Article #47
Subject: MAS 2010 Philosophy of Science Meeting
Author: Andrew W. Harrell
Posted: 12/4/2009 09:11:15 AM

Schedule of Talks and Abstracts for Ms Academy of Sciences 2010 Philosophy of
Science meeting in Hattisburg, MS
see http://www.msacad.org to attend.

HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

THURSDAY MORNING
Forrest 1

O7.01
9:00 WHAT IS A NATURAL KIND, REALLY?
Paula J. Smithka, Kenneth J. Curry
University of Southern Mississippi
People commonly speak of many "kinds" of things. There are kinds of
wines, kinds of books, etc., but "natural kinds" are "kinds"
allegedly "occurring in nature." What does this really mean? David Hull
(1978. "A Matter of Individuality," Philosophy of Science, 45.3: 335-360)
states, "...a completely satisfactory explication of the notion of a natural
kind has eluded philosophers." The goal of this presentation is to provide
such a satisfactory (albeit perhaps not "completely satisfactory") account of
natural kinds. In the history of philosophy and of philosophy of science,
natural kinds seem to occupy a "privileged" ontological position between
being a universal (or general) thing and being a particular thing; i.e.,
more "real" than a universal thing and more general with longer duration than
some particular thing. Oliver Rieppel (2005. "Monophyly, Paraphyly, and
Natural Kinds," Biology and Philosophy 20: 465-487) says "fuzzy" edges are
required on both sides of the disjunction, ‘natural kinds are universals or
they are particulars'--natural kinds are "in between." For Hull (1978), the
disjunction is exclusive. Species, often associated with natural kinds, must
be sets (general things) or individuals (particular things); Hull opts for
individuals. We agree that the disjunction is exclusive, but accept that if
natural kinds have ontological status, they would have to be general things.
We deny that general things exist; hence, neither natural kinds nor species,
have ontological status as extra-mentally existing things. Instead, we argue
that natural kinds and species are conceptual categories, non-arbitrarily
formed, based on characteristics that particular organisms exhibit.

O7.02
9:20 BIOLOGICAL INDIVIDUALS
Malachi Martin
University of Southern Mississippi
In this presentation I tackle biological individuals by
distinguishing between an epistemic and an ontological notion of
individuation and arguing for an ontology of nested individuals. Epistemic
individuation is the cognitive act of singling out an abstract or concrete
entity. Ontological individuation is the objective reality of a concrete
entity's being or becoming an individual of some kind. By making this
distinction I avoid reifying abstract entities as real entities and ideafying
concrete entities as constructs. Conceptualizing an entity does not mean it
objectively exists. Furthermore, if individuals or concrete entities are
spatially localized, integrated and bounded then individuals are nested in
each other and there is no privileged level at which "the individual"
resides. This thesis has been advanced by Nachtomy, Shavit and Smith
in "Leibnizian Organisms, Nested Individuals and Units of Selection" (2002)
and by Stanley Salthe in Evolving Hierarchical Systems (1985). If biological
individuals, those individuals that are alive, can be nested then false n-
chotomies evaporate and some "problematic cases" of biological individuals
dissolve. For example, strawberry plants and strawberry patches, polyps and
polyp colonies, fungal mycelia and mushrooms are each simultaneously
biological individuals. I argue that organismic individuals are biological
individuals that form lineages and are members of species. Thus, the
aforementioned cases represent nested biological individuals, with the former
entities in each case being the organismic individuals. Ultimately, I
consider these and other cases including slime molds, humans, insect
communities, the "superorganism" concept, the species-as-individuals (SAI)
thesis and implications for the "units of selection" debate.

9:40 Break

O7.03
10:00 WHAT IS THE ONTOLOGICAL STATUS OF A LAW OF NATURE?
Christopher Dyer
Univeristy of Southern Mississippi
It seems uncontroversial that science strives to identify laws of
nature. These laws describe and explain the natural phenomena that
scientists observe in the world. But what is the ontological status of a law
of nature?
Philosophers of science tend to divide into two camps on this particular
question. One side answers that laws of nature state the regularities found
in the world; as such, they function as descriptions of the way the world
is. Any attempt to explain why it is so will prove fictitious. I call this
view the ‘Regularity Theory' and its proponents ‘Regularists'.
The second view holds that laws of nature reveal the principles that govern
the natural phenomena of the world; on this view, the natural world obeys the
laws of nature. Physical necessity is a property of laws of nature, or,
alternatively, necessity is inherent in the content and structure of the
universe. In either case, necessity is something ‘out there' in the world.
I call this view the ‘Necessity Theory' and its adherents ‘Necessitarians'.
The aim of this presentation is to provide arguments for and against the
Regularist and the Necessitarian positions. Despite Necessitarianism's
putative advantage over Regularity Theory, that in absence of necessity all
that remains is accident and an unfit basis for scientific activity, I argue
that Regularity Theory is more plausible. Positing physical necessity is no
more productive than recognizing regularity and is ultimately a non-empirical
notion.

O7.04
10:20 A SHORT HISTORY OF LOGIC DIAGRAMS, 500BC-1900AD (HOW DID THEY TURN
INTO LOGIC MACHINES?)
Andrew Harrell
Engineering Research and Development Center
This talk can only include a brief introduction to the history of
these ideas. But, they form the foundation of many topics in mathematical
logic and computer science. The talk will follow the historical material in
Martin Gardner's 1958 book. "Mathematics is the study of what is invariant
under change of notation." To agree to this controversial and primary
postulate one must subscribe to a certian theory of what logical Truth is.
But, this viewpoint about logical truth explains why the definition of terms
and the symbols in the logic diagrams that we choose to make and create can
be very important. For the talk, first, we will review Aristotle's
classification of syllogistic functions and terms. Then, we look at Raymond
Lull's different theological concepts including his class diagrams of
concepts of a concept. Lull's famous student, Leibnitz's introduced the idea
of a monad. The idea of a Monad relates to the modern day set theoretic "What
is the Concept of the Number One" in mathematical logic. These ideas will
later reappear in the 1990s as a definition of a data structure in computer
programming. It only took 400 years for us to figure this out. Then we will
briefly consider Venn diagrams and how they relate to Lull's diagrams and
some precise abstract mathematical definitions of modern day point set
topology. Finally, requiring all the previous steps, the origin and the
importance of the next historical step: Boolean functions and their algebras,
will be much clearer.

O7.05
10:40 CAN A SCIENCE OF PHILOSOPHY GIVE US HAPPINESS?
Kant Vajpayee
University of Southern Mississippi
Many of us feel that there is an epidemic of unhappiness. It's a
serious matter since happiness is what we seek all along! We are expected to
handle it on our own. And if we can't, where do we go to seek help? I can't
think of a professional other than philosophers. Doctors help us with
physical ailments, neurologists with brain problems, psychologists with
brain/mind. None in the health care industry seems to entertain problems of
unhappiness. Philosophers dwell on the most difficult topics, especially that
are abstract. If God is the most challenging topic for philosophers,
unhappiness must be the second most challenging one. Can we expect the
medical sciences to advance in the areas of mind and soul? Could genetics
help them in this direction? Will the scientists be able to do on their own,
or might they need the help of philosophers. I have more hope from the
philosopher, at least in the near term, than the medical scientists, in
delivering happiness to those who need it. Innovative efforts by philosophers
might open a new branch of knowledge we may call clinical philosophy . This
new field will emphasize the application side of philosophy for the needs of
the material market that brings street-level prestige to a discipline.
Imagine a store in Turtle Creek mall dispensing happiness! Imagine
philosophers on the medical team in hospitals!

THURSDAY AFTERNOON
Forrest 1

O7.06
1:40 HOW DO YOU DEFINE THE NUMBER ONE?
Andrew Harrell
Engineering Research and Development Center
The above question arises when we consider how we can develop a
better understanding of the interrelations of science and faith. At the turn
of the last century work on the area of the foundations of mathematical
analysis and the beginnings of the development of mathematical logic
increased. This happened along with the invention of digital computers. And,
a new area of mathematical area of research called set theory was created in
order to understand what "a real number" in Calculus means. Leopold
Kronecker made his famous statement, "God created the integers and all else
is the work of man." But, how did God create the integers? Plato's dialogue
Parmenides is perhaps his hardest to understand work and the most important
attempt in the classical era to try understand different ways we can answer
this question. What is a set? What is an empty set (basically this is
determined logically when you know what an element in a set is and what a set
is)? This talk will give a short history of some of the progress
mathematicians and logicians have made trying to answer these questions since
the beginning of the last century. We have shown, that except for some
notable gaps, how "real numbers (rational, algebraic, transcendental)", and
likewise various other "complex and ideal numbers" can all be constructed
logically from the positive integers. The possibility of the "notable gaps"
come from the proof of the independence of the continuum hypothesis.

O7.07
2:00 A FOURTEENTH CENTURY LOGICAL DEBATE OVER COMPLEX TERMS IN CATEGORICAL
PROPOSITIONS
Michael J Fitzgerald
Itawamba Community College
Albert of Saxony and John Buridan, both 14th century arts masters at
the University of Paris, were engaged in a logical debate over the ability of
categorical propositions, i.e. propositions composed of a quantifier, subject
term, copula, and predicate term, to have complex subject and predicate terms
as their logically proper parts. My presentation will recount their positions
on this issue, and argue that their semantic disagreement is particularly
important to the development of modern logical techniques because it
underlies the disagreements over modern formalizations between logicians
trained in the Frege-Russell tradition, and those of the 20th century Polish
logicians, Leśniewski in particular, or those of modern combinatory logic.
Albert of Saxony, for example, is one of the first logicians to defend a
Leśniewskian like view, that categorical propositions can have composite
terms as the subject and predicate terms of categorical propositions without
turning them into compound propositions. He constructs composite subject and
predicate terms utilizing implied operators which are medieval analogues to
logical "functors" in modern formal systems. John Buridan, on the other hand,
like logicians trained in the Frege-Russell tradition, maintains that
composite subject and predicate terms ultimately will turn categorical
propositions into logically compound hypothetical propositions containing
more than a single categorical proposition.

2:20 Division Business Meeting

FRIDAY MORNING
Forrest 1


O7.08
9:15 CONSIDERING THE SPECIES CONCEPT IN A HIERARCHICAL FRAMEWORK
Kenneth J. Curry, Paula J. Smithka
University of Southern Mississippi
The species concept is one of the most elusive of biological
concepts. A typical freshman biology textbook devotes a significant portion
of a chapter to the species concept and frequently includes a table of
competing species concepts. No other part in the book will present as much
uncertainty about biological phenomena as attends the species concept. Our
inability to reach even modest consensus about the species concept is
manifested in our difficulty with apprehending the vast time and spatial
elements of species. We have a world view necessarily limited by the spatial
and temporal range that characterizes humans. We conceive of species having
some sense of spatial-temporal reality so vast in comparison to our own that
we are challenged to apprehend this concept, a concept of our own making
which some have argued may not even be ontologically warranted! The species
concept is grounded in and inferred from organisms, but organisms are so far
removed in dimensions of time and space from species as to doom any clear
apprehension of species obvious to all of us. Hierarchical modeling can help
us understand systems much smaller or much larger in space and/or time than
we are. Here we apply hierarchical modeling to species to help understand
both the nature of this concept and the difficulty of understanding the
concept. Hierarchical modeling is a method that allows us to separate
conceptually the complexity of systems of any space-time dimension, exploring
their component parts while retaining the notion of the whole system.

O7.09
9:35 THE LEGAL TRIALS AND TRAVAILS ASSOCIATED WITH SOCIAL DARWINISM,
EUGENICS, AND PHRENOLOGY
Michael Dodge
McGill University, Montreal, Quebec
On the trail of the Sesquicentennial Anniversary of The Origin of
Species, there are a plethora of topics rife for discussion and reflection.
From the more practical history of biologic thought, to the more abstract
conceptualizations of biophilosophy, the intellectual offspring of Darwin’s
work deserve special consideration. One of the more pertinent—though oft
forgotten—analyses focuses on the legal consequences of Darwin’s thought,
with special attention paid to Social Darwinism. While evolutionary thought
heralded a new age of scientific enlightenment, proponents of Social
Darwinism occasionally used influence and political bodies to engender
sinister and draconic laws. This presentation aims to describe the legal
ramifications of the Black Sheep of Social Darwinism—Eugenics. Though
eugenic thought far preceded the Origin of Species, it received a monumental
boost from Darwin’s work. Eugenicists actively pursued the eradication of
undesirables and the “feeble minded”, both in Europe and in the United
States. Laws were designed both for forced sterilization and to prevent
miscegenation, and resulted in infamous controversies like Loving v. Virginia
and Buck v. Bell. Although many laws today are designed to protect against
eugenic applications, proponents of eugenics are nevertheless extant in
modern society, and dystopian visions of the future continue to call for
legal vigilance. This presentation analyzes both the history and future of
the Anglo-American legal battles over eugenics, and suggestions to guard
against future legal travesty are discussed.

10:00 Break

O7.10
10:20 IS BIOLOGY A VANISHING SCIENCE?
Paula J. Smithka, Kenneth J. Curry
University of Southern Mississippi
Since the time of logical positivism in the early 20th century, a
philosophical goal of science has been to achieve unification among the
particular sciences by reducing all theories and objects of scientific
inquiry to those of physics. Along the way of this theoretical and
ontological descent toward ultimate physical particles and theories about
those particles, special sciences such as psychology and biology begin to be
replaced by neurophysiology and biochemistry, respectively. Marjorie Grene
(1974) characterizes this reductionist trend as a "crisis" for "behavioral
science" and for biology. She asks, "...is biology vanishing as, for
example, astrology or alchemy have already done?" (pp. 36-37). In this
presentation, we investigate the reductionist strategy in science and argue
that even if such ontological reductionism is possible and desirable, a
complete theoretical reductionism is methodologically undesirable.

O7.11
10:40 LIFE: BIOLOGISTS' MOST ENIGMATIC CONCEPT
Kenneth J. Curry, Paula J. Smithka
University of Southern Mississippi
Biologists may be the only professional group who cannot describe
clearly in a few words what it is they study. Of course they say they study
life, but who among them can say what life is? Freshman biology texts
typically devote several pages of chapter one explaining the aspects that are
associated with life, but the problem of distinguishing life from nonlife and
life from death are among the most enigmatic problems of biology. We suggest
that the problem stems from trying to describe life with a single-level
ontology. Life at the level of cells is different in significant ways from
life at the level of multicellular organisms. Conflating these two
ontological levels leads to confused ideas of life. Terms such as respiration
and reproduction refer simultaneously and with different meaning to two
levels of organization, thus adding to the confusion. Understanding the
nature of life requires understanding the conceptual problems attending the
concept of life. Here we assume the cell is a basic unit of life.
Multicellular organisms exhibit features associated with life on a higher
ontological plane that we recognize as qualitative novelty, i.e., emergent
properties. These properties are not found in unicellular organisms, but
frequently become conflated with attempts to define life. We argue that
(cellular) life's most obvious features are complexity of organization and
rate of system behavior. These two features in combination allow us, with
reasonable reliability, to distinguish life from nonlife and life from death.