Elliott Sober Quotes - Page 2

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

  Elliott Sober

  Views, Mind, Body

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• "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

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I have spent a lot of time arguing that the theory of group selection is not the stupid, pernicious doctrine that many biologists once claimed it to be. The theory is not just conceptually coherent; there are adaptations out there in nature (like reduced virulence in some viruses) that evolved because there was group selection.

  Elliott Sober

  Stupid, Groups, Viruses

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• 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

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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

  Elliott Sober

  Age, Biologist, Regard

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• 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

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Some philosophical arguments (e.g., in connection with the mind/body problem) look pretty good, while others (e.g., those that criticize moral realism) do not.

  Elliott Sober

  Philosophical, Mind, Connections

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Creationists have long held that evolutionary theory is atheistic; defenders of the theory do the theory no favor when they agree.

  Elliott Sober

  Long, Favors, Theory

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I don't endorse deism or interventionist theism. My point is just that evolutionary biology is logically compatible with the former and with some versions of the latter.

  Elliott Sober

  Biology, Latter, Theism

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Deism is logically compatible with evolutionary theory for the simple reason that the theory says nothing about the origin of the universe or of the laws of nature.

  Elliott Sober

  Simple, Law, Reason

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Deism is compatible with evolutionary theory.

  Elliott Sober

  Theory, Deism, Compatible

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• This is not to deny that there are versions of theism that do conflict with evolutionary biology. Young Earth Creationism is an example; it claims that God created life on earth within the past 10,000 to 50,000 years. But other types of theism are different.

  Elliott Sober

  Past, Years, Example

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I disagree with those who argue that evolutionary biology and the existence of God are incompatible.

  Elliott Sober

  Arguing, Biology, Existence

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• In the history and literature courses I took, epistemological questions came to interest me most. What makes one explanation of the French Revolution better than another? What makes one interpretation of "Waiting for Godot" better than another? These questions led me to philosophy and then to philosophy of science.

  Elliott Sober

  Philosophy, Waiting, Literature

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• When I was in high school I found literature and history interesting, but science not at all. Literature and history obviously involved thinking, but science seemed to be all about memorizing facts and doing mindless calculations.

  Elliott Sober

  School, Thinking, Interesting

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Deism claims that God creates the universe and the laws of nature and then is hands-off, with everything that subsequently happens in nature being due to natural processes.

  Elliott Sober

  Hands, Law, Natural

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• If you have evidence that C1 is a cause of E, and no evidence as to whether C2 is also a cause of E, then C1 seems to be a better explanation of E than C1&C2 is, since C1 is more parsimonious. I call the version of Ockham's razor used here "the razor of silence." The better explanation of E is silent about C2; it does not deny that C2 was a cause. The problem changes if you consider two conjunctive hypotheses.

  Elliott Sober

  Two, Silence, Doe

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• "Simpler is always better" is an overstatement.

  Elliott Sober

  Overstatement

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• It is an interesting fact about model selection that the evidence at hand can indicate that a model known to be false will be more predictively accurate than a model known to be true. This opens the door to a kind of instrumentalism.

  Elliott Sober

  Doors, Hands, Interesting

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• 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

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• If the organisms in a species now have trait T, and this trait now helps those organisms to survive and reproduce because the trait has effect E, a natural hypothesis to consider is that T evolved in the lineage leading to those current organisms because T had effect E. This hypothesis is "natural," but it often isn't true!

  Elliott Sober

  Lineage, Helping, Natural

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• 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

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• 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

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• 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

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• 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

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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