WESS Dinner Meeting, Thursday, Jan. 31, 2002, James Barham.

  Dear Colleagues:

  You are invited to a WESS dinner meeting on Thursday, Jan. 31, 2002
for a discussion on an emerging philosophy of biology, biofunctional
realism. The abstract for the talk and a short biography of the
speaker are given below.

  Speaker:
          Mr. James Barham
        Independent Scholar
        Lancaster, Pennsylvania

  Title:
        What is Value? A Plea for Realism in Biology and Philosophy

  Time: 5:30 PM Cocktails
          7:00 PM Dinner
          8:15 PM Speaker

Place: Les Halles Brasserie
          1201 Penn Ave NW
          Washington, DC, 20004
          (202) 347-6848
          www.LesHalles.net

Your reservation should be emailed directly to me. Or, you can leave
a message on the answering machine at 703-790-1651. Our agreement
with our hosts requires us to submit a firm number of reservations at
least 24 hours in advance of the meeting.

The location of Les Halles Brasserie is about four blocks east of the
White House, close to the Washington Metro stops of Metro Center and
Federal Triangle and to several parking garages in downtown Washington.

Guests are welcome.

Cheers

Jerry LR Chandler

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WHAT IS VALUE?
A PLEA FOR REALISM IN BIOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY

James Barham

ABSTRACT

Mind is the central problem of philosophy, and value is the central
problem of mind. Value is a problem because it is not a part of our
scientific picture of the world. Since life in general has mind-like
properties, including value, it is to life that we should look for a
bridge between inanimate matter and mind, and for a solution to the
problem of value.
        To illustrate the problem of value, I cite the example of
Kismet. Kismet is a robot developed by the Sociable Machines Project
at the MIT AI Lab to interact with humans in a seemingly lifelike
way. It has been argued that an idealized Kismet of the future would
fulfill all the conditions of personhood, and ought to be accorded
the corresponding moral and legal status. Is this claim absurd? If
not, why not? If so, why?
        I argue that, since value in organisms exists objectively
(apart from any observer), a satisfactory answer to this question
must be realistic. This means that it must explain value
intrinsically. I further argue that neither the theory of natural
selection nor the reigning functionalist philosophy of mind satisfies
this condition, and that therefore these theories should be rejected
as explanations of value.
        Finally, I outline an alternative "molecular vitalist"
account of the bridge between condensed matter physics and the living
state based on the wok of F.E. Yates, Herbert Fröhlich, Hans
Frauenfelder, and others. I close with a brief consideration of the
relationship between value in the sense described here and
phenomenological consciousness.

Biography
Born in Dallas, Texas, in 1952, I received my B.A. in Classics from
the University of Texas at Austin, and my M.A. in the History of
Science from Harvard University. During 1976--1977, I was a Sheldon
Traveling Fellow in Athens, Greece, doing research for a dissertation
on Byzantine astronomy. I also lived and worked in Belgrade,
Yugoslavia, for four years in the late '70s and early '80s. In
August, 1993, I accompanied an international convoy attempting to
bring supplies into besieged Sarajevo.
        Over the past twelve years I have produced a series of papers
articulating a philosophical viewpoint I call "biofunctional
realism." In a nutshell, biofunctional realism draws upon work in
nonlinear dynamics and condensed matter physics in order to explain
the teleological and normative features of life and mind as
objective, emergent properties of the living state of matter.

Selected Bibliography

(1990) "A Poincaréan Approach to Evolutionary Epistemology," Journal
of Social and Biological Structures 13: 193--258.

(1996) "A Dynamical Model of the Meaning of Information," BioSystems
38: 235--241.

(2000) "Biofunctional Realism and the Problem of Teleology,"
Evolution and Cognition 6: 2--34.

(2001) "Back to the Stoics: Dynamical Monism as the Foundation for a
Reformed Naturalism," talk delivered at Calvin College, Grand Rapids,
Michigan.

(2001) "After Darwin: A Scientific Dirge," submitted to The Kenyon Review.

(2002) "Theses on Darwin," Rivista di Biologia (in press).
Received on Thu Jan 24 20:59:19 2002