Biology and Philosophy 8 (2):173-192 (1993)
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Abstract |
I examine the branch of evolutionary epistemology which tries to account for the character of cognitive mechanisms in animals and humans by extending the biological theory of evolution to the neurophysiological substrates of cognition. Like Plotkin, I construe this branch as a struggling science, and attempt to characterize the sort of theory one might expect to find this truly interdisciplinary endeavor, an endeavor which encompasses not only evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, and developmental neuroscience, but also and especially, the computational modeling of artificial life programming; I suggest that extending Schaffner''s notion of interlevel theories to include both horizontal and vertical levels of abstraction best fits the theories currently being developed in cognitive science. Finally, I support this claim with examples drawn from computational modeling data using the genetic algorithm.
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Keywords | Artificial life programming connectionism evolutionary epistemology genetic algorithm interlevel theories |
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DOI | 10.1007/BF00850481 |
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References found in this work BETA
The Nature of Selection: Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus.Elliott Sober - 1984 - University of Chicago Press.
Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge.Karl Raimund Popper - 1962 - London, England: Routledge.
Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach.Karl Raimund Popper - 1972 - Oxford, England: Oxford, Clarendon Press.
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Citations of this work BETA
Reduction, Explanatory Extension, and the Mind/Brain Sciences.Valerie Gray Hardcastle - 1992 - Philosophy of Science 59 (3):408-28.
A Comment on Some Recent Arguments in Evolutionary Epistemology — and Some Counterarguments.Franz M. Wuketits - 1995 - Biology and Philosophy 10 (3):357-363.
Evolution, Cognition, and Survival: Evolutionary Epistemology and Derivative Topics.Franz M. Wuketits - 1997 - World Futures 51 (1):47-93.
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