Alexander Rosenberg

Alexander Rosenberg is an American philosopher, and the R. Taylor Cole Professor of Philosophy at Duke University.

Rosenberg was educated at Stuyvesant High School, [cite web |url=http://jerroldnadler.humanarchives.org |title=Jerrold Lewis Nadler |publisher=Human Archives Organization |accessdate=2007-10-31] the City College of New York and Johns Hopkins University. He received the Lakatos Award in 1993 and was the National Phi Beta Kappa Romanell Lecturer in 2006.

Research and Scholarship

His early work focused on the philosophy of social science and especially the philosophy of economics. His doctoral dissertation, published as "Microeconomic Laws" in 1976, was the first treatment of the nature of economics by a contemporary philosopher of science. Over the period of the next decade he became increasingly skeptical about neoclassical economics as an empirical theory. Rosenberg later shifted to work on issues in the philosophy of science that are raised by biology. He became especially interested in the relationship between molecular biology and other parts of biology. Rosenberg introduced the concept of supervenience to the treatment of intertheoretical relations in biology, soon after Donald Davidson began to exploit Richard Hare's notion in the philosophy of psychology. Rosenberg is among the few biologists and fewer philosophers of science who reject the consensus view that combines physicalism with antireductionism. Rosenberg also coauthored an influential book on David Hume with Tom L. Beauchamp, "Hume and the Problem of Causation", arguing that Hume was not a skeptic about induction but an opponent of rationalist theories of inductive inference. Rosenberg's interests in social science and biology led him to write a series of papers on the bearing of differences in biological endowment on equality, the treatment of intellectual property rights in biotechnological discoveries, and the arguments advanced in the 1990s for sequencing the human genome.

Critical discussions of Rosenberg’s work

Rosenberg’s treatment of fitness as a supervenient property which is undefined concept in the theory of natural selection is criticized by Brandon and Beatty in “The Propensity Interpretation of 'Fitness'--No Interpretation Is No Substitute,” "Philosophy of Science", Vol. 51, No. 2, 1984. His original development of how the supervenience of Mendelian concepts blocks traditional derivational reduction was examined critically by C. Kenneth Waters, in “Rosenberg's rebellion”, "Biology and Philosophy", 1990. His later account of reduction in developmental biology were criticized by Gunter Wagner, “How Molecular is Molecular Developmental Biology? A Reply to Alex Rosenberg's Reductionism Redux: Computing the Embryo”, "Biology and Philosophy", 2001. Elliot Sober's "Multiple realization arguments against reductionism," Philosophy of Science, vol. 66, 1999, reflects a shift towards Rosenberg's critique of antireductionist arguments of Putnam's and Fodor's.

But Elliot Sober has also challenged Rosenberg’s view that the principle of natural selection is the only biological law in “Two Outbreaks of Lawlessness in Recent Philosophy of Biology,” "Philosophy of Science", Vol. 64, No. 4, 1996 as did Kim Sterelny and Paul Griffiths, "Sex and Death".

The explanatory role of the principle of natural selection and the nature of evolutionary probabilities defended by Rosenberg were subject to counter arguments by Brandon in “The Indeterministic Character of Evolutionary Theory: No "No Hidden Variables Proof" but No Room for Determinism Either” "Philosophy of Science", Vol. 63, No. 3 1996, and later in Dennis Walsh, “The Pomp of Superfluous Causes: The Interpretation of Evolutionary Theory”, "Philosophy of Science" Vol. 74, No. 3, 2007. Rosenberg's account of the nature of drift and the role of probability in the theory of natural selection draws on significant parallels between the principle of natural selection and the second law of thermodynamics.

In the philosophy of social science Rosenberg’s more skeptical views about microeconomics were challenged first by Wade Hands in “What Economics Is Not: An Economist's Response to Rosenberg,” "Philosophy of Science", Vol. 51, No. 3 1984,and later by Daniel Hausman in several books and articles, including “Economic Methodology in a Nutshell, ”The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 3, No. 2 1989. Richard Lewontin expresses skepticism about Rosenberg’s claim that functional explanations in social science require Darwinian underlying mechanisms in “Does Culture Evolve?” "History and Theory" 38 (4),1999.

Administrative Career in Undergraduate Education

Rosenberg has a long record of supporting excellence in undergraduate education. He has directed three university Honors Programs, including Syracuse University's, the University of Georgia's and founded the University Honors Program at the University of California, Riverside. At Georgia he organized the Foundation Fellows Program, and at Duke is the director of the Angier B. Duke Memorial Scholarship Program. [http://www.duke.edu/web/abduke/contact.html Angier B. Duke Memorial Scholarship - Contact Information] ]

Controversy

Rosenberg was a member of the "Group of 88" faculty in light of 2006 Duke University lacrosse case, who signed a letter thanking protesters "making a collective noise" about "what happened to this young woman." The letter has been widely criticized as a prejudgment since no sexual assault occurred. [http://www.newsobserver.com/1185/story/563248.html] [ [http://photos1.blogger.com/photoInclude/x/blogger/2862/372/1600/99636/Listening_Statement_b.jpgJPG of Listening Statement] ] [ [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXv_s1GQQAw Video of protesters] ]

References

Published books

*"Microeconomic Laws: A Philosophical Analysis" (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976)
*"Sociobiology and the Preemption of Social Science" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980; Basil Blackwell, 1981)
*"Hume and the Problem of Causation" (Oxford University Press, 1981) (with T.L. Beauchamp)
*"The Structure of Biological Science" (Cambridge University Press, 1985)
*"Philosophy of Social Science" (Clarendon Press, Oxford and Westview Press, 1988, Second Edition, Revised, Enlarged, 1995)
*"Economics: Mathematical Politics or Science of Diminishing Returns?" (University of Chicago Press, 1992)
*"Instrumental Biology, or the Disunity of Science" (University of Chicago Press, 1994)
*"Darwinism in Philosophy, Social Science and Policy" (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
*"Philosophy of Science: A Contemporary Approach" (Routledge, 2000, second edition 2005)
*"Darwinian Reductionism or How to Stop Worrying and Love Molecular Biology" (University of Chicago Press, 2006)
*"The Philosophy of Biology: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, 2007) (with Daniel McShea)

External links

* [http://www.duke.edu/~alexrose Alexander Rosenberg’s home page]