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The Organization of Knowledge: Beyond Campbell's Evolutionary Epistemology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Wayne D. Christensen  and
Clifford A. Hooker
Wayne D. Christensen*
Affiliation:
University of Newcastle
Clifford A. Hooker
Affiliation:
University of Newcastle
*
†Department of Philosophy, University of Newcastle Australia; e-mail: plwdc [respectively plcah] @cc.newcastle.edu.au.
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Abstract

Donald Campbell has long advocated a naturalist epistemology based on a general selection theory, with the scope of knowledge restricted to vicarious adaptive processes. But being a vicariant is problematic because it involves an unexplained epistemic relation. We argue that this relation is to be explicated organizationally in terms of the regulation of behavior and internal state by the vicariant, but that Campbell's selectionist approach can give no satisfactory account of it because it is opaque to organization. We show how organizational constraints and capacities are crucial to understanding both evolution and cognition and conclude with a proposal for an enriched, generalized model of evolutionary epistemology that places high-order regulatory organization at the center.

Type
Philosophy of Biology
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 66 , Issue S3: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1998 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers Sep., 1999 , 1999 , pp. S237 - S249
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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