Jan Faye – författare

One of the most basic problems in the philosophy of science involves determining the extent to which nature is governed by laws. This volume presents a wide-ranging overview of the contemporary debate and includes some of its foremost participants. It begins with an extensive introduction describing the historical, logical and philosophical background of the problems dealt with in the essays. Among the topics treated in the essays is the relationship between laws of nature and causal laws as well as the role of ceteris paribus clauses in scientific explanations. Traditionally, the problem of the unity of science was intimately connected to the problem of understanding the unity of nature. This fourth volume of Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science tackles these problems as part of our consideration of the most fundamental aspects of scientific understanding.

Traditionally, philosophers have argued that epistemology is a normative discipline and therefore occupied with an a priori analysis of the necessary and sufficient conditions that a belief must fulfill to be acceptable as knowledge. But such an approach makes sense only if human knowledge has some normative features, which conceptual analysis is able to disclose. As it turns out, philosophers have not been able to find such features unless they are very selective in their choice of examples of knowledge. Much of what we intuitively think functions as knowledge, both in human and non-human animals, does not share these normative features.

The purpose of this book is to demonstrate that natural selection has adapted human sense impressions to deliver reliable information without meeting the traditional commitments for having knowledge. In connection with memory, sensory and bodily information provides an animal with experiential knowledge. Experiential knowledge helps an animal to navigate its environment. Moreover, experiential knowledge has different functions depending on whether the deliverance of information stems from the organism’s external or internal senses.

This book presents a persuasive argument in favour of evolutionary naturalism and outlines what such a stance means for our capacity of observation and understanding reality. The author discusses how our capacity of knowledge is adapted to handle sensory information about the environment in the light of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. The implication of this is that much of our thinking in science and philosophy that goes beyond our immediate experience rests on abstractions and hypostatization. This book rejects the possibility of having any knowledge of reality as it is in itself, while not denying that our capacity of conceptual abstractions is of great benefit for our survival.