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Darwinian Algorithms and Indexical Representation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Murray Clarke
Murray Clarke*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy Concordia University
*
‡Send reprint requests to the author, Department of Philosophy, Concordia University, 7141 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H4B 1R6.
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Abstract

In this paper, I argue that accurate indexical representations have been crucial for the survival and reproduction of homo sapiens sapiens. Specifically, I want to suggest that reliable processes have been selected for because of their indirect, but close, connection to true belief during the Pleistocene hunter-gatherer period of our ancestral history. True beliefs are not heritable, reliable processes are heritable. Those reliable processes connected with reasoning take the form of Darwinian Algorithms: a plethora of specialized, domain-specific inference rules designed to solve specific, recurrent, adaptive problems in social exchange contexts. Humans do not reason logically, but adaptively.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 63 , Issue 1 , March 1996 , pp. 27 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

Earlier versions of this paper were read at the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science Annual Meetings and at the Canadian Philosophical Association Annual Meetings. I would like to thank Martin Pate, Elliot Sober, Stephen Stich, Evan Thompson, and audiences at the meetings mentioned for discussion and suggestions. For my parents, Ethel and William Clarke, thanks for support on both sides of the nature/nurture divide.

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