Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

But far from being an ‘uncomfortable’ feature, the logical independence of biological functionality and natural selection is what gives Darwinism its empirical content.

A common (and lazy) criticism of the theory of natural selection is that it is circular.

Or, natural selection says only that whatever gets selected gets selected.

By noting that biological functionality can be identified independently of any invocation of natural selection, Fodor, to his credit, shows why such arguments are fallacious.

Natural selection is a falsifiable scientific explanation of how biological functionality arises, not a part of the concept of functionality itself.

On the other hand, from a scientist’s perspective functionality without natural selection is unacceptably incomplete.

Faced with this puzzle, the only alternatives to natural selection are deliberate engineering by a deity or extraterrestrial; some kind of mysterious teleological force that allows future benefit to affect present design; and simply not caring.

Natural selection, moreover, does more than solve the puzzle of how biological functionality arises.

For example, if the explanation of biological functionality in terms of natural selection is correct, we can rule out adaptations that work toward the greater good of the species, the harmony of the ecosystem, beauty for its own sake, benefits to entities other than the replicators that create the adaptations (such as horses which evolve saddles), functional complexity without reproductive benefit (e.g. an adaptation to compute the digits of pi), and anachronistic adaptations that benefit the organism in a kind of environment other than the one in which it evolved (e.g., an innate ability to read, or an innate concept of ‘carburetor’ or ‘trombone’).

Natural selection also has a positive function in scientific discovery, impelling psychologists to test new hypotheses about the possible functionality of aspects of psychology that previously seemed functionless.