This is a very interesting note on evolutionary epistemology in the fine online Stanford philosophical collection. It seems to me that they take knowledge as an unexamined primitive. This is OK as it removes semantics leaving still difficult questions. The article ignores the evolution of knowing. They consider the evolution of acquisition of knowledge but not the evolution of the structure of knowledge (until section 1.5). Logic is the study of the structure of some sorts of knowledge.

I am interested here in the first of the two sorts of questions that section 1.1 broaches: the evolution of the brain features that allow it to know things—EEM. (N.B. “Ontogenesis” seems to mean morphogenesis.)

Bizarre but not absurd. I am not impressed after a few minutes of Googling.

Section 1.5 extends the ability to know to perhaps chordata but not the prokaryotic cells with flagellar rotors who seem to know (at least sense) whether they are swimming towards greater sucrose concentration. When I read the book (“Evolutionary Epistemology”) I could not find a line to exclude these prokaryotes. Perhaps this is not a continuous evolution or perhaps a line can be drawn.

The simple formal model given in section 2.1 describes the bugs with rotors nicely.

Some philosophers still want a first person account of knowledge. I believe there is value in that but I think that such explanations cannot be complete. (By first person I mean an explanation that bottoms out in already familiar subjective primitives, or features that can be pointed out via suggested mental exercises; they want an ordinary explanation.) For now I cache a link.

The sea-moss example is a nice example of evolved intelligence of a plant. It is an evolved reflex.

The scope of the article is an indication of the length of the evolutionary road to intelligence. They suggest a few distantly separated landmarks on that road. Unlike the road to the eye I think this road is largely unexplored.

In section 2.4 the paper seems initially to adopt “truth” as a primitive. But then an Axelrod sort of game is introduced.

I largely concur with the ideas ascribed to Gerhard Vollmer by Wikipedia including his omission of metaphysical elements.