Premium
Granny versus Mother Nature—No Contest
Author(s) -
DENNETT DANIEL C.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
mind and language
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.905
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1468-0017
pISSN - 0268-1064
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0017.1996.tb00046.x
Subject(s) - intentionality , aside , darwin (adl) , contest , darwinism , epistemology , natural selection , meaning (existential) , representation (politics) , evolutionary theory , foundation (evidence) , selection (genetic algorithm) , natural (archaeology) , set (abstract data type) , philosophy , cognitive science , psychology , computer science , artificial intelligence , biology , linguistics , history , paleontology , theology , software engineering , archaeology , politics , political science , law , programming language
Fodor's doubts about neo‐Darwinism are driven by something other than familiarity with evolutionary biology, so they should be set aside. His claim that a theory of intentionality cannot be constructed on an evolutionary foundation because there is no representation in the process of natural selection reveals that he has been blind to the chief beauty of Darwin's vision: its capacity to explain not just how the living can come, gradually, from the non‐living, but also how meaning can come, by incremental steps, out of the meaningless.