Jeffrey S. Turner

In this dissertation I use recent developments in the philosophy of science and in moral philosophy to show that we are committed to two quite different conceptions of truth: the objective truth of science, which is based on the "meta-paradigm" of scientific realism, and the subjective truth of morality, which is based on the self's attempt to remain true to itself. ;In the first part I begin by giving an ontological grounding to the central claims of Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn claims there that "scientists working under different paradigms live in different worlds," yet he admits he does not know what such a locution would mean. I turn to Division One of Martin Heidegger's Being and Time to give an ontological ground to Kuhn's claims about scientific practice; this leads to a rethinking of scientific truth as "discovering." ;But the Kuhnian-Heideggerian analysis of science cannot do justice to the sense in which we take scientific practice to be different from "everyday" practice. Thus scientific practice must be itself an articulation of a deeper "meta-paradigm" of objectivity: this paradigm establishes the meaning and place of "scientific activity" as a way to discover the truth. This means that we are committed to "scientific truth": it is neither necessarily nor simply contingently true that science discovers the truth about "the external world." ;In the second part of the dissertation I show that our commitment to "subjective truth" in morality need not isolate us from others. Drawing on readings of some of Soren Kierkegaard's pseudonymous works I propose that moral truth is located in the situation of confession, where we share, with others, the stories of our lives. It is there where we see whether we live up to the stories we tell about our lives; it is there where we see whether we are "in the truth." ;The phenomenon of confession cannot be understood as merely an attempt to establish the "objective truth," however, and so our commitments to truth are bifurcated. The dissertation thus aims at establishing that we have no unified concept of truth: the drive for scientific truth and the pathos of moral truth lead in different directions

One vigorous line of thought in contemporary moral philosophy, which I shall call ‘Neo-Aristotelianism,’ centers on three things: a rejection of traditional enlightenment moral theories like Kantianism and utilitarianism; a claim that another look at the ethical concerns and projects of ancient Greek thought might help us past the impasse into which enlightenment moral theories have left us; more particularly, an attempt to reinterpret Aristotle’s ethical work for the late twentieth-century so as to transcend this impasse.

Phenotype, whether conventional or extended, is defined as a reflectionof an underlying genotype. Adaptation and the natural selection thatfollows from it depends upon a progressively harmonious fit betweenphenotype and environment. There is in Richard Dawkins' notion ofthe extended phenotype a paradox that seems to undercut conventionalviews of adaptation, natural selection and adaptation. In a nutshell, ifthe phenotype includes an organism's environment, how then can theorganism adapt to itself? The paradox is resolvable through aphysiological, as opposed to a genetic, theory of natural selection andadaptation.

In modern evolutionary theory, selection acts on particular genes and assemblages of genes that operate through phenotypes expressed in environments. This view, however, overlooks the fact that organisms often alter their environments in pursuit of fitness needs and thus modify some environmental selection pressures. Niche construction theory introduces a reciprocal causal process that modifies natural selection relative to three general kinds of environmental components: abiota, biota (other organisms), and artifacts. The ways in which niche-constructing organisms can construct or modify the components differ. Modification of abiota, for example, may have different consequences from the construction of artifacts. Some changes in abiota may simply be caused by the by-products of metabolisms and activities of organisms. Alternatively, artifacts may be “extended phenotypes” that demonstrate obvious prior “design” and “construction” by organisms in the service of fitness needs. Nevertheless, adaptation should always account for the reciprocity between constructed niches and the living agents that construct them. Looking to well-adapted nature for inspiration for human-built artifacts must account for this reciprocity between phenotype and constructed environment as well as the novel features of human architecture, including frank intentionality of design and novel culturally acquired knowledge.