Evolution's Impact on Philosophy

I haven’t heard a case made as of yet regarding the effect that evolution would have on philosophy. Perhaps if I had a more in-depth study of philosophy, I’d discover more and more cases which would remain unscathed and unaffected by evolutionary theory. But I feel that, even if subtly or slightly, evolutionary theory has an impact on certain philosophies, and I would like to ask that the more well versed philosophers describe, in your opinion, what impact the evolutionary theory would have had on philosophers of the past, had they known this fact.

Before reading the remainder of the post, please keep in mind this is geared towards those who accept evolution as fact. I am hoping to share my own insights as to the implications evolution has on some philosophical questions, and your extrapolations and opinions are greatly appreciated.

Inevitably on the timeline of evolution, there came a period where our species, in remote parts of the world, subconsciously began to do something no other species could do: plan for the future. At the time, we undoubtedly had the basic reasoning abilities: we undoubtedly used tools that worked better for finding food, with the assumption that those tools would work better consistently (the future would be no different than the past). We set goals, and gained the ability of foresight. At this time, the meaning of logic was simply that we could accurately make predictions about the future based on observations of the past. We created language to share ideas and concepts. Our cranium size increased to allow more thought, more goals, more planning, and more insight into the future. It’s safe to assume that at this time, we didn’t have a concept of God, and didn’t believe in a higher power, other than whatever powers were capable of making us a short afternoon snack.

As time went on, our language became more complex to accommodate our more complex planning and goal setting. Just as logically we concluded that the tools we used for a specific purpose, say, using a rock to crack open a coconut, would always be able to accomplish this task. Our logic was strictly dependent on our reality, on results that could be used over and over again. When we used an animal’s pelt to draw water from a river, we concluded it would work every time. It was these simple assumptions we used to enhance our survival. Slowly, the “truth” of the world around us was being revealed. At some point, it seems likely that this cause and effect view of reality began to make other assumptions. Perhaps a certain group noticed that each time they killed an animal, it would rain. Perhaps we began to imagine that the effect of killing the animal was rain, and our understanding of the world at that time would be so limited, it is easy to assume that somehow we were being rewarded for the kill. But who were we being rewarded by would be the next question? Well, another entity that enjoyed food as we did, and viewed rain as payment for the food. An exchange of sorts.

I could continue going through details of this very mysterious period of time when mankind began developing an idea of the world, an idea of what reality was, and how we made conclusions based upon our limited view of the world at that time, as self consciousness and self-awareness grew. There were some very unique and interesting mental developments throughout this period of time, and looking back through history, it is quite interesting to see how complex our thoughts, language, and ideas became.

At the time of Socrates, and Aristotle, and essentially most philosophers up through Darwin, and most likely after Darwin, this knowledge wasn’t available. They were trying to analyze an end product, without realizing how the end product originated. There are many concepts in philosophy that wouldn’t be affected by the knowledge of our origins, but for many others, the effects would seem inevitable and obvious. “Good” and “Evil” weren’t things that always existed: in fact, they’re a very modern development in our history on this rock. So many of the things we take for granted, looking only through the scope of the finished product, might seem mysterious and difficult to analyze if one doesn’t first closely think about the origins of such things. Emotions, truth, logic, reason, ideas, semantics. How does one begin to accurately analyze love, or happiness, or honor, or justice, without having a very clear idea of our origins? How would our analysis of such concepts change, knowing that they were not always something that existed, but rather developed only a short time ago on the timeline of our existence?

What are your thoughts on how the development of philosophy would have changed had these philosophers known about our true origins? From this point forward, how will philosophy continue to change with this knowledge? To say that it will not change at all would seem to only be possible if we ignore this evidence, as many of the questions philosophers have posed were posed without the knowledge of our origins and beginnings.

What are your thoughts on the impact of the fact and theory evolution on philosophy, both in the past and the future? Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.

I probably should’ve included this, it prompted me to think about this post:

youtube.com/watch?v=13NPZ5Nv_fc

It’s a great watch, whether you hate Dawkins or not.

To what extent? When were we not planning for the future? By this I assume you mean that we began to take in to our reasoning events that would happen after we made the decision. Well, duh, that’s been happening ever since we developed the ability to react to our environment, which happened when we were still amoeba. If I decide not to jump off a cliff its because I don’t want to die, and because the dying comes after the jumping its in the future, and I am, in effect, considering the future in my actions, and planning accordingly. If by planning for the future, you mean storing food or stockpiling, or planting seeds for future benefit, by all means say so. But the only difference between stockpiling food in a cave for the winter and picking berries is the time between the action and the benefit; how far into the future we are considering. So, when you say planning for the future, you just mean applying a basic principle, picking berries when you’re not hungry, to a wider situation. Get what I’m saying? Basically, whadda ya mean, planning for the future? What do you imagine not planning for the future would look like?

Concluded what?

No, these simple assumptions were our tools to rise to the top of the food chain. Animals without such assumptions have survived, but not necessarily prospered. If you’re saying this was our claim to fame, our secret weapon, then yes, you’re right.

How could they notice such a phenomena if it was not true? How could they notice that each time they killed an animal it would rain, if it didn’t actually rain each time they killed an animal. And, how would they survive if the assumption “killing animal causes rain” was indeed false? Would not this negative evolutionary attribute be weeded out through natural selection?

But it isn’t so, is it? There is no exchange, really. So how did these people, who waste their time making sacrifices to gods, survive? Surely their atheist counterparts would be much better evolutionarily suited?

My response is this. If these assumptions about the existence of a being were not beneficial, they would have been discarded through natural selection.

About how recent, would you say?

You forget, we did have a very clear idea of our origins. We believed that we had been created, by God. Your argument, if I grasp it correctly, is that because this assumption was false, the results logically were false. Fair enough, but the problem is still not that we didn’t have any idea where we came from, but that we had the wrong idea.

First, how short a time ago? Second, our analysis should not change to claiming that the concepts are false, but to analyzing the circumstances that caused them to come about and their evolutionary benefit to their adherents.

Tsk tsk. Of our true origins and beginnings. We had knowledge of our origins, it was just incorrect.

Dorky? Dorky? Wherefore art thou?

Crying in my corner when my post is neglected. I thought it was a good question…

I’ll respond to your post after work. :smiley:

It was a great question. You just didn’t answer it very well.

But I’m sure you would agree there is a difference between thinking about the future, visualizing the future, and simply adapting over millions of years for the future. Natural selection doesn’t have foresight like we do. If you decide not to jump off of a cliff, you’re planning. If over millions of years you evolve not to jump off of cliffs, or to have a light enough body to survive a jump off of a cliff, you’re not planning, you’re evolving through an extremely slow, gradual process. There is a difference between a knee-jerk, thoughtless evolutionary reflex and a cognitive process for planning for the future.

Oh, it’s very easy to notice things like that. Haven’t you ever known a person who thinks every little thing that happens was somehow a sign? Somehow meant to be? Human brains look for patterns, and tend to remember the times patterns were fulfilled and forget the times they were not. People could easily have remembered the times they prayed or offered an animal sacrifice and it rained within a few days, and then tried to figure out why a few times it didn’t rain in the next few days. They weren’t as clever as we are now.

Darwinian natural selection wouldn’t have an influence on the survival value of qualities such as a belief in a deity.

.

Natural selection deals with physical traits and behaviors, but the behavior of believing in deities doesn’t decrease chance of survival.

Exactly, and I feel philosophy developed incorrectly based on this faulty information. How would it have developed had we the correct information about our origins?

Hmm. They both use the same method: changing how you react in the future based on the data gathered in the past. I know there’s a difference, I just can’t find it.

Write, human beings developed a sort of hyper-awareness as a defense mechanism, as it was better to see a tiger when there is no tiger than to not see the tiger when there is one. Have you read “Why people believe weird things”? I bet you have. Anyway, yes, people could notice that phenomena if it was not true. But the noticing of it would be detrimental, and should be weeded out by natural selection, but natural selection is too imprecise a tool to take it out. Basically, we are in the same situation as the tiger example. Either we notice patterns when there are none, or we do not notice real patterns. But, why would this false-pattern noticing proliferate? Why would we start worshiping, and having churches, and having a dominant population of theists? Why haven’t we learned that killing animals doesn’t cause rain?

Yes it would. Why not?

No, it is pretty obvious that if the theists were so much worse off, they would have died. They have not. Even without natural selection, people would start to notice that when you are a theist, you die, and teach their children not to be theists accordingly.

It would develop as it is now.

What’s he saying?

Your sig is amazing.

Me? Why thank you.

Cognitive science has developed a challenge to philosophy but it appears to me that philosophy will not recognize the challenge because basically philosophy considers that it is a domain of knowledge that is unaccountable to empirical evidence.

Cognitive science has two paradigms: symbol manipulation (AI) and conceptual metaphor. This last paradigm ‘conceptual metaphor’ has issued a book that challenges philosophy but as far as I know philosophy tends to ignore the challenge.

We have in our Western philosophy a traditional theory of faculty psychology wherein our reasoning is a faculty completely separate from the body. “Reason is seen as independent of perception and bodily movement.” It is this capacity of autonomous reason that makes us different in kind from all other animals. I suspect that many fundamental aspects of philosophy and psychology are focused upon declaring, whenever possible, the separateness of our species from all other animals.

This tradition of an autonomous reason began long before evolutionary theory and has held strongly since then without consideration, it seems to me, of the theories of Darwin and of biological science. Cognitive science has in the last three decades developed considerable empirical evidence supporting Darwin and not supporting the traditional theories of philosophy and psychology regarding the autonomy of reason. Cognitive science has focused a great deal of empirical science toward discovering the nature of the embodied mind.

The three major findings of cognitive science are:
The mind is inherently embodied.
Thought is mostly unconscious.
Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.

“These findings of cognitive science are profoundly disquieting [for traditional thinking] in two respects. First, they tell us that human reason is a form of animal reason, a reason inextricably tied to our bodies and the peculiarities of our brains. Second, these results tell us that our bodies, brains, and interactions with our environment provide the mostly unconscious basis for our everyday metaphysics, that is, our sense of what is real.”

All living creatures categorize. All creatures, as a minimum, separate eat from no eat and friend from foe. As neural creatures tadpole and wo/man categorize. There are trillions of synaptic connections taking place in the least sophisticated of creatures and this multiple synapses must be organized in some way to facilitate passage through a small number of interconnections and thus categorization takes place. Great numbers of different synapses take place in an experience and these are subsumed in some fashion to provide the category eat or foe perhaps.

Our categories are what we consider to be real in the world: tree, rock, animal…Our concepts are what we use to structure our reasoning about these categories. Concepts are neural structures that are the fundamental means by which we reason about categories.

Quotes from “Philosophy in the Flesh”.

I think the most obvious effect of the theory of evolution on philosophy is that it provided a rational counterargument to the best logical proof of god’s existence, the argument from design. The argument from design is actually a very convincing argument in the original sources such as Averroes and Aquinas. Everything in nature is incredibly well suited for its tasks, we have incredibly delicate sense organs etc. In retrospect, in light of the theory of evolution, it is easy to make fun of such arguments but it seems to me that the argument from design was the most logical answer available until 1859.

This was undoubtedly a monumental achievement by Darwin, and I think it’s impossible to assess how it has affected philosophy in the 20th and late 19th centuries. Several other groundbreaking discoveries were also made in the 19th century which contributed to the modern worldview, for instance in geology where it was shown that the Earth was billions of years old, not thousands.

Seems to me that ancient philosophers analyzed these phenomena pretty well without the theory of evolution, I don’t quite see the urgent need for an idea of origin in these contexts. To me, pseudo-scientific speculation on how emotions/honor/morals provided selective advantages for early hominids is much less interesting than the philosophy of here and now. And of course early philosophy contributed directly to the emergence of the theory of evolution, so it’s a bit circular to wonder how it would have been affected by this theory. But as for future philosophy, undoubtedly it had and will continue to have a great impact as long as the scientific worldview retains its dominance.