@Jeppsson, You might like Dennis Noble, the systems biologist claiming that genes are non-deterministic. He is commonly found on IAI disputing Dawkins and others.
Myself and colleagues (various research nonprofits) too find problems with the genetics argument from an applied level. Of what clinical, ethical, or social value is it to invok…
@Jeppsson, You might like Dennis Noble, the systems biologist claiming that genes are non-deterministic. He is commonly found on IAI disputing Dawkins and others.
Myself and colleagues (various research nonprofits) too find problems with the genetics argument from an applied level. Of what clinical, ethical, or social value is it to invoke a genetics argument to a service user or even the public, regardless of it's truthiness? We have never found one. Instead we often find ourselves agreeing with people like Noel Hunter. To paraphrase, it is but "a 'metaphoric blame-game' wherein people no longer need to be concerned about their own behaviors, but rather blame generations prior for passing down bad genes due to their (or other society's) problematic behaviors and lifestyles". Indeed, it seems to fit in quite well with the anti-free will agenda throughout neurosciences: "Free will can't be real, so no one is responsible for anything whatsoever! Now give us more money for this next gen MRI machine!"
Haha, I'm a philosopher who started my career writing about free will, though now I focus on philosophy of psychiatry and philosophy of madness. And empirical scientists who wanna discuss free will are often SO bad. #notallempiricalscientists , of course, and #notallneuroscientists. But way too many believe that they don't need to know any philosophy, because empirical science is better than philosophy. They don't even understand that those are different subject matters, concerned with different types of questions. They believe that philosophers do the same thing as empirical scientists, only rely on armchair speculation instead of empirics, and therefore worse. And then they plow ahead and do philosophy too without realizing that this is what they're doing, and predictably, the results are awful.
But it's interesting you're talking about the "blame game", because moral philosophers are traditionally fond of drawing these strict lines between actual moral blame and merely causal responsibility attributions. And then they'll insist that those are completely different, and telling someone they have "bad genes" is squarely in the latter, supposedly far less loaded, camp. I think this is wrong-headed and comes from the fact that philosophy is so dominated by quite privileged people. But yeah, future work is coming on this.
@Jeppsson, You might like Dennis Noble, the systems biologist claiming that genes are non-deterministic. He is commonly found on IAI disputing Dawkins and others.
Myself and colleagues (various research nonprofits) too find problems with the genetics argument from an applied level. Of what clinical, ethical, or social value is it to invoke a genetics argument to a service user or even the public, regardless of it's truthiness? We have never found one. Instead we often find ourselves agreeing with people like Noel Hunter. To paraphrase, it is but "a 'metaphoric blame-game' wherein people no longer need to be concerned about their own behaviors, but rather blame generations prior for passing down bad genes due to their (or other society's) problematic behaviors and lifestyles". Indeed, it seems to fit in quite well with the anti-free will agenda throughout neurosciences: "Free will can't be real, so no one is responsible for anything whatsoever! Now give us more money for this next gen MRI machine!"
Haha, I'm a philosopher who started my career writing about free will, though now I focus on philosophy of psychiatry and philosophy of madness. And empirical scientists who wanna discuss free will are often SO bad. #notallempiricalscientists , of course, and #notallneuroscientists. But way too many believe that they don't need to know any philosophy, because empirical science is better than philosophy. They don't even understand that those are different subject matters, concerned with different types of questions. They believe that philosophers do the same thing as empirical scientists, only rely on armchair speculation instead of empirics, and therefore worse. And then they plow ahead and do philosophy too without realizing that this is what they're doing, and predictably, the results are awful.
But it's interesting you're talking about the "blame game", because moral philosophers are traditionally fond of drawing these strict lines between actual moral blame and merely causal responsibility attributions. And then they'll insist that those are completely different, and telling someone they have "bad genes" is squarely in the latter, supposedly far less loaded, camp. I think this is wrong-headed and comes from the fact that philosophy is so dominated by quite privileged people. But yeah, future work is coming on this.