Skip to main content

PHI786A: Evolutionary Theories of Knowledge and Cognition

Course Description

Traditional epistemology (foundational, infallible) stems from Plato’s Philosophy and the Skeptics. One of the Platonic strands focuses on the problem of distinguishing between and explaining episteme and doxa. The other offshoot attempts to provide a reconstruction of human knowledge, in the sense of Descartes, explicating how the pieces of human knowledge fit together. Such approaches assume that epistemological questions have to be answered in normative ways, which do not presuppose any descriptive knowledge.

The Evolutionary perspectives, revolutionarily, offered alternative philosophical approaches to the concept of Knowledge, Reasoning, Science, Ethics, etc. John Dewey, Konrad Lorenz, Karl Popper, D.T. Campbell pioneered the Evolutionary Epistemological viewpoints. Such a trajectory, as a part of the philosophy of science, is a naturalistic approach to theories of knowledge. It incorporates a descriptive, fallibilistic account of Knowledge and Knowing. It addresses questions in the theory of knowledge from an evolutionary point of view involving concepts, models, and metaphors drawn from evolutionary biological theories. The varieties of cognitive mechanisms, capacities, cultural, and social aspects that life, mind, and science can portray are evolutionary products. It examines the linkages and implications between evolutionary processes (adaptive and non-adaptive/ ontogenetic and phylogenetic), cognitive processes, and socio-cultural evolutionary products.

Course Content

Tentative Structure

Course Audience

PhD Students