Abstract

Part One of this dissertation explores an analogy between Darwinian evolution by natural selection and the process of inquiry. Beliefs are memes, or replicators, much like biological replicators . As beliefs replicate, their numbers can increase at a geometrical rate. Important checks to the replication of beliefs include limited human memory and attention, as well as the law of non-contradiction. When someone detects an inconsistency, the contradictory beliefs enter into an intellectual struggle for existence. Which beliefs die out and which go on replicating is sometimes, though not always, determined by arguments, evidence, and reasons. Arguments are among the interactors of intellectual evolution: their interactions with each other and with us can cause the differential replication of beliefs. Inquiry is thus a Darwinian evolutionary process---it is the evolution of beliefs and arguments over time. ;Three lines of objection to this analogical evolutionary epistemology are addressed in Part One: the weak analogy criticism; the explanatory emptiness objection; and a set of worries concerning normativity. ;The conclusion of Part One is that the analogy between evolution and inquiry, while not perfect, still deserves to be taken seriously. One significant consequence of the analogy is that the process of inquiry has no over-arching, as-yet-to-be-realized future goal or telos, as some philosophers have thought. Instead, the process of inquiry, like biological evolution, is open-ended and driven from behind by the sub-processes of replication, interaction, and selection. ;Part Two of the dissertation tests the fruitfulness of the analogy by showing how it can be combined with related theories in philosophy of mind and normative epistemology. Chapter III shows how Ruth Garrett Millikan's Darwinian approach to philosophy of mind can shed light on the nature of beliefs. Chapter IV combines the analogy between evolution and inquiry with John Post's minimal epistemology, or the epistemology of creativity and consistency