Abstract
The non-adaptationist approach to evolutionary epistemology (EE) was born at the end of the 1970s as an alternative to traditional adaptationist EE. Despite the fact that non-adaptationist EE offers compelling interpretative models and its explanatory power is widely recognised, an organic overview of the broad non-adaptationist field is still lacking. In this paper, I propose to fill this gap. To this effect, after providing a systematisation of the perspectives that are commonly associated with non-adaptationist EE, I will discuss two recurring orders of arguments that non-adaptationist scholars, often independently of one another, put forward against their adaptationist rivals. By offering a way to conceive non-adaptationist evolutionary epistemological approaches as part of a structured whole, the resulting systematic account is meant to provide a reading grid, a compass for orienting oneself in the uneven territories of non-adaptationist EE. Moreover, the consequent identification of two recurring argumentative bodies is intended to add to the explanatory power of non-adaptationist EE, which in finding new strength in numbers eventually acquires a greater critical efficacy against its adaptationist counterpart.
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Notes
Parts of this article have been submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the M.Sc. in History and Philosophy of Science at Utrecht University and have been extrapolated from my Master’s thesis “Evolution, Knowledge, and Reality: A Defence of Non-Adaptationist Evolutionary Epistemology”, https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/353294.
Wuketits (1992, 1995, 2000) uses similar arguments to express his adherence to hypothetical realism. I think Wuketits’s endorsement of hypothetical realism is controversial, his position oscillating between two seemingly irreconcilable poles—realism and non-realism. In this paper, by centring in on the proximity of Wuketits’s position to that of Ruse (1989), I have interpreted Wuketits’s view in non-realist terms, as close to Ruse’s common-sense realist/internal realist standpoint. In light of this, whereas Wuketits’s (2006) reference to “something out there” might be read as a reiteration of a hypothetical realist stance, given Wuketits’s endorsement of Ruse’s ideas, it might also be interpreted as deriving from Ruse’s consideration that there are objects out there, but these are posited by us “in order to make sense of the coherence of our experience” (reviewed in Lemos 2002, 795). By focusing on the affinity between Wuketits’s position and Ruse’s, in this paper I opt for the second of these two readings.
Riegler ascribes hypothetical realism to adaptationist thinkers and Wuketits (1992) as well. As I mentioned in footnote 2, Wuketits’s adherence to hypothetical realism is controversial, and it remains open to discussion whether Wuketits does in fact embrace a hypothetical realism of the kind espoused by adaptationist evolutionary epistemologists. In this paper, by centring in on the proximity of Wuketits’s position to that of Ruse (1989), I have read his view in non-realist terms, as close to Ruse’s common-sense realist/internal realist standpoint.
The classic notion of knowledge as justified true belief (JTB) is the idea that “justified, true belief is necessary and sufficient for knowledge” (Ichikawa and Steup 2018). Accordingly, a subject “S knows that p if and only if p is true and S is justified in believing that p”, where “p” stands for “the proposition that is known” (Steup 2018). For a detailed analysis of the idea of knowledge as JTB, I refer the reader to Steup (2018) and Ichikawa and Steup (2018). Also of relevance is Cellucci’s proposal to rethink the JTB conception in view of elaborating a coherent naturalist and non-realist perspective on knowledge for which I refer the reader to Cellucci (2008) and Cellucci (2015). A full discussion of Cellucci’s ideas, also in comparison to non-adaptationist approaches to EE, goes beyond the scope of this article.
Adaptationist thinkers do usually appeal to adaptation to solve this circularity and show that our knowledge is in fact reliable (cf. Vollmer 2004). As Sterpetti explains, adaptationist evolutionary epistemologists interpret adaptation as “a truth-encoding process” guided by natural selection, whereby natural selection is what “encode[s] in us true (or approximately true) knowledge about the world, or […] give[s] us a faculty which is able to reach some true (or approximately true) knowledge about the world in dealing with it” (Sterpetti 2011a, 185). In the light of this, truth of our (scientific) knowledge is guaranteed by natural selection and is “based on true features of the world” (ibid.). However, as Sterpetti argues:
[A]daptationism itself can hardly guarantee the crucial assumption in the above argumentation: the fact that the relation between organisms and their environment [i.e., adaptation] can be seen as a sort of transfer of true knowledge, managed by selection, which is able to guarantee the product of our knowledge. This assumption can only be sustained by an IBE [(Inference to the Best Explanation)]. This is a “success-to-truth” inference, for which the survival of an organism implies his true (or approximately true) knowledge of its environment. (Sterpetti 2011a, 185)
But, as Sterpetti notices, “[t]he appeal to evolution […] does not seem to be resolving”, since adaptationist evolutionary epistemologists end up presupposing what first should be demonstrated: “the connection between success and truth” (Sterpetti 2011b, 333-335, translation mine).
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Facoetti, M. United in Diversity: An Organic Overview of Non-Adaptationist Evolutionary Epistemology. J Gen Philos Sci 52, 211–225 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-019-09452-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-019-09452-y