Species of thought: A comment on evolutionary epistemology

The primary outcome of natural selection is adaptation to an environment. The primary concern of epistemology is the acquistion of knowledge. Evolutionary epistemology must therefore draw a fundamental connection between adaptation and knowledge. Existing frameworks in evolutionary epistemology do this in two ways; (a) by treating adaptation as a form of knowledge, and (b) by treating the ability to acquire knowledge as a biologically evolved adaptation. I criticize both frameworks for failing to appreciate that mental representations can motivate behaviors that are adaptive in the real world without themselves directly corresponding to the real world. I suggest a third framework in which mental representations are to reality as species are to ecosystems. This is a many-to-one relationship that predicts a diversity of adaptive representations in the minds of interacting people. As “species of thought”, mental representations share a number of properties with biological species, including isolating mechanisms that prevent them from blending with other representations. Species of thought also are amenable to the empirical methods that evolutionists use to study adaptation in biological species. Empirical studies of mental representations in everyday life might even be necessary for science to succeed as a normative “truth-seeking” discipline.     

Assessing evolutionary epistemology

There are two interrelated but distinct programs which go by the name evolutionary epistemology. One attempts to account for the characteristics of cognitive mechanisms in animals and humans by a straightforward extension of the biological theory of evolution to those aspects or traits of animals which are the biological substrates of cognitive activity, e.g., their brains, sensory systems, motor systems, etc. (EEM program). The other program attempts to account for the evaluation of ideas, scientific theories and culture in general by using models and metaphors drawn from evolutionary biology (EET program). The paper begins by distinguishing the two programs and discussing the relationship between them. The next section addresses the metaphorical and analogical relationship between evolutionary epistemology and evolutionary biology. Section IV treats the question of the locus of the epistemological problem in the light of an evolutionary analysis. The key questions here involve the relationship between evolutionary epistemology and traditional epistemology and the legitimacy of evolutionary epistemology as epistemology. Section V examines the underlying ontological presuppositions and implications of evolutionary epistemology. Finally, section VI, which is merely the sketch of a problem, addresses the parallel between evolutionary epistemology and evolutionary ethics.This research was supported, in part, by a grant from the National Science Foundation # SES—8308720. I want to thank Richard Lewontin and the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University for their hospitality and support during Spring 1984. I also want to thank David Hull, Charles Dyke and Michael Ruse for helpful comments on an earlier draft, and Andy Altman for pointing out to me the passage from Inherit the Wind.     

Evolution as a cognition process: Towards an evolutionary 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.     

Methodological Problems in Evolutionary Biology. XIII. Evolution and Knowledge

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.     

Regulatory constructivism: On the relation between evolutionary epistemology and Piaget's genetic epistemology

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.     

Empirical and philosophical problems with the subspecies rank

Species‐level taxonomy derives from empirical sources (data and techniques) that assess the existence of spatiotemporal evolutionary lineages via various species “concepts.” These concepts determine if observed lineages are independent given a particular methodology and ontology, which relates the metaphysical species concept to what “kind” of thing a species is in reality. Often, species concepts fail to link epistemology back to ontology. This lack of coherence is in part responsible for the persistence of the subspecies rank, which in modern usage often functions as a placeholder between the evolutionary events of divergence or collapse of incipient species. Thus, prospective events like lineages merging or diverging require information from unknowable future information. This is also conditioned on evidence that the lineage already has a detectably distinct evolutionary history. Ranking these lineages as subspecies can seem attractive given that many lineages do not exhibit intrinsic reproductive isolation. We argue that using subspecies is indefensible on philosophical and empirical grounds. Ontologically, the rank of subspecies is either identical to that of species or undefined in the context of evolutionary lineages representing spatiotemporally defined individuals. Some species concepts more inclined to consider subspecies, like the Biological Species Concept, are disconnected from evolutionary ontology and do not consider genealogy. Even if ontology is ignored, methods addressing reproductive isolation are often indirect and fail to capture the range of scenarios linking gene flow to species identity over space and time. The use of subspecies and reliance on reproductive isolation as a basis for an operational species concept can also conflict with ethical issues governing the protection of species. We provide a way forward for recognizing and naming species that links theoretical and operational species concepts regardless of the magnitude of reproductive isolation.     

Typology Reconfigured: From the Metaphysics of Essentialism to the Epistemology of Representation

The goal of this paper is to encourage a reconfiguration of the discussion about typology in biology away from the metaphysics of essentialism and toward the epistemology of classifying natural phenomena for the purposes of empirical inquiry. First, I briefly review arguments concerning 'typological thinking', essentialism, species, and natural kinds, highlighting their predominantly metaphysical nature. Second, I use a distinction between the aims, strategies, and tactics of science to suggest how a shift from metaphysics to epistemology might be accomplished. Typological thinking can be understood as a scientific tactic that involves representing natural phenomena using idealizations and approximations, which facilitates explanation, investigation, and theorizing via abstraction and generalization. Third, a variety of typologies from different areas of biology are introduced to emphasize the diversity of this representational reasoning. One particular example is used to examine how there can be epistemological conflict between typology and evolutionary analysis. This demonstrates that alternative strategies of typological thinking arise due to the divergent explanatory goals of researchers working in different disciplines with disparate methodologies. I conclude with several research questions that emerge from an epistemological reconfiguration of typology.     

Epistemology, necessity, and evolution: a critical review of Michael Ruse��s Philosophy After Darwin

Michael Ruse??s new anthology Philosophy After Darwin provides great history and background in the major impacts Darwinism has had on philosophy, especially in ethics and epistemology. This review focuses on epistemology understood through the lens of evolution by natural selection. I focus on one of Ruse??s own articles in the collection, which responds to two classic articles by Konrad Lorenz and David Hull on the two major forms of evolutionary epistemology. I side with Ruse against Lorenz??s account of the necessity we think our principles of reasoning have, though I disagree with Ruse??s particular example. I also argue that Ruse??s alternative explanation is lacking. Against Hull, I side with Ruse in his doubts that a sociobiological approach to science will prove fruitful, though I point out that it has certain advantages other approaches do not have. Although I side with Ruse on the issue, I conclude that the two views do not really come into direct conflict and so one needs not reject either. Finally, I discuss Ruse??s positive view and raise questions for his conception of evolutionary epistemology. I conclude that his arguments are insufficient to overcome opposing views and his view has at least as many unintuitive conclusions as the alternatives.     

Thermodynamics and the conceptual structure of evolutionary theory

Thermodynamics and evolutionary theory have spent most of their shared history in adversarial relationship to one another. The point of this paper is to consider some qualitative ways in which thermodynamics can enrich both the theory and epistemology of evolution. The "autonomy of biology" posture in evolutionary theory hangs on the supposed uniqueness of why-questions in biology. With this posture, and with the general obstruction of constructive dialogue between evolution and the physical sciences it fosters, come the perennial accusations that Darwinism deals in adaptational teleology but not mechanisms. Thermodynamics provides for a two-tiered hierarchy of causation in nature in which the why-question is rendered not only legitimate materialistically, but essential to understanding the evolutionary process in its totality--from the emergence of life to the branching of lineages in speciation.     

Epistemological Implications of Fieldwork and Their Consequences

Fieldwork is anthropology's primary data-gathering device, providing a boundary marker from related disciplines. Since data obtained through fieldwork form the bases of anthropological theory, it is crucial that their truth value be analyzed. The paper discusses reasons for both the relative lack of epistemological concern in anthropology until recent times and its current vogue. The empirical foundations of fieldwork are examined and a grid is presented for judging the philosophical position of fieldworkers. Application of the methods suggested is illustrated by a case study of missionary/anthropologist field interaction. Finally, an argument is outlined against both rationalism and phenomenology as being antiscientific. These last two positions are seen as the logical result of anthropology's neglect of epistemology. [epistemology, fieldwork, methodology, recurrent relationships, empiricism]     

Does science have a “global goal?”: A critique of hull's view of conceptual progress

Hull's recent work in evolutionary epistemology is marred by a deep tension. While he maintains that conceptual and biological evolution are both driven by selection processes, he also claims that only the former is globally progressive. In this paper I formulate this tension and present four possible responses (including Hull's). I argue that Hull's position rests on the assumption that there is a goal which is sufficiently general to describe most scientific activity yet precise enough to guide research. Working from within Hull's framework, I argue that a non-progressionist stance is both preferable and more consistent with Hull's basic commitments.     

Evolutionary arguments against moral realism: Why the empirical details matter (and which ones do)

The aim of this article is to identify the strongest evolutionary debunking argument (EDA) against moral realism and to assess on which empirical assumptions it relies. In the recent metaethical literature, several authors have de-emphasized the evolutionary component of EDAs against moral realism: presumably, the success or failure of these arguments is largely orthogonal to empirical issues. I argue that this claim is mistaken. First, I point out that Sharon Street’s and Michael Ruse’s EDAs both involve substantive claims about the evolution of our moral judgments. Next, I argue that combining their respective evolutionary claims can help debunkers to make the best empirical case against moral realism. Some realists have argued that the very attempt to explain the contents of our endorsed moral judgments in evolutionary terms is misguided, and have sought to escape EDAs by denying their evolutionary premise. But realists who pursue this reply can still be challenged on empirical grounds: debunkers may argue that the best, scientifically informed historical explanations of our moral endorsements do not involve an appeal to mind-independent truths. I conclude, therefore, that the empirical considerations relevant for the strongest empirically driven argument against moral realism go beyond the strictly evolutionary realm; debunkers are best advised to draw upon other sources of genealogical knowledge as well.     

Popper, falsifiability, and evolutionary biology

First, a brief history is provided of Popper's views on the status of evolutionary biology as a science. The views of some prominent biologists are then canvassed on the matter of falsifiability and its relation to evolutionary biology. Following that, I argue that Popper's programme of falsifiability does indeed exclude evolutionary biology from within the circumference of genuine science, that Popper's programme is fundamentally incoherent, and that the correction of this incoherence results in a greatly expanded and much more realistic concept of what is empirical, resulting in the inclusion of evolutionary biology. Finally, this expanded concept of empirical is applied to two particular problems in evolutionary biology — viz., the species problem and the debate over the theory of punctuated equilibria — and it is argued that both of them are still mainly metaphysical.     

The Philosophy of Donald T. Campbell: A Short Review and Critical Appraisal

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.     

Can adaptation lead to extinction?

Ever since J.B.S. Haldane proposed the idea, evolutionary biologists are aware that individual level adaptations do not necessarily lead to optimal population performance. A few deeply mathematical models, drawing from a diverse range of systems, even predict that individual selection can lead to the extinction of the whole population, a phenomenon which has become known as evolutionary suicide. Due to the complexity of both following adaptation and determining the exact cause of an extinction, evolutionary suicide has remained untested empirically. However, three recent empirical studies suggest that it may occur, and that suicide should be taken seriously as a potentially important evolutionary phenomenon. Here we ask whether or not evolutionary suicide can occur, briefly reviewing the theoretical and empirical evidence. We further highlight systems which may be used to test whether or not individual level selection can cause extinction.     

From philosophy to science (to natural philosophy): evolutionary developmental perspectives

This paper focuses on abstraction as a mode of reasoning that facilitates a productive relationship between philosophy and science. Using examples from evolutionary developmental biology, I argue that there are two areas where abstraction can be relevant to science: reasoning explication and problem clarification. The value of abstraction is characterized in terms of methodology (modeling or data gathering) and epistemology (explanatory evaluation or data interpretation).     

Epistasis and its consequences for the evolution of natural populations

Throughout the neodarwinian synthesis, theorists have debated the role of gene interactions, or epistasis, in the evolutionary process. Unfortunately, empirical measurement of the role of epistasis in the evolution of natural populations has, until now, been difficult. Two developments in empirical approaches have occurred: (1) application of theory to the evolution of natural populations, and (2) the concurrent development of molecular marker-assisted techniques to understand the architecture of quantitative genetic variation. Thus, exciting developments in both theory and empirical data collection provide the stimulus for documenting the role of epistasis in the evolutionary process.     

Evolutionary theory and systematics: relationships between process and patterns

The relevance of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis to the foundations of taxonomy (the construction of groups, both taxa and phyla) is reexamined. The nondimensional biological species concept, and not the multidimensional, taxonomic, species notion which is based on it, represents a culmination of an evolutionary understanding. It demonstrates how established evolutionary mechanisms acting on populations of sexually reproducing organisms provide the testable ontological basis of the species category. We question the ontology and epistemology of the phylogenetic or evolutionary species concept, and find it to be a fundamentally untenable one. We argue that at best, the phylogenetic species is a taxonomic species notion which is not a theoretical concept, and therefore should not serve as foundation for taxonomic theory in general, phylogenetics, and macroevolutionary reconstruction in particular. Although both evolutionary systematists and cladists are phylogeneticists, the reconstruction of the history of life is fundamentally different in these two approaches. We maintain that all method, including taxonomic ones, must fall out of well corroborated theory. In the case of taxonomic methodology the theoretical base must be evolutionary. The axiomatic assumptions that all phena, living and fossil, must be holophyletic taxa (species, and above), resulting from splitting events, and subsequently that evaluation of evolutionary change must be based on a taxic perspective codified by the Hennig ian taxonomic species notion, are not testable premises. We discuss the relationship between some biologically, and therefore taxonomically, significant patterns in nature, and the process dependence of these patterns. Process-free establishment of deductively tested “genealogies” is a contradiction in terms; it is impossible to “recover” phylogenetic patterns without the investment of causal and processual explanations of characters to establish well tested taxonomic properties of these (such as homologies, apomorphies, synapomorphies, or transformation series). Phylogenies of either characters or of taxa are historical-narrative explanations (H-N Es), based on both inductively formulated hypotheses and tested against objective, empirical evidence. We further discuss why construction of a “genealogy”, the alleged framework for “evolutionary reconstruction”, based on a taxic, cladistic outgroup comparison and a posteriori weighting of characters is circular. We define how the procedure called null-group comparison leads to the noncircular testing of the taxonomic properties of characters against which the group phylogenies must be tested. This is the only valid rooting procedure for either character or taxon evolution. While the Hennig -principle is obviously a sound deduction from the theory of descent, cladistic reconstruction of evolutionary history itself lacks a valid methodology for testing transformation hypotheses of both characters and species. We discuss why the paleontological method is part of comparative biology with a critical time dimension ana why we believe that an “ontogenetic method” is not valid. In our view, a merger of exclusive (causal and interactive, but best described as levels of organization) and inclusive (classificatory) hierarchies has not been accomplished by a taxic scheme of evolution advocated by some. Transformational change by its very nature is not classifiable in an inclusive hierarchy, and therefore no classification can fully reflect the causal and interactive chains of events constituting phylogeny, without ignoring and contradicting large areas of corroborated evolutionary theory. Attempts to equate progressive evolutionary change with taxic schemes by Haeckel were fundamentally flawed. His ideas found 19th century expression in a taxic perception of the evolutionary process (“phylogenesis”), a merger of typology, hierarchic and taxic notions of progress, all rooted in an ontogenetic view of phylogeny. The modern schemes of genealogical hierarchies, based on punctuation and a notion of “species” individuality, have yet to demonstrate that they hold promise beyond the Haeckel ian view of progressive evolution.     

Where guesses come from: Evolutionary epistemology and the anomaly of guided variation

This paper considers a central objection to evolutionary epistemology. The objection is that biological and epistemic development are not analogous, since while biological variation is blind, epistemic variation is not. The generation of hypotheses, unlike the generation of genotypes, is not random. We argue that this objection is misguided and show how the central analogy of evolutionary epistemology can be preserved. The core of our reply is that much epistemic variation is indeed directed by heuristics, but these heuristics are analogous to biological preadaptations which account for the evolution of complex organs. We also argue that many of these heuristics or epistemic preadaptations are not innate but were themselves generatedby a process of blind variation and selective retention.We would like to thank Paul Bloom, Donald Campbell, Philip Clayton, Paul Pietroski, Peter Skagestad, Nicholas Thompson, G. L. Vankin, Laszlo Versenyi and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments.