Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T04:26:06.772Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reduction and Instrumentalism in Genetics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Philip Gasper
Philip Gasper*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In his important paper “1953 and All That: A Tale of Two Sciences” (1984), Philip Kitcher defends biological antireductionism, arguing that the division of biology into subfields such as classical and molecular genetics is “not simply … a temporary feature of our science stemming from our cognitive imperfections but [is] the reflection of levels of organization in nature” (p. 371). In a recent discussion of Kitcher's views, Alexander Rosenberg has argued, first, that Kitcher has shown that the reduction of classical to molecular genetics is impossible only because of our intellectual limitations and, second, that this kind of antireductionism supports an instrumentalist approach to biological theory. I argue that both of Rosenberg's claims should be rejected despite the fact that Kitcher misdiagnoses the central reason for the failure of reduction.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 59 , Issue 4 , December 1992 , pp. 655 - 670
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

I began work on this paper while participating in a National Endowment for the Humanities seminar held at Brown University in the summer of 1990. I would like to thank the NEH for its support and the seminar's director, Jaegwon Kim, for stimulating discussion. Earlier versions were read at the American Philosophical Association Pacific Division meeting in San Francisco (March 1991) and at the University of Vermont. My thanks to Paul Tang, who commented in San Francisco, and to the audiences on both occasions. Thanks also to Richard Boyd, David Brink, Richard Moran, J. D. Trout and an anonymous reviewer for Philosophy of Science for helpful comments.

‡

Send reprint requests to the author, Department of Philosophy, University of California at San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.

References

Cartwright, N. (1983), How the Laws of Physics Lie. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/0198247044.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collier, J. (1988), “Supervenience and Reduction in Biological Hierarchies”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 14: 209–234.Google Scholar
Gasper, P. (1990), “Explanation and Scientific Realism”, in Knowles, D., (ed.), D. Knowles, New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 285–295.Google Scholar
Jackson, F. and Pettit, P. (n.d.), “Causation in the Philosophy of Mind”. Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Kim, J. (forthcoming), “Supervenience as a Philosophical Concept”, Metaphilosophy.Google Scholar
Kincaid, H. (1987), “Supervenience Doesn't Entail Reducibility”, Southern Journal of Philosophy 25: 343–356.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kincaid, H. (1988), “Supervenience and Explanation”, Synthese 77: 251–281.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, P. (1981), “Explanatory Unification”, Philosophy of Science 48: 507–531.10.1086/289019CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, P. (1984), “1953 and All That: A Tale of Two Sciences”, Philosophical Review 93: 335–373.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, P. (1989), “Explanatory Unification and the Causal Structure of the World”, in Kitcher, P. and Salmon, W., (eds.), P. Kitcher and W. Salmon, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 410–505.Google Scholar
Laymon, R. (1989), “Cartwright and the Lying Laws of Physics”, Journal of Philosophy 86: 353–372.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Menzies, P. (1988), “Against Causal Reductionism”, Mind 97: 551–574.10.1093/mind/XCVII.388.551CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Putnam, H. (1975), “Philosophy and Our Mental Life”, in Philosophical Papers. Vol. 2, Mind, Language and Reality. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 291–303.10.1017/CBO9780511625251.016CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Putnam, H. (1978), Meaning and the Moral Sciences. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, A. (1978), “The Supervenience of Biological Concepts”, Philosophy of Science 45: 368–386.10.1086/288813CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenberg, A. (1985), The Structure of Biological Science. New York: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139171724CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenberg, A. (1989), “From Reductionism to Instrumentalism?” in Ruse, M., (ed.), What the Philosophy of Biology Is: Essays Dedicated to David Hull. Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 245–262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sober, E. (1984), The Nature of Selection: Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
van Cleve, J. (1990), “Supervenience and Closure”, Philosophical Studies 58: 225–238.10.1007/BF00368283CrossRefGoogle Scholar