Naturalized epistemology
Encyclopedia
Naturalized epistemology is a collection of philosophic
views concerned with the theory of knowledge that emphasize the role of natural scientific methods. This shared emphasis on scientific methods of studying knowledge shifts focus to the empirical
processes of knowledge acquisition and away from many traditional philosophic questions. There are noteworthy distinctions within naturalized epistemology. Replacement naturalism maintains that traditional epistemology should be abandoned and replaced with the methodologies of the natural sciences. The general thesis of cooperative naturalism is that traditional epistemology can benefit in its inquiry by using the knowledge we have gained from the cognitive science
s. Substantive naturalism focuses on an asserted equality of facts of knowledge and natural facts.
Objections to naturalized epistemology have targeted features of the general project as well as characteristics of specific versions. Some objectors suggest that natural scientific knowledge cannot be circularly grounded by the knowledge obtained through cognitive science, which is itself a natural science. This objection from circularity has been aimed specifically at strict replacement naturalism. There are similar challenges to substance naturalism that maintain that the substance naturalists' thesis that all facts of knowledge are natural facts is not only circular but fails to accommodate certain facts. Several other objectors have found fault in the inability of naturalized methods to adequately address questions about what value forms of potential knowledge have or lack. Naturalized epistemology is generally opposed to the anti-psychologism of Immanuel Kant
, Gottlob Frege
, Karl Popper
and others.
version of naturalized epistemology considers reasons for serious doubt about the fruitfulness of traditional philosophic study of scientific knowledge. These concerns are raised in light of the long attested incapacity of philosophers to find a satisfactory answer to the problems of radical scepticism, more particularly, to David Hume
's criticism of induction. But also, because of the contemporaneous attempts and failures to reduce mathematics to pure logic by those in or philosophically sympathetic to The Vienna Circle
. He concludes that studies of scientific knowledge concerned with meaning or truth fail to achieve the Cartesian goal of certainty
. The failures in the reduction of mathematics to pure logic imply that scientific knowledge can at best be defined with the aid of less certain set-theoretic notions. Even if set theory's lacking the certainty of pure logic is deemed acceptable, the usefulness of constructing an encoding of scientific knowledge as logic and set theory is undermined by the inability to construct a useful translation from logic and set-theory back to scientific knowledge. If no translation between scientific knowledge and the logical structures can be constructed that works both ways, then the properties of the purely logical and set-theoretic constructions do not usefully inform understanding of scientific knowledge.
On Quine's account, attempts to pursue the traditional project of finding the meanings and truths of science philosophically have failed on their own terms and failed to offer any advantage over the more direct methods of psychology. Since traditional philosophic analysis of knowledge fails, those wishing to study knowledge ought to employ natural scientific methods. Scientific study of knowledge differs from philosophic study by focusing on how humans acquire knowledge rather than speculative analysis of knowledge. According to Quine, this appeal to science to ground the project of studying knowledge, which itself underlies science, should not be dismissed for its circularity
since it is the best option available after ruling out traditional philosophic methods for their more serious flaws. This identification and tolerance of circularity is reflected elsewhere in Quine's works.
In order to understand the link between observation and science, Quine's naturalized epistemology must be able to identify and describe the process by which scientific knowledge is acquired. One form of this investigation is reliabilism
which requires that a belief be the product of some reliable method if it is to be considered knowledge. Since naturalized epistemology relies on empirical evidence, all epistemic facts which comprise this reliable method must be reducible to natural facts. That is, all facts related to the process of understanding must be expressible in terms of natural facts. If this is not true, i.e. there are facts which cannot be expressed as natural facts, science would have no means of investigating them. In this vein, Roderick Chisholm
argues that there are epistemic principles (or facts) which are necessary to knowledge acquisition, but may not be, themselves, natural facts. If Chisholm is correct, naturalized epistemology would be unable to account for these epistemic principles and, as a result, would be unable to wholly describe the process by which knowledge is obtained.
Beyond Quine's own concerns and potential discrepancies between epistemic and natural facts, Hilary Putnam
argues that the replacement of traditional epistemology with naturalized epistemology necessitates the elimination of the normative
. But without the normative, there is no "justification, rational acceptability [nor] warranted assertibility". Ultimately, there is no "true" since any method for arriving at the truth was abandoned with the normative. All notions which would explain truth are only intelligible when the normative is presupposed. Moreover, for there to be "thinkers", there "must be some kind of truth"; otherwise, "our thoughts aren't really about anything[,...] there is no sense in which any thought is right or wrong". Without the normative to dictate how one should proceed or which methods should be employed, naturalized epistemology cannot determine the "right" criteria by which empirical evidence should be evaluated. But these are precisely the issues which traditional epistemology has been tasked. If naturalized epistemology does not provide the means for addressing these issues, it cannot succeed as a replacement to traditional epistemology.
Jaegwon Kim
, another critic of naturalized epistemology, further articulates the difficulty of removing the normative component. He notes that modern epistemology has been dominated by the concepts of justification
and reliability
. Kim explains that epistemology and knowledge are nearly eliminated in their common sense meanings without normative concepts such as these. These concepts are meant to engender the question "What conditions must a belief meet if we are justified in accepting it as true?". That is to say, what are the necessary criteria by which a particular belief can be declared as "true" (or, should it fail to meet these criteria, can we rightly infer its falsity)? This notion of truth rests solely on the conception and application of the criteria which are set forth in traditional and modern theories of epistemology.
Kim adds to this claim by explaining how the idea of "justification" is the only notion (among "belief" and "truth") which is the defining characteristic of an epistemological study. To remove this aspect is to alter the very meaning and goal of epistemology, whereby we are no longer discussing the study and acquisition of knowledge. Justification is what makes knowledge valuable and normative; without it what can rightly be said to be true or false? We are left with only descriptions of the processes by which we arrive at a belief. Kim realizes that Quine is moving epistemology into the realm of psychology, where Quine’s main interest is based on the sensory input-output relationship of an individual. This account can never establish an affirmable statement which can lead us to truth, since all statements without the normative are purely descriptive (which can never amount to knowledge). The vulgar allowance of any statement without discrimination as scientifically valid, though not true, makes Quine’s theory difficult to accept under any epistemic theory which requires truth as the object of knowledge.
As a result of these objections and others like them, most, including Quine in his later writings, have agreed that naturalized epistemology as a replacement may be too strong of a view. However, these objections have helped shape rather than completely eliminate naturalized epistemology. One product of these objections is cooperative naturalism which holds that empirical results are essential and useful to epistemology. That is, while traditional epistemology cannot be eliminated, neither can it succeed in its investigation of knowledge without empirical results from the natural sciences. In any case, Quinean Replacement Naturalism finds relatively few supporters.
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
views concerned with the theory of knowledge that emphasize the role of natural scientific methods. This shared emphasis on scientific methods of studying knowledge shifts focus to the empirical
Empirical
The word empirical denotes information gained by means of observation or experimentation. Empirical data are data produced by an experiment or observation....
processes of knowledge acquisition and away from many traditional philosophic questions. There are noteworthy distinctions within naturalized epistemology. Replacement naturalism maintains that traditional epistemology should be abandoned and replaced with the methodologies of the natural sciences. The general thesis of cooperative naturalism is that traditional epistemology can benefit in its inquiry by using the knowledge we have gained from the cognitive science
Cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...
s. Substantive naturalism focuses on an asserted equality of facts of knowledge and natural facts.
Objections to naturalized epistemology have targeted features of the general project as well as characteristics of specific versions. Some objectors suggest that natural scientific knowledge cannot be circularly grounded by the knowledge obtained through cognitive science, which is itself a natural science. This objection from circularity has been aimed specifically at strict replacement naturalism. There are similar challenges to substance naturalism that maintain that the substance naturalists' thesis that all facts of knowledge are natural facts is not only circular but fails to accommodate certain facts. Several other objectors have found fault in the inability of naturalized methods to adequately address questions about what value forms of potential knowledge have or lack. Naturalized epistemology is generally opposed to the anti-psychologism of Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
, Gottlob Frege
Gottlob Frege
Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege was a German mathematician, logician and philosopher. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern logic, and made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics. He is generally considered to be the father of analytic philosophy, for his writings on...
, Karl Popper
Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA was an Austro-British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics...
and others.
Replacement naturalism
W. V. O. Quine'sWillard Van Orman Quine
Willard Van Orman Quine was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition...
version of naturalized epistemology considers reasons for serious doubt about the fruitfulness of traditional philosophic study of scientific knowledge. These concerns are raised in light of the long attested incapacity of philosophers to find a satisfactory answer to the problems of radical scepticism, more particularly, to David Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
's criticism of induction. But also, because of the contemporaneous attempts and failures to reduce mathematics to pure logic by those in or philosophically sympathetic to The Vienna Circle
Vienna Circle
The Vienna Circle was an association of philosophers gathered around the University of Vienna in 1922, chaired by Moritz Schlick, also known as the Ernst Mach Society in honour of Ernst Mach...
. He concludes that studies of scientific knowledge concerned with meaning or truth fail to achieve the Cartesian goal of certainty
Certainty
Certainty can be defined as either:# perfect knowledge that has total security from error, or# the mental state of being without doubtObjectively defined, certainty is total continuity and validity of all foundational inquiry, to the highest degree of precision. Something is certain only if no...
. The failures in the reduction of mathematics to pure logic imply that scientific knowledge can at best be defined with the aid of less certain set-theoretic notions. Even if set theory's lacking the certainty of pure logic is deemed acceptable, the usefulness of constructing an encoding of scientific knowledge as logic and set theory is undermined by the inability to construct a useful translation from logic and set-theory back to scientific knowledge. If no translation between scientific knowledge and the logical structures can be constructed that works both ways, then the properties of the purely logical and set-theoretic constructions do not usefully inform understanding of scientific knowledge.
On Quine's account, attempts to pursue the traditional project of finding the meanings and truths of science philosophically have failed on their own terms and failed to offer any advantage over the more direct methods of psychology. Since traditional philosophic analysis of knowledge fails, those wishing to study knowledge ought to employ natural scientific methods. Scientific study of knowledge differs from philosophic study by focusing on how humans acquire knowledge rather than speculative analysis of knowledge. According to Quine, this appeal to science to ground the project of studying knowledge, which itself underlies science, should not be dismissed for its circularity
Circular reasoning
Circular reasoning, or in other words, paradoxical thinking, is a type of formal logical fallacy in which the proposition to be proved is assumed implicitly or explicitly in one of the premises. For example:"Only an untrustworthy person would run for office...
since it is the best option available after ruling out traditional philosophic methods for their more serious flaws. This identification and tolerance of circularity is reflected elsewhere in Quine's works.
Cooperative naturalism
Cooperative naturalism is a version of naturalized epistemology which states that while there are evaluative questions to pursue, the empirical results from psychology concerning how individuals actually think and reason are essential and useful for making progress in these evaluative questions. This form of naturalism says that our psychological and biological limitations and abilities are relevant to the study of human knowledge. Empirical work is relevant to epistemology but only if epistemology is itself as broad as the study of human knowledge.Substantive naturalism
Substantive naturalism is a form of naturalized epistemology that emphasizes how all epistemic facts are natural facts. Natural facts can be based on two main ideas. The first is that all natural facts include all facts that science would verify. The second is to provide a list of examples that consists of natural items. This will help in deducing what else can be included.Criticism
Quine articulates the problem of circularity inherent in naturalized epistemology when it is treated as a replacement for traditional epistemology. If the goal of traditional epistemology is to validate or to provide the foundation for the natural sciences, naturalized epistemology would be tasked with validating the natural sciences by means of those very sciences. That is, an empirical investigation into the criteria which are used to scientifically evaluate evidence must presuppose those very same criteria. However, Quine points out that these thoughts of validation are merely a byproduct of traditional epistemology. Instead, the naturalized epistemologist should only be concerned with understanding the link between observation and science even if that understanding relies on the very science under investigation.In order to understand the link between observation and science, Quine's naturalized epistemology must be able to identify and describe the process by which scientific knowledge is acquired. One form of this investigation is reliabilism
Reliabilism
Reliabilism, a category of theories in the philosophical discipline of epistemology, has been advanced both as a theory of knowledge and of justified belief...
which requires that a belief be the product of some reliable method if it is to be considered knowledge. Since naturalized epistemology relies on empirical evidence, all epistemic facts which comprise this reliable method must be reducible to natural facts. That is, all facts related to the process of understanding must be expressible in terms of natural facts. If this is not true, i.e. there are facts which cannot be expressed as natural facts, science would have no means of investigating them. In this vein, Roderick Chisholm
Roderick Chisholm
Roderick M. Chisholm was an American philosopher known for his work on epistemology, metaphysics, free will, and the philosophy of perception. He received his Ph.D. at Harvard University under Clarence Irving Lewis and Donald C. Williams, and taught at Brown University...
argues that there are epistemic principles (or facts) which are necessary to knowledge acquisition, but may not be, themselves, natural facts. If Chisholm is correct, naturalized epistemology would be unable to account for these epistemic principles and, as a result, would be unable to wholly describe the process by which knowledge is obtained.
Beyond Quine's own concerns and potential discrepancies between epistemic and natural facts, Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Whitehall Putnam is an American philosopher, mathematician and computer scientist, who has been a central figure in analytic philosophy since the 1960s, especially in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science...
argues that the replacement of traditional epistemology with naturalized epistemology necessitates the elimination of the normative
Norm (philosophy)
Norms are concepts of practical import, oriented to effecting an action, rather than conceptual abstractions that describe, explain, and express. Normative sentences imply “ought-to” types of statements and assertions, in distinction to sentences that provide “is” types of statements and assertions...
. But without the normative, there is no "justification, rational acceptability [nor] warranted assertibility". Ultimately, there is no "true" since any method for arriving at the truth was abandoned with the normative. All notions which would explain truth are only intelligible when the normative is presupposed. Moreover, for there to be "thinkers", there "must be some kind of truth"; otherwise, "our thoughts aren't really about anything[,...] there is no sense in which any thought is right or wrong". Without the normative to dictate how one should proceed or which methods should be employed, naturalized epistemology cannot determine the "right" criteria by which empirical evidence should be evaluated. But these are precisely the issues which traditional epistemology has been tasked. If naturalized epistemology does not provide the means for addressing these issues, it cannot succeed as a replacement to traditional epistemology.
Jaegwon Kim
Jaegwon Kim
Jaegwon Kim is a Korean American philosopher currently working at Brown University. He is best known for his work on mental causation and the mind-body problem. Key themes in his work include: a rejection of Cartesian metaphysics, the limitations of strict psychophysical identity, supervenience,...
, another critic of naturalized epistemology, further articulates the difficulty of removing the normative component. He notes that modern epistemology has been dominated by the concepts of justification
Theory of justification
Theory of justification is a part of epistemology that attempts to understand the justification of propositions and beliefs. Epistemologists are concerned with various epistemic features of belief, which include the ideas of justification, warrant, rationality, and probability...
and reliability
Reliabilism
Reliabilism, a category of theories in the philosophical discipline of epistemology, has been advanced both as a theory of knowledge and of justified belief...
. Kim explains that epistemology and knowledge are nearly eliminated in their common sense meanings without normative concepts such as these. These concepts are meant to engender the question "What conditions must a belief meet if we are justified in accepting it as true?". That is to say, what are the necessary criteria by which a particular belief can be declared as "true" (or, should it fail to meet these criteria, can we rightly infer its falsity)? This notion of truth rests solely on the conception and application of the criteria which are set forth in traditional and modern theories of epistemology.
Kim adds to this claim by explaining how the idea of "justification" is the only notion (among "belief" and "truth") which is the defining characteristic of an epistemological study. To remove this aspect is to alter the very meaning and goal of epistemology, whereby we are no longer discussing the study and acquisition of knowledge. Justification is what makes knowledge valuable and normative; without it what can rightly be said to be true or false? We are left with only descriptions of the processes by which we arrive at a belief. Kim realizes that Quine is moving epistemology into the realm of psychology, where Quine’s main interest is based on the sensory input-output relationship of an individual. This account can never establish an affirmable statement which can lead us to truth, since all statements without the normative are purely descriptive (which can never amount to knowledge). The vulgar allowance of any statement without discrimination as scientifically valid, though not true, makes Quine’s theory difficult to accept under any epistemic theory which requires truth as the object of knowledge.
As a result of these objections and others like them, most, including Quine in his later writings, have agreed that naturalized epistemology as a replacement may be too strong of a view. However, these objections have helped shape rather than completely eliminate naturalized epistemology. One product of these objections is cooperative naturalism which holds that empirical results are essential and useful to epistemology. That is, while traditional epistemology cannot be eliminated, neither can it succeed in its investigation of knowledge without empirical results from the natural sciences. In any case, Quinean Replacement Naturalism finds relatively few supporters.
Selected bibliography
- Almeder, Robert (1998) Harmless Naturalism: The Limits of Science and the Nature of Philosophy, Peru, Illinois: Open Court.
- BonJour, Laurence (1994) "Against Naturalized Epistemology," Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XIX: 283-300.
- Chisholm, Roderick (1966)Theory of Knowledge, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
- Chisholm, Roderick (1982) The Foundations of Knowing, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
- Chisholm, Roderick (1989)Theory of Knowledge, 3rd ed., Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
- Feldman, Richard (1999), "Methodological Naturalism in Epistemology," in The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology, edited by John Greco and Ernest Sosa, Malden, Ma: Blackwell, pp. 170-186.
- Foley, Richard (1994) "Quine and Naturalized Epistemology," Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XIX: 243-260.
- Fumerton, Richard (1994) "Skepticism and Naturalistic Epistemology," Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XIX: 321-340.
- Fumerton, Richard (1995) Metaepistemology and Skepticism, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
- Gibbard, Allan (1990) Wise Feelings, Apt Choices, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
- Goldman, Alvin (1979) "What is Justified Belief?," in G. Pappas, ed., Justification and Knowledge: New Studies in Epistemology, Dordrecht, Reidel: 1-23.
- Goldman, Alvin (1992), Liaisons: Philosophy Meets the Cognitive and Social Sciences, Cambridge: MIT Press.
- Haack, Susan (1993) Evidence and Inquiry: Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology, Oxford: Blackwell.
- Harman, Gilbert (1977) Thought, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Kim, Jaegwon (1988) "What is Naturalized Epistemology?" Philosophical Perspectives 2 edited by James E. Tomberlin, Asascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing Co: 381-406.
- Kitcher, Philip (1992) "The Naturalists Return," Philosophical Review, 101: 53-114.
- Kornblith, Hilary (1994) Naturalizing Epistemology 2nd Edition, Cambridge: MIT Press.
- Kornblith, Hilary (1999) "In Defense of a Naturalized Epistemology" in The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology, edited by John Greco and Ernest Sosa, Malden, Ma: Blackwell, pp. 158-169.
- Kornblith, Hilary (1988) "How Internal Can You Get?," Synthese, 74: 313-327.
- Lehrer, Keith (1997) Self-Trust: A study of Reason, Knowledge and Autonomy, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
- Lycan, William (1988) Judgement and Justification, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Mafffie, James (1990) "Recent Work on Naturalizing Epistemology," American Philosophical Quarterly 27: 281-293.
- Pollock, John (1986) Contemporary Theories of Knowledge, Totawa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield.
- Quine, W.V.O. (1969) Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, New York: Columbia University Press.
- Quine, W.V.O. (1990) "Norms and Aims" in The Pursuit of Truth, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
- Steup, Matthias, An Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology, Prentice-Hall, 1996.
- Stich, Stephen and Richard Nisbett (1980), "Justification and the Psychology of Human Reasoning," Philosophy of Science 47: 188-202.
- Stich, Stephen (1990) The Fragmentation of Reason, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Strawson, Peter (1952) Introduction to Logical Theory, New York: Wiley.
- van Cleve, James (1985) "Epistemic Supervenience and the Circle of Belief" Monist 68: 90-104.
External links
- The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Epistemology
- The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Naturalized Epistemology
- The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy ISBN 0-14-051250-0