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Book SynopsisHas exclusion of Darwin's views on evolution distorted 20c philosophy? Cunningham suggests a reappraisal. Two of the dominant traditions in twentieth-century philosophy, analytic philosophy (founded by G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell) and phenomenology (founded by Edmund Husserl), explicitly excluded Charles Darwin's account of evolution, not because they saw it as mistaken, but because they saw it as irrelevant. These two traditions set the stage for a great deal of subsequent philosophy, and Professor Cunningham argues that the non-Darwinian framework they constructed continues to constrain significant portions of the field, in particular theories of perception and mind. In tracing the major reasons for this exclusion of Darwin and evolutionary considerations, and the consequencesfor philosophy, Professor Cunningham criticises purely cognitivist theories of perception and Machine Functionalist theories of mind, and offers proposals on how these theories should be amended to take account of the adaptive role that perception and mind play on behalf of a living organism's struggle for survival and well-being. SUZANNE CUNNINGHAMis Associate Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University, Chicago.
Trade ReviewA valuable reading of the implications of Darwin's views and of the various readings of Darwinism in the recent history of philosophy. RUSSELL: JOURNAL OF BERTRAND RUSSELL ARCHIVES'A significant breakthrough in contemporary philosophy...[Cunningham's] exhaustive review of the relevant literature is impressive. * METAPHILOSOPHY July 98, Vol. 29, #3. *
Table of ContentsDarwin's relevance to philosophy; G.E. Moore and evolutionary ethics; Bertrand Russell and evolutionism; perception and mind in the analytic tradition; Edmund Husserl, phenomenology, and evolution; Husserl on perception and mind; perception and mind - a Darwinian approach.
