The gods in design space: A Darwinian essay on mind and religion (R. A. Fisher, George Williams, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett)

This dissertation identifies the general philosophical and scientific constraints that any successful evolutionary theory of religion must observe. To a first approximation, the project equates mind with religion in the sense that the task of explaining the mind in Darwinian terms becomes the governing model for explaining religion. Chapter One winds its way through a century and a half of evolutionary thought, patiently working through the work of Charles Darwin, R. A. Fisher, George Williams and Richard Dawkins. The aim is to square away some of the most difficult and important neo-Darwinian concepts—especially those associated with the “selfish gene” revolution—so that we have a clear portrait of contemporary evolutionary theory's first principles. Chapter Two builds on this theoretical foundation by closely examining Daniel Dennett's bid to reconcile the traditional philosophy of mind to the strict demands of neo-Darwinian thought. The chapter canvasses his entire career and pays particular attention to the evolutionary rationale behind such key Dennettian ideas as: the intentional stance; Design Space; reverse engineering; and consciousness as a “virtual machine.” With the necessary conceptual clarification complete, Chapter Three takes up the challenge of articulating a genuinely explanatory theory of religion that is consistent with mainstream neo-Darwinian thought. Given that the dissertation's limited goal is establishing the empirical and theoretical constraints that govern such an enterprise, the chapter does not provide—much less confirm—a full-fledged theory in all of its detail. Rather, the objective is to sketch the inventory of questions that any robustly Darwinian explanation must address, and indicate which answers are dead-ends and which may hold future promise. One of the key conclusions is that for evolutionary theory to provide any lasting explanatory leverage in this area, it must team up with the cognitive neurosciences and demonstrate how the ubiquity of religion is a by-product of the mind's evolved phenotypic features.