Episode 123: Campbell vs Deutsch: Incremental vs Cosmic Significance

Bruce compares Donald Campbell’s evolutionary epistemology and David Deutsch’s ideas on infinite knowledge growth. What is knowledge growth? Is it a rare thing limited to only biological evolution and human ideas, as Deutsch seems to argue? (Does he argue that?) Or is it a ubiquitous process that happens all around us at all levels of nature as Campbell argues?

Is knowledge created in human minds an incremental process, as Campbell might emphasize, based on blind variation and selection? Or as Deutsch might emphasize, is this a cosmically significant, open-ended process based on creativity and explanation? Can these two great thinkers ideas be reconciled or are they in contradiction to each other?

⁠Support us on Patreon