11 - Evolution and epistemology

Summary

The theory of evolution is often taken to be a triumph for naturalistic conceptions of the world. That is, it is often taken as a powerful vindication of the view that there is nothing that, in principle, cannot be explained naturalistically using the resources of the empirical sciences. Part of the general programme of many naturalistic philosophers is to replace traditional philosophical questions with scientific ones. This approach to philosophy was explicitly endorsed by John Dewey and W. V. Quine, both of whom have proved to be extremely influential in this regard. The questions of epistemology, such as “What is knowledge?” and “What can we know?” are among these traditional philosophical questions. There are two ways in which we might try to accommodate philosophy to a naturalistic worldview:

1. • It can be held that instead of asking purely conceptual questions, such as “What is knowledge?”, we should ask only empirical questions, such as “How, in fact, do human beings come to have the beliefs they have?” This approach, however, may be considered to be sidestepping the questions of traditional epistemology, rather than using science to help answer them.

2. • There is a more modest way of going about things. Whatever answer we give to questions such as “What can we know?” or “How is it possible that we can have knowledge?” had better be compatible with what our best current science tells us about what capacities human beings have.

3. […]