Latest Elliott Sober Quotes from Interviews

• From the fact that E is evidence for T and the fact that T entails M, it doesn't follow that E is evidence for M.

  Elliott Sober

  Facts, Evidence

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

• The indispensability argument seeks to assimilate the epistemology of metaphysical statements to the epistemology of statements that are obviously empirical. I think it fails to achieve this goal. The argument does not refute the Carnapian thesis that scientific theories and metaphysical claims differ epistemologically - observations can provide evidence for the former, but not for the latter.

  Elliott Sober

  Thinking, Goal, Doe

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

• The indispensability argument says (roughly) that if you have ample reason to accept an empirical scientific theory that makes indispensable use of mathematics, and that theory entails that numbers exist, then you have ample reason to accept that numbers exist. The argument affirms the antecedent of this conditional, and concludes that you have ample reason to believe that numbers exist. What is striking about this argument is that it seems to show that the empirical reasons that suffice for accepting a scientific theory also suffice for accepting a metaphysical claim.

  Elliott Sober

  Believe, Numbers, Use

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

• Instead of thinking of the question of race genealogically, and leaving it open whether vernacular races are genealogical units, the interest in biomedicine has been to determine whether vernacular racial categories are medically useful in diagnosis and treatment. There is on-going debate about this.

  Elliott Sober

  Thinking, Race, Leaving

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

• Evolutionary biologists often avoid using the term "race" because there is so much racist baggage that comes with the term. However, they are often okay with the idea that the genealogy of human groups within our species can sometimes be inferred in much the same way as the genealogy of different species.

  Elliott Sober

  Race, Ideas, Way

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

• The racial categories that are used in a given society (for example, in contemporary America) are biologically meaningless, but sometimes it turns out that a vernacular racial category has biological reality.

  Elliott Sober

  Reality, America, Example

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

• "Tiger is a natural kind" and "Tiger is a historical particular" are incompatible with each other, and evolutionary biology provides a reason for favoring the latter over the former.

  Elliott Sober

  Historical, Kind, Biology

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

• It can be a necessary conceptual truth that pains are painful without this ruling out the physicalist thesis that immaterial minds are impossible or the thesis that conscious states supervene on physical states. The necessity involved in these claims is nomological necessity, not metaphysical necessity (assuming that these are different).

  Elliott Sober

  Pain, Mind, Different

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

• I disagree with the widely held view that it is metaphysical necessity, not nomological, that matters in the mind/body problem.

  Elliott Sober

  Vistas, Mente, Cuerpo

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

• The upshot is that most philosophers of biology now hold that biological properties supervene on physical properties (where supervenience is taken to include some kind of "in virtue of" relation), and that fitness and other biological properties are not identical with physical properties.

  Elliott Sober

  Taken, Philosopher, Kind

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

• Just as thought experiments can't show that vitalism is true (or that it is false), they also can't show that dualism is true (or that it is false).

  Elliott Sober

  Shows, Experiments, Dualism

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

• Philosophers of biology generally recognize that evolutionary fitness (roughly, an organism's ability to survive and reproduce in its environment) is multiply realizable.

  Elliott Sober

  Philosopher, Environment, Biology

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

• I think that the existence of Beethoven is remarkable, but I do not bristle at the suggestion that this event had a low probability given the initial state of the universe.

  Elliott Sober

  Thinking, Suggestions, Events

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

• Biologists now pretty universally regard vitalism as a vestige of a bygone age.

  Elliott Sober

  Age, Biologist, Regard

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

• Trait X is fitter than trait Y in a population of organisms if those organisms have other biological traits T and live in an environment that has properties E. The theory of natural selection is filled with statements of this form.

  Elliott Sober

  Population, Environment, Natural

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

• Darwin and his successors have railed against the fallacy of confusing the current utility of a trait with the reason the trait evolved. For example, Darwin argued that skull sutures in mammals did not evolve because they facilitate live birth; the sutures were in place well before live birth evolved. Checking the chronological order in which different traits evolved in a lineage is one way to test an adaptive hypothesis; the fact of common ancestry is what makes that checking possible.

  Elliott Sober

  Skulls, Order, Confusing

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

• Another way to test hypotheses about adaptation is to consider trait variation across a group of species instead of focusing on the trait of a single species. Rather than seeking to explain why polar bears have fur of a certain thickness, one tries to explain why bears in colder climates have thicker fur than bears in warmer climates. The former problem is hard to solve, since it is hard to say exactly what fur thickness polar bears should have if natural selection guided the evolution of that trait.

  Elliott Sober

  Should Have, Trying, Tests

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

• The big picture, I think, is that common ancestry is evidentially prior to natural selection in Darwin's theory and in contemporary evolutionary biology as well.

  Elliott Sober

  Thinking, Ancestry, Common

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

• Si los organismos de una especie tienen ahora el rasgo T, y este rasgo ayuda ahora a esos organismos a sobrevivir y reproducirse porque el rasgo tiene efecto E, una hipótesis natural a considerar es que T evolucionó en el linaje que lleva a esos organismos actuales porque T tenía efecto E. Esta hipótesis es "natural", ¡pero a menudo no es cierta!

  Elliott Sober

  Lineage, Helping, Natural

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

• Darwin repeatedly used the hypothesis of common ancestry as a platform on which to build his various ideas about testing hypotheses concerning natural selection. He also argued that adaptive similarities provide little or no evidence for common ancestry. Although this second claim needs to be fine-tuned, Darwin was right that ample evidence for common ancestry can exist even if none of the characteristics we observe were caused to evolve by natural selection.

  Elliott Sober

  Ideas, Littles, Ancestry

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

• Evolutionary game theory was originally developed as an alternative to the hypothesis of group selection; now it is clear that game theory models postulate group selection, even if they do not use the g-word.

  Elliott Sober

  Games, Groups, Alternatives

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

• One influential philosophical position about the use of probability in science holds that probabilities are objective only if they are based on micro-physics; all other probabilities should be interpreted subjectively, as merely revealing our ignorance about physical details. I have argued against this position, contending that the objectivity of micro-physical probabilities entails the objectivity of macro-probabilities.

  Elliott Sober

  Philosophical, Ignorance, Objectivity

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

• Group selection and individual selection are just two of the selection processes that have played important roles in evolution. There also is selection within individual organisms (intragenomic conflict), and selection among multi-species communities (an idea that now is getting attention in work on the human microbiome). All four of these levels of selection find a place in multi-level selection theory.

  Elliott Sober

  Ideas, Two, Community

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

• The rabid opposition to group selection has now considerably subsided. In the process, the conceptual structure of evolutionary theory has become clearer, as have the relationships that connect different theoretical approaches.

  Elliott Sober

  Groups, Different, Structure

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

• Our own species evolved under the influence of group selection, as Darwin emphasized when he discussed the evolution of altruism.

  Elliott Sober

  Groups, Evolution, Influence

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

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