Kagaku tetsugaku

[title in Japanese]

[in Japanese]

1998 Volume 31 Issue 2 Pages 1-16
Published: November 15, 1998
Released on J-STAGE: May 29, 2009

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4216/jpssj.31.2_1

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Let's think first the following argument: if (1) classical mechanics implies Laplacian determinism, and (2) biology is reducible in principle to classical mechanics, then Laplacian determinism holds in biology and therefore, probability used in biology is only the result of classical ignorance. This claim seems to represent the so-called classical attitude toward the probability concept, but still there are many advocates of this position. I will show that this position is wrong by investigating the argument of Laplace's demon. It is shown that probability model can't be reduced to mechanical model, because of having different points of view. We will see the concrete differences between two types of models. From the construction of each model, I will claim that the difference between two types of models is due to the point of view of thinking of the world. Models include many points of view and among them the elements of agents are implicitly included in (genetic) probability models, whereas there are fewer elements in mechanical models than probability models.

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[title in Japanese]

[in Japanese]

1998 Volume 31 Issue 2 Pages 17-25
Published: November 15, 1998
Released on J-STAGE: May 29, 2009

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4216/jpssj.31.2_17

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Whether the natural classification of plants and animals is possible or not is an important problem of philosophy of biology. Because of the acceptance of the theory of evolution, "the death of essentialism" is widely held. But an extreme conventionalist's view that every classification is artificial is not correct. In this paper I propound a view that the natural classification is possible in some sense. The natural classification has its roots in "folk taxonomy" and is necessary for human beings. The natural classification is different from phylogenetic classification. We should distinguish phylogenetical study of the evolutional history from taxonomy or classification, especially the natural classification.

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[title in Japanese]

[in Japanese]

1998 Volume 31 Issue 2 Pages 27-39
Published: November 15, 1998
Released on J-STAGE: May 29, 2009

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4216/jpssj.31.2_27

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Biological explanation in psychology has two aspects. One is explanation of mind as functions of the nervous system. The other is explanation of mind as results of evolution. Two different approaches in study of the evolution of mind can be separated, namely reconstruction of history of evolution and analysis of cause of evolution of specific function. These biological study of mind should be integrated as a discipline so called comparative cognitive neuroscience.

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Genes and Malleability

Neven Sesardic

1998 Volume 31 Issue 2 Pages 41-48
Published: November 15, 1998
Released on J-STAGE: May 29, 2009

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4216/jpssj.31.2_41

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This paper raises the question about the malleability of heritable psychological differences. Put differently, if some differences in behavioral dispositions are the product of genetic variation can these differences be eliminated, or at least can they be eliminated in the same way as the environmentally caused differences? I criticize three arguments purporting to prove the complete symmetry between environmental and genetic causality.

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[title in Japanese]

[in Japanese]

1998 Volume 31 Issue 2 Pages 49-59
Published: November 15, 1998
Released on J-STAGE: May 29, 2009

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4216/jpssj.31.2_49

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In this paper, I will propose a new foundation of the possible post-modern "Philosophy of Biology" by introducing the new idea of "Artificial Evolution" revising the meaning of classical Darwinian concepts of "fitness" and "natural selection", replacing by the term of contemporary biotechnology.
Then, clarifying essential distinction between "Genetic Identity" and "Personal Identity", I will sketch a newly emerging "Communitarian Bioethics" which is based on the revised interpretation of value-oriented "Personhood" which might destroy the classic idea of "humanism" and therefore, the theory of "fundamental human right".

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[title in Japanese]

[in Japanese]

1998 Volume 31 Issue 2 Pages 61-74
Published: November 15, 1998
Released on J-STAGE: May 29, 2009

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4216/jpssj.31.2_61

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We are now living together with the enormous progress of many biological innovations. In this situation, do these innovations change evolutionary biology? Or can evolutionary biology control these various innovations? There is the strong opinion that we have to change present biology to include the new situation where we can make an artificial selection to change organisms genetically in order to satisfy our desires. I defend evolutionary theory, which should not change itself to treat the new situation, even though it needs a minor change. Within the synthetic theory, we can answer negatively to these two questions. Evolutionary biology took a progress recently and this new population biology claims something positive about the new situation. With new evolutionary ideas we can give partially affirmative answers to these questions. We see why the answers are affirmative by considering evolutionary egoism and altruism. And then we will show that at the bottom of these answers there are many philosophically unsolved problems.

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[title in Japanese]

[in Japanese]

1998 Volume 31 Issue 2 Pages 75-87
Published: November 15, 1998
Released on J-STAGE: May 29, 2009

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4216/jpssj.31.2_75

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As a methodologist of science, John Maynard Keynes scrutinised the classical induction theory of Bernoulli and Laplace and proposed a new set of principles of induction in A Treatise on Probability (1921). He took up the same subject, after the publication of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), in his debate with Jan Tinbergen on econometrics. Keynes's criticism of econometrics is generally considered to be done on the ground of the principles of induction which he formulated in the former book. However, this standard interpretation seems odd, because those principles depended heavily on his theory of probability and he radically changed this analysis of probability in his mature economic theory. If he kept the theory of induction intact in his criticism of econometrics, then he was curiously absent-minded. I do not think that Keynes was such an inconsistent thinker, and I believe that his later theory of induction should be understood from the perspective of a much modern type of theory, i.e., something like a Kuhnian paradigm-bound view of science, or one of its more sophisticated variants. It is founded on the concept of inter-personal probability or 'expectation', and it is also constructed to be amenable to the interplay of 'theory and practice'.

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[title in Japanese]

[in Japanese]

1998 Volume 31 Issue 2 Pages 89-104
Published: November 15, 1998
Released on J-STAGE: May 29, 2009

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4216/jpssj.31.2_89

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This is a complement of 'Cantor's set theory and his philosophy', compiled in my collected papers, Borderland between Mathematics and Philosophy (1998, in Japanese). Cantor (1845-1918) was a mathematician with a strong tendency to philosophy, which tendency appeared as early as 1867 (Dissertation), and finally exerted latent influences upon the formation of transfinite set theory. For a purely mathematical purpose, this theory as well as its formation process can be explained without any reflection on his philosophical writings. However, in this case, we shall miss the complete figure of his conception. In fact, he expressed an opinion on Time and Space, opposed to Kant, on the basis of his Continuum, and gave an interpretation of-Spinoza's 'Deus' (in Ethica) through his transfinite ordinals (1883). He attempted, too, to establish a sort of Pythagorean Natural Philosophy, but in vain, in which was applied the Continuum Hypothesis (1885). This Natural Philosophy, fantastic as it was, can be traced back via several marks in his papers up to 1867. On the other hand, to speak frankly, Cantor's philosophical reasonings are far from systematic, and sometimes remain casual remarks.

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[title in Japanese]

[in Japanese]

1998 Volume 31 Issue 2 Pages 105-107
Published: November 15, 1998
Released on J-STAGE: May 29, 2009

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4216/jpssj.31.2_105

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[title in Japanese]

[in Japanese]

1998 Volume 31 Issue 2 Pages 109-136
Published: November 15, 1998
Released on J-STAGE: May 29, 2009

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4216/jpssj.31.2_109

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[title in Japanese]

[in Japanese]

1998 Volume 31 Issue 2 Pages 137-142
Published: November 15, 1998
Released on J-STAGE: May 29, 2009

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4216/jpssj.31.2_137

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ERRATUM

1998 Volume 31 Issue 2 Pages 143
Published: 1998
Released on J-STAGE: May 29, 2009

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4216/jpssj.31.2_143

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