John Dupré

John A. Dupré (* 1952 ) is a British philosopher . Dupré taught at Stanford University until 1996 before moving to the University of Exeter as professor of philosophy and philosophy of science . There he is director of the "Center for Genomics in Society". Dupré's main field of work is the philosophy of science of biology .

Dupré is included in the Stanford School of Science along with Nancy Cartwright , Ian Hacking and Patrick Suppes . These are united by the critical handling of the reductionist ideal of unified science .

Pluralistic metaphysics

Dupré opposes the reductionism of the classical philosophy of science with a pluralistic position. This reductionism is shaped by the idea of ​​unified science. In principle, psychology should be reduced to (neuro) biology, biology to chemistry and chemistry to physics. Since reduction relations are seen as transitive , everything should ultimately be traceable back to physics.

Dupré opposes this conception with a pluralism, which says that the individual sciences cannot be reduced to one another, which is not due to a lack of knowledge, but to the pluralistic structure of the world, which cannot be traced back to Dupré. Dupré's later work develops a process philosophy and ontology of biology.

determinism

A classic argument for reductionism relates to the notion of causality . According to this, there is a sufficient physical cause for every event . If the psychological or biological conditions cannot be traced back to the physical conditions and the physical conditions have already done all the causal work, then the psychological or biological conditions seem to be causally ineffective. In the philosophy of mind , this problem is discussed under the name " mental causation ".

Dupré tries to get around this problem by rejecting determinism . He rejects the premise that there is a sufficient physical cause for every event. Dupré counters determinism with the concept of indeterministic, probabilistic causality. These ideas are largely influenced by Nancy Cartwright ; The philosopher Karl Popper takes similar positions .

Philosophy of biology

Dupré is also a major critic of “biological” research programs in the life sciences. The criticism relates in particular to the attempt to capture human behavior, thinking and feeling through evolutionary theories, as is attempted, for example, in sociobiology and evolutionary psychology . Dupré thinks that such projects must necessarily remain highly speculative and therefore often reflect the prejudices of the researchers more than facts in the world.

Another criticism of Dupré concerns the handling of biological taxonomy . According to Dupré, the biological classifications are first made by humans and are not found in the world. They are therefore open to criticism and modification. This applies in particular to the classifications of people - for example according to “race” or gender .

Honors

In 2010 he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science , and in 2020 an international honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Works

• Darwin's legacy. The importance of evolution for the human presence ("Darwin's Legacy"). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 2005, ISBN 3-518-58432-4 .
• The Disorder of Things. Metaphysical foundations of the disunity of science . Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Massachusetts) 1993, ISBN 0-674-21260-6 . Google Books preview
• Human Nature and the Limits of Science . Clarendon Press, Oxford 2003, ISBN 0-19-924806-0 .
• Humans and Other Animals . Clarendon Press, Oxford 2002, ISBN 0-19-924709-9 .
• Nicholson, Daniel J., and John Dupré. Everything flows: Towards a processual philosophy of biology . Oxford University Press, 2018.

Web links

• Duprés university homepage

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Fellows of the AAAS: John Dupré. American Association for the Advancement of Science, accessed February 1, 2018 .