Eyes, Bunnies, Neanderthal Extinction

Every week scientists seem to change their mind regarding the cause of the extinction of neanderthals. This week it was their big dreamy eyes, the other day it was rabbits, a while back it was their rubbish childhoods.

In truth, I'm sure most researchers aren't radically changing their minds so much so often, but adding nuances to complex theories. The problem is almost certainly down to hyperbolic science journalism. 

Silent killer.

 From what I understand, there are still a few key competing theories regarding neanderthal extinction: interbreeding, disease, genocide or some general competitive advantage possessed by humans. It's this last factor that causes trouble. As soon as we begin to speculate about the details of a plausible but vague competitive advantage, we open the doors to any hypothesis that sounds feasible. Superior communication? Diverse tools? More effective hunting strategies? Surely any and all of these are possible, but how would we come to any sort of sensible and testable comparison?

Giant eyes, killer bunnies; these guys had a hard time.

This a problem that frequents evolutionary psychology. In evolutionary psychology we look for evolutionary reasons for often highly specific and complex psychological traits and behaviour. But in doing so we run the danger of hysterical hypothesising- rapidly drawing conclusions that are frequently unverifiable. That's not to say there isn't an evolutionary explanation for those traits, but rather that our conclusions need to be moderate and uncertain. Likewise, I don't doubt the possibility of human competitive advantages over neanderthals- as a lay person who am I to dispute this? I also don't doubt the possibility and utility of comparing the plausibility of different adaptations as an explanation for human survival to some extent. However, I find the range of such assured headlines suspicious. I'm sure most scientists in the field take a nuanced approach that avoids such certainty.

Things that are (probably) magic

There are some philosophical questions that seem utterly unanswerable from within a naturalistic framework. These are questions that science just doesn't appear to have the capacity to investigate. These are things that, at least from where we're currently standing, appear to be magic.

1. Consciousness: Why is there anything at all that it feels like to be a person, or a dog, or a bat? Where does subjectivity fit into the naturalistic framework?
2. Free Will: Naturalism commonly assumes a causally deterministic universe (or at best, a quantum undeterministic universe, which is hardly an improvement). How then can we freely choose to act?
3. Morality: How can anything possess inherent value? What does it mean for something to be right or wrong if all that exists is the physical world?

There's an obvious sense in which all three of these "magic things" are linked. Moral action, at least under most systems, requires a degree of free will, and free will would seem to require a degree of conscious awareness. So maybe we should say that there's just one magic thing, perhaps a transcendent soul of some description.

This is all a bit tongue-in-cheek, although there's a serious point to it as well. Rather than just discarding these as "magic things" that naturalistic philosophy cannot investigate, it might be better to simply regard them as ill-formed questions. In fact, scientific progress is being made on the subject of consciousness, but only by breaking it up into a number of smaller, related questions about attention, perception, and so on. Similarly, questions about the cognitive implementation of agency are tractable, even if the fundamental nature of free will is not. And whilst we might not be able to determine why something is right or wrong, we can ask more practical questions about how ethical principles should be applied in the world.

So maybe we should just accept that, at least for the time being, some things appear to be magic, and get on with answering the questions that we can answer.

Life Without Philosophy

Last Friday I attended a talk by Derek Ball (from the University of St. Andrews), titled "Philosophy Without Truth". His basic claim was that even if philosophical theories were never true, we might nonetheless have reason to accept them. His argument followed the structure of arguments for anti-realism in the philosophy of science, appealing to, amongst other things, the failure of previous philosophical theories and fact that some theories might actually contradict themselves if they were true.

I think that the most interesting point came out in the discussion at the end, where someone suggested that we might want to go for a "pluralism-plus" with regard to the aims of different philosophical disciplines. This would mean that not only might different disciplines have different aims (a possibility that Ball mentioned towards the end of his talk), but that even within a given discipline there might be a number of different competing aims, truth being only one of them.

What might some of those aims look like?

Truth - Obviously we might think it's important that a philosophical theory is true (whatever that might mean).

Scientific Progress - Related to the above, some disciplines/schools see philosophy as being continuous with science, in which case (presuming scientific realism!) they might well aim at truth.

Instrumental Value - On the other hand, we might only care about a theory being in some way "useful", whether that be to scientific progress or in some ethical sense. Pragmatism (as a global description) perhaps falls into this category.

Clarity - Even if it doesn't achieve anything else, a philosophical education certainly enables one to think and reason clearly, and could be valuable for that reason alone.

Being "Interesting" - Towards the end of the discussion I flippantly commented that if we were only motivated by being interesting, we'd be better off becoming fiction writers, but I do actually agree that there can be an aesthetic value to philosophy.

Being Fun - A bit like being interesting, but somewhat broader and perhaps more liable to result in incoherent post-modern ramblings.¹

Existential Necessity - Not an aim so much as a motivation, but philosophy asks some pretty mind-bending questions, and perhaps at some level simply pursuing those questions is a necessary component of a fulfilling life.

Winning - The aim of philosophy is to disprove the argument of others while working within the rules of logic.²

I think that all of these are important, and all in some sense contribute to my reasons for pursuing a philosophical career. Some are definitely more important than others though, and if I didn't think that there was at least some instrumental value to what I was doing, I probably wouldn't carry on doing it. On the other hand, I find it hard to imagine a life without philosophy, so perhaps I haven't got much choice in the matter.

This list is by no means comprehensive, so please let me know if you can think of any other aims of philosophy!

1. Inspired by a comment from Krzysztof Dołęga, although he is not responsible for the suggestion that incoherent post-modern ramblings are "fun".
2. Krzysztof also suggested this, albeit as an example of "fun".