International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences

Abstract

Traditionally, epistemology concerns justifying beliefs. What right do we have to think that our beliefs are true? Evolutionary epistemology is a form of naturalized epistemology. In naturalized epistemology, the justification provided turns on an appeal to something about the natural world, in this case the evolutionary process. Organisms that do not react appropriately to their environments are not likely to survive to reproduce. Evolutionary epistemology began as both epistemology and evolutionary. Evolutionary epistemology was ‘epistemology’ in the sense that it was designed to justify certain basic beliefs that people hold. Evolutionary epistemology was ‘evolutionary’ in the sense that it was based on evolutionary theory as a biological theory. The reason that our knowledge of the world of our experience is reasonably good is that our sense organs have been honed by natural selection, and the results of this honing are programmed into our genes. The early versions of evolutionary epistemology were gene based; that is, the relevant knowledge was programmed into our genes and thus passed from generation to generation. Things like behavior were viewed as phenotypic characteristics.