Walsh, "Objectcy and Agency" + Lewontin selection

 

Questions

 

1.      What does Walsh mean by a “non-standard scientific theory”? How is biological explanation empirical?

2.      What is the connection between agencies and natural normativity?

3.      Are the social sciences object theories? Are objects the primary substance in common sense ontology?

4.      What is the distinction between organicism and methodological vitalism? What kind of distinction is being made between organism and environmental? Pragmatic? Metaphysical?

5.      What can we learn methodologically doing this historical work? What can we take away from Walsh’s methodological vitalism?

6.      Distinction between problem/solution model and organisms as problem solvers? How does this approach to problems link with Walsh’s methodological intervention?

7.      What does it mean to take the organism/environment relation as constitutive of the Anthropocene or climate change?

 

Notes

-        Anthropocene and social metabolism

-        Relation to feminist philosophy of science (Harding: Haraway) and ecofeminism (Plumwood): concept of co-constitution. Question: what is the environment? Isn’t the environment an organism itself?

-        Organism – environment relation

o   Is the organism too autonomous or even dominating? Lewontin seem to put too much emphasis on the autonomy of the organism and to overstate the impact of the organism on the environment. What about the effects of the environment?

-        There is a problem when we think in terms of subject-object. Haraway has challenged this way of thinking. We might need a new vocabulary to provide an adequate account of nature, life, etc.

-        Context: Kant’s Third Antinomy Problem: could agency be used to describe the environment? If agency is the overarching concept, how should we understand this in the organism-environment distinction?
Maybe thinking in terms of spontaneity and receptivity, would be different.

-        Life as a metaphysical fact – pragmatic distinction in terms of what organisms actually do in order to effectuate processes and, thus, it is also a metaphysical claim. They are not completely bound to the laws of nature.

-        It seems that Lewontin’s description of how molecules are not subject to the same laws as organisms (among other examples) could be seen as an analogous case to Einstein’s theory of relativity in opposition to the Newtonian framework as one that is absolute.

-        Walsh: vocabulary to understand or explain the self-determination and active nature of organisms.

-        Explanation of animal action: there are different kinds. Is there a notion of agency that could be applied both in the case of genetic and teleological explanations? Is there a notion that could connect the multiple language-games or types of explanations for understanding organism-environmental?

-        Darwin: rejection of model of certain materialist history and an understanding of change. Would that entail a non-agential world (Walsh)? Lewontin seems to disagree: practical activity is not undertaken by huma labor but we should extend materialism to nonhuman agents. Expansion of concepts of perception, language, etc.

-        Intervention into a materialist history of organisms: What kind of category is agency in Marxist materialism? Social and political. But this could be expanded. These explanations would not have to be separated of biological explanations or accounts.

-        Again: feminist materialists (Haraway) have a lot to contribute in order to understand the interdependence of beings and the environment.

-        Lewontin: resuscitate the Aristotelian ethical hope that when we find value in life, that relates to a value-seeking pursuit that is shared with other living beings. Empirical account of biological function that is not only deterministic (based on trait) it means that we can think again of what it is to conceptualize a good life.

-        Colin’s diagrams: left – explanation of two models of environment-organism. Right – diagrams compared to Foucault’s understanding of subject-power relation

-        Connection to the issue of reflexivity (Bremner): you don’t need autonomy when you reach certain level of complexity.

-        Fox Keller: challenging the need for an initial cause.