is not clearly delineated. Why should this boundary be more known in linguistics capacity?


Conclusion:

The assumption of innateness is very interesting because it helps to focus on a real problem: the existence of converging, complex and pragmatically correct belief systems, though experiences may be different and limited . But this "hard nativism" is unsatisfactory.


Psychological Nativism (Chomsky) by Mikolka est mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Paternité-Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale-Pas de Modification 2.0 France.