Online research in philosophy

The viewpoint of Evolutionary Epistemology (EE) and of Genetic Epistemology (GE) on classical epistemological questions is strikingly different: EE starts with Evolutionary Biology, the subject of which is population's dynamics. GE, however, starts with Developmental Psychology and thus focusses the development of individuals. By EE knowledge is seen as portraying or copying process, and truth is interpreted as a product of adaptation, whereas for GE knowledge is due to a construction process in which the production of true insights is only one possibility among others: Like falsity, error and deception, true knowledge goes back to a free relationship to reality. The difference between scientific and common knowledge is hard to be checked by EE, since both result ultimately from human hereditary structures. The study of how scientific knowledge emerges from everyday cognition is rather the task of GE.

Towards the last quarter of the 20th century, philosophers of science began to develop a research programme to show that neo-Darwinian models of species evolution are analogous to the evolution of scientific theories. This programme is known as the evolutionary epistemology of theories (Bradie, p. 414, 1986). Karl Popper’s influential book The Logic of Discovery was one of the first accounts to draw out the analogy between the evolution of biological species and the evolution of scientific theories. Many philosophers of science have later adopted this analogy, for Stephen Toulmin (1972), and Donald Campbell (1974). The aim of the metaphor is to not just be a model that explains how science progresses, but to actually account for how it does so. At the heart of this analogy is the fact that the generation of new scientific theories and scientific knowledge is conducted through a random process known as “blind variation” (Popper 1963, 1979 & Campbell 1974). If this analogy holds a philosophical consequence, it is that there is no logic of discovery. If there is no logic of discovery, this then supports the Fregean view that there is a gulf between the context of justification and context of discovery. If there is no logic of discovery, then the philosopher’s job is to analyze the justification rather than the discovery. However, Poppers analogy has come under pressure from fellow philosophers of science. Most notably, Paul Thagard argues that Popper’s analogy is a disanalogy because scientists don’t generate hypotheses blindly. My aim of this essay is to show that this is correct. My thesis is that Popper’s analogy is a disanalogy because there is a logic of discovery, thus making evolutionary epistemology of theory (EET) false. I will begin by explaining how Popper argues for the metaphor and the rejection of a logic of discovery. In section II, I will then build off of Thagard’s critiques of Popper to show that in order for science to progress, there needs to be some form of logic. Finally, I will argue that the most likely candidates for a logic of discovery are two types negative-logic: error-elimination and error-correction. I will then conclude that since there are suitable logics for discovery, Popper’s analogy is a disanalogy. This is important to philosophy because it allows for philosophers to analyze the context of discovery and not just the context of justification.

Aside from his remarkable studies in psychology and the social sciences, Donald Thomas Campbell (1916–1996) made significant contributions to philosophy, particularly philosophy of science,epistemology, and ethics. His name and his work are inseparably linked with the evolutionary approach to explaining human knowledge (evolutionary epistemology). He was an indefatigable supporter of the naturalistic turn in philosophy and has strongly influenced the discussion of moral issues (evolutionary ethics). The aim of this paper is to briefly characterize Campbells work and to discuss its philosophical implications. In particular, I show its relevance to some current debates in the intersection of biology and philosophy. In fact, philosophy of biology would look poorer without Campbells influence. The present paper is not a hagiography but an attempt to evaluate and critically discuss the meaning of Campbells work for philosophy of biology and to encourage scholars working in this field to read and re-read this work which is both challenging and inspiring.

It is argued that fundamental to Piaget''s life works is a biologically based naturalism in which the living world is a nested complex of self-regulating, self-organising (constructing) adaptive systems. A structuralist-rationalist overlay on this core position is distinguished and it is shown how it may be excised without significant loss of content or insight. A new and richer conception of the nature of Piaget''s genetic epistemology emerges, one which enjoys rich interrelationships with evolutionary epistemology. These are explored and it is shown how a regulatory systems evolutionary epistemology may be embedded within genetic epistemology.

Recently, biologist and philosophers have been much attracted by an evolutionary view of knowledge, so-called evolutionary epistemology. Developing this insight, the present paper argues that our cognitive abilities are the outcome of organic evolution, and that, conversely, evolution itself may be described as a cognition process. Furthermore, it is argued that the key to an adequate evolutionary epistemology lies in a system-theoretical approach to evolution which grows from, but goes beyond, Darwin's theory of natural selection.

This paper is a critique of Darwinian models of the growth of scientific knowledge. Donald Campbell, Karl Popper, Stephen Toulmin, and others have discussed analogies between the development of biological species and the development of scientific knowledge: in both kinds of development, we find variation, selection, and transmission. It is argued that these similarities are superficial, and that closer examination of biological evolution and of the history of science shows that a non-Darwinian approach to historical epistemology is needed. An adequate model of the growth of knowledge will have to go beyond evolutionary epistemology in discussing the role of intentional, abductive theory construction in scientific discovery, the selection of theories according to general criteria, the achievement of progress by sustained application of criteria, and the transmission of selected theories in highly organized scientific communities.

In 1941/42 Konrad Lorenz suggested that Kant''s transcendental categories ofa priori knowledge could be given an empirical interpretation in Darwinian material evolutionary terms:A priori propositional knowledge was an organ subject to natural selection for adaptation to its specific environments. D. Campbell extended the conception, and termed evolution a process of knowledge. The philosophical problem of what knowledge is became a descriptive one of how knowledge developed, the normative semantic questions have been sidestepped, as if the descriptive insights would automatically resolve them. This came at a time when the traditional concept of knowledge as universally true, justified beliefs had been challenged by subjectivist, intercommunicative coherence frameworks. Much of the literature on evolutionary epistemology claimed that knowledge in general, and science as its epitome in particular, evolved along lines analogous to organic biological evolution. I refer here only to the view of knowledge as an extension of material biological evolution. These theories of evolutionary epistemology, contrary to the relativist notions of naturalized epistemology, adopted strict realist positions.Although there is no contention with the claim that biological evolution provided the raw material and the constraints for human knowledge, cognition is not knowledge and knowledge is not constrained by it beyond some trivial truisms. The view that sees evolution as a knowledge/cognition process is coercing a loosely defined term into the status of a phenotypic trait on which selection could act. This disregards the intricate many-to-many relationship between correlates of knowledge and biological capacities. But even if we grant the correlates of knowledge the status of selectable traits, the heritability of alternative phenotypes would be low and unpredictable due to the high, open-ended environmental malleability of such complex characters in the course of development. Such concepts are therefore biologically inconsequential.

Evolutionary epistemologists aim to explain the evolution of cognitive capacities underlying human knowledge and also the processes that generate knowledge, for example in science. There can be no doubt that our cognitive capacities are due in part to our evolutionary heritage. But this is an uninformative thesis. All features of organism have indeed been shaped by evolution. A substantive evolutionary explanation of cognition would have to provide details about the evolutionary processes involved. Evolutionary epistemology has not provided any details. Considering progress of theorizing in science, evolutionary epistemologists have proposed many different analogies between natural selection and selection in science. As yet, the analogies have not been fruitful. The entire program of evolutionary epistemology is programmatic. Evolutionary epistemologists have also moved beyond explanation to justification, the primary issue in traditional epistemology. It turns out that their program presupposes that we can justify knowledge claims in traditional ways. Evolutionary biology is not a proper tool for the justification of beliefs.

Among philosophers, Don Campbell is best known for his naturalistic, evolutionary approach to epistemology. There can be no doubt, however, that he was a thoroughgoing naturalist in all matters, even though he seems to have had little interest in exploring naturalism as a general philosophical position. He was professionally more interested in the origins and workings of knowledge producing social systems. I am interested in these things too, but also naturalism in general. So my tribute to Don will be to present some aspects of a generalized naturalism that I hope he would have liked. Campbell's naturalism, like his epistemology, would be evolutionary, but, like his realism, would be more. It would be hypothetical, a posit, and not a first principle. And it would be critical, subject to ongoing refinement in light of new experience. Thus my title. It is a title I fancy Don would have liked, perhaps one he himself would have used had he ever taken up naturalism as a general theme. It is much easier to give a negative characterization of naturalism than to provide a positive account of what it..

Donald T. Campbell outlines an epistemological theory that attempts to be faithful to evolution through natural selection. He takes his position to be consistent with that of Karl R. Popper, whom he credits as the primary advocate of his day for natural selection epistemology. Campbell writes that neither he nor Popper want to give up the goal of objectivity or objective truth, in spite of their evolutionary epistemology. In discussing the conflict between an epistemology based on natural selection and objective truth, Campbell cites an article by the German sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel entitled 'On a Connection of Selection Theory to Epistemology', as presenting the issue in a notably forthright manner.The present essay summarizes Simmel's article, with the purpose of clarifying, in terms that Campbell apparently finds satisfactory, the conflict that Campbell acknowledges between an evolutionary epistemology and ultimate truth; the essay then examines the responses of Campbell and Popper to Simmel's position. While Campbell and Popper acknowledge the work of Simmel, their responses suggest something less than a full consideration of Simmel's position.