"Darwin's dangerous idea is reductionism incarnate, promising to unite and explain just about everything in one magnificent vision. Its being the idea of an algorithmic process makes it all the more powerful, since the substrate neutrality it thereby possesses permits us to consider its application to just about everything. It is no respector of material boundaries. It applies ... even to itself. The most common fear about Darwin's idea is that it will not just explain but explain away the Minds and Purposes and Meanings that we all hold dear. People fear that once this universal acid has passed through the monuments we cherish, they will case to exist, dissolved in an unrecognizable and unlovable puddle of scientific destruction. This cannot be a sound fear; a proper reductionistic explanation of these phenomena would leave them still standing but just demystified, unified, placed on more secure foundations" ... Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, p 82.

To date ... (Darwin and Emergence)

• essentialism vs relativism? ... both, but not as originally thought things seem to have "essential" properties, but these seem to result from the "time slicing" of processes of interaction which are coninually in flux
• realism vs constructivism? ... both, but not as originally thought there may or not be something out there, but regardless it is unlikely to be a stable benchmark of the kind implied by realist usage/aspiration (or needed by the correspondence theory of truth)
• non-intentionality vs intentionality? ... iffy, but needing more work at a minimum, non-intentionality and intentionality are not discrete categories: intentionality arises from non-intentionality, probably in a graded fashion, certainly with no evidence for any mysterious added factor
• objectivity vs subjectivity? ... iffy, but needing more work TO TALK ABOUT, but requiring context that the issue, if real, must have, like intentionality/non-intentionality, emerged from states where it was absent
• singularism vs multiplism? .... iffy, but needing more work TO TALK ABOUT, but requiring context that the issue, if real, must have, like intentionality/non-intentionality, emerged from states where it was absent

So ... where does "seems" and "reality" and "intentionality" and "subjectivity" and "objectivity" come from? If one doesn't START with mind and meaning and purpose, where do they come from?:

Grobstein, Paul Getting It Less Wrong: The Brain's Way
Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. Philosophy in the Flesh, Chapters 1-4

The Bi-Partite Brain - The Brain's Images: Reflecting and Creating Human Understanding
The Brain as Story Teller - The Brain's Images: Co-Construcing Reality and the Self
Dealing With Angst - Who's Afraid of Emily Dickinson? Or ... How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Brain
Moral and Ethical Considerations - A Vision of Science (and Science Education) in the 21st Century: Everybody "Getting It Less Wrong" Together

Philosophical considerations -

• "seems" = all there is to work with
• "reality" = the shared parts of our stories
• objectivity = adhering to that which is common to our stories
• meaning and purpose = that which we create in the story telling process to give coherence and direction
• intentionality = a confusing term, partly a function of story telling, partly not
• multiplism = an acknowledgement, hard won, by the story teller that stories seem to have an inevitable tentativeness about them (which COULD be related to what the stories were about IF they were in fact about something)
• pragmatic multiplism = life is a playground in which we are free to provide meaning and purpose (indeed must if we wish such things)
• a challenge - to conceive philosophy without the antecedent concepts of reality/truth/meaning? (evolution/emergence implies alternate possible "stories" ... "replay the tape" and see where it goes?)

For next week:

• William James, What Pragmatism Means
• William James, Pragmatism's Conception of Truth
• (Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club, 2001)