Philosophers
Mortimer Adler Rogers Albritton Alexander of Aphrodisias Samuel Alexander William Alston Anaximander G.E.M.Anscombe Anselm Louise Antony Thomas Aquinas Aristotle David Armstrong Harald Atmanspacher Robert Audi Augustine J.L.Austin A.J.Ayer Alexander Bain Mark Balaguer Jeffrey Barrett William Barrett William Belsham Henri Bergson George Berkeley Isaiah Berlin Richard J. Bernstein Bernard Berofsky Robert Bishop Max Black Susanne Bobzien Emil du Bois-Reymond Hilary Bok Laurence BonJour George Boole Émile Boutroux Daniel Boyd F.H.Bradley C.D.Broad Michael Burke Lawrence Cahoone C.A.Campbell Joseph Keim Campbell Rudolf Carnap Carneades Nancy Cartwright Gregg Caruso Ernst Cassirer David Chalmers Roderick Chisholm Chrysippus Cicero Tom Clark Randolph Clarke Samuel Clarke Anthony Collins Antonella Corradini Diodorus Cronus Jonathan Dancy Donald Davidson Mario De Caro Democritus Daniel Dennett Jacques Derrida René Descartes Richard Double Fred Dretske John Dupré John Earman Laura Waddell Ekstrom Epictetus Epicurus Austin Farrer Herbert Feigl Arthur Fine John Martin Fischer Frederic Fitch Owen Flanagan Luciano Floridi Philippa Foot Alfred Fouilleé Harry Frankfurt Richard L. Franklin Bas van Fraassen Michael Frede Gottlob Frege Peter Geach Edmund Gettier Carl Ginet Alvin Goldman Gorgias Nicholas St. John Green H.Paul Grice Ian Hacking Ishtiyaque Haji Stuart Hampshire W.F.R.Hardie Sam Harris William Hasker R.M.Hare Georg W.F. Hegel Martin Heidegger Heraclitus R.E.Hobart Thomas Hobbes David Hodgson Shadsworth Hodgson Baron d'Holbach Ted Honderich Pamela Huby David Hume Ferenc Huoranszki Frank Jackson William James Lord Kames Robert Kane Immanuel Kant Tomis Kapitan Walter Kaufmann Jaegwon Kim William King Hilary Kornblith Christine Korsgaard Saul Kripke Thomas Kuhn Andrea Lavazza Christoph Lehner Keith Lehrer Gottfried Leibniz Jules Lequyer Leucippus Michael Levin Joseph Levine George Henry Lewes C.I.Lewis David Lewis Peter Lipton C. Lloyd Morgan John Locke Michael Lockwood Arthur O. Lovejoy E. Jonathan Lowe John R. Lucas Lucretius Alasdair MacIntyre Ruth Barcan Marcus Tim Maudlin James Martineau Nicholas Maxwell Storrs McCall Hugh McCann Colin McGinn Michael McKenna Brian McLaughlin John McTaggart Paul E. Meehl Uwe Meixner Alfred Mele Trenton Merricks John Stuart Mill Dickinson Miller G.E.Moore Thomas Nagel Otto Neurath Friedrich Nietzsche John Norton P.H.Nowell-Smith Robert Nozick William of Ockham Timothy O'Connor Parmenides David F. Pears Charles Sanders Peirce Derk Pereboom Steven Pinker Plato Karl Popper Porphyry Huw Price H.A.Prichard Protagoras Hilary Putnam Willard van Orman Quine Frank Ramsey Ayn Rand Michael Rea Thomas Reid Charles Renouvier Nicholas Rescher C.W.Rietdijk Richard Rorty Josiah Royce Bertrand Russell Paul Russell Gilbert Ryle Jean-Paul Sartre Kenneth Sayre T.M.Scanlon Moritz Schlick Arthur Schopenhauer John Searle Wilfrid Sellars Alan Sidelle Ted Sider Henry Sidgwick Walter Sinnott-Armstrong J.J.C.Smart Saul Smilansky Michael Smith Baruch Spinoza L. Susan Stebbing Isabelle Stengers George F. Stout Galen Strawson Peter Strawson Eleonore Stump Francisco Suárez Richard Taylor Kevin Timpe Mark Twain Peter Unger Peter van Inwagen Manuel Vargas John Venn Kadri Vihvelin Voltaire G.H. von Wright David Foster Wallace R. Jay Wallace W.G.Ward Ted Warfield Roy Weatherford C.F. von Weizsäcker William Whewell Alfred North Whitehead David Widerker David Wiggins Bernard Williams Timothy Williamson Ludwig Wittgenstein Susan Wolf Scientists David Albert Michael Arbib Walter Baade Bernard Baars Jeffrey Bada Leslie Ballentine Marcello Barbieri Gregory Bateson Horace Barlow John S. Bell Mara Beller Charles Bennett Ludwig von Bertalanffy Susan Blackmore Margaret Boden David Bohm Niels Bohr Ludwig Boltzmann Emile Borel Max Born Satyendra Nath Bose Walther Bothe Jean Bricmont Hans Briegel Leon Brillouin Stephen Brush Henry Thomas Buckle S. H. Burbury Melvin Calvin Donald Campbell Sadi Carnot Anthony Cashmore Eric Chaisson Gregory Chaitin Jean-Pierre Changeux Rudolf Clausius Arthur Holly Compton John Conway Jerry Coyne John Cramer Francis Crick E. P. Culverwell Antonio Damasio Olivier Darrigol Charles Darwin Richard Dawkins Terrence Deacon Lüder Deecke Richard Dedekind Louis de Broglie Stanislas Dehaene Max Delbrück Abraham de Moivre Bernard d'Espagnat Paul Dirac Hans Driesch John Eccles Arthur Stanley Eddington Gerald Edelman Paul Ehrenfest Manfred Eigen Albert Einstein George F. R. Ellis Hugh Everett, III Franz Exner Richard Feynman R. A. Fisher David Foster Joseph Fourier Philipp Frank Steven Frautschi Edward Fredkin Benjamin Gal-Or Howard Gardner Lila Gatlin Michael Gazzaniga Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen GianCarlo Ghirardi J. Willard Gibbs James J. Gibson Nicolas Gisin Paul Glimcher Thomas Gold A. O. Gomes Brian Goodwin Joshua Greene Dirk ter Haar Jacques Hadamard Mark Hadley Patrick Haggard J. B. S. Haldane Stuart Hameroff Augustin Hamon Sam Harris Ralph Hartley Hyman Hartman Jeff Hawkins John-Dylan Haynes Donald Hebb Martin Heisenberg Werner Heisenberg John Herschel Basil Hiley Art Hobson Jesper Hoffmeyer Don Howard John H. Jackson William Stanley Jevons Roman Jakobson E. T. Jaynes Pascual Jordan Eric Kandel Ruth E. Kastner Stuart Kauffman Martin J. Klein William R. Klemm Christof Koch Simon Kochen Hans Kornhuber Stephen Kosslyn Daniel Koshland Ladislav Kovàč Leopold Kronecker Rolf Landauer Alfred Landé Pierre-Simon Laplace Karl Lashley David Layzer Joseph LeDoux Gerald Lettvin Gilbert Lewis Benjamin Libet David Lindley Seth Lloyd Werner Loewenstein Hendrik Lorentz Josef Loschmidt Alfred Lotka Ernst Mach Donald MacKay Henry Margenau Owen Maroney David Marr Humberto Maturana James Clerk Maxwell Ernst Mayr John McCarthy Warren McCulloch N. David Mermin George Miller Stanley Miller Ulrich Mohrhoff Jacques Monod Vernon Mountcastle Emmy Noether Donald Norman Alexander Oparin Abraham Pais Howard Pattee Wolfgang Pauli Massimo Pauri Wilder Penfield Roger Penrose Steven Pinker Colin Pittendrigh Walter Pitts Max Planck Susan Pockett Henri Poincaré Daniel Pollen Ilya Prigogine Hans Primas Zenon Pylyshyn Henry Quastler Adolphe Quételet Pasco Rakic Nicolas Rashevsky Lord Rayleigh Frederick Reif Jürgen Renn Giacomo Rizzolati A.A. Roback Emil Roduner Juan Roederer Jerome Rothstein David Ruelle David Rumelhart Robert Sapolsky Tilman Sauer Ferdinand de Saussure Jürgen Schmidhuber Erwin Schrödinger Aaron Schurger Sebastian Seung Thomas Sebeok Franco Selleri Claude Shannon Charles Sherrington David Shiang Abner Shimony Herbert Simon Dean Keith Simonton Edmund Sinnott B. F. Skinner Lee Smolin Ray Solomonoff Roger Sperry John Stachel Henry Stapp Tom Stonier Antoine Suarez Leo Szilard Max Tegmark Teilhard de Chardin Libb Thims William Thomson (Kelvin) Richard Tolman Giulio Tononi Peter Tse Alan Turing C. S. Unnikrishnan Francisco Varela Vlatko Vedral Vladimir Vernadsky Mikhail Volkenstein Heinz von Foerster Richard von Mises John von Neumann Jakob von Uexküll C. H. Waddington John B. Watson Daniel Wegner Steven Weinberg Paul A. Weiss Herman Weyl John Wheeler Jeffrey Wicken Wilhelm Wien Norbert Wiener Eugene Wigner E. O. Wilson Günther Witzany Stephen Wolfram H. Dieter Zeh Semir Zeki Ernst Zermelo Wojciech Zurek Konrad Zuse Fritz Zwicky Presentations Biosemiotics Free Will Mental Causation James Symposium |
Scientists
Michael Arbib John S. Bell Bernard Baars Charles Bennett Ludwig Bertalanffy Margaret Boden David Bohm Neils Bohr Ludwig Boltzmann Emile Borel Max Born Leon Brillouin Stephen Brush Henry Thomas Buckle Donald Campbell Anthony Cashmore Eric Chaisson Jean-Pierre Changeux Arthur Holly Compton John Conway E. H. Culverwell Charles Darwin Abraham de Moivre Paul Dirac John Eccles Arthur Stanley Eddington Paul Ehrenfest Albert Einstein Richard Feynman Joseph Fourier Michael Gazzaniga GianCarlo Ghirardi Nicolas Gisin A.O.Gomes Joshua Greene Jacques Hadamard Patrick Haggard Sam Harris Martin Heisenberg Werner Heisenberg William Stanley Jevons Pascual Jordan Simon Kochen Stephen Kosslyn Rolf Landauer Alfred Landé Pierre-Simon Laplace David Layzer Benjamin Libet Hendrik Lorentz Josef Loschmidt Ernst Mach Henry Margenau James Clerk Maxwell Ernst Mayr Jacques Monod Roger Penrose Steven Pinker Max Planck Henri Poincaré Adolphe Quételet Jerome Rothstein David Ruelle Erwin Schrödinger Aaron Schurger Claude Shannon Herbert Simon Dean Keith Simonton B. F. Skinner Roger Sperry Henry Stapp Antoine Suarez Leo Szilard William Thomson (Kelvin) Peter Tse John von Neumann Daniel Wegner Paul A. Weiss Steven Weinberg Norbert Wiener Eugene Wigner E. O. Wilson H. Dieter Zeh Ernst Zermelo Donald Campbell
Donald Campbell investigated creative thought and described it as a process involving the generation of "blind" variations of ideas, followed by a selective retention of good ideas. He proposed that his Blind Variation and Selective Retention (BVSR) could also explain the development of human knowledge, including inventions and the increase in scientific knowledge.
BVSR is itself a variation on common-sense and ancient notions of trial-and-error, and it seems directly inspired by the two-step process of biological evolution, but Campbell sees it as more general than these. BVSR is applicable to organic evolution, the learning process in individual organisms, and the social construction of knowledge.
BVSR can be applied to our two-stage model for free will. Other biological examples include the immune system and quality control in protein/enzyme factories.
The idea that units of cultural knowledge undergo variation and then are selected for is perhaps better known from the recent work of Richard Dawkins, who named the self-replicating unit of cultural evolution the "meme" in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene.
The idea of BVSR is widely used in cybernetics. For example, the "general problem solver" programs of Allan Newell and Herbert Simon involve two stages, first the blind generation of theorems and then testing of the theorems for validity.
There is some reason to see three parts, and not just two, in BVSR. Campbell clearly distinguishes retention from selection in his writings. In biological evolution, a new characteristic is preserved by inheritance across the generations, whereas natural selection works by differential rates of reproductive success across those generations.
He says that the general model underlying both trial-and-error problem solving and evolution by natural selection has three requirements: "a mechanism for introducing variation, a consistent selection process, and a mechanism for preserving and reproducing the selected variations."
This somewhat resembles Charles Sanders Peirce's famous triad of abduction-induction-deduction, and the three step view of evolution in his unpublished A Guess at the Riddle - "first, the principle of individual variation or sporting; second, the principle of hereditary transmission, which wars against the first principle; and third, the principle of the elimination of unfavorable characters."
Whereas Peirce insisted on absolute chance for his first principle (he called it "tychism" after the Greek for chance, τυχή). Campbell is diffident about real chance. Some systematic or algorithmic variations may be good enough. In this respect, Campbell resembles Daniel Dennett, who believes that deterministic pseudo-randomness is good enough for human free will, and Herbert Simon, whose "generate-and-test" programs usually systematically generate their variations.
Campbell thus prefers the term "blind" to the usual random or chance variations.
a comment on the use of the word "blind" rather than the more usual "random"... Equiprobability is not needed, and is definitely lacking in the mutations which lay the variation base for organic evolution. Statistical independence between one variation and the next, while frequently desirable, can also be spared: in particular, for the generalizations essayed here, certain processes involving systematic sweep scanning are recognized as blind, insofar as variations are produced without prior knowledge of which ones, if any, will furnish a selectworthy encounter. An essential connotation of "blind" is that the variations emitted be independent of the environmental conditions of the occasion of their occurrence.In his contribution to the 1974 Schilpp volume on Karl Popper, Campbell described BVSR as the basis for an "Evolutionary Epistemology," based on many of the ideas of Popper. He and Popper both saw evolution itself as "a knowledge process, and that the natural selection paradigm could be generalized to other epistemic activities, such as learning, thought, and science." But the growth of biological information is also ontological, bringing genuinely new information into the universe, and this is equally true of the free thoughts that lead to willed human actions in our two-stage models. New information requires quantum indeterminacy. Popper, in his 1977 lecture at Darwin College entitled Natural Selection and the Emergence of Mind, said he had changed his mind (a rare admission by a philosopher) about two things. First he now thought that natural selection was not a "tautology" that made it an unfalsifiable theory. Second, he had come to accept the random variation and selection of ideas as a model of free will. The selection of a kind of behavior out of a randomly offered repertoire may be an act of choice, even an act of free will. I am an indeterminist; and in discussing indeterminism I have often regretfully pointed out that quantum indeterminacy does not seem to help us; for the amplification of something like, say, radioactive disintegration processes would not lead to human action or even animal action, but only to random movements.Evolutionary epistemology makes all biological functions and all knowledge contingent. But, as Popper says, randomness in the variation stage does not imply random selections. "Popper's contribution to evolutionary epistemology is to recognize the process of the succession of theories in science as similar selective elimination processes," says Campbell, but this makes their certainty merely probability. "In this perspective," Campbell continues, "Hume's achievement in showing that the best of scientific laws have neither analytic truth nor any other kind of absolute truth seems quite reasonable and appropriate." Just as Hume denied the power of induction to prove theories, e.g., causality is not proven by any number of similar instances of B following A, Popper denies that induction from a series of observations is the source of a scientific theory. Theories are inventions, hypotheses, conjectures, to be put forward for trial and to be eliminated (refuted) if they conflict with observations. In this Popper follows Peirce's first principle of "abduction" (hypothesis). Campbell says, In the process, Popper has effectively rejected the model of passive induction even for animal learning, and advocated that here too the typical process involves broad generalizations from single specific initial experiences, generalizations which subsequent experiences edit. It is noteworthy that the best of modern mathematical learning theories posit just such a one-trial learning process, as opposed to older theories which implied inductive accumulation of evidence on all possible stimulus contingencies. Most noteworthy, Popper is unusual among modern epistemologists in taking Hume's criticism of induction seriously, as more than an embarrassment, tautology, or a definitional technicality. It is the logic of variation and selective elimination which has made him able to accept Hume's contribution to analysis (while rejecting Hume's contribution to the psychology of learning and inference) and to go on to describe that sense in which animal and scientific knowledge is yet possible... Another older and also more current statement of the epistemological problem is also eschewed. This is the identification of "knowledge" not as "true belief" but as "true belief" which is also "rationally justified" or "well-grounded." Though widely used in linguistic analysis, this point of view implicitly accepts as valid an inductivist epistemology (giving but superficial lip service to Hume in recognizing such induction as providing only approximate validity). Popper does not limit truth to those statements which have rational support or are well-grounded before they are asserted. Truth rather lies in the outcome of subsequent tests.
Campbell on William James
Campbell misreads James as accepting blind (indeed, totally random and spontaneous) variations, but then thinking that the social environment does the selective retention. Campbell says that...
James departs from the more complete model presented in Poincaré, Mach, and Campbell by seemingly having the full range of mental variations selected by the external environment rather than recognizing the existence of mental selectors, which vicariously represent the external environment (the selected products, of course, being subject to further validation in overt locomotion, etc.)What James actually said was... And I can easily show...that as a matter of fact the new conceptions, emotions, and active tendencies which evolve are originally produced in the shape of random images, fancies, accidental out-births of spontaneous variation in the functional activity of the excessively instable human brain, which the outer environment simply confirms or refutes, adopts or rejects, preserves or destroys, - selects, in short, just as it selects morphological and social variations due to molecular accidents of an analogous sort.James does not literally mean here that the environment selects, but only in the Kantian sense that we put our questions to Nature and nature responds. In his following paragraphs, James beautifully describes the origin of new ideas as "the most abrupt cross-cuts and transitions from one idea to another, the most rarefied abstractions and discriminations, the most unheard-of combinations of elements, the subtlest associations of analogy; in a word, we seem suddenly introduced into a seething caldron of ideas, where everything is fizzling and bobbing about in a state of bewildering activity." He says that "their genesis is sudden and, as it were, spontaneous. That is to say, the same premises would not, in the mind of another individual, have engendered just that conclusion." That the conclusion is the product of a mind choosing from alternative possibilities, James affirms as "the steadfastness of a human will capable of alternative choice."
Downward Causation
At a 1972 conference in Bellagio, Italy, Campbell reacted to the idea of "downward determination" broached in the conference discussion of Morton Beckner's presentation. Campbell quickly prepared a second paper, in which he argued for "downward causation" in hierarchically organized biological systems.
The basic idea of downward causal control had been put forward some years earlier by Roger Sperry in his 1965 lecture to the Humanist Association in Chicago and his 1969 article in Psychological Review.
Sperry cited a wheel rolling downhill as an example of downward causal control. The atoms and molecules are caught up and overpowered by the higher properties of the whole. He compares the rolling wheel to an ongoing brain process or a progressing train of thought in which the overall properties of the brain process, as a coherent organizational entity, determine the timing and spacing of the firing patterns within its neural infrastructure.
In 1977, Karl Popper changed his mind on the importance of indeterminism. He developed a two-stage model of free will and said that it was an example of downward causation!
Popper cited both Sperry and Campbell as the source of the idea of downward causation.
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Bibliography
Campbell, D.T. (1959). Methodological suggestions from a comparative
psychology of knowledge processes. Inquiry, 2, 152-182.
Campbell, D.T. (1960). Blind variation and selective retention in
creative thought as in other knowledge processes. Psychological
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Campbell, D.T. (1973). Ostensive instances and entitativity in language
learning. In N. D. Rizzo (Ed.), Unity through diversity. New York:
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Campbell, D.T. (1974b). Unjustified variation and selective retention in
scientific discovery. In F.J. Ayala & T. Dobzhansky (Eds.),
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Campbell, D.T. (1974c). "Downward causation" in hierarchically organized
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Campbell, D.T. (1977a). Descriptive epistemology: Psychological,
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Campbell, D.T. (1982). The "blind-variation-and-selective-retention" theme.
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Campbell, D.T. (1986b). Science policy from a naturalistic sociological
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