## 1. General Orientation



Contemporary discussions of NE tend to take as their starting point
Quine's seminal 1969 paper, "Epistemology
Naturalized". Before considering that work, some background will
help to give a sense of the general character of the traditional
approach to epistemological theorizing, the various themes running
through NE, and the pre-Quinean history of NE. Here, the natural
starting point is Descartes, who is widely regarded as "the
founder of modern epistemology" (Sosa 2003: 554; cf. BonJour
2002: 6).


### 1.1 Some key features of TE



Descartes' avowed goal was to "start again right from the
foundations" (*First Meditation*, 1988 [1641]: 17) of
science--i.e., to legitimate the foundations of inquiry *per
se*, and to show how we ought to conduct ourselves intellectually
in order to achieve knowledge and avoid error. The realization of the
possibility of massive error--made vivid through the device of
certain skeptical possibilities--of course had a significant
influence over Descartes' theorizing. His specific
recommendation, arrived at through careful reflection on his own
ideas, was a particularly strong foundationalism designed to rule out
the possibility of error: one should "hold back [one's]
assent from opinions which are not completely certain and
indubitable" (*ibid.*), and in fact treat as false
anything that could possibly be false. On the other hand, Descartes
says, "I...seem to be able to lay it down as a general rule
that whatever I perceive very clearly and distinctly is true"
(*ibid*.: 87). So long as one carefully apportions one's
judgment to the degree of "clarity and distinctness" of
one's ideas, given God's providence, one can proceed in
confidence that one is not theorizing in error.



Very few current practitioners of TE endorse Descartes'
arguments and positive views. Very few, for example, accept his
*infallibilism* about what knowledge requires, and many regard
Descartes' arguments as manifesting an unfortunate circularity.
Nonetheless, Descartes' work exemplifies certain assumptions
about the epistemological enterprise that many epistemologists have
retained, even if only implicitly, and that have come to be closely
associated with TE. Taking our cue from Crumley (2009: 185; Goldman
1986: 1-2, and Pacherie 2002: 300-301, make similar
suggestions), we can identify the most salient such assumptions as
follows:



(a)
Much of traditional theorizing about central epistemic notions,
such as knowledge, justification, evidence, and so on, has been
carried out
***a priori***: careful reflection, rather than
empirical investigation, is taken to be the proper method to arrive at
an accurate understanding of the true epistemological principles and
facts.
(b)
Second, and relatedly, is a view of epistemology as
**autonomous**: in terms of both its methods and its
subject matter, epistemology is independent of the sciences. Hence,
for example, there's nothing the sciences can tell us that will,
or could, inform our answers to the distinctively philosophical
questions epistemologists ask ("what is knowledge?",
"is knowledge even possible?", etc.). On the contrary, if
anything, it is epistemology that's prior to the
sciences--advances in the former can aid and constrain the
latter, but not *vice versa*.
(c)
Third--and again, relatedly--a distinctive feature of
traditional epistemology is said to be its concern with
**normative** matters. By this, it is usually meant at
least that epistemological facts--whether a belief is justified
or rational, e.g.--are *evaluative*, and not purely
descriptive: to say that a belief is *justified*, for example,
is to say that from an epistemic point of view it is *good*, *correct*, or
*permissible*, to hold it.
(Compare Chisholm's (1977) calling "justified" a
"term of epistemic appraisal".) Many proponents of TE
regard epistemology as being normative in respect of being
*prescriptive* as well--i.e., of telling us how we
*should* form our beliefs, and so on. This connects with the
idea, popular within TE, that epistemology is in the business of
offering useful advice, and so as having "an important
meliorative dimension" (Kitcher 1992: 64; cf. Wrenn 2006:
60).


To Crumley's list, we might, given its historical importance,
add the following:



(d)
While there is hardly agreement about how best to do so, among the
central tasks of epistemology as traditionally practiced has been to
articulate a plausible response
to **skepticism**--i.e., to defend the ordinary
commitment that we have, or are reasonable in taking ourselves to
have, a wide range of justified beliefs and/or a decent stock of
knowledge.


(a)-(d), again, are some of the central features of TE, as it is
usually understood. Obviously, there are natural connections among
them. For instance, to the extent that the *autonomy* of epistemology
 (b)
 is thought to amount to its *priority*--insofar as it
approaches the status of "first philosophy", in the manner
Descartes supposed--a concern with
 (d)
 will be natural, even obligatory. So too, one might think that the
autonomy of epistemology
 (b)
 is owing to its (partly) normative subject matter
 (c),
 and/or its distinctive methodology
 (a),
 as compared with the (purportedly) purely descriptive concerns and *a
posteriori* methods of science. And so on. However, the theories
falling within TE are, once again, a varied lot; and those sympathetic
to TE at times pull these features apart, emphasizing commitment to
them to varying degrees and in different ways.


### 1.2 NE: Some key forms and themes



And so too for those who favor NE: Naturalists join in rejecting one
or more of the above features of traditional (non-naturalistic)
epistemology. But different theories and theorists within NE
reject--to varying extents, in different ways, and for different
reasons--different combinations of these features, and so differ
in how much distance is put between their specific view and
traditional
 epistemologies.[2]
 The resulting variety among naturalistic theories is reflected in the
various taxonomies that other commentators have offered. Thus, for
example, Alvin Goldman (1994: 301-304) has distinguished between
*meta-epistemic*, *substantive* and
*methodological* versions of
 NE:[3]



**Meta-epistemic NE**: The meta-epistemological position
that epistemic properties--in particular, those usually counted
as "normative" or evaluative (see above)--are, or
must be, appropriately related to "natural" properties.
The major forms of such appropriate relations are commonly thought to
be reduction and supervenience. (As Goldman notes (1994:
301-302), and we'll see below, meta-epistemic NE may not
as it stands be sufficient to distinguish between certain naturalistic
and non-naturalistic views; and arguably, the motivation for it is as
much methodological as it is metaphysical--see
 Section 3.2.)



In terms of
 (a)-(d)
 above, meta-epistemic NE would constitute a denial of the autonomy of
epistemology
 (b),
 at least as regards its fundamental ontology. If the relevant
evaluative property cannot be appropriately related to natural ones,
on this view, it is rejected as unreal--yielding
**eliminativism** or **error
theory**--which would constitute a rejection of
 (c).



**Substantive NE**: Some object-level thesis in the vein
recommended by meta-epistemic NE--that is, an account of some
epistemic phenomenon in terms of certain natural (non-normative)
properties or relations. Examples here would include accounts of
knowledge or justification in terms of causation (Goldman 1967),
reliability (Armstrong 1968, Goldman 1979, Papineau 1993, Kornblith
2002), natural functions (Graham 2012, Millikan 1984), information
theoretic notions (Dretske 1981), or some kind of nomic or counterfactual
dependence (Nozick 1983). Such accounts tend to be
"externalist" in
 character[4]--i.e.,
 they do not require, for a subject to know or be justified in
believing, that s/he be aware of that in virtue of which s/he knows or
is
 justified.[5]



Substantive NE too is a rejection of any very strong version of the
autonomy of epistemology
 (b),
 understood as a claim about its subject matter. Further, some critics
have contended that externalism is, as such, ill-equipped to provide
useful guidance to epistemic agents, at least of the first-personal
reason-guiding variety. In this way, it has been thought, substantive
naturalistic views might run afoul of
 (c),
 understood as a claim about a specific type of normative guidance or
improvement (see, e.g., Kaplan 1994, BonJour 1994). An important
sub-theme within substantive NE, as Goldman notes, is
"descriptive realism as opposed [to] idealization" (1994,
p. 305), not merely for accuracy's sake, but so as to ensure
responsiveness to the principle that "ought implies can"
(*ibid.*). For some, this is the primary motive for adopting a
naturalistic approach:



> 
> 
> The main reason that I believe that epistemology would have much to
> learn from psychology if psychologists knew more about belief
> formation is that I believe that in epistemology as in ethics ought
> implies can. Epistemic agents cannot and ought not be faulted on the
> grounds that they did not follow epistemic strategies which are not
> cognitively possible for them. (Grandy 1994: 343; cf., e.g., Cherniak
> 1986; Harman 1986, 1999; Bach 1984, 1985; Kornblith 2001)
> 
> 
> 



Another manifestation of the aversion to overly-demanding or otherwise
"unrealistic" epistemic theory is a tendency to treat



> 
> 
> the question "How is knowledge possible?"...as an
> abbreviation for the question "How is knowledge possible for
> beings like us in the world as it is?" (Pacherie 2002: 306; cf.
> Papineau 1993, "Introduction", and Kornblith 1994b)
> 
> 
> 



The same "realistic" outlook is evident as well as in
naturalists' well-known and often-criticized disinclination to
seriously engage with the traditional problem of philosophical
skepticism (on which, more below).



Last within Goldman's typology is **methodological
NE**, according to which epistemology



> 
> 
> should either consist in empirical science, or should at least be
> informed and beholden to the results of scientific disciplines. (1994:
> 305) 
> 
> 
> 



If the former, we have what Feldman (2012) and others, following
Kornblith (1994a: 3-4), refer to as **replacement
naturalism**. On the latter, weaker reading, on which
epistemology retains some of its essential (traditional) features and
merely "needs help" from other disciplines (Goldman 1986:
9), we have what Feldman (2012) calls **cooperative
naturalism** and what Goldman elsewhere (1999a) dubs
**moderate naturalism** (see
 Section 5.1
 below).



In his own work, Goldman (1999a; 1986; 2005: 403) has emphasized the
methodological form or dimension of NE; and it is foremost in the work
of others as well, including Quine (1969b) and Kornblith (e.g., 2002,
2007). In terms of the features of TE described above, a commitment to
methodological NE would see us rejecting or qualifying both the *a priori*
character of epistemology
 (a), understood as a prescriptive claim, and its methodological autonomy (b): on this view, empirical methods and the
results obtained thereby have a crucial role to play in epistemological theorizing.



Having reviewed some general features of TE, and some of the major
forms and themes of NE, we will next consider some important and
influential recent versions of NE, using the above features and
categories to clarify and facilitate discussion. This survey will
center on recent epistemological developments. However, it bears
emphasizing once again that NE *per se* is not itself a recent
phenomenon: as briefly explained in the next (sub)section, various
themes within NE are as much a part of our epistemological inheritance
as are the usual features of TE.


### 1.3 NE: A brief note on the pre-Quinean history



While Cartesian epistemology offers an especially vivid instance of
all of the features of TE discussed above, some of those same
tendencies and concerns are, of course, present in varying degrees in
the work of other figures in the epistemological canon. The assumption
that epistemology trades in normative matters, and not just
description
 (c),
 and an abiding concern with skepticism
 (d),
 for example, can be seen in much epistemology from Descartes through
to the present.



At the same time, however, many of the same figures' works
comfortably assume features of the naturalistic outlook. So naturalism
is far from a recent invention; as Kornblith puts it, it has "a
long and distinguished heritage" (1999: 158). As the subtitle of
Hume's most famous work, for example, makes
clear--"An attempt to introduce the experimental method of
reasoning into moral [i.e., human] subjects"--his intention
was to apply the Newtonian "experimental method" to the
human mind, avoiding "hypotheses" and trying to uncover
the most general underlying principles. Only then, he thought, would
we be in a position to get our epistemic position into proper
perspective. Further, the inspiration Hume draws from sciences beyond
"the science of man" (1739, "Introduction") to
which he intends his own work to be a contribution, is not merely
methodological. He compares his principles of association to gravity,
for example, "ideas and impressions" being the relevant
domain of "objects" on which those "forces"
operate (*ibid*., 1.1.4 para 6). Lastly, according to Barry
Stroud, Hume's "revolution in philosophy" was his
use of this empirical orientation to rein in and replace an overly
rationalistic conception of cognitive agents:



> 
> 
> There had traditionally been a largely inherited or a priori framework
> of thinking about human nature--in particular about man's
> rationality--that Hume seeks both to discredit and to supplant.
> (Stroud 1977: 9)
> 
> 
> 



On the face of it, the "skeptical" upshot of Hume's
study stands in stark contrast to the strong sense of enlightenment
optimism with which the *Treatise* begins (compare the
"Introduction" of the *Treatise* to Book I's
"Conclusion"). But Locke, for example, is more
consistently optimistic. His discussion of the nature and extent of
human knowledge is, like Hume's, preceded and informed by
psychological theorizing based--to the best of his
ability--on good observational reasoning. Further, Locke insists
that it is "[f]olly to expect demonstration in everything"
(Locke 1690: IV.XI.10), and he defends the information of the senses
as giving us "an assurance that *deserves the name
knowledge*" (*ibid.*, IV.XI.3), notwithstanding the
theoretical possibility of our being deceived. This runs counter to
Descartes' infallibilism, of course. But it also illustrates the
above-mentioned shift, characteristic of NE, away from perfectly
general questions about the nature and possibility of knowledge to
understanding human knowledge, given the facts of our powers and
situation:



> 
> 
> ...our faculties being suited not to the full extent of Being,
> nor to a perfect, clear, comprehensive Knowledge of things free from
> all doubt and scruple; but to the preservation of us, in whom they
> are; and accommodated to the use of Life: they serve to our purpose
> well enough, if they will but give us certain notice of those Things,
> which are convenient or inconvenient to us.... (1690:
> IV.XI.8)
> 
> 
> 



Similar themes, both methodological and epistemic, are at the
forefront in Thomas Reid, who begins his first major work as
follows:



> 
> 
> Wise men now agree, or ought to agree, in this, that there is but one
> way to the knowledge of nature's works--the way of
> observation and experiment....All that we know of the body, is
> owing to anatomical dissection and observation, and it must be by an
> anatomy of the mind that we can discover its powers and
> principles.... (1764: Chapter 1, Section 1)
> 
> 
> 



As to his epistemology, Norman Daniels claims that Reid's views
can be seen as "a precursor to recent work in cognitive
psychology and 'naturalized epistemology'" (1989:
133). And Rysiew (2002) argues that Reid does not entirely separate
psychological facts from epistemic norms.



In general, then, if by "psychologism" we mean simply the
view that psychology is of direct relevance to certain areas of
philosophy--as opposed to its (usually pejorative) usage in
denoting the *identification* of psychological and normative or
logical matters--there is ample backing for Goldman's claim
that "[p]sychologistic epistemology...is in the mainstream
of historical epistemology" (1986:
 6).[6]
 It was Frege (in *The Foundations of Arithmetic*, 1884), and
Husserl (in his "Prolegomena to Pure Logic", in the
*Logical Investigations*, 1900), with their trenchant critiques
of psychologism in logic and mathematics, who were largely responsible
for initiating the sharp turn away from this broadly naturalistic
*status quo* (see Kusch 2014; see too Kitcher 1992, Goldman
1986, Kelly 2014, Anderson 2005, and Engel 1998). A key part of
Frege's and Husserl's thinking here was that tying logic
to psychology was incompatible with preserving its necessary
character, and with its being knowable *a priori*. Following
their lead, the logical positivists approached epistemology, as other
areas, as a matter of *a priori* "rational
reconstruction", in Carnap's (1928 [1967]) famous phrase.
Such reconstruction "replace[d] rationally opaque processes with
transparently rational definitions and inferences" (Richardson
2006: 682). Claims about ordinary objects were given "logical
definitions" in a language that made reference only to
experience (sense data); more complex such statements were defined in
terms of simpler ones, and logical relations between them were made
explicit. In none of this was the goal to be faithful to actual
psychology.



The clean separation of psychology from epistemology was enshrined as
well in Reichenbach's famous distinction between the context of
discovery and the context of justification, which he described as
"a more convenient determination" of rational
reconstruction (Reichenbach 1938: 6; cf. Richardson 2006: 683).
Reichenbach writes:



> 
> 
> Epistemology does not regard the processes of thinking in their actual
> occurrence; this task is entirely left to psychology. What
> epistemology intends is to construct thinking processes in a way in
> which they ought to occur if they are to be ranged in a consistent
> system; or to construct justifiable sets of operations which can be
> intercalated between the starting-point and the issue of
> thought-processes, replacing the real intermediate links. Epistemology
> thus considers a logical substitute rather than real processes.
> (Reichenbach 1938: 5)
> 
> 
> 



While enthusiasm for the project of rational reconstruction faded,
elements of the program--a disinterest in psychology, a
preference for a formal-logical approach, and a concern with precise
definition of key terms--were retained. It was in this period
that "conceptual analysis", for example, came to
prominence.



> 
> 
> The paradigms of epistemology became the logic of confirmation, the
> analysis of "*S* knows that *p*", and the theory
> of justification or warrant, (Goldman 1986: 7) 
> 
> 
> 



to none of which was psychology, much less any other empirical
science, thought to be relevant.


## 2. "Epistemology Naturalized"



Just as very few proponents of TE endorse Descartes' own
epistemological views, very few advocates of NE endorse the position
presented--or seemingly presented--in the paper that is
the starting point of contemporary discussions of NE, Quine's
"Epistemology Naturalized" (1969b). However, because of
its undeniable historical importance, and because it will serve to
introduce some of the principal objections to NE, it can hardly be
ignored.



Like Descartes, Quine takes epistemology to be "concerned with
the foundations of science" (1969b: 69). Addressing the logical
empiricist project of rational reconstruction, he says that 



> 
> 
> [t]he Cartesian quest for certainty [is] the remote motivation of
> epistemology, both on its conceptual side and its doctrinal side.
> (1969b: 74) 
> 
> 
> 



About the epistemological project, so understood, Quine's chief
observation is hardly news: the Cartesian quest is "a lost
cause" (*ibid*.). Whether in the form Descartes himself
practiced, or in any subsequent form up to and including the logical
empiricists', work on both the conceptual and the doctrinal side
is bound to fail: no strict translation of the notion of
"body" in sensory terms is possible, and "the
inferential steps between sensory evidence and scientific doctrine
must fall short of certainty" (1969b: 74-75).



What *is* new in "Epistemology Naturalized" is what
Quine recommends in the face of this result:



> 
> 
> Why all this creative reconstruction, all this make-believe? The
> stimulation of his sensory receptors is all the evidence anybody has
> had to go on, ultimately, in arriving at his picture of the world. Why
> not just see how this construction really proceeds? Why not settle for
> psychology? (1969b: 75)
> 
> 
> 
> If all we hope for is a reconstruction that links science to
> experience in explicit ways short of translation, then it would seem
> more sensible to settle for psychology. Better to discover how science
> is in fact developed and learned than to fabricate a fictitious
> structure to a similar effect. (1969b: 78)
> 
> 
> 
> Epistemology, or something like it, simply falls into place as a
> chapter of psychology and hence of natural science. It studies a
> natural phenomenon, viz., a physical human subject. This human subject
> is accorded a certain experimentally controlled input--certain
> patterns of irradiation in assorted frequencies, for
> instance--and in the fullness of time the subject delivers as
> output a description of the three-dimensional external world and its
> history. The relation between the meager input and the torrential
> output is a relation that we are prompted to study for somewhat the
> same reasons that always prompted epistemology: namely, in order to
> see how evidence relates to theory, and in what ways one's
> theory of nature transcends any available evidence....But a
> conspicuous difference between old epistemology and the
> epistemological enterprise in this new psychological setting is that
> we can now make free use of empirical psychology. (1969b: 82-83)
> 
> 
> 
> 



Even if it would offend strong anti-psychologists, it is not the
suggestion that epistemologists make "free use" of
empirical psychology that is so radical; it is the suggestion that
psychology can and should *replace* epistemology. (As
we'll see in
 Section 3.2
 below, in later writings Quine cites other sciences as being relevant
to epistemology naturalized as well. But that does not affect the
present discussion.) In terms of the features of TE laid out above
 (Section 1.1),
 Quine appears here to be rejecting
 (a)-(c)
 altogether: epistemology--"or something like
it"--is recast as wholly *a posteriori*,
descriptive, and anything but autonomous. As to
 (d),
 the traditional concern with finding an adequate response to the
skeptic, Quine, in later writings, responds with the claim that
"skeptical doubts are scientific doubts" (1975: 68):



> 
> 
> Scepticism is an offshoot of science. The basis for scepticism is the
> awareness of illusion, the discovery that we must not always
> believe our eyes....But in what sense are they illusions? In the
> sense that they seem to be material objects which they in fact are
> not. Illusions are illusions only relative to prior acceptance of
> genuine bodies with which to contrast them....The positing of
> bodies is already rudimentary physical science; and it is only after
> that stage that the sceptic's invidious distinctions make
> sense....Rudimentary physical science, that is, common sense
> about bodies, is thus needed as a springboard for scepticism....
> (1975: 67)
> 
> 
> 



But if skepticism itself is born of science, we can appeal to science
in answering its doubts. For instance, we can look to natural
selection, and find "some encouragement in Darwin" in
quelling doubts about the reliability of induction:



> 
> 
> creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic but
> praiseworthy tendency to die out before reproducing more of their
> kind. (1969c: 126)
> 
> 
> 



(For similar ideas, see Kornblith 1994a and Dretske 1989. For a
discussion of "evolutionary epistemology", a specific
avenue of study that treats both aspects of human cognition and theory
change in science in terms of selectional processes, see Bradie and
Harms 2015.)



In thus deflating the skeptical problem, Quine turns his back on
 (d),
 the final characteristic feature of TE. In terms of the forms of NE
discussed above
 (Section 1.2),
 Quine appears to be recommending replacement naturalism and,
consequently, the elimination of terms of epistemic appraisal in favor
of descriptions of psychological goings-on (eliminative NE).


## 3. Critical Reactions to Quine



Unsurprisingly, given the radical character of the view defended,
Quine's "Epistemology Naturalized" has been
subjected to heavy
 criticism.[7]
 In this Section, we briefly consider a number of specific objections
to it that have been presented. As we will see, some of these are more
easily met, at least *prima facie*, than others. Others, geared
as they are towards Quine's arguments and position in particular, are of
less general interest. Others still raise issues facing all versions
of NE--they remain front and center in current discussions of NE
and its prospects.


### 3.1 Five objections



(1) One natural response to Quine's "Epistemology
Naturalized" is to see it as involving, in one or another way, a
gross ***non sequitur***. On one version, this is
because Quine equates TE with Cartesian epistemology; whereas, by the
time of his writing, infallibilism had largely fallen out of fashion
(e.g., Kim 1988: 386-388; Van Fraassen 1995: 82). So too for the
project of "rational reconstruction", "an
epistemological program", as Kelly puts it, "that had
already been abandoned by the time [Quine] wrote" (2014: 24).
Instead, by 1969 TE had largely turned to the now-familiar analytic
program of suggesting definitions, or criteria for the application, of
epistemic terms and concepts, revising these in light of
often-imaginary counter-examples, and so on (Almeder 1990: 267). (A
fair snapshot of the then-state of the art would be *Knowing:
Essays on the Analysis of Knowledge*, edited by Roth & Galis
1970.) So, whatever the merits of Quine's attack on the sort of
strong foundationalist program practiced by Descartes and the logical
empiricists, they fail to motivate any rejection of TE as such.



(2) A second objection is that Quinean naturalism is **viciously
circular**. Among the central tasks of epistemology, it's
said, is to establish that empirical knowledge is possible--that
we may, for example, legitimately rely upon empirical science as a
source of knowledge. However, Quine would have epistemologists make
"free use" of the results of science from the start.



(3) A third, related objection is that Quine's **response
to skepticism is unsatisfactory**. Insofar as the challenge
posed by skepticism is to establish the possibility of knowledge,
making use of certain methods of belief-formation, common-sensical or
otherwise, is hardly going to strike the skeptic as legitimate:
"Such attempts to respond to the skeptic's concerns
involve blatant, indeed pathetic, circularity" (Fumerton 1994:
338). Granted, Quine claims that skeptical arguments inevitably trade
on the fact of illusions, which would seem to make (other) appeals to
common sense fair game. According to BonJour, however,



> 
> 
> [t]he fundamental skeptical move is to challenge the adequacy of our
> reasons for accepting our beliefs, and such a challenge can be mounted
> without any appeal to illusion. (1994: 288)
> 
> 
> 



And even in the case of illusions, skepticism requires only their
possibility, not their reality (Stroud 1981, 1984: Ch. VI; compare
Feldman 2012: Section 3).



(4) Fourth, and perhaps best known, is the objection that, in
recasting epistemology as "a chapter of psychology", Quine
is stripping away any concern with epistemic
**normativity**. (Hence, that his endorsement of
replacement naturalism has eliminativism as a consequence.) The
complaint here is not merely that normativity is a *feature* of
TE
 (Section 1.1);
 it is that a concern with normative epistemic matters is
*essential to* epistemology *per se*. Jaegwon Kim, the
foremost author of this complaint, takes the abandonment of
normativity to be what's really distinctive about Quine's
proposal:



> 
> 
> He is asking us to set aside the entire framework of
> justification-centered epistemology. That is what is new in Quine's
> proposals. Quine is asking us to put in its place a purely
> descriptive, causal-nomological science of human cognition. (Kim 1988:
> 388)
> 
> 
> 



Quine does, of course, speak of NE as investigating "how
evidence relates to theory", but this claim is misleading. Since
"evidence" here is proxy for certain causal-nomological
relations, the claim "suggests a conflation of causal and
evidential relations" (Grandy 1994: 345; cf. Sellars 1956: Sec
32; Siegel 1980: 318-319; Lehrer 1990: 168-172). Evidence as it relates to *justification* is what concerns the
epistemologist. Justification is the central epistemic notion--it
makes up the difference between mere true belief and knowledge
(*modulo* Gettier), and is the locus of specifically epistemic
normativity. Thus, to jettison justification is to abandon any concern
with normativity; and without such a concern, whatever we're
doing, it's not deserving of the title
"epistemology":



> 
> 
> ...it is difficult to see how an "epistemology" that
> has been purged of normativity, one that lacks an appropriate
> normative concept of justification or evidence, can have anything to
> do with the concerns of traditional epistemology. And unless
> naturalized epistemology and classical epistemology share some of
> their central concerns, it's difficult to see how one could replace
> the other, or be a way (a better way) of doing the other.... For
> epistemology to go out of the business of justification is for it to
> go out of business. (Kim 1988:
>  391)[8]
> 
> 
> 



(5) A final objection that has been presented in various forms (e.g.,
Bealer 1992, Kaplan 1994, BonJour 1994, Siegel 1984, Brandom 1998) is
that Quine's position is **self-defeating**. For
example, part of Quine's argument for the idea that "the
old epistemology" is doomed is his rejection of the *a
priori*--feature
 (a)
 of TE
 (Section 1.1).
 However, as Mark Kaplan puts it, to convince of us this, and of the
disreputability of "[t]he a priorism involved in the traditional
sort of armchair methodological research", "what the
proponents of naturalism have offered us is a series of
arguments" (1994: 359). But it seems that nothing in
epistemology as Quine conceives of it affords us the resources for
evaluating such arguments:



> 
> 
> ...*are* [naturalists'] arguments cogent? So long as
> the naturalists mean to be showing their audience in spoken word and
> in print that their doctrines are correct, this question will be an
> urgent one. But how are we supposed to go about trying to answer it?
> What are we to do--what can we do--to decide whether the
> naturalists' arguments are cogent?
> 
> 
> 
> It is hard to see what we can do except evaluate these arguments by
> the light of the very sorts of epistemic intuitions which the
> naturalists are so eager to disparage. (Kaplan 1994: 360; cf. Almeder
> 1990: 266-267)
> 
> 
> 



In this way, NE itself requires or presumes the legitimacy of appeals
to *a priori* or "armchair" intuition, such appeals
being a key element within what George Bealer has called "the
standard justificatory procedure" in philosophy (Bealer 1992).
So the position of the proponent of NE is
self-defeating--"it seeks to justify naturalized
epistemology in precisely the way in which, according to it,
justification cannot be had" (Siegel 1984: 675).


### 3.2 Some responses, and further clarification of the issues



Various responses to the preceding objections have been suggested.
Addressing the first will give us occasion to clarify typical current
naturalists' motivations, as well as--and
relatedly--to get a better sense of what is, and is not, central
to NE. Addressing the fourth and fifth will carry us beyond Quine and
into the heart of current disagreements with, and within, NE.



(1) Recall, first, the ***non sequitur***
objection, according to which Quine falsely equates TE with Cartesian
epistemology. One response is that Quine's arguments
survive--at least in spirit--the recognition that many
epistemologists had/have already moved away from infallibilistic
requirements on foundational beliefs, and that even in its more
lenient forms, "[f]oundationalism has simply failed to deliver
the goods" (Kornblith 1995: 238). For the looser we make the
requirements on justified beliefs in answer to our pretheoretic
intuitions, the less we're learning about knowledge, the less
we're seriously engaged with answering the skeptic, and the less
we stand to gain any substantial epistemic advice (beyond, "keep
believing more or less what you already believed") (1995: 239).
So foundationalism, in whatever form, "is an idea which [has]
simply failed to work out" (1995:
 239).[9]



A different line of response to the *non sequitur* objection is
simply to grant the point, but observe that, Quine's arguments
notwithstanding, more recent naturalists have not been motivated by
the failure of *Cartesian* epistemology. Rather, they have
sought to find an alternative to what was seen as a stagnating or
otherwise unsatisfactory traditional approach. For instance, failed
attempts to solve the Gettier problem by requiring more, and more
subtle, logical relations among propositions, seemed to ignore the
fact that, unless the subject's psychology aligns with the
suggested requirements, the proposed analysis will fail (Kitcher 1992:
59-60). Thus, Goldman's early causal theory of
knowing--an early appearance of NE in the aforementioned Roth
& Galis volume--was expressly presented as an alternative
to



> 
> 
> a well-established tradition in epistemology, the view that
> epistemological questions are questions of logic or justification, not
> causal or genetic questions. (Goldman 1967: 82)
> 
> 
> 



Along the same lines, when, at the end of his "Discrimination
and Perceptual Knowledge", Goldman contrasts his approach with
that of Descartes, it's not the latter's infallibilism
that gets special attention, but rather issues of a broadly
explanatory-methodological nature:



> 
> 
> The trouble with many philosophical treatments of knowledge is that
> they are inspired by Cartesian-like conceptions of justification or
> vindication. There is a consequent tendency to overintellectualize or
> overrationalize the notion of knowledge. In the spirit of naturalistic
> epistemology, I am trying to fashion an account of knowing that
> focuses on more primitive and pervasive aspects of cognitive life, in
> connection with which, I believe, the term "know" gets its
> application. A fundamental facet of animate life, both human and
> infra-human, is telling things apart, distinguishing predator from
> prey, for example, or a protective habitat from a threatening one. The
> concept of knowledge has its roots in this kind of cognitive activity.
> (Goldman 1976: 102)
> 
> 
> 



Other naturalistic treatments of knowledge were similarly motivated.
For instance, Dretske's (1981) information-theoretic account was
an attempt to move beyond justification-centered accounts of
knowledge--accounts which took it for granted that knowledge
required justification, the task then being to find what special
combination of other ingredients must be added to yield knowledge.
According to Dretske, such an approach faces "a variety of
crippling objections" (1981: 85). In addition, "[t]he
concept of *justification* (or some related epistemic notion)
is often taken to be primitive", with theorists using



> 
> 
> firmer intuitions about when, and whether, someone knows something to
> determine when, and whether, someone has a satisfactory level of
> justification. (1981: 249)
> 
> 
> 



Finally, like Goldman, Dretske associates justificationist accounts of
knowledge with a tendency to over-intellectualize epistemic phenomena,
to focus on "fancier" cases of knowing, cases which bring
in (what he sees as) extraneous factors. The result is that the
theorist is left having to reject some very clear cases of
knowledge--in children, non-human animals, and unreflective
adults--as not genuine knowledge at all (Dretske 1991). His own
account of knowledge,



> 
> 
> is an attempt to get away from the philosopher's usual bag of tricks
> (justification, reasons, evidence, etc.) in order to give a more
> realistic picture of what perceptual knowledge is. (1983: 58)
> 
> 
> 



The same kind of broad methodological concerns are evident as well in
naturalistic accounts of justification (warrant, etc.), rather than
knowledge. Goldman's reliabilism about justification (1979), for
example, has among its starting points a critique of
"ahistorical", apsychological accounts of
justification--i.e., accounts which state conditions on a
belief's being justified



> 
> 
> without restriction on *why* the belief is held, i.e., on what
> *causally initiates* the belief or *causally sustains*
> it. (1979:
>  112)[10]
> 
> 
> 



Also worth noting here are a pair of more strictly
meta-epistemological *desiderata* Goldman announces at the
start of the same paper. The first is that an account of justification
should be "substantive"--i.e., that it should specify
in non-epistemic terms when a belief is justified (p. 105). This
recalls, of course, meta-epistemic NE
 (Section 1.2)--i.e.,
 the thought that evaluative epistemic properties are, or must be,
reducible or otherwise appropriately related to (e.g., supervene on)
"natural" properties. And it is sometimes suggested that
*this*--the demand, as Maffie puts it, that
"epistemic value [be] anchored to descriptive fact, no longer
entering the world autonomously as brute, fundamental fact"
(1990a: 284)--is central to the debate over NE (*ibid.*;
Steup 1996: 185-6). According to Kim, that epistemic properties
*do* plausibly supervene on "natural facts" is what
makes normative epistemology possible, and naturalistically
respectable, even if no
 reduction[11]
 is forthcoming:



> 
> 
> ...is there a positive reason for thinking that normative
> epistemology is a viable program?.... The short answer is this:
> we believe in the supervenience of epistemic properties on
> naturalistic ones, and more generally, in the supervenience of all
> valuational and normative properties on naturalistic
> conditions.... That [a given belief] is a justified belief cannot
> be a brute fundamental fact unrelated to the kind of belief it is.
> There must be a *reason* for it, and this reason must be
> grounded in the factual descriptive properties of that particular
> belief. Something like this, I think, is what we believe. (Kim 1988:
> 399)
> 
> 
> 



As others have observed, however, it is doubtful that the question of
whether epistemic properties at least supervene upon natural
properties--hence, meta-epistemic NE, as written--sheds much
light on the NE-vs-TE controversy (see Foley 1994: 243-244;
Feldman 2012: Section 4; Maffie 1990a: 289; Kappel 2011: 839). For
virtually everyone on both sides of that debate can be seen as
agreeing that epistemic properties supervene. (The notable exception
here is Lehrer 1997.) For example, Chisholm, who is hardly thought to
be an advocate of NE, is explicit in holding that epistemic facts
supervene on non-epistemic ones (1989: 42-43; cf. 1957:
31-39; 1982: 12)--for instance, that being appeared to in
certain ways makes it evident to *S* that he is appeared to by
an *F*, or makes *S* justified in believing that there
is an *F* before him. And Feldman (2012) argues that
evidentialism--which is usually regarded as an instance of TE,
not NE--respects supervenience as well. (Evidentialism has it
that what determines whether one is justified is a function of the
evidence possessed, where one's evidence, on the view Feldman
himself favors, is some combination of one's experiences,
memories and other beliefs.)



So we do not yet have a plausible candidate, in the vicinity of
meta-epistemic NE, of something on which proponents of TE and NE might
clearly divide. Taking Goldman as our representative of NE, we find a
suggestion in his second *desideratum*--namely, that an
account of justification be genuinely explanatory, or
"appropriately deep and revelatory" (1979: 106). He
writes:



> 
> 
> Suppose, for example, that the following sufficient condition of
> justified belief is offered: "If *S* senses redly at
> *t* and *S* believes at *t* that he is sensing
> redly, then *S*'s belief at *t* that he is sensing
> redly is justified". This is not the kind of principle I seek;
> for, even if it is correct, it leaves unexplained *why* a
> person who senses redly and believes that he does, believes this
> justifiably. (1979: 106)
> 
> 
> 



So, while the stated Chisholmian principle itself respects
supervenience--what's mentioned in its antecedent is,
plausibly, wholly psychological--it fails to be genuinely
illuminating. As Feldman says, Chisholm holds that, underlying
particular epistemic facts such as the one Goldman mentions are
"principles of evidence other than the formal principles of
deductive logic and inductive logic" (Chisholm 1977: 67) which
are themselves *fundamental*. Further, Feldman continues,
something similar is true of traditionalists more generally:



> 
> 
> In addition to facts about particular people being justified in
> believing particular propositions, [traditionalists] are committed to
> the existence of epistemic facts about what beliefs are supported by a
> particular body of evidence. It remains unclear whether these are
> natural facts. Traditionalists often regard these facts as necessary
> truths, and it is their necessity that enables evidentialists to
> endorse the supervenience thesis. [On standard definitions of
> supervenience, necessary truths supervene on any facts--so,
> trivially, they supervene on natural facts.]....[But it] is
> legitimate to ask whether they count as natural facts. (Feldman 2012:
> Section 4)
> 
> 
> 



However, regardless of the answer to the latter question, construed as
a metaphysical query, it is clear that the relevant
meta-epistemological concern of Goldman's, at least, is
*methodological*: he wants to *explain* justification,
and thinks that an appeal to the reliability of the processes which
generate and sustain a belief, for example, does just that, whereas an
appeal to Chisholmian--or, presumably,
evidentialist--principles does not. Similar concerns would apply
to Chisholm's (1977) taking *reasonableness* as
 primitive[12]
 and casting other central epistemic notions in terms of it (as Lehrer
would later do; see his 1990: 127): while this is compatible with
there in fact being some naturalistic basis for
 reasonableness[13]--i.e.,
 with reasonableness being part of the real, natural world--the
resulting account would not be "appropriately deep and
revelatory".



Of course, opponents of NE may contest this claim and hold that there
just are brute epistemic principles and *sui generis* epistemic
properties--as Chisholm, Lehrer, and perhaps many other
traditionalists believe (Fumerton, e.g., is quite explicit about this;
1988: 454-455). And, as Feldman (2012: Section 4) notes, the
disagreement here appears to be over what is natural, as opposed to
over whether extra-natural facts exist. Nevertheless, the present
point is that the attempt to avoid any such fundamental epistemic
properties or principles in one's theorizing appears to be a
real difference between NE and TE, and seems to be of more central
importance than a concern for reduction-or-supervenience *per
se*. In any case, it should now be clear that current naturalists
are not directly inspired by the failure of specifically Cartesian
epistemology. So even if it's a mistake on Quine's part to
represent NE as having such a source, that point does not seem
directly relevant here.



(2) Turning now to the **circularity** objection, Quine
himself addresses it when he says:



> 
> 
> If the epistemologist's goal is validation of the grounds of
> empirical science, he defeats his purpose by using psychology or other
> empirical science in the validation. However, such scruples against
> circularity have little point once we have stopped dreaming of
> deducing science from observations. (1969b: 75-76)
> 
> 
> 



Moreover, this rejoinder aside, it may be that "we should expect
question begging when the issue concerns our most fundamental methods
of inquiry" (Foley 1994: 256). Further, there is no guarantee
anyway that a given method will vindicate itself--a method may
generate evidence that undermines its own reliability
(*ibid.*). Finally, just when (if ever) circularity is
epistemically bad, and why, is a matter of some controversy. (For
general discussion and references, see Lammenranta n.d. in Other
Internet Resources; see too Kappel 2011: 843.)



(3) Broadly similar remarks have been suggested in reply to the
objection that Quine's **response to skepticism is
unsatisfactory**. While that response may involve blatant
circularity, for the reasons just given it's an open question
whether that circularity is vicious. Further, Quine claims, in pointing out that
skeptical doubts are scientific doubts, he did not take himself to be
refuting the skeptic or subjecting skepticism to a *reductio*
(1975: 68). More generally, questions might be raised about the
underlying assumption that responding to the skeptic in such a way as
to not beg any questions is an achievable end to begin with, and so
whether it is something that deserves as much attention as it has traditionally been
afforded. Here, proponents of NE diverge somewhat. Kornblith states
that the project of responding to the skeptic is "a dead
end" (1999: 166). In a similar vein, Kitcher says that
"[s]keptics who insist that we begin from *no*
assumptions are inviting us to play a mug's game" (1993:
35). Dretske (1970, 1981) is more conciliatory, offering an
explanation that grants certain skeptical claims their power, even
correctness, while defending our knowledge nonetheless. And both
Goldman (1986: 39-41, 55-57; 1976: 101) and Pollock (1986:
1-7) take it to be *a* task of epistemology to address
skepticism--even if our goal therein is to understand and learn
from skepticism rather than to refute it, and even if the topic deserves less
attention than it has historically received.



(4) Kornblith sums up the **normativity** objection as
follows: "Epistemology without normativity...is just
*Hamlet* without the prince of Denmark" (1995: 250). As
we saw above, it looks as though handing epistemology off to
psychology (replacement NE) makes epistemology a purely descriptive
enterprise (hence, yields eliminative NE). Certainly, Quine
*is* hardly friendly to epistemology as standardly practiced.
For example, he thinks that, as it's usually understood, the
notion of knowledge is so beset by imprecision that, for theoretical
purposes, we should "give [it] up... as a bad job"
(1989: 109; see too Johnsen 2005: 92-93). And no doubt
"Epistemology Naturalized" encourages the standard
interpretation of Quine as jettisoning a concern for normative
epistemic matters. Nonetheless, as recent commentators have pointed
out (see, e.g., Foley 1994 and Johnsen 2005; both cite numerous
examples of the standard interpretation), in his later work, Quine
insists that "[t]he normative is naturalized, not dropped"
(1990: 229). He writes:



> 
> 
> Naturalization of epistemology does not jettison the normative and
> settle for the indiscriminate description of ongoing procedures. For
> me normative epistemology is a branch of engineering. It is the
> technology of truth-seeking, or, in a more cautiously epistemological
> term, prediction. Like any technology, it makes free use of whatever
> scientific findings may suit its purpose. It draws upon mathematics in
> computing standard deviation and probable error and in scouting the
> gambler's fallacy. It draws upon experimental psychology in
> exposing perceptual illusions, and upon cognitive psychology in
> scouting wishful thinking. It draws upon neurology and physics, in a
> general way, in discounting testimony from occult or parapsychological
> sources. There is no question here of ultimate value, as in morals; it
> is a matter of efficacy for an ulterior end, truth or prediction. The
> normative here, as elsewhere in engineering, becomes descriptive when
> the terminal parameter is expressed. (Quine 1986: 664-665)
> 
> 
> 



For Quine, then, epistemic normativity is simply a matter of
instrumental efficacy towards the relevant end--viz., truth or
prediction. Thus, normative epistemology "gets naturalized into
a chapter of engineering: the technology of anticipating sensory
stimulation" (1992: 19). He continues:



> 
> 
> The most notable norm of naturalized epistemology actually coincides
> with that of traditional epistemology. It is simply the watchword of
> empiricism: *nihil in mente quod non prius in sensu*. This is a
> prime specimen of naturalized epistemology, for it is a finding of
> natural science itself, however fallible, that our information about
> the world comes only through the impact of our sensory receptors. And
> still the point is normative, warning us against telepaths and
> soothsayers. (Quine 1992: 19)
> 
> 
> 



(5) So Quine does have an account of epistemic normativity after all,
and thus a response to the normativity objection to (his version of)
NE. And yet, one might see that response as inviting once again the
charge of **self-defeat**. For example, one might wonder
why it is *truth*, or *prediction*--rather than
pleasure, say, or monetary gain--that is the epistemic end. Is
*that* a result of science, discovered *a posteriori*
(compare Foley 1994: 249)? A friend of TE is likely to see it, rather,
as a conceptual truth that is knowable, intuitively, *a priori*. Similarly, one can wonder whether natural science *per
se* really does underwrite the putative empiricist
"watchword". Much recent developmental psychology, for
instance, seems to suggest that at least some empirical
"knowledge" (or empirical "theories" or
"assumptions") is native, rather than sensorily acquired
(see Samet and Zaitchik 2014 for an overview).--Not that such a
contrary finding, or theoretical disagreement on the matter within the
relevant sciences, would itself pose a problem for Quine's
general approach to NE. The relevant point, rather, is that the matter
and disagreement in question are *theoretical*, and that it is
not immediately clear whether it is something that can be settled
without the help of "old-fashioned" methods such as
armchair reflection, some of it perhaps *a priori*, on the
relevant data and issues. (The present worry could be developed along
other lines--e.g., that natural science *presupposes* that
truth or prediction is the end, that the senses are what give us
information about the world, etc. This would take us back to worries
about circularity. As we've already seen, there is inter-play
between the concerns to which NE gives rise.)



Nonetheless, while he is best-known for taking psychology--and,
what's more, behavioristic psychology ("neural receptors
and their stimulation rather than sense of
 sensibilia"[14]
 (Quine 1992: 19))--to be the successor to TE, Quine has a
*very* broad conception of science. Science for Quine includes
humble, everyday common sense thinking, after all. Further, while he
sometimes speaks of one discipline replacing another, Quine also
expresses his idea in terms of the "rubbing out" (1969b:
90) or "blurring" (1995: 257) of disciplinary boundaries
such as that between epistemology and science. Finally, given his
rejection of analyticity, his consequent rejection of the *a
 priori*,[15]
 and his holism about both meaning and confirmation, it is quite
unclear how Quine *could* maintain any hard and fast
distinction between philosophy and science (Gregory 2006: 660). For
these reasons, it is unclear whether the entirety of traditional
philosophical methods *per se* would--or could--be
excluded from a respectable Quinean
 epistemology.[16]
 Unfortunately, Quine himself does not provide a clear and direct
account of what, notwithstanding the rejection of the *a
priori*, might indeed remain of TE and its method within
"epistemology naturalized".



Where we are left, then, is needing a way of understanding how, within
the constraints of NE, truth (or prediction) comes to be fixed as the
epistemic end, such that the normativity objection can be fully met.
More generally, we need some respectable naturalistic version of traditional
philosophical methods (reflecting on cases, consulting our intuitions,
and so on), or of alternative methods closely approximating them. For
it seems that it is only if we have something playing those
methods' usual role--constructing and arbitrating between
theories, directing our more obviously empirical inquiries, and so
on--that the charge of self-defeat can be avoided.



Both of these matters--the ability of NE to account for epistemic
normativity, and to accommodate or find a suitable replacement for the
traditional philosophical methodology that some see as indispensable
to epistemological theorizing--are at the center of current
debate both about, and within, NE. Over the next two sections we
consider two prominent means of addressing these matters--those
offered by Hilary Kornblith and by Alvin Goldman--and the
challenges that each faces.


## 4. Epistemology as "Thoroughly Empirical"


### 4.1 Knowledge and Epistemology



Unlike Quine, Kornblith retains knowledge as a central epistemological
notion. However, his position departs dramatically from TE in how it understands the
nature of epistemological investigation. Here, in both
its proper target and its methods, epistemology is held not to be as
TE and its practitioners portray them. As to the first, recall
 (Section 1.3)
 that a, if not the, central task of analytic epistemology following
the demise of logical empiricism was "the analysis of
knowledge", by which was meant the attempt to provide an
analysis, typically in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions,
of the *concept* of knowledge. (See, for instance, the various
papers in the aforementioned Roth and Galis volume.) Against this, it
is suggested that the concept of knowledge is of little if any
theoretical interest; it is no more the proper target of
epistemological theory than the *concept* of aluminum is a
worthy target of inquiry for one trying to understand various metals.
Likely, Kornblith says, our concept of knowledge is defective in
various ways anyway. (For example, in spite of its now near-universal
rejection among epistemologists, the idea that knowledge required
certainty enjoyed the favor of many, and is arguably still attractive
among many non-philosophers.) What epistemologists *should*
seek is "to provide an account of a certain natural phenomenon,
namely, knowledge itself" (1999: 161). "It is the
investigation of knowledge as a phenomenon in the world", he
writes, "which distinguishes naturalism from other approaches to
knowledge" (1995: 245).



As to method, the epistemologist should proceed as would our imagined
metallurgist: we begin by examining apparently clear cases of
knowledge, and look to find what they have in common. Part of what
happens here, very likely, is that we will reclassify some of these
examples along the way. What emerges, however, is a picture of the
true nature of knowledge. Specifically, and as is evident in the work
of cognitive ethologists in particular--that is, those whose job
it is to study intelligent animal behavior--what emerges is an
essentially reliabilist picture, in which knowledge consists in



> 
> 
> true beliefs that are reliably produced, that are instrumental
> in the production of behavior successful in meeting biological needs
> and thereby implicated in the Darwinian explanation of the selective
> retention of traits. (Kornblith 2002: 62)
> 
> 
> 



Knowledge, on this view, is a natural kind, one that's realized
in both human and non-human animals. It has a particular nature, and a
particular causal-explanatory role in our general understanding of the
life and success of certain types of biological organisms. In better
understanding that place, and through an empirical investigation of




> 
> 
> the various mechanisms of belief production and retention, we may
> determine where we are most in need of guidance, and what steps can be
> taken, given our capabilities, to overcome our shortcomings.
> (Kornblith 1999: 163; on NE and epistemic improvement, see too
> Kornblith's 1994b)
> 
> 
> 



So, both at the stage of understanding the worldly epistemological
target, and in recommending possible improvements to our epistemic
strategies, "a proper naturalistic epistemology is empirical all
the way down" (Kornblith 1995: 243). While epistemology thus has
no distinctive *method*, there is a sense, Kornblith thinks, in
which it retains its autonomy:



> 
> 
> Questions about knowledge and justification, questions about theory
> and evidence, are...legitimate questions, and they are ones in which
> philosophy has a special stake....If the autonomy of a discipline
> consists in dealing with a distinctive set of questions, or in
> approaching certain phenomena with a distinctive set of concerns, then
> philosophy is surely an autonomous discipline. There is no danger that
> these questions and concerns will be somehow co-opted by other
> disciplines. (Kornblith 2002: 26)
> 
> 
> 


### 4.2 Epistemic Normativity



While Kornblith thus denies that epistemology is to be replaced by
some other discipline(s) (replacement NE), it is perhaps less clear
what becomes of the **normativity** of epistemology on
his view. Unlike Quine *as he is standardly
interpreted*--but as appears to be Quine's view in
later writings--Kornblith is "quite sympathetic with the
suggestion that the normative dimension of epistemological inquiry is
essential to it" (Kornblith 1995: 250). And Kornblith, like
reliabilists generally, portrays truth (true belief) as the epistemic
goal--much as Quine, in describing his view of the normative
dimension of epistemology
 (Section 3),
 presumes that truth (or prediction) is "the terminal
parameter". But how is *that* fact established, such that a
"thoroughly empirical" (1995: 250) epistemology can, after
all, retain the normative dimension of TE?



One response to this question is that epistemic norms have a
"practical grounding" (Kornblith 1993b, 2002). While it is
compatible with the possible intrinsic value of true belief (Kornblith
2002: 161, 373), such an account features its instrumental value.
Importantly, however, the argument is not cast (just) in terms of the
instrumental value of individual true beliefs; the central claim,
rather, is that everyone "has pragmatic reasons to favor a
cognitive system which is effective in generating truths" (2002:
156). This point can perhaps be best illustrated by considering an
alternative naturalistic account of the source of epistemic
normativity--the "pragmatist" account favored by
Stephen Stich (1990, 1993).



According to Stich, there is nothing special about truth, and no
reason to take it to be the epistemic goal. In fact, for pragmatists,
there are no special cognitive or epistemological values at
all--"[t]here are just values" (1993: 9). Good
reasoning is a matter of effectively promoting your goals (what
you value), *whatever they are*. Stich says that, "the
pragmatist project for assessing reasoning" proceeds by
determining one's goals--what one wants to
achieve--and then identifying the reasoning strategies that
others have successfully employed in achieving those same goals
(*ibid*: 9-10). However, it is hard to see how this is to
be done unless one has some reliable cognitive systems or strategies
in place. That is, even if happiness, say, rather than true belief, is
what one really values, in order to effectively pursue that goal one
will need some way of determining how best to achieve it. One will
need, that is, a (reasonably) reliable cognitive system--or, to
put it in more traditional terms, one will need some reliable
faculties. Further,



> 
> 
> [p]recisely because our cognitive systems are required to perform
> evaluations relative to our many concerns, and to perform these
> evaluations accurately, the standards by which we evaluate these
> cognitive systems themselves must remain insulated from most of what
> we intrinsically value, whatever we may value. (Kornblith 2002:
> 158)
> 
> 
> 



So, whatever else one cares about, one has an interest in--one
should care about--having a cognitive system (or systems) that
produces true beliefs reliably; and one has an interest in--a reason
to care about--evaluating, not just individual beliefs, but our
various systems and methods for producing them, in terms of their
reliability. "And this", as Kornblith says, "is
precisely what epistemic evaluation is all about. Truth plays a
pre-eminent role here" (2002: 158).



Whether one finds the preceding account of the grounding of epistemic
normativity satisfactory will depend largely upon how one conceives of
epistemic normativity, even normativity generally, to begin with. For
example, the above argument seems to rely upon the instrumental or
means-end norm. Speaking of his own view, which is in this respect
similar to Kornblith's, Maffie says: 



> 
> 
> epistemology is normative only within the framework of instrumental
> reason and...its normativity is parasitic upon that of the
> latter. (1990b: 333) 
> 
> 
> 



There is debate, however, about the nature and status of instrumental
reason, as well as about whether a reliance upon it should be acceptable
to a naturalist. (See, e.g., Hampton 1992, Dreier 2001, Siegel
 1990;[17]
 for general discussion, see Wallace 2014.) So too, some philosophers
regard epistemic norms as categorical--as binding on any rational
agent, regardless of the goals or desires which s/he happens to have
(Kelly 2003: 616, 621). Now, there are no *specific* goals or
desires that one must have in order to be so bound, according to
Kornblith: his argument requires only that one have *some*
goals. Since this condition is fulfilled in all normal humans the
hypothetical norm--"If you have some desire or goal you
wish to satisfy or attain, seek the truth"--is *in
effect* a categorical one (it is "universal", as
Kornblith puts it; 2002: 161). However, some may find even this still
too contingent a ground upon which to base epistemic norms. (Compare
Husserl's and Frege's concerns about the intrusion of
psychology into logic and mathematics;
 Section 1.3.)
 Others, on the other hand, may doubt whether TE itself has ever been
able to provide any entirely unconditional recommendations (e.g.,
Grandy 1994: 345). And Kornblith, like other naturalists, is bound to
question whether attempting to understand epistemic normativity while
setting aside such obvious and inescapable facts as that we do have
goals and desires is likely to yield any useful insight into our
actual epistemic situation (see, e.g., Kornblith 1995: 251, and Wrenn
2006: 73, commenting on Goldman 1986).[18]


### 4.3 Intuitions and the *A Priori*



As we saw previously, one prevalent form of the
**self-defeat** objection to NE is that it inevitably
itself relies upon "[t]he a priorism involved in the traditional
sort of armchair methodological research" (Kaplan 1994: 359) and
that it makes use of "the very sorts of epistemic intuitions which the
naturalists are so eager to disparage" (*ibid.*: 360; cf.
Almeder 1990: 266-267). In this way, EN itself requires or
presumes the legitimacy of appeals to *a priori* or
"armchair" intuition, such appeals being a key element of "the standard
justificatory procedure" in philosophy (Bealer 1992). So the
position of the proponent of NE is self-defeating--"it
seeks to justify naturalized epistemology in precisely the way in
which, according to it, justification cannot be had" (Siegel
1984: 675).



According to the form of NE currently being considered, a reliance on
intuitions, particularly in the early stages of inquiry, may be
practically necessary. However, it may be argued that "the
method of appeals to intuitions is...easily accommodated within a
naturalistic framework" (Kornblith 2002: 12). Thus, were you to
describe to me a certain animal you observed in your back yard, I
might naturally and correctly judge it to have been a squirrel.
Clearly, this does not involve or require any *a priori*
insight on my part; it simply reflects some easily gotten knowledge
about the relevant local *fauna.* In the same way, Kornblith
thinks, our seemingly spontaneous judgments about whether this or that
actual or hypothetical case constitutes an instance of knowledge is an
*a posteriori* judgment, backed by our already-acquired
knowledge of the relevant worldly epistemic phenomenon. So
"appeals to intuition do not require some non-natural faculty or
a priori judgment of any sort....The practice of appealing to
intuition has no non-natural ingredients" (2002:
 21).[19]



What of the charge that, in presenting various philosophical
arguments, the naturalist is tacitly relying upon various principles
of good reasoning, themselves known only *a priori* (e.g.,
BonJour 1994)? One obvious response is that this begs the question. On
a reliabilist view, the legitimacy of the relevant principles of
reasoning--what makes them good principles--is a function of
whether they are, in fact, reliable. They needn't be known to be
such, much less must they be known to be such *a priori*
(Kornblith 2002: 21-23; 1995: 252). So the objector "is
simply taking for granted certain constraints on good reasoning which
the naturalist rejects" (1995: 253). Moreover, there is the
concern that such constraints, if consistently applied, would
rarely if ever be satisfied. Insofar as they have such skeptical
consequences, such constraints cannot be reasonable (1995: 253; 2006:
347-348).



As with his response to the normativity problem, there are questions
as to whether Kornblith's attempt to diffuse the self-defeat
objection is successful. For example, both BonJour (2006) and Siegel
(2006) have replied to Kornblith's arguments, claiming that the
threat of self-defeat is as strong as ever. For instance, Siegel
claims that "it is unclear how [Kornblith's] appeal to
reliabilism can be justified without either contravening naturalism or
presupposing it" (2006: 246-248; cf. Kappel 2010: 845).
Or, to take another example, Kornblith at one point says in passing that "knowledge is, surely, more than just true belief" (2002:
54), and a proponent of TE might wonder what justifies *that*
claim. Of course, it is not difficult to imagine how Kornblith is apt
to respond to such worries--that knowledge involves reliably
produced true belief is an empirical discovery, arrived at by
studying apparently clear cases of the phenomenon. There may be some
circularity here, but no more than is involved in Siegel's or
BonJour's pointing to some cases and saying, with the presumed
backing of rational insight, that *they* reveal what knowledge
(justification, rationality, etc.) really is.



Obviously, there is to be no fast and easy resolution of this
debate--not least because the nature of status of the *a
priori*, as well as what is required for knowledge, for example,
are themselves hotly contested. (For general discussion of the *a
priori*, see Russell 2014; for a representative sampling of
current work on the topic, see Casullo and Thurow 2013. Ichikawa and
Steup 2014 provide an overview of issues surrounding knowledge.) For
our purposes, however, what is especially noteworthy is that some of
the very same worries as Siegel and BonJour register about
Kornblith's attempt to cast epistemology as "empirical all
the way down" have been voiced by Alvin Goldman, himself an
extremely prominent advocate of NE:



> 
> 
> Where does the assertion that knowledge is "more than just true
> belief" come from? What licenses it? Surely it doesn't
> come from cognitive ethology. It would have to come, one supposes,
> from a semantico-conceptual account of the term
> "knowledge". But many would say that this is precisely
> what philosophy, in its analytic phase, aims to provide. So that job
> is not taken over by biological science, as Kornblith often suggests
> that it is. (2005: 407)
> 
> 
> 


## 5. A Moderate Naturalism


### 5.1 Conceptual Analysis, Intuitions, and Epistemological Methodology



As the passage just quoted suggests, Goldman sees conceptual analysis
and appeals to intuition as playing an ineliminable role within
epistemological
 practice.[20]
 While, as noted above, within TE such an analysis has standardly
taken the form of a search for necessary and sufficient conditions,
Goldman is dubious of that specific approach (e.g., 1986: 38-39,
2015, 2007: 23 and papers there cited). Nonetheless, he insists that
"armchair" conceptual investigation must be the starting
point of epistemological theorizing. For this reason he is dubious
that a satisfactory epistemology can be entirely concerned with
"extra-mental phenomena". In his most recent writing on
the subject, Goldman frames the problem (as he sees it) for
Kornblith's view as follows:



> 
> 
> ...for a given analysandum, there will often be multiple
> candidates for being the relevant extra-mental phenomenon. If we set
> out to study knowledge empirically, as Kornblith instructs us, we will
> have an excess of candidate extra-mental phenomena. Starting with
> Kornblith's preferred candidate, there is the set of states that
> consist in a creature believing a true proposition as a result of
> using a reliable process. Second, there is the set of states that
> consist in a creature believing something true (period). Third, there
> is the set of states consisting in a creature believing a proposition
> justifiedly (without its being true). Finally, there is a host of
> additional candidates, each corresponding to a different theory that
> was floated in response to the Gettier problem. Which of these many
> candidate extra-mental phenomena should philosophers of knowledge seek
> to investigate empirically? And how should they choose the one that is
> really knowledge?
> 
> 
> 
> What emerges here is that the epistemologist would need some prior
> method for choosing the right extra-mental phenomenon. And it seems
> inevitable that the method for making this choice will have to be
> something like the traditional one of consulting speakers' judgments
> about which states qualify--"intuitively"--as
> states of knowing. In short, a prior method is needed to pick out
> which set of extra-mental events in the world should be the target of
> a Kornblithian empirical investigation. Without such a prior method,
> the epistemologist would be like a blind man sent on a mission without
> a guide, or guide dog, to help him. Without a guide, how can one
> select the relevant extra-mental phenomenon? But Kornblith seems
> intent on denying the epistemologist any such guide. (Goldman
>  2015)[21]
> 
> 
> 



Given that it is anchored in precisely the sort of intuitional
methodology and conceptual investigation that is characteristic of TE,
Goldman's approach does not of course face any immediate threat
of (apparent) self-defeat. In what respect, though, is the view
*naturalistic*? In one place, Goldman characterizes his
preferred form of naturalism--he calls it "moderate
naturalism"--as the combination of two
 theses.[22]
 The first thesis states his commitment, which we encountered above
 (Section 3.2),
 to a psycho-etiological approach to understanding justification
(warrant, etc.). The second embodies his own view as to how, or how
far, the methodology of TE needs to be altered and its autonomy
modulated (see the discussion of methodological NE in
 Section 1.2
 above):




**Moderate Naturalism**



(A)
All epistemic warrant or justification is a function of the
psychological (perhaps computational) processes that produce or
preserve belief.
(B)
The epistemological enterprise needs appropriate help from
science, especially the science of the mind. (Goldman 1999a:
26)



What sort of help from science might philosophy need? In
*Epistemology and Cognition* (1986) Goldman presents a
"two-stage" model of epistemological inquiry: the first
involves traditional armchair, conceptual analysis to determine the
key contours of the relevant concepts (according to Goldman, it
reveals the centrality of considerations of reliability thereto);
thereafter it is (or should be) epistemology's task to determine
"which cognitive processes are available and reliable";
and it is here, at this second stage, that "collaboration with the empirical science of psychology, or cognitive science"
is needed (2005: 408).



Note:
 (A)
 here states that justification is a function of the psychological
processes that produce or preserve belief. It represents a commitment
to a certain form or degree of psychologism
 (Section 1.3).
 It does *not* state that all such justification is *a
posteriori*: Goldman rejects the sort of strongly empiricist brand
of NE that Kornblith and Quine embrace,
 [23]
 and he takes pains to argue that his own reliabilist way of
underwriting
 (A)
 is perfectly compatible with the existence of *a priori*
justification (see his 1999a). (Kitcher too has suggested "that
the concept of a priori knowledge can be embedded in a naturalistic
epistemology"; 1980: 4.) And in his *Epistemology and
Cognition* (1986), for example, Goldman appears to regard the
conceptual analysis and consulting of intuitions that he sees as
essential to epistemology as itself *a priori* (see 1989:
143).



In more recent work (Goldman 1999a, 2005, 2007; Goldman & Pust
1998), however, Goldman has suggested that the conceptual work
characteristic of epistemological theorizing is a form of *a
posteriori*, empirical investigation. For example, conceptual
analysis typically involves the eliciting (or "testing")
of intuitions--a sample case is presented, and the epistemologist
asks himself (or others) whether s/he thinks that the subject therein
possesses knowledge. Rather than seeing this as
individuals' employing some special faculty geared towards
answering non-empirical questions, it can be seen as the
employment of an essentially experimental, "proto-scientific
method" (2005: 408), geared towards the discovery of facts about
the "experimenter's", or others', epistemic
concepts. On this view, even the consultation of one's own
intuitions is thoroughly empirical:



> 
> 
> Classificational intuitions should not be assimilated to mathematical
> or logical intuitions. They are somewhat more like introspections or
> readouts of one's own internal states, in this instance, the
> classificational implications of one's own concepts. Although
> they are not perceptual, they share some features with
> observations....even intuition-based evidence of the first-person
> kind is not a priori evidence. Moreover, optimal use of one's
> intuitions to arrive at theories of the contents of concepts, or the
> meanings of predicates, should take account of semantical and
> psychological theory, both empirical rather than a priori disciplines.
> (Goldman 2005: 409)
> 
> 
> 



In thus (re)casting conceptual analysis and the consulting of
intuitions as an empirical endeavor, Goldman is moving away from
Bealer (1992) and BonJour (1994), for example, who take it as obvious
that the conceptual orientation characteristic of traditional
epistemological practice marks it as *a priori*. Just as
importantly, Goldman is here moving closer to Kornblith. According to
Goldman, while a reliance on intuitions, especially in connection with
the project of analysis, constitutes an obvious difference between
philosophical methodology and the methodology of empirical science,
that methodology is still empirical. In *this* respect,
philosophical methodology is not distinctive after all. It can appear
to be such only because philosophical investigation, at least in its
initial stage, has as its target the empirical examination *of our
concepts*. It is his insistence upon the latter--that the
target of armchair empirical investigations are concepts, rather than
any extra-mental epistemic phenomena themselves--that remains the
crucial point on which Goldman and Kornblith
 disagree.[24]


### 5.2 Intuitions, Norms, Experiments



Given that his moderate naturalism has him (agreeing and) disagreeing
with certain elements of both TE and more "radical"
naturalisms, it is not surprising that Goldman's position has come in for
criticism from both sides. Thus, for example, Feldman (1999, 2012) and
BonJour (1994) voice doubts about whether more modest forms of NE are
both interesting and correct--whether, that is, plausible
instances of the relevance of (e.g.) psychology to epistemology
aren't already accommodated by TE, and whether any genuinely
newsworthy bearing of (e.g.) psychology on epistemology really is
likely. (Goldman offers a direct response to BonJour at 1999:
26-27; and many of Kornblith's arguments on behalf of
naturalism--e.g., his 1995 and 2001--can be read as a
response to such objections.) Once again, however, perhaps more
interesting for our purposes is the internecine objection: according
to Kornblith, the importance Goldman places upon conceptual analysis
stands in the way of his offering a plausible account of epistemic
normativity.



In his review of Kornblith's 2002 book, Goldman writes that
"[o]n the question of the basis of epistemic norms, he
[Kornblith] has a very insightful and probing discussion" (2005:
409)--see the brief discussion thereof in
 Section 4.2
 above. And, of course, Goldman is hardly averse to seeing true belief
as having the sort of instrumental value that Kornblith's
account of epistemic normativity features. However, as Kornblith
writes, "in *Epistemology and Cognition*, empirical
concerns play no role at all in explaining the source of epistemic
normativity" (2002: 140-141). On that account, rather, it
is at the foundational *conceptual* stage of epistemology that
normativity gets a foothold: our epistemic assessments are evaluative
(Goldman 1986: 20), and give pride of place to reliability
considerations, owing to the contents of the concepts which are
deployed therein. In short, Kornblith says, on Goldman's (1986)
account "[n]ormative force seems to derive from semantic
considerations alone" (Kornblith 2002: 142). According to
Kornblith, however, such a semantic grounding for epistemic
normativity is unsatisfactory. In effect, it simply pushes the problem
back: why should we care about the concepts--hence, the epistemic
standards--that we actually have (2002: 142-145)?



As Kornblith acknowledges, he is not the first to raise such concerns
about the normative standings of results obtaining via the conceptual
analysis that is characteristic of TE. Stich (1990: 92-93), for
example, has raised them previously. As Stich's discussion makes
clear, what would make the envisaged problem pressing is if there
were, in fact, genuine diversity in our cognitive processes, epistemic
standards, and/or our intuitions about cases. After all, so long as
our actual epistemic concepts and evaluations are broadly
reliabilist--so long as 



> 
> 
> [e]xamining folk epistemic concepts...reveal[s] how truth (true
> belief) is a primary basis for epistemic evaluation and epistemic
> achievement (Goldman 2007: 22) 
> 
> 
> 



--there is at the very least an important *consilience*
between the results yielded by our conceptual investigation and the
account of epistemic normativity that Kornblith favors.



Hence the significance of certain results claimed to have been
obtained within "experimental philosophy" (x-phi), itself
a recent movement within naturalistic
 philosophy.[25]
 For, according to some theorists, there is in fact widespread
diversity in epistemic intuitions--both within individuals
(Swain, Alexander, and Weinberg 2008) and between groups, even (as
Jennifer Nagel puts it) "along such epistemically scary fault
lines" (Nagel 2012: 495) as ethnicity (Weinberg, Nichols, and
Stich 2001) and gender (Buckwalter and Stich 2011). According to those
working within x-phi's "negative"
 program,[26]
 (putative) results such as this reveal that there is something deeply
flawed about the method of using intuitions to inform one's
philosophical theory. This is the lesson that Bishop and Trout take
away from such reported results as well. As they see it, while
practitioners of "Standard Analytic Epistemology" (SAE)
typically regard NE as unable to accommodate epistemic normativity, it
is in fact they who are engaged in a purely descriptive
project--namely, the project of giving information 



> 
> 
> about the reflective epistemic judgments of a group of idiosyncratic,
> non-representative people who have been trained to use highly
> specialized epistemic concepts and patterns of thought. (Bishop and
> Trout 2005a: 704)
> 
> 
> 



If we want a genuinely normative epistemology, Bishop and Trout
suggest (2005a,b), we should abandon SAE altogether and look directly
to the empirical findings of "ameliorative psychology",
which promises to give us insight into how we can reason
 better.[27]
 The feasibility of this project has been challenged, and on much the
same grounds as Goldman (e.g.) objects to Kornblith's
view--namely, because of the apparent indispensability to even an
empirically-minded epistemology of a reliance upon intuitions, for
instance concerning what the relevant standard of epistemic goodness
*is* (e.g., Stich 2006). And yet, if the studies mentioned
above are correct, it's not clear what kind of authority we
should grant such intuitions - or, more generally, the results
of armchair philosophical methods such as are found within both TE and
Goldman's brand of "moderate naturalism".



However, those studies have been challenged. For instance, Sosa 2005,
Goldman 2010, and Williamson 2013 raise concerns about the
interpretation and significance of the reported data (and, to some
extent, about the merits of x-phi itself). Just as importantly, others
working within an experimental framework have raised questions about
those data themselves. Thus, while Weinberg, Nichols, and Stich
(2001), for example, claimed to find significant cross-cultural
variation in people's epistemic intuitions, several recent studies
(Nagel *et al.* 2013, Seyedsayamdost 2015, Kim and Yuan 2015)
have failed to replicate those results. (See too Nagel 2012, 2013;
Nagel and Boyd 2014.) In fact, in his most recent work on the subject,
Stich - along with his coauthors (see Machery *et al.*
2015) - has argued for the cross-cultural *robustness* of
certain epistemic intuitions, suggesting that these "may be a
reflection of an underlying innate and universal *core folk
epistemology*." Like NE itself, x-phi raises pressing issues
about philosophical methodology and remains the focus of lively
debate. The most recent findings just mentioned, however, illustrate
how x-phi *per se* is not at odds with the more traditional
concerns and methods that Goldman's moderate naturalism, for example,
incorporates: an epistemological theory's being informed by conceptual
investigation, or by intuitive judgments, does not automatically fate
it to being parochial and therefore of only limited interest.


## 6. Other Topics and Approaches



The discussion of the past few sections has focused on the views and
arguments of select figures within NE. The rationale for this focus
has been twofold: first, because the positions and figures in
question have been at the forefront of recent discussions of NE; and
second, because the general epistemological affinity between Kornblith
and Goldman in particular (i.e., their common adherence to
reliabilism) has allowed us to isolate and appreciate both the central
challenges to NE and some of the major points of difference among its
advocates. Once again, however, the selective focus above should not
obscure the fact that many other naturalistic epistemological theories have
been offered
 (Section 1.2).
 Thus, for example, in addition to reliabilist (Goldman, Kornblith),
pragmatic (Stich), and information-theoretic (Dretske) views,
teleo-functional thinking has been used in proffered accounts of both
knowledge (Millikan 1984) and epistemic entitlement (Graham 2012).
Pollock (1986, 1987), and Pollock and Cruz (1999), seek to understand
epistemic justification in terms of conformity to procedural norms of
belief-formation, the correctness of which is ensured by the contents
of the relevant concepts. And
others--"nonfactualists" such as Field (1998), and
"expressivists" such as Chrisman (2007)--regard the
use of epistemic terms, and the explicit endorsement of specific
epistemic norms and evaluations, as essentially a matter of expressing
one's attitudes, pro and con. These and other specific views
represent other ongoing attempts to understand various epistemic
concepts and/or phenomena in a naturalistic manner. While each faces
distinct challenges, *qua* naturalistic views, the most
pressing issues facing them are those discussed above.



In addition to such positions with regard to specific epistemic
matters, there are other regions of epistemology in which NE figures
prominently. This final section briefly describes three further such areas--social epistemology,
feminist epistemology, and the debate over (epistemic)
rationality.


### 6.1 Social epistemology



As we have seen, NE is motivated by a variety of concerns about the
methods and ideals of TE--for instance, a reliance upon the *a
priori*, an apsychological, "current time slice"
(Goldman 2011) approach to understanding knowledge or justification, a
tendency to overlook or idealize the resources and abilities that
actual epistemic subjects possess, and so on. Another aspect of TE
that has recently come under much scrutiny is its tendency to treat
subjects in rather *individualistic* terms--i.e., as
divorced from their social environment. This too is seen as a serious
distortion, given that people's lives, epistemic and otherwise,
are importantly shaped by social forces. (Indeed, according to some,
even this way of putting it is misleading, since it paints individuals
as explanatorily prior to the social in epistemic matters.) Worth
noting here is that even paradigm instances of NE might be charged
with being unduly focused on the individual--e.g., with looking to
individual psychology as being especially relevant to epistemology, at
the expense of areas of empirical study with a more social orientation
(cf. Grandy 1994: 346-348).



*Social epistemology* (SE) is a large and diverse area of
research aimed at countering the individualism of TE by studying
epistemic phenomena from a properly social perspective. (Sample
overviews of SE are Schmitt 1994 and Goldman and Blanchard 2015.
Goldman and Whitcomb 2011 is an up-to-date collection of papers on SE;
and Lackey 2014 is a volume of new papers on collective epistemology
specifically.) Just as with NE, different specific theories and
theorists within SE maintain closer or more distant relations to TE.
Some social epistemologists maintain a view of the individual as the
primary locus of epistemic achievement, for example, while others
treat entities other than individuals, such as groups or corporations,
as having epistemic properties. Some theorists evaluate various social
processes and institutions in terms of some more general, non-social
feature (e.g., reliability), while others think that the relevant
good-making features are not so reducible. Some retain truth as the
primary epistemic goal; others propose some non-traditional goal. And
so on. Across these various approaches, however, many practitioners
within SE are motivated by concerns similar to those that animate NE,
and many of the forms and themes within NE
 (Section 1.2)
 appear here as well. (In terms of the theoretical choice points
mentioned just above, Goldman 1999b, for example--as he does with
respect to NE *per se*--tends to occupy the more
"conservative" positions; the SE of Martin Kusch 2002, for
instance, rejects many of the core assumptions of TE; and Helen
Longino's 2002 views are, arguably, intermediate between the
two.)


### 6.2 Feminist epistemology



As the reference to Longino in the previous (sub)section suggests,
there is a continuity between the issues and concerns addressed within
SE and those addressed within *feminist epistemology* (FE).
(For overviews of the latter, see Anderson 2012; Grasswick 2013, esp.
Section 1; and Janack n.d. in Other Internet Resources). Like SE (and
NE), of course, FE is a broad category, within which many diverse
projects and positions are assayed. As Longino puts it,



> 
> 
> There is no single feminist epistemology. Instead there are a plethora
> of ideas, approaches, and arguments that have in common only their
> authors' commitment to exposing and reversing the derogation of women
> and the gender bias of traditional formulations. (1999: 331) 
> 
> 
> 



Nonetheless, like SE and NE, historically FE has been motivated by
concerns about the ideals and assumptions built into TE--albeit,
of course, from a distinctly feminist perspective. Thus, for example,
traditional notions of reason and objectivity have been subjected to
critical scrutiny, on the grounds that they embody (usually tacitly)
certain characteristically masculine ideals, such as a separation from
other people, from the object of knowledge, and from one's own
body and the socio-cultural *milieu*. (Not surprisingly, here,
once again, Cartesian assumptions and aspirations come in for special
critical attention.)



Against this general background, many theorists adopt a more or less
naturalistic approach to the subject matter--focusing on
particular features of the actual epistemic situation and drawing from
a diverse range of areas of empirical study (psychology, gender
studies, sociological and historical studies, and others). Among such
NE-minded philosophers, however, different theorists once again stake
out different positions. Thus, for example, a number of feminist
epistemologists (e.g., Antony 1993, Campbell 1998, Nelson 1990) draw
upon Quine's work. Just as in NE, however, others (e.g., Clough
2004, Code 1996) argue that a different sort of naturalistic approach
is to be preferred--sometimes, on grounds familiar from those
discussed earlier; sometimes, because of specifically feminist
concerns. So too, just as in both NE and SE, there is disagreement
about how much of the original framework of TE--which of its
concepts, concerns, and assumptions--should be retained, and how
certain of its elements might need to be recast so as to render them acceptable.


### 6.3 Rationality debates



In addition to being of central interest within TE,
*rationality* is central to our self-conception: Aristotle held
that we are "rational animals", a presumption built into
the very name of our species ("*homo sapiens*");
and the thought that humans are rational, perhaps distinctively so,
appears to be part of the popular fabric of thought about ourselves.
There is long-standing disagreement among epistemologists as to the
nature of epistemic rationality
("rationality")--which, on one understanding, is
distinguished from other forms of rationality by being concerned with
the effective pursuit of the distinctively cognitive-epistemic end of
true belief. There has also recently arisen heated debate--often
termed "the Rationality Wars"--among psychologists
and philosophers of psychology concerning what we should say in the
face of empirical findings about humans' apparently
disappointing performance on certain "reasoning tasks".
According to some, those results force us to confront the possibility
that humans may in fact be quite irrational. According to others, such
results, together with a psychologically realistic view of how human
reasoning actually proceeds, point up the need to revise standard
views of what rationality involves. (Much of the resulting debate
recapitulates, in broad terms, the debate within TE as to the nature
of justified, or rational,
 belief.[28])



For example, well-known experimental findings--e.g., those of
Tversky and Kahneman (1982) concerning probabilistic reasoning, and
those of Wason (1968) concerning deductive reasoning--cannot be
taken to illustrate failures in rationality unless we assume what
Stein (1996) calls "the Standard Picture" (SP):



> 
> 
> According to this picture, to be rational is to reason in accordance
> with principles of reasoning that are based on rules of logic,
> probability theory and so forth. If the standard picture of reasoning
> [rationality] is right, principles of reasoning that are based on such
> rules are normative principles of reasoning, namely they are the
> principles we ought to reason in accordance with. (Stein 1996: 4)
> 
> 
> 



According to some, rather than suggesting that humans are irrational,
the relevant findings (among many other considerations) give us good
occasion to ask whether it is reasonable to see "the Standard
Picture" as providing the relevant normative standard.
Discussion of the ensuing debate would take us too far afield here
(but see note 27). For present purposes, it suffices to note that it
shares many features with the debate within and about NE. Empirical
results and considerations of psychological feasibility play a large
role within the rationality debate, and many of the facts and factors
appealed to by friends of NE in their critique of TE (see
 Sections 1.2
 and
 3.2
 above, e.g.) reappear here either as criticisms of SP, or as
proffered constraints upon an adequate conception of rationality.
Finally, as with debates within and about NE generally, discussions of
rationality involve appeals to both normative and psychological
considerations, with many of the most contested issues having to do
with how best to balance their sometimes-competing claims.