Stone Links: Nagel Agonistes - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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The distinguished philosopher Thomas Nagel has spent much of his career defending an antireductionist view of mind. His new book, “Mind and Cosmos,” extends this skepticism to much of contemporary scientific inquiry, including evolutionary biology, and calls for a new scientific revolution based on teleological principles. It’s a proposal that has, unsurprisingly, been quite controversial
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, they think Nagel’s insistence “that explanation and prediction are symmetrical” is an outdated one, and that his description of what a new, teleologically-oriented science would look like is insufficiently clear.
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As for teleology, Sober has no problem understanding certain phenomena this way, as long as there are “causal underpinnings” for a given teleological statement. But Nagel’s position, as Sober understands it, entails “teleological explanations that are both true and causally inexplicable,” a class for which neither Sober, nor Nagel, apparently, can offer any examples. (In a strangely concessive coda, Sober does admit that his “reactions may be mired in presuppositions,” and that history may prove Nagel to be “a prophet whom naysayers such as me were unable to recognize.”)