In his recent book on Darwinism, Daniel Dennett has offered up a species of a priori selectionism that he calls algorithmic. He used this view to challenge a number of positions advocated by Stephen J. Gould. I examine his algorithmic conception, review his unqualified enthusiasm for the a priori selectionist position, challenge Dennett's main metaphors (cranes vs. skyhooks and a design space), examine ways in which his position has lead him to misunderstand or misrepresent Gould (spandrels, exaptation, punctuated equilibrium, (...) contingency and disparity), and discuss recent results in developmental biology that suggest that an a priori position does not fill the demands of an evolutionary biology. I conclude by insisting that evolutionary biology is many leveled, complicated, and is carried on an ever shifting and expanding empirical base that when disregarded results in caricature. (shrink)

No philosopher has worked harder than Dan Dennett to set the possibility of machine mentality on firm philosophical footing. Dennett’s defense of this possibility has both a positive and a negative thrust. On the positive side, he has developed an account of mental activity that is tailor-made for the attribution of intentional states to purely mechanical contrivances, while on the negative side, he pillories as mystery mongering and skyhook grasping any attempts to erect barriers to the conception of machine mentality (...) by excavating gulfs to keep us “bona fide” thinkers apart from the rest of creation. While I think he’s “won” the rhetorical tilts with his philosophical adversaries, I worry that Dennett’s negative side sometimes gets the better of him, and that this obscures advances that can be made on the positive side of his program. In this paper, I show that Dennett is much too dismissive of original intentionality in particular, and that this notion can be put to good theoretical use after all. Though deployed to distinguish different grades of mentality, it can (and should) be incorporated into a philosophical account of the mind that is recognizably Dennettian in spirit. (shrink)

Greg Macainsh is a major actor in the Australian popular music scene. He was the pioneer ethnographic filmmaker of the youth gang the Sharpies, and then bass player and songwriter for the most innovative band of the seventies, Skyhooks. Skyhooks combined new composition, driving music, sarcastic and local lyrics, and keen attention to visuals and costume. This article backgrounds Macainsh and his context. The interview that follows looks further into musical history and performative culture in Melbourne and its (...) suburbs in the period. (shrink)

In 1991, I included a brief discussion of the Baldwin effect in my account of the evolution of human consciousness, thinking I was introducing to non-specialist readers a little-appreciated, but no longer controversial, wrinkle in orthodox neo-Darwinism. I had thought that Hinton and Nowlan (1987) and Maynard Smith (1987) had shown clearly and succinctly how and why it worked, and restored the neglected concept to grace. Here is how I put it then.

Michael Behe's book is an interesting attempt at a frontal assault on Darwinism, based on an analysis of the complexities of molecular structures inside the cell--Darwin's black box.

The history of the natural sciences repeatedly shows that the unification of a higher level theory with a lower level theory by reduction does not eliminate the need for the higher level theory nor preclude its further development, leading to changes in the understanding of the lower level. The radical neuron doctrine proposes that the future science of psychology or linguistics will derive principally from the evolution of understanding at the neural level and not from current theories based on the (...) observation of behavior. It is far more likely that the two bodies of theory will coevolve in semiautonomous fashion. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titles: Introduction and Conspectus: Naturalizing the Logical Modalities The Law of Noncontradiction and Possible Worlds Craning Noncontradiction Natural Necessity and Metaphysical Necessity in Millikan's Philosophy The Son, the Daughter, and the Mighty Dead: Debunking the Myth of the Logical Given23.

Do we need a Darwinian theory of cultural evolution? In one sense, certainly. It is obvious that there are patterns of cultural change-evolution in the neutral sense-and any theory of cultural change worth more than a moment's consideration will have to be Darwinian in the minimal sense of being consistent with the theory of evolution by natural selection of Homo sapiens. Our species name is well chosen, and it is culture that makes us the knowing hominid, so a minimally Darwinian (...) theory of culture must hold that the phenotypic traits that make cumulative culture possible-mainly, language and the habits of sociality-evolved by natural selection, unaided by what I call skyhooks: saltations in Design Space that could not be the outcome of standard evolutionary mechanisms (Dennett, 1995). This minimal Darwinism is simply the denial of the.. (shrink)

The prelims comprise: Introduction The Implications Conclusion Note.

Preface Part I: Before Plantinga 1. Introduction to the Skyhook 2. Defining Concepts 3. Paradox Lost 4. Compatibility Issues 5. Eliminationist Rhetoric 6. Mental Problems 7. Knowledge and Normativity 8. Naturalism Epistemologized 9. On the Origin of Theses 10. Language Games 11. Leftovers Part II: Anno Plantinga 12. Plantinga's Epistemology 13. Preliminaries to Plantinga's Skyhook 14. Mind Matters 15. A Premise Made 16. The Problem of Propriety 17. Non-Accidentally True Belief Conclusions Bibliography.

Throughout philosophical history, there has been a recurring argument to the effect that determinism, naturalism, or both are self-referentially incoherent. By accepting determinism or naturalism, one allegedly acquires a reason to reject determinism or naturalism. _The Epistemological Skyhook_ brings together, for the first time, the principal expressions of this argument, focusing primarily on the last 150 years. This book addresses the versions of this argument as presented by Arthur Lovejoy, A.E. Taylor, Kurt Gödel, C.S. Lewis, Norman Malcolm, Karl Popper, J.R. (...) Lucas, William Hasker, Thomas Nagel, Alvin Plantinga, and others, along with the objections presented by their many detractors. It concludes by presenting a new version of the argument that synthesizes the best aspects of the others while also rendering the argument immune to some of the most significant objections made to it. (shrink)

If we are to preserve qualia, one possibility is to take the current academic, philosophical, and theoretical notion less seriously and current natural science and some pre-theoretical intuitions about qualia more seriously. Dennett (1997) is instrumental in showing how ideas of the intrinsicalness and privacy of qualia are misguided and those of ineffability and immediacy misinterpreted. However, by combining ideas of non-mechanicalness used in contemporary natural science with the pre-theoretical idea that qualia are special because they are unique, we get (...) a notion of qualia that is acceptable to naturalistic philosophy. The notion of unique qualia is not opposed to the idea that some of the characterizations of qualia have to be qualified. It is the folk-philosophical, academic, notions of theoreticity and conceptuality that have to be modified. (shrink)