Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 18:04:00 -0500
From: Doug Porpora <porporad-AT-drexel.edu>
Subject: RE: BHA: RE: adjudicating between knowledge claims


hi Brad,

You say:

>I was thinking of Evolutionary Epistemology a la Plotkin (1993) "Darwin
>Machines and the Nature of Knowledge". Also Dawkins and Campbell etc.

Well, I don't know Plotkin.  I do know Dawkins and Campbell.  Also I think
Toulman pursue an epistemology based on evolution.

>If knowledge is viewed as a Darwinian adaptation, just the same as an
>opposable >thumb, this then lets things such as virtue, altruism, faith,
>charity, >morality, >sacrifice and conceptions of reality be explained in
>purely >biological terms. The Hard-line E.E. takes the view that the
>Darwinian two-step
>of chance and contingency has finally eliminated God altogether, and that
>metaphysical beliefs are epiphenomenal features of the evolution of an
>inward-directed brain, whereas the Systems Theorist departs from the
>hard-line specifically at the point of metaphysical beliefs, and takes the
>view that because natural selection is driving everything, the very fact
>that metaphysical beliefs exist means that they are significant, i.e. they
>have been selected for.

I think the critical realist belief in a stratified world inclines us
against the reduction of, say altruism, to inclusive fitness or whatever.
Still, I think we always have to look at these things case by case. All I
can tell you is that I have never bought it.  Beyond that, I am not sure
there is a specifically critical realist response to all this.  Again, I
can only say that personally I also could never see how it tells either for
or against God that our capacity for metaphysics evolved and is rooted in
the brain. Despite the arguments, I just don't find these factors
epistemically relevant.

On the theologians, Huyssteen sounds interesting.  I don't know him.
Barbour of course explicitly shares a critical realist perspective. I
didn't know Polkinghorne addressed epistemology much, but I do think he
presupposes a CR view.

I am not a good person to speak on DCR.  Although I have adopted portions
of it and do think dialectically, I am one of those more philosophically
rooted in plain CR.

>Doug, when you speak about mechanisms here,
>are you alluding to those that operate in the domain of the Real, as
>opposed to the domains of the Actual and the Empirical?

Oh boy. I'm not the most facile listmember on all these distinctions, but I
would say the mechanisms of blind variations and selective retention appear
in all three. We certainly can observe both in some cases.  So they are
empirical.  If they are empirical, then they are also both actual and real.
That's my best shot at the moment.

doug


doug porpora
dept of psych and sociology
drexel university
phila pa 19104
USA

porporad-AT-drexel.edu




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