Konrad Lorenz as evolutionary epistemologist
the problem of intentionality
pp. 119-144
in: Abner Shimony, Debra Nails (eds), Naturalistic epistemology, Berlin, Springer, 1987Abstract
Konrad Lorenz, winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his contributions to the founding of ethology, has been preoccupied with epistemological questions throughout his career. His writings on the subject began in the 1930s and continue until the present.2 He has discussed the role of instinctual elements in human thinking and behavior and examined the implications for a society which is evolving faster than its individual members are evolving biologically (see Lorenz, 1966, 1974). Lorenz has also done a comparative examination of some features of human and animal "a prions' and has argued that the results vindicate a correspondence theory of truth and justify the belief that human beings can approach to a knowledge of reality (see Lorenz, 1941).
