A Naturalistic Epistemology

1. AIMS OF THE INTRODUCTION The systematic assessment of claims to knowledge is the central task of epistemology. According to naturalistic epistemologists, this task cannot be well performed unless proper attention is paid to the place of the knowing subject in nature. All philosophers who can appropriately be called 'naturalistic epistemologists' subscribe to two theses: (a) human beings, including their cognitive faculties, are entities in nature, inter acting with other entities studied by the natural sciences; and (b) the results of natural scientific investigations of human beings, particularly of biology and empirical psychology, are relevant and probably crucial to the epistemological enterprise. Naturalistic epistemologists differ in their explications of theses (a) and (b) and also in their conceptions of the proper admixture of other components needed for an adequate treatment of human knowledg- e.g., linguistic analysis, logic, decision theory, and theory of value. Those contributors to this volume who consider themselves to be naturalistic epistemologists (the majority) differ greatly in these respects. It is not my intention in this introduction to give a taxonomy of naturalistic epistemologies. I intend only to provide an overview which will stimulate a critical reading of the articles in the body of this volume, by facilitating a recognition of the authors' assumptions, emphases, and omissions.

This volume collects thirteen papers by Hilary Kornblith on the theme of naturalistic epistemology. These papers present Kornblith's own version of a naturalistic epistemology, together with critical discussion of alternative approaches, including work on foundationalism, the coherence theory of justification, internalism and externalism, social epistemology, the role of intuitions in philosophical theorizing, epistemic normativity, and the ways in whichphilosophical theories may be informed by empirical considerations.

Much has happened in the field of contemporary epistemology since Quine’s “Epistemology Naturalized” was published in 1969. Even before Ronald Giere published his article “Philosophy of Science Naturalized,” naturalized philosophy of science had been influenced by the so-called historical approach. Kuhm, Lakatos, Feyerabend and Laudan all contributed importantly to this trend. In this light it has emerged, without a doubt, that philosophy of science is closely related to epistemology. This volume explores some of the relevant relations and will be of interest to epistemologists and philosophers of science.

From the contents: Naturalistic epistemology, murder and suicide? But what about the promises! (Ton Derksen). - Naturalism and rationality (Christopher Hookway). - Quine's hypothetical theory of language learning: a comparison of different conceptualschemes of their logic (Mia Gosselin). - Quine and innate similarity spaces (Jaap van Brakel). - Quine and Davidson on the structure of empirical knowledge (Dirk Koppelberg). - Empathy and charity (Eva Picardi). - Quine: indeterminacy, 'robust realism', and truth (Sandra Laugier). - Quine and Putnam on conceptual relativity and reference: theft or honest toil? (Roger Vergauwen).

explores the interaction between psychology and epistemology and addresses empirical questions about how we should arrive at our beliefs, and whether the processes by which we arrive at our beliefs are the ones by which we ought to arrive at our beliefs

Many philosophers these days consider themselves naturalists, but it's doubtful any two of them intend the same position by the term. In this book, Penelope Maddy describes and practises a particularly austere form of naturalism called 'Second Philosophy'. Without a definitive criterion for what counts as 'science' and what doesn't, Second Philosophy can't be specified directly - 'trust only the methods of science!' or some such thing - so Maddy proceeds instead by illustratingthe behaviours of an idealized inquirer she calls the 'Second Philosopher'. This Second Philosopher begins from perceptual common sense and progresses from there to systematic observation, active experimentation, theory formation and testing, working all the while to assess, correct and improve hermethods as she goes. Second Philosophy is then the result of the Second Philosopher's investigations.Maddy delineates the Second Philosopher's approach by tracing her reactions to various familiar skeptical and transcendental views (Descartes, Kant, Carnap, late Putnam, van Fraassen), comparing her methods to those of other self-described naturalists (especially Quine), and examining a prominent contemporary debate (between disquotationalists and correspondence theorists in the theory of truth) to extract a properly second-philosophical line of thought. She then undertakes to practise SecondPhilosophy in her reflections on the ground of logical truth, the methodology, ontology and epistemology of mathematics, and the general prospects for metaphysics naturalized.

1. AIMS OF THE INTRODUCTION The systematic assessment of claims to knowledge is the central task of epistemology. According to naturalistic epistemologists, this task cannot be well performed unless proper attention is paid to the place of the knowing subject in nature. All philosophers who can appropriately be called 'naturalistic epistemologists' subscribe to two theses: (a) human beings, including their cognitive faculties, are entities in nature, inter acting with other entities studied by the natural sciences; and (b) the results of natural scientific investigations of human beings, particularly of biology and empirical psychology, are relevant and probably crucial to the epistemological enterprise. Naturalistic epistemologists differ in their explications of theses (a) and (b) and also in their conceptions of the proper admixture of other components needed for an adequate treatment of human knowledg- e.g., linguistic analysis, logic, decision theory, and theory of value. Those contributors to this volume who consider themselves to be naturalistic epistemologists (the majority) differ greatly in these respects. It is not my intention in this introduction to give a taxonomy of naturalistic epistemologies. I intend only to provide an overview which will stimulate a critical reading of the articles in the body of this volume, by facilitating a recognition of the authors' assumptions, emphases, and omissions.

Philosophers have traditionally used conceptual analysis to investigate knowledge. Hilary Kornblith argues that this is misguided: it is not the concept of knowledge that we should be investigating, but knowledge itself, a robust natural phenomenon, suitable for scientific study. Cognitive ethologists not only attribute intentional states to non-human animals, they also speak of such animals as having knowledge; and this talk of knowledge does causal and explanatory work withintheir theories. The account of knowledge which emerges from this literature is a version of reliabilism: knowledge is reliably produced true belief.This account of knowledge is not meant merely to provide an elucidation of an important scientific category. Rather, Kornblith argues that knowledge, in this very sense, is what philosophers have been talking about all along. Rival accounts are examined in detail and it is argued that they are inadequate to the phenomenon of knowledge (even of human knowledge).One traditional objection to this sort of naturalistic approach to epistemology is that, in providing a descriptive account of the nature of important epistemic categories, it must inevitably deprive these categories of their normative force. But Kornblith argues that a proper account of epistemic normativity flows directly from the account of knowledge which is found in cognitive ethology. Knowledge may be properly understood as a real feature of the world which makes normative demands uponus.This controversial and refreshingly original book offers philosophers a new way to do epistemology.

Many contemporary Anglo-American philosophers describe themselves as naturalists. But what do they mean by that term? Popular naturalist slogans like, "there is no first philosophy" or "philosophy is continuous with the natural sciences" are far from illuminating. "Understanding Naturalism" provides a clear and readable survey of the main strands in recent naturalist thought. The origin and development of naturalist ideas in epistemology, metaphysics and semantics is explained through the works of Quine, Goldman, Kuhn, Chalmers, Papineau, Millikan and others. The most common objections to the naturalist project - that it involves a change of subject and fails to engage with "real" philosophical problems, that it is self-refuting, and that naturalism cannot deal with normative notions like truth, justification and meaning - are all discussed. "Understanding Naturalism" distinguishes two strands of naturalist thinking - the constructive and the deflationary - and explains how this distinction can invigorate naturalism and the future of philosophical research.

Working from Within examines the nature and development of W. V. Quine's naturalism, the view that philosophy ought to be continuous with science. Sander Verhaegh's reconstruction is based on a comprehensive study of Quine's personal and academic archives. Transcriptions of five unpublished papers, letters, and notes are included in the appendix.