Robust Normativity in Complexity Science

Abstract

I defend the surprising claim that scientists often do—and always should—reason about complex adaptive systems as if they were bound by normative standards that exist independently of (a) the scientists’ own normative commitments and (b) the actual features of the complex adaptive systems (including their normative commitments, if they’re capable of such). Following David Enoch, I refer to such standards as “robustly normative”. Chapters 1 and 2 show that molecular biologists and neuroethologists reason as though certain kinds of functions and mechanisms, respectively, are robustly normative. Chapters 3 and 4 show that (a) psychologists who study logical and moral reasoning, respectively, do not reason as though rationality were robustly normative and (b) this creates deep problems that cannot be solved unless they do reason as though rationality were robustly normative. Through my dissertation, I suggest an even stronger, metaphysical claim: that scientists always should reason about complex adaptive systems as if they were bound by robust norms because they are, in fact, bound by robust norms. Chapter 1 develops a template for this argument: it explains how normativity emerges from the causal structure of the photoreceptor protein rhodopsin and argues that this emergent structure licenses the kinds of explanatory roles that normativity plays in the complexity sciences. Future work will modify this template for the other explanatory roles that I attribute to norms in Chapters 2–4.