Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings

by Wimsatt, William C.

• ISBN13: 9780674015456
• ISBN10: 0674015452
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-06-30
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

Analytic philosophers once pantomimed physics: they tried to understand the world by breaking it down into the smallest possible bits. Thinkers from the Darwinian sciences now pose alternatives to this simplistic reductionism. In this intellectual tour--essays spanning thirty years--William Wimsatt argues that scientists seek to atomize phenomena only when necessary in the search to understand how entities, events, and processes articulate at different levels. Evolution forms the natural world not as Laplace's all-seeing demon but as a backwoods mechanic fixing and re-fashioning machines out of whatever is at hand. W. V. Quine's lost search for a "desert ontology" leads instead to Wimsatt's walk through a tropical rain forest. This book offers a philosophy for error-prone humans trying to understand messy systems in the real world. Against eliminative reductionism, Wimsatt pits new perspectives to deal with emerging natural and social complexities. He argues that our philosophy should be rooted in heuristics and models that work in practice, not only in principle. He demonstrates how to do this with an analysis of the strengths, the limits, and a recalibration of our reductionistic and analytic methodologies. Our aims are changed and our philosophy is transfigured in the process.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Myths of LaPlacean Omniscience	p. 3
Realism for Limited Beings in a Rich, Messy World	p. 5
Social Natures	p. 7
Heuristics as Adaptations for the Real World	p. 8
Nature as Backwoods Mechanic and Used-Parts Dealer	p. 9
Error and Change	p. 11
Organization and Aims of This Book	p. 12
Normative Idealizations versus the Metabolism of Error	p. 15
Inadequacies of Our Normative Idealizations	p. 15
Satisficing, Heuristics, and Possible Behavior for Real Agents	p. 19
The Productive Use of Error-Prone Procedures	p. 21
Toward a Philosophy for Limited Beings	p. 26
The Stance and Outlook of a Scientifically Informed Philosophy of Science	p. 26
Ceteris Paribus, Complexity, and Philosophical Method	p. 28
Our Present and Future Naturalistic Philosophical Methods	p. 32
Problem-Solving Strategies for Complex Systems	p. 37
Robustness, Reliability, and Overdetermination	p. 43
Common Features of Concepts of Robustness	p. 44
Robustness and the Structure of Theories	p. 46
Robustness, Testability, and the Nature of Theoretical Terms	p. 52
Robustness, Redundancy, and Discovery	p. 56
Robustness, Objectification, and Realism	p. 60
Robustness and Levels of Organization	p. 63
Heuristics and Robustness	p. 67
Robustness, Independence, and Pseudo-Robustness: A Case Study	p. 71
Heuristics and the Study of Human Behavior	p. 75
Heuristics	p. 76
Reductionist Research Strategies and Their Biases	p. 80
An Example of Reductionist Biases: Models of Group Selection	p. 84
Heuristics Can Hide Their Tracks	p. 86
Two Strategies for Correcting Reductionist Biases	p. 89
The Importance of Heuristics in the Study of Human Behavior	p. 90
False Models as Means to Truer Theories	p. 94
Even the Best Models Have Biases	p. 95
The Concept of a Neutral Model	p. 97
How Models Can Misrepresent	p. 100
Twelve Things to Do with False Models	p. 103
Background of the Debate over Linkage Mapping in Genetics	p. 106
Castle's Attack on the Linear Linkage Model	p. 114
Muller's Data and the Haldane Mapping Function	p. 117
Muller's Two-Dimensional Arguments against Castle	p. 121
Multiply-Counterfactual Uses of False Models	p. 123
False Models Can Provide New Predictive Tests Highlighting Features of a Preferred Model	p. 126
False Models and Adaptive Design Arguments	p. 128
Robustness and Entrenchment: How the Contingent Becomes Necessary	p. 133
Generative Entrenchment and the Architecture of Adaptive Design	p. 133
Generative Systems Come to Dominate in Evolutionary Processes	p. 135
Resistance to Foundational Revisions	p. 137
Bootstrapping Feedbacks: Differential Dependencies and Stable Generators	p. 139
Implications of Generative Entrenchment	p. 140
Generative Entrenchment and Robustness	p. 141
Lewontin's Evidence (That There Isn't Any)	p. 146
Is Evidence Impotent, or Just Inconstant?	p. 148
False Models as Means to Truer Theories	p. 152
Narrative Accounts and Theory as Montage	p. 154
Reductionism(s) in Practice	p. 159
Complexity and Organization	p. 179
Reductionism and the Analysis of Complex Systems	p. 179
Complexity	p. 181
Evolution, Complexity, and Organization	p. 186
Complexity and the Localization of Function	p. 190
The Ontology of Complex Systems: Levels of Organization, Perspectives, and Causal Thickets	p. 193
Robustness and Reality	p. 195
Levels of Organization	p. 201
Perspectives: A Preliminary Characterization	p. 227
Causal Thickets	p. 237
Reductive Explanation: A Functional Account	p. 241
Two Kinds of Rational Reconstruction	p. 243
Successional versus Inter-Level Reductions	p. 245
Levels of Organization and the Co-Evolution and Development of Inter-Level Theories	p. 249
Two Views of Explanation: Major Factors and Mechanisms versus Laws and Deductive Completeness	p. 255
Levels of Organization and Explanatory Costs and Benefits	p. 258
Identificatory Hypotheses as Tools in the Search for Explanations	p. 266
Modifications Appropriate to a Cost-Benefit Version of Salmon's Account of Explanation	p. 270
Emergence as Non-Aggregativity and the Biases of Reductionisms	p. 274
Reduction and Emergence	p. 274
Aggregativity	p. 277
Perspectival, Contextual, and Representational Complexities; or, "It Ain't Quite So Simple as That!"	p. 287
Adaptation to Fine- and Coarse-Grained Environments: Derivational Paradoxes for a Formal Account of Aggregativity	p. 296
Aggregativity and Dimensionality	p. 301
Aggregativity as a Heuristic for Evaluating Decompositions, and Our Concepts of Natural Kinds	p. 303
Reductionisms and Biases Revisited	p. 308
Engineering an Evolutionary View of Science	p. 313
Epilogue: On the Softening of the Hard Sciences	p. 319
From Straw-Man Reductionist to Lover of Complexity	p. 322
Messiness in State-of-the-Art Theoretical Physics	p. 324
Hidden Elegance and Revelations in Run-of-the-Mill Applied Science	p. 327
"Pure" versus Applied Science, and What Difference Should It Make?	p. 335
Hortatory Closure	p. 339
Important Properties of Heuristics	p. 345
Common Reductionistic Heuristics	p. 347
Glossary of Key Concepts and Assumptions	p. 353
A Panoply of LaPlacean and Leibnizian Demons	p. 161
Notes	p. 364
Bibliography	p. 405
Credits	p. 430
Index	p. 433
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