Philosophy and the Darwinian Legacy - Hardcover

Cunningham, Suzanne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1878822616 ISBN 13: 9781878822611

Publisher: University of Rochester Press, 1996

Synopsis

Has exclusion of Darwin's views on evolution distorted 20c philosophy? Cunningham suggests a reappraisal.

Two of the dominant traditions in twentieth-century philosophy, analytic philosophy (founded by G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell) and phenomenology (founded by Edmund Husserl), explicitly excluded Charles Darwin's account of evolution, not because they saw it as mistaken, but because they saw it as irrelevant. These two traditions set the stage for a great deal of subsequent philosophy, and Professor Cunningham argues that the non-Darwinian framework they constructed continues to constrain significant portions of the field, in particular theories of perception and mind.
In tracing the major reasons for this exclusion of Darwin and evolutionary considerations, and the consequencesfor philosophy, Professor Cunningham criticises purely cognitivist theories of perception and Machine Functionalist theories of mind, and offers proposals on how these theories should be amended to take account of the adaptive role that perception and mind play on behalf of a living organism's struggle for survival and well-being. SUZANNE CUNNINGHAMis Associate Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University, Chicago.

About this title

About the Author

Suzanne Cunningham is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University in Chicago, Illinois.

From the Back Cover

Two of the dominant traditions in twentieth-century philosophy explicitly excluded Charles Darwin's account of evolution, not because they claimed it was mistaken, but because they saw it as irrelevant. These two traditions - analytic philosophy, founded by G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, and phenomenology, fathered by Edmund Husserl - set the stage for great deal of subsequent philosophy. The non-Darwinian framework that they constructed continues to constrain significant portions of the field, in particular, theories of perception and mind. Philosophy and the Darwinian Legacy traces the major reasons for the exclusion of Darwin and evolutionary considerations from philosophy. These reasons include the ambivalence of nineteenth-century philosophy toward the views of Darwin, the numerous disagreements among biologists at the turn of the century about the status of Darwin's views and the determination of the architects of analytic philosophy and phenomenology to protect ethics, logic and sociopolitical values from all taint of historical contingency. Professor Cunningham argues that this exclusion of Darwinian views distorted most subsequent philosophical theories of perception and mind. She criticizes purely cognitivist theories of perception as well as Machine Functionalist theories of mind, and then offers positive proposals on how these theories should be amended to take account of the adaptive role that perception and mind play on behalf of a living organism's struggle for survival and well being.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Rochester Press
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1878822616
• ISBN 13: 9781878822611
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 312