Reply to Cho and Squier

CHO AND SQUIER take my Buddhist “two truths” analogy in an unintended way when they read it as implying that I view the physicalist position as “absolute truth.” As I made clear in my piece, physicalism should not be viewed as absolute truth, but as the best working explanation of the world that we currently have. As for the claim that we “do not really understand the science” of evolutionary theory (5), this seems to me simply false. There are certainly controversies within evolutionary theory—for instance, exclusively gene-level selection vs. multi-level selection—but there is wide consensus concerning the basic principles. Indeed, one of the most astounding things about evolutionary theory is its combination of explanatory power and utter simplicity, and it has proved itself to be an extremely productive framework for understanding phenomena from the origin of mitochondria to the emergence of human cooperation. I also find the claim that physical reductionism “offers nothing useful so far” in terms of “constructive results” (3) utterly baffling in light of the enormous achievements of the modern sciences, all of which are predicated upon the physical stance. It is, in fact, precisely by virtue of its undeniable efficacy in the world that physicalism has won such widespread acceptance, despite its fundamentally counterintuitive nature.

Analogy · Counterintuitive · Epistemology · Metaphysics · Nothing · Physicalism · Reductionism · Simplicity · Evolution and Science Education · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science