Showing papers in "Synthese in 1980"

A succession of paradigms in ecology: Essentialism to materialism and probabilism

Abstract: Lewontin (1974a), in his provocative essay ‘Darwin and Mendel — The Materialist Revolution,’ suggests that by the time On the Origin of Species was published in 1859, the notion of evolving species was already firmly established in both lay and academic circles. Embedding the evolutionary species concept in a matrix of new evolutionary thought in many areas of the arts, natural sciences, and social sciences during the late eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries, he points to a different significance of the Darwinian revolution. The emerging evolutionary worldview was incompatible with the philosophical tradition, stretching back to the Greeks, which, although patently metaphysical, still dominated nineteenth century thought: viz. Platonic idealism and Aristotelian essentialism (Popper 1961, 1963). Idealism views the material objects of the world as imperfect embodiments of fundamental, unchanging essences or ideal formal structures. Plato drew the analogy of shadows cast on a cave wall for the imperfect reflections which constitute the objects we can perceive with our senses, although Aristotle sought his version of essential forms within particulate matter, and not in some spectral transcendental realm. Lovejoy (1936), Wiener (1949), Peckham (1959), and Ghiselin (1969) suggest that the nascent evolutionary worldview engendered a reaction to metaphysical essentialism, especially in politics and economics, which eventually paved the way for the Darwinian revolution.

Dialectics and reductionism in ecology

Abstract: The philosophical debates which have accompanied the development of science have often been expressed in terms of dichotomous choices between opposing viewpoints about the structure of nature, the explanation of natural processes, and the appropriate methods for research:

Null Hypotheses in Ecology

Abstract: Null hypotheses entertain the possibility that nothing has happened, that a process has not occurred, or that change has not been produced by a cause of interest. Null hypotheses are reference points against which alternatives should be contrasted. They are used not only in statistics but in all sciences. “This hypothesis…is… characteristic of all experimentation” (Fisher 1935). In physics for example, an important null hypothesis of the post-Newtonian era was that time is a variable which is independent of all other factors. Modern physics is based upon the alternative hypothesis that time can be a function of space and relative velocities. Another famous null hypothesis, that the speed of light is independent of its direction, inspired the Michelson-Morley experiments, which failed to disprove it. An example in chemistry is that there is no molecular property unique to life, that any synthesis by protoplasm can be repeated in the test tube. Modern biochemistry has failed to disprove this null hypothesis. But the term null hypothesis sounds odd in reference to much of physics and chemistry. It is not found in textbooks nor is it used frequently in conversation about these disciplines. Though all sciences use null hypotheses in principle, the ‘atomistic’1 sciences of physics and chemistry often use them implicitly. In atomistic sciences, fundamental units are simple and quite similar to one another, and effects of phenomena are commonly so distinct that the null state of no effect does not need special recognition.

The background and some current problems of theoretical ecology

Abstract: The term ‘Oekologie’ was coined in 1866 by Ernest Haeckel in a book relating animal morphology to Charles Darwin’s then new theory of evolution by natural selection. Haeckel claimed that the theory of evolution explained and formed the groundwork of ecology. This natal link with the premier theory of biology was quite clear in the minds of early American ecologists. S. A. Forbes (1895) allowed that the whole Darwinian doctrine belonged to ecology. J. C. Arthur (1895) wrote, “We may call Darwin the father of vegetable ecology, for had he not written, the field would have lain largely uncultivated and uninteresting”. H. C. Cowles (1904) was equally explicit, “If ecology has a place at all in modern biology, certainly one of its great tasks is to unravel the mysteries of adaptation”; and J. G. Needham (1904) described it as, “the study of the phenomena of fitness”. The Darwinian derivation and emphasis of ecology has also been noted by historians of science. R. C. Stauffer (1957) asserted, “As a source for a vital stimulus to the continuing development of ecology we must look rather to the work of Charles Darwin”. R. Tobey (1976) wrote the “great theoretical synthesis” of ecology by Darwin was generally assumed by historians; and D. Worster (1977) developed the Darwinian base for ecology in detail. Recent ecologists, like John Harper (1967), reclaimed the theory of natural selection as an ecological theory, and Darwin as “the greatest of all ecologists”, but complained that Darwinian ecology had been largely neglected by ecologists.

Comments on Goodman's Ways of Worldmaking

Abstract: 1. Nelson Goodman's book and Hilary Putnam's observations on it evoked in me vivid memories of the conception of empirical know ledge that was propounded by Otto Neurath of the Vienna Circle about 1930, and which contrasted sharply with the views held by other members of the Circle at that time. Neurath certainly cannot be claimed to have anticipated Good man's ideas with their very wide scope; moreover, there are also important differences in fundamentals. But there are striking similarities between some of the basic ideas informing the two conceptions, and it may be of interest to begin with a brief consideration of those similarities: this will illuminate some of the virtues of Goodman's ideas, but it will also afford me an oppor tunity to suggest the desirability of a certain supplementation of the account given in Ways of Worldmaking.

Randomness and perceived-randomness in evolutionary biology

Abstract: In recent years we have seen a growth of interest in the concept of randomness among philosophers and mathematicians. Particularly interesting has been the development of new connections between the concept of computational complexity and the idea of the degree of randomness of a sequence as connected with the complexity of the simplest program capable of generating that sequence (Chaitan, 1975).

Useful Concepts for Predictive Ecology

Abstract: Scientists deal with two classes of ideas. The first are theories, predictive or falsifiable statements about the universe. The second are concepts which, by definition, are unfalsifiable. Both types of ideas are necessary for a scientist, but only theories comprise a science. Nevertheless, in ecology, concept and theory are confused to the point that non-predictive ideas impede scientific advance. In this essay, I will try to distinguish between the roles of theory and concept, indicating the very real shortcomings of a science which is too rooted in concept. I will suggest that we set aside the bulk of our ecological concepts in order to concentrate on theory building and modification and I describe some small steps towards a predictive ecology.

Systems approach to the concept of niche

Abstract: The systems approach to niche presented herein stands as an example of the unifying potential of mathematical system theory when applied to concepts and principles of ecology. Beginning with subjective concepts from the naturalistic tradition, the niche was framed in the formalism of general system theory. So modeled, it appeared as a restriction of a more general construct, the environ. Both niches and environs are implementable in the context of ecosystem models, and with the growing ability of ecologists to construct such models, system theoretic niches and environs both should serve in the future to clarify old problems of ecology, and make it possible to raise new classes of problems. The nature of niches, always difficult conceptually for the ecologist, may now give way to further development, both theoretical and empirical.

Oblique causation and reasons for action

Abstract: By a causal theory of action I mean one which makes two distinctive claims: (1) that behavior is not intentional unless it is caused in a certain way-unless it has certain specific kinds of causes; (2) that all acceptable explanations of intentional behavior are causal-in parti cular, that when we explain an agent's act by giving the reasons for his acting as he did, we specify causes of his behavior, so that reasons are causes of a certain kind. A causal theory sees these two claims as necessarily connected: an intentional act just is an act that has a certain kind of explanation, namely, one that was done for a reason, and an act is done for a reason only if it is caused in a certain way. The most influential advocate of a causal theory of action in recent years is Donald Davidson, who in spite of candid self-criticism contin ues to defend the main lines of an account he first laid out in 'Actions, Reasons, and Causes'. In that paper Davidson defended two theses:

Methodological bases of a progressive mentalism

Abstract: Presentation du mentalisme de Chomsky, qui attribue une realite psychologique aux constructions decouvertes par la theorie grammaticale. Les difficultes des theories mentalistes de ce type sont, selon l'A., leur caractere ontologiquement indetermine et leur indetermination empirique, notamment parce qu'infalsifiables malgre les declarations methodologiques de Chomsky lui-meme. L'A. jette les bases d'un mentalisme "progressif" neutre au plan ontologique et satisfaisant au plan methodologique.

The development of the theory of logical types and the notion of a logical subject in Russell's early philosophy

Abstract: The development of the theory of logical types in Russell's early philosophy proceeds along a difficult and rather involuted path; and even the final product, the theory as adumbrated in [PM], remains unclear as to its syntax and problematic as to its semantics. Indeed, one might well be left with the impression that Russell himself, in the end, remained unsure of which parts of the different views he had held along the way are finally to be adopted. In what follows, we shall attempt to describe the development of Russell's early views, at least to the extent to which they are available in published form today, from the perspective of the development in those views of the notion of a logical subject. It is the development of this notion in Russell's early philosophy, we believe, which holds the key to many of the problems confronting Russell in the development of his theory of logical types and which led to the various, and sometimes conflicting, proposals that he made along the way. It should be noted here, however, that in referring to the development of the theory of logical types in Russell's early philosophy we have in mind only the views developed by Russell up to, but not subsequent to, the 1910-1913 publication of the first edition of [PM]. The subsequent views developed by Russell from 1913-1925, i.e., between the first and second editions of [PM], and summarized to some extent in his introduction (and added appendices) to the second edition, fall in what might best be called Russell's middle philosophy. We shall not examine these views here both because of the limitations of space and because of the complexity of the issues involved. It is our position, moreover, that the views adumbrated in Russell's middle philosophy do not accord well with the theory of logical types (of third or higher order).

What has science to do with truth

Abstract: Recent interest in the problem of verisimilitude stemmed originally from Popper's desire to provide a non-inductive criterion of merit that will select between two false theories.1 But the problem has also been taken up by others2 who are not committed to Popper's anti-in ductivism. Indeed Ilkka Niiniluoto has argued3 that the estimated degree of truthlikeness of a generalisation g which is compatible with evidence e can be equated with the inductive probability of g on e, wherever g is a constituent in Hintikka's sense. It might therefore be worth while to approach the problem afresh, in order to determine quite generally whether a measure of verisimilitude is what is prin cipally needed for the evaluation of scientific progress. I shall argue that it is not. The attractiveness of the verisimilitudinist research-programme springs from the inherent plausibility of the thesis that science has the pursuit of truth as its characteristic objective. "The aim of science", Popperians tell us, "is simply truth; not some epistemically dis tinguished variety of truth, but truth alone. Or, more enterprisingly, more truth, as much truth as can be achieved."4 A concordant thesis is asserted by certain inductivists. "Science at its best", they say, "makes progress towards more and more truthlike theories within conceptual systems with a great unifying power."5 To attack such a doctrine which I shall hereafter refer to as 'the truth doctrine' has the appearance of intellectual sacrilege, almost of academic Satanism. It is as if, instead of Iago's "Evil, be thou my good", one were proclaiming "Falsehood, be thou my truth". Surely those who are committed to the advancement of learning, or to the useful application of intellectual effort, should uphold the sanctity of truth and the ideal of maximising its discovery? Yes, indeed; but it is nevertheless misleading to characterise the aim of science as the pursuit of truth or verisimilitude. Nor is the case for objecting to the truth doctrine based on some anti-realist argument for rejecting any conception of scientific achievements in propositional or linguistic

Russell's substitutional theory

Abstract: If p is a proposition, and a a constituent of p, let \"p/a;x\" denote the proposition which results from substituting x for a wherever a occurs in p. Then p/a, which we will call a matrix, may take the place of a function; its value for the argument x is p/a;x, and its value for the argument a is p . . . . In this way we can avoid apparent [i.e. bound] variables other than individuals and propositions . . . . Although it is possible to replace functions by matrices, and although the procedure introduces a certain simplicity into the explanation of types, it is technically inconvenient. Technically it is convenient to replace the prototype p by qba, and to replace p/a ;x by qbx; thus where, if matrices were being employed, p and a would appear as apparent variables, we now have qb as an apparent variable. (loc. cit; long emphasis mine)

The domain of laboratory ecology

Abstract: Ecologists often divide their field into three parts: theoretical, laboratory, and field studies. These approaches are directed toward many of the same concepts and, ideally, may have the same ultimate goals, but they are also distinct, not only in the scientific tools they use, but even in the types of questions best addressed by each one. This paper is concerned in particular with laboratory ecology and the relations, and distinctions, between it and field ecology.

Two metaphors of the niche

Abstract: In summary, many extant definitions of the niche concept are based on the geometric metaphor which represents the niche as an object embedded in a geometric space. There are several difficulties with this approach; the activities of organisms are not fully described, certain attributes of the functional aspect of the niche are not represented, the life cycles of organisms are not described, and the heuristic value of the concept diminishes with increasing dimensionality.

Ecology — A mixture of pattern and probabilism

Abstract: Ecology may be defined as the study of living organisms at the level of the population and community, leaving the study of individual behaviour and of organs to ethology and physiology, and of cells and molecules to cell biology and molecular biology, respectively. Such a definition is clearer than the general statement “The relationship of organisms to their environment” and recognises the separation of biology into a series of ‘horizontal levels’ of increasing complexity (Dobzhansky, 1969).

Natural Kinds, Natural History and Ecology

Abstract: What are the objects of study in ecology and where do we get them? The answers to these questions are important both for the understanding of how ecology is currently functioning as a science and for the acquisition of a view of how ecology may progress and develop into a more mature science.

‘Paradigms lost, or the world regained’ —An excursion into realism and idealism in science

Abstract: History of science is an interesting and growing subject in its own right. Philosophers of science have, in the last twenty years or so, become much more aware of the historical studies that have been made in the subject of which their philosophy is meant to be the 'philosophy of'. A number of writers have made extensive studies in both history and philosophy of science, particularly Kuhn, Feyerabend, Toulmin, and in France a writer such as Michel Foucault. What, if anything, has philosophy to do with all of this history? When philosophers survey the recent historiography of science do they find that there is no particularly philosophical question arising out of the history itself? Or do they find that some peculiarly philosophical question does arise, and that philosophy is needed along with the history? Certainly if historians of science make remarks of the kind quoted, above from Kuhn then at least some philosophical therapy is needed. But some philosophers, and many historians themselves, suggest that more is needed from philosophy than just therapy. They suggest that some version of the idealist/realist cont roversy quickly surfaces out of all this history, especially that part of it which deals with scientific revolutions. How this happens can be shown by the following considerations. Some of our philosophical and scientific ancestors believed that many things exist that we, f rom our current theoretical standpoint, do not believe exist at all. There were gods, the Holy Trinity, witches and reincarnated souls. There were, in various early sciences, phlo-

The resolution of two paradoxes by approximate reasoning using a fuzzy logic

Abstract: The method of approximate reasoning using a fuzzy logic introduced by Baldwin (1978 a,b,c), is used to model human reasoning in the resolution of two well known paradoxes.

Indiscerniblity and ontology

Abstract: We do not learn first what to talk about and then what to say about it. 1 The subject matter of our discourse, our ontology, is intimately bound up with our expressive resources, our ideology. So it is, perhaps, with theories in generalthe ontology of a theory is somehow a function of the theory's descriptive apparatus. A rather different view of the matter emerges if we think in terms of model theory, the formal study of interpretive structures and theory interpretation. One begins with a language, chooses a set of objects to serve as denotata of the referring expressions, and then proceeds to define various relations over the chosen entities, which serve as extensions of predicate expressions. Thus ontology, the specification of the objects which the theory is 'about,' somehow precedes the specification of the theory's expressive powers. It is as though we can first decide what the theory is about and then decide what the theory says about it. In less formal contexts, we often hear it said that a given theory is about a certain kind of thing-.mass points, minds, income groups, truth values, societies, species, colors, etc. Such claims draw the attention of the Ontologist, who asks whether there really are such objects for theories to be about and, if so, how they relate to the more familiar objects of ordinary (or scientific) discourse. But what is an object? And how are we to construe talk about there being (or there not being) different kinds of objects? In what follows, I lay some of the ontologist's qualms to rest, by transfiguring the ontological claims which arouse the suspicion. I argue that the specification of a theory's subject matter amounts to neither more nor less than a specification of certain features of the theory's expressive resources. Part I provides an explication of Peter. Geach's theory of Relative Identity; there is far greater metaphysical content to Geach's position than has often been not iceda consequence, in part, of Geach's own

Coupling, retheoretization, and the correspondence principle

Abstract: A popular view nowadays has it that theories which follow one another in time as principal foci of the dominant research programmes in some natural science, paradigmatically physics, are perhaps comparable with one another historically or politically or sociologically, but not object ively or rationally or evaluatively. Such theories, viewed across time, give rise to sequences, of which two classical examples within physics are: 1. Ptolemaic a s t r o n o m y Copernican a s t r o n o m y Keplerian astronomy, Galilean k inema t i c s -N ew to n i an mechan i c s -Re l a tivistic mechanics ( S T R ) G e n e r a l Relativity. 2. Classical theory of ga se s -k ine t i c theory of gases-s ta t i s t ica l m e c han i c s quantum mechan i c s quantum field theory. I will call pairs of theories following one another in such a chain predecessor and successor theories. The view in question, then, holds that the passage f rom a predecessor theory to a successor theory is a ' revolution' , that predecessor and successor theories are ' incommensurable ' (which means, at least, that propositions drawn from the two theories stand in no logical relationships to one another and, often, that no concepts are common to the two theories), and that there is no object ive sense in which a successor can be said to be 'better ' than its predecessor (although it may be aesthetically ' b e t t e r ' simpler or more e l e g a n t o r instrumentally b e t t e r ' b e t t e r for our purposes ') , in which the replacement of a predecessor by its successor can be shown to be (rationally) 'justified', or in which science can be usefully described as making 'progress' . The terminology which I have invoked should suggest such names as those of Kuhn, Feyerabend, and Lakatos. ~ Painting with a broader brush, I would also mention Quine, Davidson, Rorty, and (following his 'conversion') Putnam. 2 Let me call the view which I have isolated in this general fashion ' the uncoupling of predecessor and successor theories' . As my broadbrush portrait might suggest, its roots lie in general epistemology and,

Russell as a platonic dialogue: the matter of denoting

Abstract: Russelll--Greetings Russell2; how are you? RussellE--Most anxious to continue our conversation on metaphysics. The extent of our agreement and the progress we have made are astonishing. I am quite firmly committed to our decision to publish all of our writings under a single name. Russellj--I agree, and so does Russell3. By the way, he sent me a note saying that he might be late. He is giving the finishing touches to a paper called 'On denoting' which he says is a major philosophical breakthrough. Why don't we start by reviewing the results of our last meeting? Russell2--Here is a bold synthesis: all we have done so far is to break our former ties with German philosophy and to embrace Austrian philosophy. Russelll~Not bad. First we came to the conclusion that the KantHegel version of idealism which we used to endorse is indefensible. We agreed that the human mind is in no way involved in the creation of the objects of which it has knowledge, and that logic, mathematics and the empirical sciences consist mostly of synthetic knowledge of mindindependent facts. RusseilE--Our knowledge about the world is, of course, expressed in propositions that are somehow known to be true. After a very protracted debate we came to the unexpected conclusion that the nature of the proposition is one of the great unsolved philosophical problems. We were impressed by the fact that incorrect theories of the proposition have been