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Nagel is the philosopher who argued that mechanistic or materialist explanations for evolution are not sufficient and that they must have some kind of teleologi

Nagel is the philosopher who argued that mechanistic or materialist explanations for evolution are not sufficient and that they must have some kind of teleological underpinning. This willingness to rely on "magical" forces that he can't expand upon underpins Nagel's work. I wouldn't recommend him to anyone unless you're interested in the history of philosophy of science, and would like to be directly familiar with all major 20th-century philosophers in that space.

foldr 10y ago
Nagel's work is well worth reading. It's not good to only read people who agree with your world view.
- szemet 10y ago
  I feel a lot of times that many modern philosophers simply not qualified enough in natural sciences. I've read Mind & Cosmos but gave up halfway: Nagel simply does not get evolution. Contemporary philosophical discussion many times is like typical forum debates on the Internet about basic science - someone says something stupid and the others try to educate him, he don't get it and write his same stupidity again and again until everybody is tired to reply. In the academic world this is called publish or perish: if you are a philosopher you should fear more from being forgotten than from proper and decisive falsification - so you just have to be loud, even if you are wrong. If you defend your wrongness skilfully you will have your followers anyway. But I'm just simply don't interested in whether Nagel will get evolution eventually, or Putnam & Searle get computation sometime in the future* (just to provide another example) * I thinking about their theory that a rock can implement any computation - if we provide proper mapping between the states, without taking into consideration the complexity of the mapping as part of the "computer" here. It is ok if someone doesn't get Kolmogorov but not clear why they should make a living from it, or at least why should I support it by buying and reading their books. ;)
  - foldr 10y ago
    You don't make any specific criticisms of Nagel's work, so I can't say anything on that point, except that I didn't see any misunderstandings of evolution in the book. >Putnam & Searle [don't] get computation Putnam essentially invented the functionalist computationalist theory of mind that you are implicitly defending, so I'd say he probably understood it at least as well as you do. (He later changed his mind about its viability.) More generally I wouldn't doubt Putnam's ability to grasp technical material. This is a guy who contributed the solution to one of Hilbert's problems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert's_tenth_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert's_tenth_problem). >It is ok if someone doesn't get Kolmogorov No-one has provided a solution to the rock problem in terms of Kolmogorov complexity. Scott Aaronson speculates that this notion might be helpful, but he doesn't work out the details. In fact it seems rather unlikely that his proposed solution would work, as the mapping from abstract computational states to the physical states of actually existing computers is also extremely complex, and not obviously any less complex than the mapping from these states to physical states of rocks, waterfalls or whatever. Since we can't actually specify any of the relevant mappings, it's very difficult to say for sure that they differ significantly in terms of Kolmogorov complexity.
    - szemet 10y ago
      > I didn't see any misunderstandings of evolution in the book The greatest feature of evolution that it makes teleology unnecessary. It can operate as a mindless/goalless algorithm. Of course evolution may be operated by someone/something with specific goals instead of pure chances, but thats just an unnecessary assumption until it proved - so we may employ Occam razor here until someone proves it. The possibility of design without a designer is one of the main point and contribution of the theory and it should be fully understood - even if if later turns out (which have not happened yet, and no sign for that happening beside metaphysical opinions...) that there was a designer. > of actually existing computers is also extremely complex, and not obviously any less complex than the mapping from these states to physical states of rocks You can't be serious: First map a Computer chess program states to human interpretable visualization to play chess against it And then do this with your rock. First is mainly one-to-one mapping of digital signs to pixels by using a static table, the second is..., I'm not even sure how to inject my move into the states of the rock, but no idea either how to extract its response. You know why? There is simply no one to one mapping there. The states of a rock is a large bundle of everything without interpretation, the states of the chess program is CLEARLY more constrained - the proof is empirical: it CAN be implemented. Like if you say that the set of all positive integers contains the solution of factorizing any large number. Of course it does: you just have to point to those numbers. ;) But how? All states are not the solution - selecting the proper states is the computation, and if those selection mechanism is in the mapping process then the mapping IS the computer.

foldr 10y ago

Nagel's work is well worth reading. It's not good to only read people who agree with your world view.

szemet 10y ago
I feel a lot of times that many modern philosophers simply not qualified enough in natural sciences. I've read Mind & Cosmos but gave up halfway: Nagel simply does not get evolution. Contemporary philosophical discussion many times is like typical forum debates on the Internet about basic science - someone says something stupid and the others try to educate him, he don't get it and write his same stupidity again and again until everybody is tired to reply. In the academic world this is called publish or perish: if you are a philosopher you should fear more from being forgotten than from proper and decisive falsification - so you just have to be loud, even if you are wrong. If you defend your wrongness skilfully you will have your followers anyway. But I'm just simply don't interested in whether Nagel will get evolution eventually, or Putnam & Searle get computation sometime in the future* (just to provide another example) * I thinking about their theory that a rock can implement any computation - if we provide proper mapping between the states, without taking into consideration the complexity of the mapping as part of the "computer" here. It is ok if someone doesn't get Kolmogorov but not clear why they should make a living from it, or at least why should I support it by buying and reading their books. ;)
- foldr 10y ago
  You don't make any specific criticisms of Nagel's work, so I can't say anything on that point, except that I didn't see any misunderstandings of evolution in the book. >Putnam & Searle [don't] get computation Putnam essentially invented the functionalist computationalist theory of mind that you are implicitly defending, so I'd say he probably understood it at least as well as you do. (He later changed his mind about its viability.) More generally I wouldn't doubt Putnam's ability to grasp technical material. This is a guy who contributed the solution to one of Hilbert's problems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert's_tenth_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert's_tenth_problem). >It is ok if someone doesn't get Kolmogorov No-one has provided a solution to the rock problem in terms of Kolmogorov complexity. Scott Aaronson speculates that this notion might be helpful, but he doesn't work out the details. In fact it seems rather unlikely that his proposed solution would work, as the mapping from abstract computational states to the physical states of actually existing computers is also extremely complex, and not obviously any less complex than the mapping from these states to physical states of rocks, waterfalls or whatever. Since we can't actually specify any of the relevant mappings, it's very difficult to say for sure that they differ significantly in terms of Kolmogorov complexity.
  - szemet 10y ago
    > I didn't see any misunderstandings of evolution in the book The greatest feature of evolution that it makes teleology unnecessary. It can operate as a mindless/goalless algorithm. Of course evolution may be operated by someone/something with specific goals instead of pure chances, but thats just an unnecessary assumption until it proved - so we may employ Occam razor here until someone proves it. The possibility of design without a designer is one of the main point and contribution of the theory and it should be fully understood - even if if later turns out (which have not happened yet, and no sign for that happening beside metaphysical opinions...) that there was a designer. > of actually existing computers is also extremely complex, and not obviously any less complex than the mapping from these states to physical states of rocks You can't be serious: First map a Computer chess program states to human interpretable visualization to play chess against it And then do this with your rock. First is mainly one-to-one mapping of digital signs to pixels by using a static table, the second is..., I'm not even sure how to inject my move into the states of the rock, but no idea either how to extract its response. You know why? There is simply no one to one mapping there. The states of a rock is a large bundle of everything without interpretation, the states of the chess program is CLEARLY more constrained - the proof is empirical: it CAN be implemented. Like if you say that the set of all positive integers contains the solution of factorizing any large number. Of course it does: you just have to point to those numbers. ;) But how? All states are not the solution - selecting the proper states is the computation, and if those selection mechanism is in the mapping process then the mapping IS the computer.