By Franklin Roy Bennett
Does evolution tell the traditional debate concerning the roles that cause and intuition play in how we elect what to do? Evolution and Ethics bargains an insightful research of 4 epistemological different types of sociobiology which look within the extant literature, and incorporates a initial research of Darwinism itself.
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Evolution and Ethics: A Critique of Sociobiology
Does evolution tell the traditional debate concerning the roles that cause and intuition play in how we elect what to do? Evolution and Ethics bargains an insightful research of 4 epistemological forms of sociobiology which seem within the extant literature, and encompasses a initial research of Darwinism itself.
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415); but he nevertheless goes on: In my work on the variation of domestic animals, I have attempted to arrange in a rude fashion the laws of variation under the following heads: . . Changed conditions. . Use and disuse. . Cohesion. . Multiple parts. . Compensation. . Mechanical pressure. . Arrests of development. . Reversion. . Correlated variation. . All of these so-called laws apply equally to man and the lower animals, and most of them even to plants. (p. 416) Darwin was not aware of Mendel (the father of genetics) and worked a century before the discovery of DNA.
Of course, denying organic purposiveness f latly contradicts our best evidence—reproducible observation, the compelling principles of Darwinism notwithstanding. Curiously, one does not encounter arguments against our actually having observations of purposiveness in Darwinian literature; we have them, but they supposedly amount to some sort of ignorance, either of a kind that scientific progress will eventually dispel or of a kind that amounts to a necessary illusion like free will. Kant (1790/1987) provides an interesting view that organic purposiveness may be a universal law of human experience, but Darwinians generally do not indulge transcendental idealism.
416) Darwin was not aware of Mendel (the father of genetics) and worked a century before the discovery of DNA. Volpe and Rosenbaum (2000) offer the current mainstream views: “The causes of naturally occurring, or spontaneous, mutations are largely unknown” (p. 38); “We may say that 42 ● Evolution and Ethics spontaneous variations are random and unpredictable” (p. 38). This would seem incoherent: if we say “unknown” then we cannot say “random” and vice versa, yet that is the common sense among biologists today.