Nagel and Neo-Darwinism (Evolution)

by George Jelliss ⌂ @, Crewe, Tuesday, September 03, 2013, 20:24 (3859 days ago)

This review of Thomas Nagel's book by his former teacher may be of interest: -http://robertpaulwolff.blogspot.ca/2013/09/what-have-i-been-reading.html-It also has a bit about E. O. Wilson and ants.

--
GPJ

Nagel and Neo-Darwinism

by David Turell @, Tuesday, September 03, 2013, 23:05 (3859 days ago) @ George Jelliss

This review of Thomas Nagel's book by his former teacher may be of interest: 
> 
> http://robertpaulwolff.blogspot.ca/2013/09/what-have-i-been-reading.html
&#... 
> It also has a bit about E. O. Wilson and ants.-Thank you for this review. A bit unfair to Nagel, not liking that he skipped over a prolonged discussion of Darwinwhich most of us know thoroughly. On the other hand I'm just as critical. Nagel raised objections and had nothing to really offer, except the obvious point that the source of consciousness is still entirely mysterious to us, and is unexplained by Darwin. We all know that.

Nagel and Neo-Darwinism

by dhw, Wednesday, September 04, 2013, 20:23 (3858 days ago) @ George Jelliss

GEORGE: This review of Thomas Nagel's book by his former teacher may be of interest:
 
http://robertpaulwolff.blogspot.ca/2013/09/what-have-i-been-reading.html-Great to have you with us again, George. Not so much a review of the book as a complaint about philosophers who don't do their science homework. As a non-scientist, I can only point out that since there is no consensus among scientists concerning the source and nature of consciousness, I don't think it's unfair for a philosopher to do his own speculating. This would apply especially if the philosopher were convinced that consciousness is the key to a non-materialistic world, since science can only deal with the material world. -The review concludes:
"I mean, you cannot write a whole book modestly, tentatively, but nonetheless definitively trashing Neo-Darwinism, and then not even take a few pages to spell out exactly what your hesitantly offered alternative is."-Well, yes, you can. That is precisely the situation of the agnostic ... we can only say why we do not believe in the various alternatives. However, Nagel does not admit to being an agnostic. He says he is an atheist. I have found a very revealing quote, which may explain why:
 
In speaking of the fear of religion, I don't mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper—namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that. The Last Word, Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 130-131.-Perfectly understandable ... just as it is perfectly understandable that people should want there to be an all-powerful and loving God, and tailor their beliefs and findings to fit their wishes. As we keep noting, you can justify any theory by selecting from the information available. At least he's honest about the subjective wishes underlying his reasoning. But I still think he's an agnostic at heart!

Nagel and Neo-Darwinism: Feser\'s view

by David Turell @, Sunday, September 15, 2013, 15:36 (3848 days ago) @ dhw

Critical of Wolff:-http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2013/09/man-is-wolff-to-man.html#more

Nagel and his ID opinion

by David Turell @, Thursday, January 29, 2015, 18:42 (3346 days ago) @ David Turell

An essay written after the Dover trial rejected ID in the classroom:-http://philosophy.fas.nyu.edu/docs/IO/1172/papa_132.pdf-"ID is a different story. Its defense requires only that design be admitted
as a possibility, not that it be regarded as empirically unassailable. It
would be difficult to argue that the admission of that possibility is inconsistent
with the standards of scientific rationality. Further, if it is admitted
as a possibility, it would be difficult to argue that the presently
available empirical evidence rules it out decisively, as it does young earth
creationism. To rule it out decisively would require that the sufficiency of
standard evolutionary mechanisms to account for the entire evolution of
life should have been clearly established by presently available evidence.
So far as I can tell, in spite of the rhetoric to the contrary, nothing close to
this has been done."-I suggest reading the whole article. It is a forerunner to his book, Mind and Cosmos, 2012-A Christian review:-http://senseofevents.blogspot.ca/2015/01/prominent-atheist-professor-says.html-"Prof. Nagel tells us that he "has for a long time been skeptical of the claims of traditional evolutionary theory to be the whole story about the history of life" (p. 202). He reports that it is "difficult to find in the accessible literature the grounds" for these claims.-" Moreover, he goes farther. He reports that the "presently available evidence" comes "nothing close" to establishing "the sufficiency of standard evolutionary mechanisms to account for the entire evolution of life" (p. 199).-" He notes that his judgment is supported by two prominent scientists (Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart, writing in the Oct. 2005 book Plausibility of Life), who also recognized that (prior to offering their own theory, at least) the "available evidence" did not "decisively settle[]" whether mutations in DNA "are entirely due to chance" (p. 191). And he cites one Stuart Kauffman, a "complexity theorist who defends a naturalistic theory of emergence," that random mutation "is not sufficient" to explain DNA (p. 192)."-Antony Flew's deistic view: (same article)-"This is basically the same rationale that the 20th century's leading philosophical atheist, Antony Flew, used finally to reject atheism and declare he was a deist. He said,-"There were two factors in particular that were decisive. One was my growing empathy with the insight of Einstein and other noted scientists that there had to be an Intelligence behind the integrated complexity of the physical Universe. The second was my own insight that the integrated complexity of life itself—which is far more complex than the physical Universe—can only be explained in terms of an Intelligent Source. I believe that the origin of life and reproduction simply cannot be explained from a biological standpoint despite numerous efforts to do so. With every passing year, the more that was discovered about the richness and inherent intelligence of life, the less it seemed likely that a chemical soup could magically generate the genetic code. The difference between life and non-life, it became apparent to me, was ontological and not chemical. The best confirmation of this radical gulf is Richard Dawkins' comical effort to argue in The God Delusion that the origin of life can be attributed to a "lucky chance." If that's the best argument you have, then the game is over. No, I did not hear a Voice. It was the evidence itself that led me to this conclusion."

RSS Feed of thread
powered by my little forum