208 Michael Bradie
no doubt that adults know more than the embryos that they sprang from. The
mechanisms contributing to the transmission of knowledge across generations and
that are involved in the education of children obviously include cultural factors
such as oral traditions, writing, records and training regimens.
A similar division applies to the development of moral norms. There is a histor-
ical account to be given of the development and intergenerational transmission of
moral norms that constitutes a phylogeny of sorts. Complementing this account
is an ontogenetic account of the emergence of moral awareness as the individual
progresses from embryo to adult. Developmental psychologists have written much
about these trends (e.g. [Kohlberg, 1984; Gilligan, 1982]).
Descriptive versus prescriptive accounts
Don Campbell saw the contributions of evolutionary theory to epistemology as
constituting what he called a “descriptive epistemology” that was tocomplement
but not replace the traditional “prescriptive accounts.” [Campbell, 1988] He held
that the empirical description offered by evolutionary theory of how we acquired
the ability to acquire knowledge in conjunction with psychological accounts of
how knowledge is acquired by individuals would, in combination with traditional
accounts of the nature of justification, provide a complete picture of the nature of
human knowledge.
Other naturalists took a more radical stand and proposed to replace the tradi-
tional accounts with purely empirical ones that eschewed the normative notion of
justification altogether [Quine, 1969; 1995]. This was met by traditionally minded
epistemologists with the charge, as formulated by Jaegwon Kim, that “for epis-
temology to go out of the business of justification is for it to go out of business”
[Kim, 1988].
What is the relationship between evolutionary epistemology and traditional
epistemology on the one hand and evolutionary ethics and traditional ethics on
the other? I want to suggest that the cases are parallel and that in each instance
there are three possible configurations for these relationships.
- Evolutionary accounts arecompetitorsto the traditional accounts. On this
view, both are trying to address the same concerns and offering competing
solutions to similar problems. Insofar as the tradition has been concerned
with normative and prescriptive claims, the traditionalists have argued that
evolutionary epistemology and evolutionary ethics are purely descriptive and
thus fail to address these traditional questions of justification. Reidl [1984]
is an epistemological example of this position. Herbert Spencer’sPrinciples
of Ethicsand Julian Huxley’sEvolution and Ethicsare historical examples
of this approach in ethics. More recently Robert Richards has proposed such
an approach inDarwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Ideas on Mind
and Behavior. - Evolutionary epistemology and evolutionary ethics might be seen ascomple-
mentaryto the traditional approaches. On this view, the focus of traditional