You can't always get what you want: Evolution and true beliefs

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Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (6):533-534 (2009)
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Abstract

McKay & Dennett (M&D) convincingly argue against many proposals for adaptively functioning misbelief, but the conclusion that true beliefs are generally adaptive does not follow. Adaptive misbeliefs may be few in kind but many in number; maladaptive misbeliefs may routinely elude selective pruning; reproductively neutral misbeliefs may abound; and adaptively grounded beliefs may reliably covary with but not truthfully represent reality

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10.1017/s0140525x09991476

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Michael Murray
Franklin and Marshall College

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References found in this work

The unnatural nature of science.Lewis Wolpert - 1992 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Darwin machines and the nature of knowledge.Henry C. Plotkin - 1994 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Epistemology in the Age of Neuroscience.Patricia Smith Churchland - 1987 - Journal of Philosophy 84 (10):544-553.
Uncommon sense: the heretical nature of science.Alan H. Cromer - 1993 - New York: Oxford University Press.

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