If thinking is modeling, then 'the organism is a theory of its environment' follows automatically. If the organism carries around in its CNS {central nervous system} an internal model of external reality (and, of course, a model of itself and its capabilities) then it will be able to adapt to, to survive within, that environment. It will be able to try out and assess various alternative actions, react to future situations before they arise, and in general anticipate the environment in which it finds itself. (Our nervous systems are instruments of adaptation to our environment because they permit trial of alternatives for future conduct in an economical manner: thought models potential realities.) Modeling has survival value--it enables an organism to anticipate the future course of events and to act in accordance with the information. As shoud [sic] be obvious by now, the function of thought, as modeling, is identical to that which is attributed to induction or nondemonstrative inference: thought-as-modeling is the vehicle by which we gain our contingent knowledge of reality. (Weimer, 1971, p. 458)
... one never knows what other people mean by what they say or write. One can only make an informed guess, taking into account all the cues that are available: from the communication context, from one's own relevant experience, and from the actual linguistic signal. To put it differently, I cannot know what idea is in your mind as you speak or write. I can only know what ideas I would have had in mind if I had produced the same lexico-grammatical sequence as I believe you to have produced in the context that I think you think we currently share.(Wells, 1986, pp. 216, 217)
In further illustration of the range of the explanation afforded by the principle of Natural Selection. . . we may instance an application of it to the more special psychological problem of the development of the individual mind by its own experiences. . . . Here, then, is a close analogy, at least, to those fundamental facts of the organic world on which the law of Natural Selection is based; the facts, namely, of the "rapid increase of organisms," limited only by "the conditions of existence," and by competition in that "struggle for existence" which results in the "survival of the fittest." As the tendency to an unlimited increase in existing organisms is held in check only by those conditions of their existence which are chiefly comprised in the like tendencies of other organisms to unlimited increase, and is thus maintained (so long as external conditions remain unchanged) in an unvarying balance of life; and as this balance adjusts itself to slowly changing external conditions, so, in the history of the individual mind, beliefs which sprang spontaneously from simple and single experiences, and from a naturally unlimited tendency to generalization, are held mutually in check, and in their harmony represent the properly balanced experiences and knowledges of the mind, and by adaptive changes are kept in accordance with changing external conditions, or with the varying total results in the memory of special experiences. (Wright, 1971, pp. 115-116)
[HOME] [NEXT]Since the human mind is a product of evolution--any any opposite view such as that o fclassical dualism means a kind of 'obscurantism'31--the evolutionary appraoch can be extended to the products of mind, that is to say to epistemic activities such as science. (Wuketits, 1984c, p. 8)