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Title: Evolutionary Epistemology, Rationality, and the Sociology of Knowledge by Gerard Radnitzky, W.W., III Bartley, Karl Popper ISBN: 0-8126-9039-7 Publisher: Open Court Publishing Company Pub. Date: March, 1993 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $38.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (2 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: A great collection
Comment: Evolutionary epistemology applies Darwinian principles of natural selection to scientific theories and to knowledge generally. It is concerned with problem-solving and error elimination under various forms of selective pressure, in contrast with schools of thought which are concerned with the justification of beliefs or the explication of concepts.

The major emphasis in this book is on the biological line of thought, with some attention to William W. Bartley's work on rationality. The articles were not originally planned for this volume; most are based on papers delivered at a series of seminars during the early 1980s and some are much older pieces that are reprinted because they make a specially significant contribution to evolutionary epistemology. The volume stands in need of an introduction to make visible the skeleton of ideas that provides a degree of coherence to the collection. The absence of this guide will create some problems for people who are not familiar with evolutionary epistemology in general, and with Popper's work in particular . For more on this, google on Rathouse+Popper or Rathouse+Bartley.

In Part I the philosophers William W. Bartley and Rosaria Egidi, the scientists Gunter Wachterhauser and Gerhard Vollmer, and the psychologist Donald Campbell, together with Popper, contribute eight chapters which make up almost half the book. Bartley criticises a version of subjectivism or idealism ("the world is my dream") which he labels 'presentationalism'. His critique is relevant to all those epistemologies which equate knowledge with true belief, though few are prepared to follow the consequences with the rigor of presentationalists such as Ernst Mach (1838-1916.) Mach argued that there is no such thing as a real tree, out there in the garden, because when we claim to see it, what we actually see is an image of a tree as it is presented to our mind by our sensory and cognitive apparatus.

This anthropomorphic account of the external world can be criticised on biological grounds, as Bartley does in a section titled "About a frog, idealistically disposed". Frogs register only four kinds of visual effects because only four types of signal can be sent to their brains. These visual effects are sufficient to enable frogs to perform tasks such as catching small moving objects and leaping towards dark spaces if a predator appears. The world of the frog, as a projection of its limited visual capacity, is very impoverished and not one that we would accept as the full story even, with our own fairly limited senses. Yet a presentationalist frog would claim that the world consists only of the contrasts, the small dark objects, the moving shadows and sudden dimming of light which it perceives. Thus it would ignore the possibility that its knowledge of the world is not 'given' but is the product of the evolved sense organs which reflect some, but not all, aspects of the world which frogs inhabit. This view might seem absurd if it were advanced by a frog, but its human equivalent dominates Western philosophy, with apparent support from the findings of modern physics.

Bartley suggests that the roots of the theory that he labels presentationalism

"may be not only deep but psychological, and even metaphysical...for it seems to me that philosophers of science do not ordinarily choose presentationalism; rather they are driven to it by certain deep structural assumptions that permeate most of western philosophy."

Among those assumptions which he identifies are reductionism, determinism and positivism. These theories, with some others of a more technical nature such as instrumentalism (theories are nothing but instruments) and subjectivist interpretations of the calculus of probability, constitute what could be called the dominant framework of Western thought, especially scientific thought. The basic assumptions that support evolutionary epistemology contradict the old framework at almost every point. Hence it is possible to detect a "new program" for western philosophy, with the following elements: non-justificationism, objectivism, non-determinism and non-reductionism.

Part II treats Bartley's ideas. He has the first and last word, with John F. Post (three short pieces), John W. N. Watkins and Gerhard Radnitzky sandwiched in between. The point of departure is the theory of rationality and the limits of criticism which Bartley advanced in The Retreat to Commitment. Bartley's theory of rationality generalizes Popper's critique of the notion that a belief is nothing if it is not positively justified. This approach abandons the quest for positive justification and instead settles for a critical preference for one option rather than others, in the light of critical arguments and evidence offered up to that point. As Radnitzky puts it, "Questions of acceptance are replaced by questions of preference". Many people are likely to regard this result as a purely verbal 'solution' to the problem of justification, merely shifting the problem from the source of justification to the source of critical preference. But the shift is from the impossible task of justification to productive tasks such as exploring the types of criticism that can be used to form critical preferences.

Part III of the volume, titled "Rationality and the Sociology of Knowledge, " branches off in various directions with essays from Peter Munz, Antony Flew and Bartley (again). Munz responds to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, which contends that philosophers should not try to compete with scientists in solving problems but, instead, should sustain elegant conversations. Munz shows that Rorty has ignored evolutionary epistemology as an alternative to the 'mirror' theory that the mind passively copies the world (which Rorty rejects) and to the appeal to a select community of peers for settling knowledge claims (which Rorty apparently accepts).

Rating: 3
Summary: Evolution...the answer?
Comment: The traditional problems in epistemology led to the binary oppositions of Descartes, Kant, etc. The scholastic "quod" vs. "quo" distinction, the Cartesian subject-object dualism, and the Kantian ding-an-sich versus appearence dualism have been the centers of a considerable amount of debate in the history of epistemological kibitzing. Now, with Sir Karl Popper in the lead, some philosophers have set out to solve the problems of epistemology by approaching it in an evolutionary way! To me, this is all hogwash. I say, prove the theory of evolution BEFORE you use it as the basis for an epistemology! Show us the billions of missing links! Explain to us how in the world language came out of non-verbal life-forms. But, before that, how on earth did life appear from non-life? Is the theory of evolution falsifiable? NO! Actually, what I really want to know is, how did something come from nothing. It is an unfalsifiable presupposition. Furthermore, it is taken for granted that nothing comes from nothing, now. Well, I did give the book 3 stars. I found the part on Rorty, by Peter Munz, to be quite entertaining, as well as insighful. No one, that I know of, can quite criticize Rorty the way that Munz does. But, hey, it is a very scholarly book. Written by many great minds. It is interesting, even if wrong.