What Is Evolutionary Philosophy?
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Ever since Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, evolutionary thinking has been spreading in fits and starts throughout human culture. By 1973, its central place in the science of biology was firmly cemented, as seen by Theodosius Dobzhansky’s widely cited paper “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution.” By 1995, with the publication of Dan Dennett’s book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, this view of the all-encompassing nature of evolutionary thinking had officially spread from biology to philosophy. Dennett compared evolutionary thinking to the idea of a 'universal acid' capable of eating through anything it came into contact with. Dennett said:
This is by no means accepted by other philosophers in the field, however. And Dennett warned us on the final page of his book that this universal acid must be handled with care:
That’s exactly what this website is for. In 2012, it was published with a mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive attempt to ‘know thyself’, and a plan to expose these ideas to the variation and selection pressures that come from encountering the better arguments of other thinkers. Ten years later, this rational selection process has resulted in a totally revamped website organised around all of the major branches of philosophy. The universal acid has eaten through it all, and will no doubt continue to do so. In 2019, David Sloan Wilson published his book This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution. Wilson noted that it is now “widely understood that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution completely revolutionized the study of biology. Yet … the Darwinian revolution won’t be truly complete until it is applied more broadly—to everything associated with the words ‘human’, ‘culture’, and ‘policy’.” This website aims to be part of that revolution by applying evolutionary thinking to the entire field of philosophy. Please join in wherever you can! If you think any of the ideas here are ‘second-rate’, then help improve them into something that can survive. As you'll see throughout this site, life really does depend on this. |
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Why Evolutionary Philosophy Matters
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We humans have the technology and capacity to destroy ourselves and life on this planet as we know it. Or we could learn to live in cooperative harmony for eons of robust survival and flourishing. The choice between these outcomes will be made by our collective worldviews. How can we make the right choices? I believe that will come from the development and widespread proliferation of a worldview grounded in evolutionary philosophy.
In 1995, John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry published a seminal book about The Major Transitions in Evolution. This book described the eight major transitions that have taken life from its simplest origins of replicating molecules all the way to its current biodiverse web of complex relations. The big takeaway from this book is that each of the 8 major transitions occurred when formerly separate and competitive biological elements figured out new ways to join up and cooperate with one another and thus begin to evolve together. The most recent major transition was the one from primate societies to human societies via the origin of language. It stands to reason, therefore, that the next great transition will come when the multitude of conflicting and competitive human societies bond together around a single shared worldview. The fact that all life shares a single evolutionary history means that the worldview we will coalesce around must naturally be an evolutionary philosophy. None of this means we will wipe out our differences and replace them with a bland monoculture. The impossibility of knowing which paths lead to the best future means bio- and cultural diversity will always be highly valuable. The trick is to build a worldview that is "tight" enough to get us all pulling in the same direction, but "loose" enough to allow for plenty of trials and errors down uncertain paths. This trick is itself a multi-level evolutionary process. But we can consciously guide it towards a more and more robust evolutionary philosophy. In fact, since our power has already increased to the point where we could compete with ourselves right into oblivion, such a prosocial philosophy is exactly what we must develop for the ensured survival of life. |
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Quick Links
I've been writing about all the elements of this worldview for over 10 years now and there is a lot to explore. There are literally hundreds of posts on this site! But here are the most important essays, which collectively provide a great overview. For far more, please click around through the menu at the top of these pages. And be sure to subscribe to my mailing list to follow along and have a chance to contribute your own thoughts to this project.
A summary of the evolutionary worldview — what I learned from doing 100 thought experiments.
Epistemology: My most important essay on the problem of knowledge, which Plato defined as justified, true, beliefs, but Edmund Gettier showed was impossible. (This post is being turned into a magazine article and a peer-reviewed paper.)
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Ethics: My first peer-reviewed paper, which offers a solution to David Hume's is-ought divide. (David Sloan Wilson called this a brilliant paper during a podcast with Michael Shermer.)
Metaphysics: Here is a pdf of my evolutionary theory of consciousness and free will. It is a collection from my blog series on these phenomena, which are often considered the biggest mysteries left for naturalism to explain.
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Ethics: My published essay on replacing Maslow with an Evolutionary Hierarchy of Needs, which provides many more details on how life ought to act to survive.
Aesthetics: Links to my fiction for sale, which helps illustrate this worldview in action. Purchasing these helps support me in this endeavour too!
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Politics: My co-authored, peer-reviewed paper in Australia's leading law journal, in which my wife and I examine the collapse of John Stuart Mill's harm principle and offer a solution using an evolutionary perspective.
A rating and ranking of 60 of the most famous philosophers in history according to how well their views survive a rational selection process using evolutionary thinking.
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Another Way to Join In!
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If evolution and philosophy appeal to you, please consider Joining a Circle of Evolutionary Philosophers. This has the potential to be a revolutionary project with David Sloan Wilson's ProSocial World. We're aiming for something like the Vienna Circle, but drawing inspiration from the evolutionary sciences rather than physics. We've been building a community and going strong since early 2022 and are always open to adding more people, regardless of your experience with philosophy. Let me know if you have any questions about this!
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© 2012 Ed Gibney
