Naturalized Epistemology And Philosophy Of Science

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

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

This book presents four bridges connecting work in virtue epistemology and work in philosophy of science (broadly construed) that may serve as catalysts for the further development of naturalized virtue epistemology. These bridges are: empirically informed theories of epistemic virtue; virtue theoretic solutions to under determination; epistemic virtues in the history of science; and the value of understanding. Virtue epistemology has opened many new areas of inquiry in contemporary epistemology including: epistemic agency, the role of motivations and emotions in epistemology, the nature of abilities, skills and competences, wisdom and curiosity. Value driven epistemic inquiry has become quite complex and there is a need for a responsible and rigorous process of constructing naturalized theories of epistemic virtue. This volume makes the involvement of the sciences more explicit and looks at the empirical aspect of virtue epistemology. Concerns about virtue epistemology are considered in the essays contained here, including the question: can any virtue epistemology meet both the normativity constraint and the empirical constraint? The volume suggests that these worries should not be seen as impediments but rather as useful constraints and desiderata to guide the construction of naturalized theories of epistemic virtue.

Much has happened in the field of contemporary epistemology since Quine's "Epistemology Naturalized" was published in 1969. Even before Ronald Giere published his article "Philosophy of Science Naturalized," naturalized philosophy of science had been infl

Scientific naturalism, or scientism, is the theory that science has all the answers. This book argues that not all philosophical explanations can be reduced to scientific ones. Refuting support for scientism, it suggests that reliabilist and causal theories of epistemic justification are unsound.

Both science and philosophy are interested in questions of ontology - questions about what exists and what these things are like. Science and philosophy, however, seem like very different ways of investigating the world, so how should one proceed? Some defer to the sciences, conceived as something apart from philosophy, and others to metaphysics, conceived as something apart from science, for certain kinds of answers. This book contends that these sorts of deference are misconceived. A compelling account of ontology must appreciate the ways in which the sciences incorporate metaphysical assumptions and arguments. At the same time, it must pay careful attention to how observation, experience, and the empirical dimensions of science are related to what may be viewed as defensible philosophical theorizing about ontology. The promise of an effectively naturalized metaphysics is to encourage beliefs that are formed in ways that do justice to scientific theorizing, modeling, and experimentation. But even armed with such a view, there is no one, uniquely rational way to draw lines between domains of ontology that are suitable for belief, and ones in which it would be better to suspend belief instead. In crucial respects, ontology is in the eye of the beholder: it is informed by underlying commitments with implications for the limits of inquiry, which inevitably vary across rational inquirers. As result, the proper scope of ontology is subject to a striking form of voluntary choice, yielding a new and transformative conception of scientific ontology.

This book approaches its subject matter in a way that combines a strong analytical and critical perspective with a historical and sociological framework for the understanding of the emergence of Science Studies. This is a novelty, since extant literature on this topic tends either to narrate the history of the field, with little criticism, or to criticize Science Studies from a philosophical platform but with little interest in its historical and social context. The book provides a critical review of the most prominent figures in Science Studies (also known as Science and Technology Studies) and traces the historical roots of the discipline back to developments emerging after World War II. It also presents it as an heir to a long trend in Western thought towards the naturalization of philosophy, where a priori modes of thought are replaced by empirical ones. Finally, it points to ways for Science Studies to proceed in the future.

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