From: sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill)
Subject: Re: Evolutionary Epistemology
Originator: sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 11:06:56 GMT
Organization: SAS Institute Inc.



Since I had to drop one of the kids off early at school this morning
and have managed to get to work about two hours early, I'll spend
some time on a few more details of evolutionary epistemology.  But
I'll cheat.  Most of this stuff is lifted from an old paper of my
wife's:  "Can Darwinian Inheritance Be Extended from Biology to
Epistemology?", Carla E. Kary, _Proceedings_ of the Philosophy of Science
Association, 1982 (pp. 356-369).  A partial bibliography from that
paper follows below.  I recommend a reading of the paper itself
since it very carefully lays a basis for evaluating an arbitrary
theory with respect to whether it is a "Darwinian evolutionary theory".
The paper then concentrates on a critical analysis of Toulmin's
exposition of evolutionary epistemology as found in Vol. 1 of
_Human_Understanding_.  It is sufficiently general, however, that
it is easily applicable to other attempts.  Sections 1-3 of the
paper develop a general framework for evolutionary theories
and section 4 attacks Toulmin's views on the basis of this framework.

Instead of paraphrasing, I'll just dump a bunch of excerpts from
the paper here, since these will get across the main ideas.

"In section B Toulmin argues that any domain which is populated by
'historical entities' is open to an evolutionary interpretation.
He defines these entities as 'comprising successive sets of constituent
elements which maintain a recognizable unity despite their changing
content.  As applied to the conceptual development of science,
historical entities are identified with scientific disciplines."

...

"Scientific disciplines, viewed as historical entities, are the
things which evolve in Toulmin's account.  And the 'changing
elements' of a scientific discipline are its concepts.  These are
not to be construed as private, subjective ideas, but as entities
which are either currently being shared by the community of
professionals within a discipline, or else have the potential for
intelligibility in this common, public realm.  Further, concepts
are the entities which serve as solutions to problems encountered
by a theory."


...

"Toulmin's analogy to the biological domain supposes that intellectual
disciplines function as species do."  [Concepts play a genetic role
as the units of inheritance in the epistemological domain.]

...

"However, there are serious difficulties with this analogy.  Recall
that the conditions offered in the last section all govern the
mechanism of inheritance, by which parts are perpetuated.  Put
another way, the conditions illustrate the relation of descent
which exists among the parts.  And they do this in terms of the
transmission of parental causal centers from a parent part to a new
part. ... But concepts, which we have seen are analogous to
organisms (as well as genes) and so should function as the parts
of a discipline, do not contain causal centers or anything resembling
them.  Indeed, in Toulmin's evolutionary account concepts do not
produce new concepts at all.  Instead they are either modified
through time, or else abandoned.  And the source of new concepts
is not located in other concepts, but in the mental activity of
some human being.  Consequently, the way in which concepts are
"inherited" is very unlike the way in which genes are inherited.
Genes replicate themselves, but concepts must be "replicated" by
human beings.  Organisms contain the causal mechanism of inheritance,
concepts do not.

...

And so we should hardly expect the situation in which Toulmin's
concepts exist to yield proper Darwinian results.  For in the
absence of some causal link among these concepts which would
account for the production of new concepts by prior concepts through
descent, we cannot expect new individuals (disciplines) to be
produced from the parts (concepts) of prior individuals.  And in
the account Toulmin gives, since new concepts appear to be produced
by the action of human agents who are external to the domain of
concepts ... [T]he Darwinian theory explains the development of
individuals of the domain solely in terms of the properties of the
parts of those individuals.  There is no reliance upon the intervention
of either God or human agents."

[Editorial remark:  there are further criticisms showing the severe
breakdown of analogy to genuine contemporary Darwinian evolutionary
theory.  I'll skip them here.  Carla feels that the above type of
criticism applies to *every* attempt at drawing the analogy known
to her and is a telling criticism whether one attempts to draw
the analogy in terms of concepts, theories, conceptual schemes,
memes, or whatever.  I omit here (for reasons of length) the
criteria ("general framework") for a theory's being an evolutionary
theory, but if you want to see it I can post it (it's about a page
long in summary form).  If you are tempted to defend a theory of
evolutionary epistemology, keep in mind that you must specify the
*mechanism of inheritance* and draw a detailed analogy to the role
of the gene.  Remember:  genes split and do other odd things.
Genes have *parts* that then become *parts* of the newly formed
gene after reproduction.  Randomness plays quite a role in mutation.
Prior parts are distince entities from the parental causal centers
which they transmit to the new parts they produce. It is quite
difficult to see how concepts or other candidate entities can be
drawn into the requisite analogy (parts, autonomous splitting and
recombination, etc.).  You don't want to just wave your hands and say,
"Well, epistemology is sort of like evolution."  Anybody can do
that, as in , "Well, epistemology is sort of like a chocolate cake."
Yeah, I guess it could be thought of like that, but ...?  If the
analogy to evolutionary theory is to be helpful and enlightening,
then it has to be a tight analogy.  You can't stop at a fundamental
point and say, "Well, you get the idea ...".  If you do this, you've
just repackaged a lot of old vague stuff inside some new jargon
and gone no further.]


Here is a partial bibliography ...

Brandon, Richard, (1978) "Adaptation and Evolutionary Theory."
_Studies _in_the_History_and_Philosophy_of_Science_ 9: 181-206.

Campbell, Donald.  (1974).  "Evolutionary Epistemology,"  In
_The_Philosophy_of_Karl_Popper_, Vol. 1.  Edited by Paul Schlipp.

Cole, L.C. (1960).  "Competitive Exclusion."  _Science_ 132:
348-349.

Goudge, Thomas.  (1961).  _The_Ascent_of_Life_.  Univ. of Toronto
Press.

Hull, David.  (1978).  "A Matter of Individuality."  _Philosophy_of_
Scinece_ 45:  335-360.

Lewontin, Richard.  (1970).  "The Units of Selection."  _The_Annual_
Review_of_Ecology_and_Systematics_ 1: 1-18.

Toulmin, Stephen.  (1972).  _Human_Understanding_.  Vol. 1.
Princeton Univ. Press.

Vrba, Elizabeth. (1980). "Evolution, Species and Fossils:  How Does
Life Evolve?"  _South_African_Jorunal_of_Science_ 76: 61-84.

Williams, Mary. (1970).  "Deducing the Consequences of Evolutuion:
A Mathematical Model."  _The_Journal_of_Theoretical_Biology_ 29:
343-385.








-- 
Gary H. Merrill  [Principal Systems Developer, C Compiler Development]
SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Dr. / Cary, NC  27513 / (919) 677-8000
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