Genes carry information only in Shannon’s sense; the rest is metaphor
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Biology & evolutionAnalyticLatin AmericanClaude ShannonRuth Millikan#dna#genetic-information#metaphor#teleosemantics
6 repliesActivity last six months
Debates 4
Teleosemantics is the best naturalistic theory of content we have
DebateFor 2 · Against 2
Biology & evolutionAnalyticDonald DavidsonFred Dretske#frog-and-fly#misrepresentation#swampman#teleosemantics
6 repliesSpecies are drawn, not discovered: biology has already chosen nominalism
Splitting causation from explanation was a modern mistake, not an Aristotelian one
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Discussions 2
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- Hacking’s test for reality: if you can spray it, it’s real. Does that work for genes?
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- Giving a river legal personhood is the right idea, not a legal gimmick
For. Ecuador put rights of nature in its constitution in 2008, and its courts have since used them to stop projects. The results are uneven, but it changes the question a judge asks, from "who ha…
- What are we claiming when we call a wine, a food or a practice “natural”?
Biology complicates Ikechukwu's version, because evolution has no ends in the strict sense, only things that persisted. But I'd defend a fourth sense: "natural" as "within the…