Sunday, May 09, 2021

Does Darwinian biology explain the mind?

 The whole thrust of Darwinian biology, which is the big naturalist selling point, is to replace mind explanations with mindless ones, rendering mind explanations perhaps useful but not literally true. If Darwinian biology explains the mind, therefore, it explains it away. It explains it in such a way that mental explanations are not literally true. So, if Darwinian biology is comprehensive, then it follows that it is not literally the case that Darwin inferred his theory of natural selection from the evidence, of, for example, finch beaks in the Galapagos Islands. So, you have to be the kind of naturalist that says that Darwinian biology does not explain the human mind. I know of someone who says this who doesn't believe in God or anything like God, but last I checked he had made a lot of people in the naturalist camp really mad for saying this sort of thing. Do naturalists want to include Nagel in their club, or keep him out?

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