Volume 54, Issue 2, 2006
Jan Pleszczyński
Pages 175-197
Evolutionary Epistemology and Cognitive Sciences
In this article I am dealing mainly with the following notions: “perception apparatus” (Weltbildapparat), “view of the world” (Weltbild, picture of the world) and “representation”. The first and the second ones belong to the basic notions in the vocabulary of K. Lorenz’s evolutionary epistemology, the third in cognitive sciences. I seek to demonstrate the relationships between them. This analysis is put in a broader context, indicating the relationships between expensively developing cognitive sciences and evolutionary epistemology (much less popular today).
It is quite easy to determine what the perception apparatus is, however, it is harder to state what the view of the world, especially in its ontological aspect, is. Nevertheless, the view of the representation in the context of evolutionary epistemology points to the fact that this notion is still unclear and many representational features can be assigned to objects which, as it seems, are not representations according to cognitive sciences.