Here is a free book called ‘Darwinian Fairytales’, by David Stove. It is witty and irreverent. It is also food for thought. Give it a look;
Enjoy. 
James
I’m not getting anything from that link.
I checked it and it was working when I first put it up. Seems like it is down at the moment though. The link is originally taken from this site;
http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/davidstove.html
Unfortunately the book is not in print right now (hence the free distribution), but should be soon.
Perhaps the link will become active again shortly.
Regards,
James
I’ve had a look but I must say I’m baffled as to what he’s trying to do. Is he being satirical? I’ve never come across this dude before…
He’s quite serious I assure you. Having read the book, I can also say that he is quite convincing, though there is for such a topic as this always a certain incredulity towards all criticisms, like a voice in your ear which says; ‘surely he has missed something…’ Stove’s style is very crude and very in your face. His arguments are so simple that you think there must be something wrong with them. But his question is legitimate; ‘how many self-fashioned Darwinists actually know what they are talking about?’ - the point being, of course, that there is an inherent danger in the way we approach status quo beliefs, which we should always be wary of.
The book is definitely intriguing, if nothing else.
James
You’ve hit the spot, he is intriguing but his apparent simplicity makes you suspect that he’s wrong about almost everything.
I’m not sure that I’ve ever read Australian philosophy before, though I’m led to believe that Australia is less resistant to continental philosophy (what an absurd name given that I’m talking to someone who isn’t from Europe) than England and America are, with their obsession for the analytical. I was somewhat silly in that I studied philosophy at a uni chosen for its location rather than its content. I spent a long time arguing from a Derridan point of view in formal logic classes, and from a Nietzschean viewpoint in moral philosophy. Complete waste of time, it’s like you are talking in an unknown language. Do you study philosophy formally, i.e. at a university or something similar?
Back to Stove, a few comments did smack of a philosophy which is more about a mental attitude that making claims to truth (or wisdom, justice etc. etc.) which is something I’ve often admired about philosophers. They are more bothered that people take care with how they wrap their minds around the world than with furthering epistemology and this is a relatively non-academic part of philosophy as far as I’ve experienced it. I’d like to hear your views on this.
Hmm well this is debatable. I guess it is true of Britain - it seems that they still don’t teach any or much continental stuff at Cambridge, for instance. The faculty at UNSW is split between the two camps, with only a decidedly minimum level of overlap (e.g. our professor of moral philosophy has read Nietzsche, but probably wouldn’t mention him in print). Though the fact that the two groups co-exist under the same roof says something - but then again this isn’t the ‘bad old days’, if such a thing ever existed, and the situation in the U.S. is pretty similar, really.
It is though exactly the same attitude which characterizes our ‘analytics’ as it is anywhere else. Distaste/ignorance for European philosophy, mild common-sense fetishism, etc etc. At least in Australia, things are pretty light-hearted generally; we will joke about ‘crazy Spinoza’, ‘insane Heidegger’ etc in class, rather than just staring at each other awkwardly when one of ‘The Fallen’ is mentioned.
Having said that, though, I have heard that there are some big grudges in America between certain professors, and that this nonsense is actually taken seriously - who you know will determine which other people like or dislike you, etc. In Australia there is nothing like that* - you could devote your entirely literary output to destroying a given academic’s credibility, and still be good friends outside of that setting, etc like at the pub.
In fact, at the end of each session many professors will literally go with their students for a few at the uni pub. It doesn’t seem like this really happens anywhere else.
[size=75]*except for that thing at Sydney uni, which you can navigate to via the link above. But that was pretty extraordinary, and no-one at UNSW is that ‘political’, at least not that I’ve noticed.[/size]
Hmm, well I can see how this might be true of Stove, although he was a logician with a complete double-identity outside of his ‘popular books’. In any case, we still do epistemology down here, as well as metaphysics and all the rest of it. It’s as ‘academic’ as it is anywhere else, I’m afraid.
Regards,
James
p.s. I am currently at UNSW, though will be on exchange between Jan and May.
On the sociobiologists’ oscillation on the meaning of kin altruism, Stove writes (from “So you think you are a Darwinian?â€)
Any discussion of altruism with an inclusive fitness theorist is, in fact, exactly like dealing with a pair of balloons connected by a tube, one balloon being the belief that kin altruism is an illusion, the other being the belief that kin altruism is caused by shared genes. If a critic puts pressure on the illusion balloon - perhaps by ridiculing the selfish theory of human nature - air is forced into the causal balloon. There is then an increased production of earnest causal explanations of why we love our children, why hymenopteran workers look after their sisters, etc., etc. Then, if the critic puts pressure on the causal balloon - perhaps about the weakness of sibling altruism compared with parental, or the absence of sibling altruism in bacteria - then the illusion balloon is forced to expand. There will now be an increased production of cynical scurrilities about parents manipulating their babies for their own advantage, and vice versa, and in general, about the Hobbesian bad times that are had by all. In this way critical pressure, applied to the theory of inclusive fitness at one point, can always be easily absorbed at another point, and the theory as a whole is never endangered
Why would an intelligent man immediately reduce such a complex issue to “a pair of balloons�
Why are there only two balloons? Why not 3, or 42?
Why are these two “kin altruism†balloons (illusion and genes) the two he has chosen?
[list]Surely the “cause†becomes more and more complex the more the species develops?
Who is to say that the cause must remain the same for the species?
Doesn’t it make more sense that the cause / model (which is a part of this fluid universe) may also be constantly changing and adapting?
Why are these two balloons connected at all?
Why does the decrease in balloon 1 (“kinship is an illusionâ€) expand balloon 2 (“kin altruism is caused by shared genesâ€)?
If something is not an illusion, then it doesn’t necessarily follow that it must therefore be cause (solely) by genes?[/list:u]
My biggest gripe with standard Darwinian / sociobiological theory is that I don’t see why every theorist has to force one “modelâ€â€¦ on all species… and for all time?
Do we really think bacteria, insects, animals, and humans, all work on the same model? Humans, for instance have other, more powerful cultural, religious, psychological, educational factors that influence their level of altruism to their family.
Who’s to say animals don’t have primitive psychological / emotion states that may override genes too? Thus the illusion/genes dichotomy is silly.
But most importantly – and something I haven’t as yet read – is: Why is the model(s) itself exempt from mutating and adapting to the environment?
(Unfortunately, I may be too busy to respond but I couldn’t resist this one. ) 
km2_33
Thanks for the response. This excerpt also appears in the book, and is fresh in my memory.
It seems to me to be no more than a trope for describing what he takes to be a certain circularity in the theory. It is also a simile, so the extent to which it can be considered a ‘reduction’ is debatable.
Why is not everything indefinite, or something else?
These two balloons are chosen for reasons which would be apparent if you read the entire book - whereas the essay you are quoting from is likely to mislead more than anything else. The point is that genes are highlighted as the cause except in all those cases where genes are seen to be not the cause; thus demanding the conclusion that the ‘facts’ must be ‘illusory’. When this ‘veil’ theory is pressured, the theorist is forced to return to causal explanation - and then back, in circular motion, as required. That is Stove’s description, in any case. The point for him is that the commitment to the theory is ideological and nothing more; and that it would be more rational to just admit that it is wrong, and move on.
Not necessarily. You are carrying over the idea of an ubiquitous flux to places where it perhaps does not belong. Thinking logically, I prefer to tie every particular to a general, every discontinuity to a continuity, and so forth. Pseudo-Heraclites can bite my arse. 
Ok it is not logically necessary but then the sociobiologist would not make such a claim to begin with, I don’t think. I think it is more to do with the emphasis placed on the primacy, not the exclusivity, of genes in providing causal explanations which is at root here. Though this is in the end a kind of functional exclusivity, I guess. Stove argues, vis-a-vis altruism, that sociobiologists like Dawkins equivocate on whether they are explaining altruism, or denying its existence, and that moreover it is this equivocation which allows them to ‘have their cake and eat it too’, so to speak. This ambiguity is, he argues, present in Darwinism from the very beginning, because that theory is premised or propelled by a whole collection of ideological presuppositions without which, in his opinion, there simply wouldn’t be any sociobiology to begin with.
Regards,
James
OK I’ll read the book (when published) or the link above is fixed before I open my mouth again. It seems my concerns may have been addressed?
Very well explained Why couldn’t Stove have put it like that rather than using silly analogies about balloons and pipes?
I know I said I’d read the book before commenting but…
I’m still uncomfortable with the one-model-fits all approach? Why cant altruism be non existent in some species (insects, for example) yet exist in other species (e.g. humans)
Why can’t altruism ‘evolve’ and be used as a survival tactic in the more developed species?
Why the need for an either/or proposition… for all species… over all time? This iron clad dichotomy disturbs me.
I guess the sociobiologist would say that it is logically possibly, just false in fact. Stove more or less does argue along your lines though, except he also argues for altruism outside the human species as well.
Stove would argue, because Darwinism is false, silly. 
(except you mean in relation to other species. Stove is primarily concerned with refuting Darwinism for humans.)
Regards,
James
The link is (temporarily) back up. (Its a zipped PDF file - 16MG)
Thanks for your response James.
I’m perplexed how evolution can apply to animals and not humans unless Stove’s saying we have created other factors which over-ride traditional Darwinian explanations. If so, this seem quite obvious. Who can deny we’re creating our own cocooned world (inside the greater evolutionary model) which is less and less dependent on mutation, random selection and survival of the fittest?
Re altruism being an animal (as well as human) characteristic, I would agree. If you spend time with farm animals, you couldn’t help but witness behaviours that seem to go far beyond genetics and instinct. So much so, I have never eaten meat since – perhaps this is an example of humans bucking the evolutionary trend?
Anyway, all shall become clear…
I suspect the answer to this is something along the lines of;
‘I’m perplexed how evolution can apply to animals and not inanimate objects.’
i.e. something resembling a category error. Stove would probably say that the felt need for ‘consistency’ in applying the theory is probably a kind of question begging as regards the definition of ‘human’.
Well he’s certainly postulated other factors which override traditional Darwinian explanations, but this is only because he thinks these explanations are wrong to begin with. He is definitely not though postulating newly created forces which supposedly ‘inhibit’ the forces of evolution, as if evolution is true then it cannot be ‘overridden’ as such. This is what he calls the ‘Cave Man’ theory in his book.
David Stove can. Read the book and see if you agree with him.
Regards,
James