Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings

Analytic philosophers once pantomimed physics: they tried to understand the world by breaking it down into the smallest possible bits. Thinkers from the Darwinian sciences now pose alternatives to this simplistic reductionism.

In this intellectual tour—essays spanning thirty years—William C. Wimsatt argues that scientists seek to atomize phenomena only when necessary in the sea...

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Analytic philosophers once pantomimed physics: they tried to understand the world by breaking it down into the smallest possible bits. Thinkers from the Darwinian sciences now pose alternatives to this simplistic reductionism.

In this intellectual tour—essays spanning thirty years—William C. Wimsatt argues that scientists seek to atomize phenomena only when necessary in the search to understand how entities, events, and processes articulate at different levels. Evolution forms the natural world not as Laplace’s all-seeing demon but as a backwoods mechanic fixing and re-fashioning machines out of whatever is at hand. W. V. Quine’s lost search for a “desert ontology” leads instead to Wimsatt’s walk through a tropical rain forest.

This book offers a philosophy for error-prone humans trying to understand messy systems in the real world. Against eliminative reductionism, Wimsatt pits new perspectives to deal with emerging natural and social complexities. He argues that our philosophy should be rooted in heuristics and models that work in practice, not only in principle. He demonstrates how to do this with an analysis of the strengths, the limits, and a recalibration of our reductionistic and analytic methodologies. Our aims are changed and our philosophy is transfigured in the process.

I. Introduction
1. Myths of LaPlacean Omniscience
Realism for Limited Beings in a Rich Messy World
Social Natures
Heuristics as Adaptations for the Real World
Nature as Backwoods Mechanic and Used-Parts Dealer
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I. Introduction
1. Myths of LaPlacean Omniscience
Realism for Limited Beings in a Rich Messy World
Social Natures
Heuristics as Adaptations for the Real World
Nature as Backwoods Mechanic and Used-Parts Dealer
Error and Change
Organization and Aims of This Book
2. Normative Idealizations versus the Metabolism of Error
Inadequacies of Our Normative Idealizations
Satisficing, Heuristics, and Possible Behavior for Real Agents
The Productive Use of Error-Prone Procedures
3. Toward a Philosophy for Limited Beings
The Stance and Outlook of a Scientifically Informed Philosophy of Science
Ceteris Paribus, Complexity, and Philosophical Method
Our Present and Future Naturalistic Philosophical Methods
II. Problem-Solving Strategies for Complex Systems
4. Robustness, Reliability, and Overdetermination
Common Features of Concepts of Robustness
Robustness and the Structure of Theories
Robustness, Testability, and the Nature of Theoretical Terms
Robustness, Redundancy, and Discovery
Robustness, Objectification, and Realism
Robustness and Levels of Organization
Heuristics and Robustness
Robustness, Independence, and Pseudo-Robustness: A Case Study
5. Heuristics and the Study of Human Behavior
Heuristics
Reductionist Research Strategies and Their Biases
An Example of Reductionist Biases: Models of Group Selection
Heuristics Can Hide Their Tracks
Two Strategies for Correcting Reductionist Biases
The Importance of Heuristics in the Study of Human Behavior
6. False Models as Means to Truer Theories
Even the Best Models Have “Biases”
The Concept of a “Neutral Model”
How Models Can Misrepresent
Twelve Things To Do with False Models
Background of the Debate over Linkage Mapping in Genetics
Castle’s Attack on the “Linear Linkage” Model
Muller’s Data and the Haldane Mapping Function
Muller’s “Two-Dimensional” Arguments against Castle
Multiply-Counterfactual Uses of False Models
False Models Can Provide New Predictive Tests Highlighting Features of a Preferred Model
False Models and Adaptive Design Arguments
Summary and Conclusions
7. Robustness and Entrenchment: How the Contingent Becomes Necessary
Generative Entrenchment and the Architecture of Adaptive Design
Generative Systems Come To Dominate in Evolutionary Processes
Resistance to Foundational Revisions
Bootstrapping Feedbacks: Differential Dependencies and Stable Generators
Implications of Generative Entrenchment
Generative Entrenchment and Robustness
Conclusion
8. Lewontin’s Evidence (That There Isn’t Any)
Is Evidence Impotent, or Just Inconstant?
False Models as Means to Truer Theories
Narrative Accounts and Theory as Montage
III. Reductionism(s) in Practice
9. Complexity and Organization
Reductionism and the Analysis of Complex Systems
Complexity
Evolution, Complexity, and Organization
Complexity and the Localization of Function
10. The Ontology of Complex Systems: Levels of Organization, Perspectives, and Causal Thickets
Robustness and Reality
Levels of Organization
Perspectives: A Preliminary Characterization
Causal Thickets
11. Reductive Explanation: A Functional Account
Two Kinds of Rational Reconstruction
Successional versus Inter-Level Reduction
Levels of Organization and the Co-Evolution and Development of Interlevel Theories
Two Views of Explanation: Major Factors and Mechanisms versus Laws and Deductive Completeness
Levels of Organization and Explanatory Costs and Benefits
An Example: The Assumption of “the Purity of the Gametes” in the Heterozygote
Identificatory Hypotheses as Tools in the Search for Explanations
Appendix: Modifications Appropriate to a Cost-Benefit Version of Salmon’s Account of Explanation
12. Emergence as Non-Aggregativity and the Biases of Reductionism(s)
Reduction and Emergence
Aggregativity
Perspectival, Contextual, and Representational Complexities; or, “It Ain’t Quite So Simple as That!”
Adaptation to Fine- and Coarse-Grained Environments: Derivational Paradoxes for a Formal Account of Aggregativity
Aggregativity and Dimensionality
Aggregativity as a Heuristic for Evaluating Decompositions, and Our Concepts of Natural Kinds
Reductionisms and Biases Revisited
IV. Engineering an Evolutionary View of Science
13. Epilogue: On the Softening of the “Hard” Sciences
13. Epilogue: On the Softening of the “Hard” Sciences
From Straw-Man Reductionist to Lover of Complexity
Messiness in State-of-the-Art Theoretical Physics
Hidden Elegance and Revelations in Run-of-the-Mill Applied Science
“Pure” versus Applied Science, and What Difference Should It Make?
Hortatory Closure
Appendix A. Important Properties of Heuristics
Appendix B. Common Reductionistic Heuristics
Appendix C. Glossary of Key Concepts and Assumptions
Appendix D. A Panoply of LaPlacean and Leibnizian Demons
Notes
Bibliography
Credits
Index
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