Hi Jim more on evolution?

[Jim]

Hi Charles. I wrote up some stuff on Wilber's use of the term "reductionism," so, since you mention his use of that term, I'll paste it in here.

In his blog post response to one of my posts, Wilber says:

I am simply saying that most mainstream biologists accept that there are problems and issues at the leading edge of their science, and I am saying that I recognize the same leading-edge problems that they do, but at that point we quickly part ways—virtually all of them believe those issues can be fully solved using scientific materialism, and I of course do not accept that quadrant absolutism and gross reductionism, but rather introduce a transcendent-immanent principle that is quite similar to Erich Jantsch’s idea, which he states as “evolution is self-organization through self-transcendence.” Of course, you find some daring scientists who go in that non-reductionistic direction, such as Erich Jantsch and, more recently, James Gardner’s Biocosm and Michael Ruse’s The Evolution Wars: A Guide to the Debate, with a foreword by Edward O. Wilson. But not mainstream biology.

Michael Ruse (who is a philosopher, not a scientist) describes himself as a "hard-line Darwinian," a naturalist, and an agnostic who has "no more belief" in God than Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. The primary difference between Ruse's position and the positions of Dawkins and Dennett is that Ruse, though a hard-line Darwinian, tries to avoid turning Darwinism into a "secular religion" (he accuses Dawkins and Dennett of doing just that), and he realizes that polarizing anti-Darwinian religious believers by attacking religion does more harm than good for Darwinism. Ruse says that he, Dawkins, Dennett, and other Darwinians, "need to make allies in the fight, not simply alienate everyone of good will."

Ruse rejects intelligent design and says:

I think that any supposed science that appeals to causes that are non-natural is not a science as we understand the concept today.

Natural here is as in naturalism, as in physicalism and materialism. Ruse is no less a materialist than Dawkins, Dennett, Kaufman, Lewontin, and Mayr.

Ruse also says:

There is nothing in modern evolutionary theory which stands in the way of a deep sense of religion or of a morally worthwhile life.

Regarding a book he wrote about the “evolution wars” after the one Wilber references, Ruse says:

In The Evolution-Creation Struggle I try to give the creationists' positions fairly and with historical sympathy. That, I think, is the obligation of the scholar.

Wilber refers to himself as a scholar, but does he meet this obligation?

Does Wilber present naturalistic positions fairly?

No, he doesn't. For one thing, he abuses the word "reductionism," and he does so in the above when he says, "virtually all of them believe those issues can be fully solved using scientific materialism, and I of course do not accept that quadrant absolutism and gross reductionism." Here Wilber begs the question that naturalism is automatically quadrant absolutism and gross reductionism.

In his entry for "reductionism" in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Michael Ruse notes that reductionism is "One of the most used and abused terms in the philosophical lexicon..." (my italics).

“It is not clear when ‘reductionist’ became a term of abuse,” write Julian Baggini and Peter Fosl in The Philospher’s Toolkit, “but, in general discourse, at least, that seems to be where it has ended up.”

Baggini and Fosl say it would be “wildly unfair” to dismiss reductionism on the basis of caricatures of reductionists, e.g., “someone who takes what is complex, nuanced and sophisticated and breaks it down into something simplistic, sterile and empty.”

Reductionism is a much more respectable process than many of its critics maintain. Reductionism is simply the process of explaining one kind of phenomenon in terms of the simpler, more fundamental phenomena that underlie both it and other phenomena.

Physicist Steven Weinberg distinguishes between compromising reductionism (good), and uncompromising reductionism (bad).

Daniel Dennett distinguishes between reductionism (good) and greedy reductionism (bad).

Dennett says that a "reasonable and realistic fear is that the greedy abuse of Darwinian reasoning might lead us to deny the existence of real levels, real complexities, real phenomena. By our own misguided efforts, we might indeed come to discard or destroy something valuable."

Michael Farraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Heinrich Hertz showed that electricity, magnetism and light can be given a reductionistic explanation (as the unification of electromagnetism and light). The notion of an all-pervading ether was done away with in the process. Electromagnetic theory gives us a physicalist reduction of light as a non-mechanical, entirely physical phenomenon (EM waves).

Is the physicalist reduction of light and the elimination of ether an example of quadrant absolutism and gross reductionism?

It was once believed that all combustible substances contain a hypothetical substance called phlogiston and that the process of combustion is essentially the process of losing phlogiston. Antoine Lavoisier demonstrated through quantitative experiments that combustion is a process in which oxygen combines with another substance, and the theory of phlogiston was disproved.

Is the elimination of phlogiston from the theory of combustion an example of gross reductionism and quadrant absolutism?

Wilber is quoted at IN and at his blog as saying that the idea found in the movie What the Bleep?! that human intentionality creates reality at a quantum level is "bad physics and bad mysticism." Is Wilber guilty of quadrant absolutism and gross reductionism for discarding that idea? Surely not, and unless someone can offer good reasons why the proposition that human intentionality creates reality at a quantum level should be kept on the table, there is no reason not to discard it.

The fact that scientific reductions leave things aside doesn't necessarily have any metaphysical significance. The kinetic theory of heat leaves aside many things, such as heat's effect on the conscious states of humans, heat's effect on the Gross National Product of Peru, heat's effect on bluebird-egg cholesterol levels, and heat's effect on pneumonial infections. This does not make the kinetic theory of heat a form of gross reductionism or quadrant absolutism.

In his conversation with Alan Wallace, Wilber says:

John Searle gives a convincing argument that the first-person is irreducible. And then he simply proceeds to reduce it.

Here is an accurate statement about Searle’s views on consciousness:

The first basic principle grounding Searle's theory of consciousness is that consciousness is irreducible. For Searle, consciousness is essentially a first-person, subjective phenomenon, and thus talk of conscious states cannot be reduced or eliminated in favor of third-person, objective talk about neural events. Any such attempt at reduction, Searle argues, simply misses the essential features of conscious states -- that is, their subjective qualities. - Daniel Barbiero

http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/MindDict/searle.html

Wilber apparently just likes to toss the term "reductionism" around like rice at a wedding (his proposed marriage of science and religion, of course).

In the MP3 audio that Dashh recently linked to, Wilber says that Jeff Meyerhoff asks "What about accounts [of evolution] lacking these ingredients," where one of the ingredients is Wilber's telos, "such as Daniel Dennett?"

Wilber says:

Well Daniel Dennett's a reductionist, of course he lacks those ingredients! ... We don't take reductionists, that's true. We try to take the true aspects from theorists; reductionism is not one...

Here again, Wilber simply begs the question that reductionism cannot be a "true aspect" of evolutionary biology, and he once again uses the term "reductionism" as if all reductionism is by definition greedy or gross reductionism.

I don't say any of this in defense of Searle and Dennett, by the way, as I disagree with both on various things. I say this in defense of what Ruse calls the scholar's obligation to represent competing views fairly.