Gene Callahan has kicked off quite a debate with his post on evolutionary epistemology that was noted the other day. There are now over 80 comments.
His main point seems to be that EE provides no “warrants” for knowledge approaching the truth.
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.
The CR rejoinder is that we are not talking about warrants and we are not assuming that the evolution of the brain is the same thing as the evolution of knowledge, given the distinction between subjective beliefs and public, inter-subjective or objective knowledge which exists in spoken and written form.
Now Callahan has called Wittgenstein, Popper, Kuhn, Bartley and Hayek all rebranded sophists. How does one respond to that? I suppose he believe we’re all unfortunate dupes who fell for a terrible deception. But … whatever, Callahan is clearly unfamiliar with the ideas of those he is criticising, nor does he seem willing to understand them.
Very strange. The sophists get a bad press because they were interested in arguments and they were prepared to look at the arguments on each side of a case. That infuriated people who just wanted philosophers to tell them the Truth. I think Gene is an unashamed foundationalist – he thinks we do have foundations. He thinks we can’t function without them. OK, we have all sorts of ideas and we could not function without them, but…heck, what’s the point. Whose buying the next round of beers?
I have an idea (can’t recall where it came from) that Gene went to the LSE to sharpen up his philosophy of science and became a rabid anti-Popperian.