TY - JOUR
T1 - The organization of knowledge
T2 - Beyond Campbell's evolutionary epistemology
AU - Christensen, Wayne D.
AU - Hookert, Clifford A.
PY - 1999
Y1 - 1999
N2 - Donald Campbell has long advocated a naturalist epistemology based on a general selection theory, with the scope of knowledge restricted to vicarious adaptive processes. But being a vicariant is problematic because it involves an unexplained epistemic relation. We argue that this relation is to be explicated organizationally in terms of the regulation of behavior and internal state by the vicariant, but that Campbell's selectionist approach can give no satisfactory account of it because it is opaque to organization. We show how organizational constraints and capacities are crucial to understanding both evolution and cognition and conclude with a proposal for an enriched, generalized model of evolutionary epistemology that places high-order regulatory organization at the center.
AB - Donald Campbell has long advocated a naturalist epistemology based on a general selection theory, with the scope of knowledge restricted to vicarious adaptive processes. But being a vicariant is problematic because it involves an unexplained epistemic relation. We argue that this relation is to be explicated organizationally in terms of the regulation of behavior and internal state by the vicariant, but that Campbell's selectionist approach can give no satisfactory account of it because it is opaque to organization. We show how organizational constraints and capacities are crucial to understanding both evolution and cognition and conclude with a proposal for an enriched, generalized model of evolutionary epistemology that places high-order regulatory organization at the center.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=4243718999&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:4243718999
SN - 0031-8248
VL - 66
JO - Philosophy of Science
JF - Philosophy of Science
IS - 3 SUPPL. 1
ER -