Abstract
Evolutionary Debunking Arguments (EDAs) are defined as arguments that appeal to the evolutionary genealogy of our beliefs to undermine their justification. Recently, Helen De Cruz and her co-authors supported the view that EDAs are self-defeating: if EDAs claim that human arguments are not justified, because the evolutionary origin of the beliefs which figure in such arguments undermines those beliefs, and EDAs themselves are human arguments, then EDAs are not justified, and we should not accept their conclusions about the fact that human arguments are unjustified. De Cruz's objection to EDAs is similar to the objection raised by Reuben Hersh against the claim that, since by Gödel's second incompleteness theorem the purpose of mathematical logic to give a secure foundation for mathematics cannot be achieved, mathematics cannot be said to be absolutely certain. The response given by Carlo Cellucci to Hersh's objection shows that the claim that by Gödel's results mathematics cannot be said to be absolutely certain is not self-defeating, and can be adopted to show that EDAs are not self-defeating as well in a twofold sense: an argument analogous to Cellucci's one may be developed to face De Cruz's objection, and such argument may be further refined incorporating Cellucci's response itself in it, to make it stronger. This paper aims at showing that the accusation of being self-defeating moved against EDAs is inadequate by elaborating an argument which can be considered an EDA and which can also be shown not to be self-defeating.
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Notes
Adapted from Kahane 2011, p. 106.
The relevance of evolutionism for epistemology is a well known and debated issue. On that sort of ‘Darwinian epistemological dilemma’ which arises when we try to naturalize knowledge relying on evolutionism, c.f., e.g., Clark 1986, p. 151: “What is the proper attitude of the evolutionary epistemologist towards science? Should he regard science as disclosing (or aiming to disclose) information concerning the way the world is in itself, independently of the species-specific needs, bias and cognitive orientation of the human life-form? Or should he conceive it as intrinsically limited and indelibly marked with the stamp of his own humanity? Either way there is a problem. If he adopts the first, objectivist, interpretation he faces the charge of hypocrisy; why does he not extend the results of his conjectures concerning cognition in other species to the enquiring animal, man? To make that extension, and to regard our scientific knowledge as biased and limited in ways analogous to those attributed to the lower animals, is, however, to breed a deeper discomfort. For if he adopts a species-specific, non-objectivist account of scientific knowledge then the status of the evolutionary conjecture itself is brought into question.”
Cellucci specifies that this objection “was raised in correspondence by Reuben Hersh, acting as advocatus diaboli, not because he shared it” (Cellucci 2013, p. 7, footnote 44). So, it is just for simplicity that in what follows we will refer to that objection as ‘Hersh’s objection’.
This reference to the truth is due to the fact that the truth of mathematics is considered to be related to the certainty of its results, which is given by the reliability of the means used to reach such results, and by their coherence, given that there is no possibility of appealing to some form of empirical confirmation of the truth of a theory when dealing with mathematics. Indeed, Hilbert considered coherence as equivalent to truth: “If the arbitrarily given axioms do not contradict one another, then they are true, and the things defined by the axioms exist. This for me is the criterion of truth and existence” (Hilbert 1980, p. 42). Thus, if by Gödel’s results there cannot be absolute certainty in proving the coherence of a mathematical theory, then such theory cannot be said to be absolutely true.
Cf. De Cruz et al. 2011, p. 518: “An EDA is constructed by negating at least one of the crucial EA [Evolutionary Argument] premises, in particular about the relative importance of natural selection, and about its truth-tracking ability.”
See above footnote 6.
On the fact that the main idea which lays behind scientific realism is the intuition that the empirical success of a scientific theory can be explained by nothing but its truth, see, e.g., Worrall 1989.
Abbreviations
- EDAs:
-
Evolutionary debunking arguments
- Vs-MAT:
-
Hersh’s objection
- MAT:
-
Cellucci’s response to Vs-MAT
- Vs-EDAs:
-
De Cruz’s objection to EDAs
- Pro-EDAs:
-
Response to Vs-EDAs
- EDAM:
-
Evolutionary debunking argument for mathematics
- Pro-EDAs+EDAM:
-
Extended response to Vs-EDAs
- EAM:
-
Evolutionary argument for mathematics
- EDA*:
-
Simplified Version of Pro-EDAs+EDAM
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I wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments and suggestions.
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Sterpetti, F. Are Evolutionary Debunking Arguments Really Self-Defeating?. Philosophia 43, 877–889 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-015-9608-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-015-9608-4