Gene Callahan has posted a very strange criticism of EE, inspired by the scholarly but eccentric contrarian John Gray.
“This [is] an objection to evolutionary epistemology in all of its forms—that there is no reason whatever for supposing that the web of belief which has emerged via natural and cultural evolution mirrors nature or tracks reality. It will do so, according to evolutionary theory itself, only in so far as such mirroring or tracking enhances survival chances. There is, in fact, nothing a priori to tell against the possibility that false belief systems may sometimes give their holders a competitive edge in survival stakes, if unreasonable optimism, or false religious or other hopes are useful in sustaining them in adversity.” – John Gray, Liberalisms, 248.
Gene wrote:
It seems to me that Gray’s point is indisputable: the mere fact that, say, our brains or our scientific enterprises evolved as “spontaneous orders” gives them, contra Hayek, no warrant of epistemological reliability whatsoever.
I was not aware that EE was concerned with “warrants” because in the hands of its leading exponents like Karl Popper and the American psychologist Donald Campbell it is a helpful alternative to the “justificationist” epistemologies that are concerned with foundations, warrants, certified beliefs, inductive probability and the like.
Gene’s argument does not look like a critique of the kind of EE that you find in these readings – the Bartley and Raditzky collection or the Hooker and Hahlweg collection.
The rise of EE in modern times can be seen as the revival of a line of thought that was squashed by the rise of the philosophy of physics as THE philosophy of science. That would not have been so harmful by itself but the philosophy of physics that became dominant was the positivism and empiricism that von Mises saw as a deadly threat to Austrian economics.
Evolutionary epistemology applies Darwin’s principle of natural selection to scientific theories and to other forms of knowledge. It is concerned with problem-solving and error elimination under various forms of selective pressure. This contrasts with most theories of knowledge that are concerned with the foundations of belief or the probability of theories. In its attention to the historical, social and institutional context of learning it is a corrective to the mainstream epistemologies that assign something like foundational status to subjective percepti0ns (sensations in empircism, concepts in the case of classical rationalists and phenomenologists).
Getting back to the Gene’s critique:
(Gray, in fact, specifically notes Hayek as someone committing the error he is criticizing.) In any case, while thinking about Gray’s passage above, I was struck by an amusing illustration of the principle in question, which I thought I’d share.
The case is drawn from Evans-Pritchard on Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande which demonstrated that the magical belief system of the Azande was internally consistent. Gene develops the point beyond that to argue that sorcery works for the individual but impedes the econonomic development of the community.
Instead of (mainly) entering into a system of social cooperation based on the division of labor, everyone in a sorcerous society is constantly scheming how to protect themselves against others’ spells and ensure that their own spells remain unblocked and undetected. In a society without sorcery, it is often simple to identify “rights violators” and punish them, but in the Azande’s society, just who done you wrong is veiled in magic.
He than suggested that by a stroke of evolutionary luck, Europeans developed a gene that made them incapable of believing in sorcery (except under very special circumstances) and so trade and commerce developed.
But Europeans had not lost the ability to do sorcery, and, in fact, one form of sorcery has been a key to their success in spreading their way of life across the globe: they continued to believe in and be able to perceive the results of sorcery when the sorcery took a very public form and there was a strong consensus that it would work. They called such sorcery “science and technology.” By limiting themselves to only this type of sorcery, Europeans were able to reduce the socially destructive effects of sorcery largely to a minimum.
On this account.
“The belief in the illusory nature of sorcery has not spread because it is true. It is most definitely false, but that is the very secret of its success—in this case, perceiving the truth is highly anti-survival.”
At this point the argument has taken a strange turn. We don’t need to be concerned especially about belief in sorcery, if you want to call science and technology “sorcery” that is a loaded definition, we are concerned about the truth or falsehood of particular theories and the efficacy of particular practices. As a tradition of critical thinking develops it become a faster process to weed out ideas and practices that do not stand up to various forms of criticism, especially the criticism of practice. That does not preclude the survival of millions of false beliefs, especially if they are harmless.
Far from being a critique of any form of EE that I recognise, this looks more like an interesting and ingenious application of EE ideas.
A nice example of sorcery that survives and sustains a particular cultural or occupational group is inductive logic, and, more generall, the “true belief” or “justificationist” epistemologies. We would be amused to observe tribes that spend so much time cultivating plots that produce such a small harvest.
See also Stanislav Andreski “Social Science as Sorcery”.
FYI the leading exponent of EE is David Deutsch. The section in his book _The Fabric of Reality_ is better than what Popper wrote on the subject, and there’s lots more in his upcoming book _The Beginning of Infinity_.