Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy

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Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary
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Naturalized epistemology
and epistemic evaluation
a
Christopher Hookway
a
Department of Philosophy , University of
Birmingham , Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15
2TT, England
Published online: 29 Aug 2008.
To cite this article: Christopher Hookway (1994) Naturalized epistemology and

epistemic evaluation, Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 37:4,
465-485, DOI: 10.1080/00201749408602368
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00201749408602368
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Inquiry, 37, 465-85
Naturalized Epistemology and

Epistemic Evaluation
Christopher Hookway
University of Birmingham
The paper explores Quine's 'naturalized epistemology', investigating whether its

adoption would prevent the description or vindication of normative standards
standardly employed in regulating beliefs and inquiries. Quine's defence of
naturalized epistemology rejects traditional epistemological questions rather than
using psychology to answer them. Although one could persuade those sensitive to
the force of traditional epistemological problems only by employing the kind of
argument whose philosophical relevance Quine is committed to denying, Quine can
support his view by showing how scientific inquiry need not confront any evaluative
issues which cannot be addressed in naturalistic terms. A survey of Quine's own
epistemological writings supports this account of his position: naturalized
epistemology, it is argued, requires acceptance of the shallowness of epistemic
reflection, and traditional epistemology employs general epistemic norms and
principles which Quine endeavours to show that we can do without. The closing
sections of the paper argue that Quine can consistently resist recent criticisms by
Alvin Plantinga in spite of the fact that an unsympathetic reader could reasonably
be unimpressed by this resistance. Finally, an attempt is made to understand the
normative role of Quine's empiricism and of his claim that prediction is the
checkpoint of inquiry.
I. Naturalized Epistemology
Quine's approach to epistemological issues is resolutely naturalistic. Ques-
tions concerning how theory is confirmed by evidence and how observation
yields truths about external things are to be tackled within natural science;
there is no role for a philosophical theory, independent of the sciences,
which assures us of the reliability of the methods used in scientific inves-
tigations. He recognizes that by identifying epistemology as an enterprise
that is internal to natural science, he rejects what some may take to be
central to the 'epistemological tradition' (namely 'the Cartesian dream of
a foundation for scientific certainty firmer than scientific method itself).1
The retention of the term 'epistemology' signals that he is still concerned
with 'what has been central to traditional epistemology, namely the relation
of science to its sensory data',2 but Quine does not care overmuch about
the term. The important question is not that of whether Quine's 'naturalized
epistemology' is 'epistemology correctly so-called'.3 It is rather: are there
466 Christopher Hookway
genuine issues, often discussed under the title of 'epistemology', which

Quine's more general philosophical naturalism prevents us taking seriously?
Does he close down discussion too early? Thus a number of critics have
urged that Quine fails to find room for concepts and categories that are
fundamental to our (and science's) ways of making sense of ourselves and
our activities. My aim in this paper is to look (in rather general terms) at
whether this charge (in one of its forms) can be mounted and how far it
can be resisted.
A common criticism of Quine's 'epistemology' is that epistemology is a
normative discipline, while its Quinean replacement can only describe the
processes which produce our developing theory of the world.4 It may be
denied that Quine can make sense of normative claims within epistemology
at all. We often reflect upon how we ought to revise our opinions in
response to conflicts and surprises. Epistemology grows out of an attempt

to be reflective about such reflections, and a scientific account of how our
theories are arrived at ignores questions about how they ought to be
developed and defended. Quine rejects this criticism: 'Insofar as theoretical
epistemology gets naturalized into a chapter of theoretical science, so
normative epistemology gets naturalized into a chapter of engineering:
the technology of anticipating sensory stimulation.'5 So long as epistemic
evaluation is concerned with assessing technical means to achieving fixed
cognitive ends, normativity need present no problem for the naturalist.
The more interesting forms of the objection point to particular eval-
uations which arise out of reflective inquiry which cannot be understood in
'technological' terms. Cartesians claim, for example, that we need to defend
our view of the world as a whole against sceptical attack, vindicating the
senses as a source of information about external things and defending the
legitimacy of induction. This need is supposed to be evident to common-
sense philosophical reflection upon our opinions.6 Quine's repudiation of
the Cartesian tradition requires him to deny that any such defence is
required. Since it would plainly be circular to rely upon information
obtained from induction and the senses in combating Cartesian scepticism,
naturalized epistemology would fail if we were not warranted in doing so.
Even if 'Cartesian' worries do not disturb us, there may be epistemic
norms which cannot be understood in 'technological' terms. A critic may
complain that Quine's approach to epistemology ignores issues of genuine
epistemic concern. My primary concern in the paper is with how far such
objections can be sustained. Quine's naturalism claims that many issues
traditionally investigated by philosophers interested in epistemology are
properly located within psychology. To give this claim some 'naturalistic'
bite, we must add that these issues belong to a kind of psychology which
is to be classified along with the natural sciences. Somebody who thought
that epistemology formed part of a distinctively philosophical or intro-
Epistemology and Evaluation 467
spective psychology would be no philosophical ally of Quine's. In that case,

there are two forms such dissatisfaction with Quine's philosophy can take.
First one could take issue with the details of his view of psychology, claiming
that we need, if we are to organize the quest for knowledge responsibly, a
more robust notion of content than he is prepared to allow us. A critic
might insist that it is only by employing a richer apparatus of propositional
attitudes than Quine can find room for that we can make sense of what it
is to do science, and then use this as the basis of a kind of reductio of
naturalized epistemology.7 And this stance might be supported by arguing
that Quine's resistance to the use of a robust notion of content rests on
theses about synonymy or reference which rest upon aspects of his natu-
ralism which are independently open to challenge.
The kind of objection I am concerned with here is different, and it could
be sustained even if Quine's naturalism embraced a richer version of

psychology and a more sympathetic attitude towards intentional content
and the propositional attitudes. Epistemology is concerned with the activi-
ties we engage in when we try to extend our knowledge: typically, we raise
questions and we try to answer them. These activities typically involve
evaluations: we attempt to monitor our opinions and carry out inquiries in
a controlled and responsible manner. In the face of perceptual surprise,
we try to reassign truth-values among our corpus of accepted propositions
or sentences in as rational and responsible a manner as we can. This
requires us to make evaluations of how well hypotheses are supported by
the available evidence. We assess arguments and strategies of inquiry, and,
most crucially, we reflect in a second-order fashion upon the norms and
values which govern this activity. This kind of reflection requires us to
evaluate our evaluative procedures, and it provides one point at which
philosophical (and most significantly epistemological) reflection emerges.
The second form of dissatisfaction with the Quinean approach charges
that it requires a distinctive form of blinkeredness: if one is to 'live' the
philosophical outlook involved in naturalized epistemology, one would be
oblivious of the need to engage in reflection of these kinds. And this
amounts to more than an admirable philosophical 'tunnel vision'. It involves
turning away from basic features of our experience.
There are two forms the objection might take, and both surface in Alvin
Plantinga's recent book Warrant and Proper Function} First, one might
deny that Quinean epistemology has the resources to describe fundamental
epistemic norms. Thus Plantinga's analysis of 'warrant'9 exploits a func-
tionalist analysis of cognitive faculties, and asserts that a belief is warranted
only if it is produced or sustained by cognitive systems that are functioning
properly. His examination of some attempts to give naturalistic expla-
nations of the notion of function within the philosophy of biology leads to
the suspicion that none is available. This suggests that there is a fundamental
epistemological value which naturalists must ignore. Alternatively, one

could hold that although fundamental norms can be described, a naturalistic
epistemology cannot explain why we are correct to rely on these norms:
the search for a 'technological vindication' fails. Thus Plantinga suggests
(like that noted friend of naturalism, Stephen Stich)10 that while natural
selection is likely to equip us with faculties that will enable us to survive
long enough to reproduce and bring up our young, it is unlikely to favour
faculties that will be reliable at producing true beliefs. If Darwin is correct,
the argument runs, our cognitive endowment is likely to be a poor means
to our cognitive ends. These examples are intended as illustrative. It is not
my intention to defend them here.
Finally, we should note a structural form of the normativity objection.
Quine suggests that all epistemic evaluation is concerned with the assess-
ment of means to ends. It may be objected that we are also able to evaluate
our ends in inquiry, fixing goals that motivate us in inquiry. If normative
issues do arise concerning the propriety of our epistemic ends, they cannot
be made sense of in the means/ends terms that Quine favours. This may
indicate a further limitation of naturalized epistemology.
II. Dialectical Matters: Quine's 'Radicalism'

First, however, we must consider some complexities in the dialectical
position of someone trying to defend (or criticize) naturalistic epistemology.
When we try to evaluate objections to naturalized epistemology, it is
important to distinguish two separate contexts of justification. We can ask
whether Quine is in a position to persuade his critics that his naturalized
epistemology offers them all that they could reasonably require; and we
can ask whether he can satisfy himself that there are no challenges that
should lead him to reconsider his position. It is natural to suppose that
unless he can achieve the former, then his claim to have achieved the latter
should ring hollow. In the remainder of this introduction, I suggest that
the position is more complex than that: he may be justified in adhering to
naturalized epistemology, although he cannot present arguments that would
persuade his critics that they too should do so.
Burton Dreben has recently characterized Quine as a philosophical
radical.11 The mark of this radicalism lies in his attitude towards what are
referred to as 'traditional philosophical problems'. We might contrast three
philosophical stances as follows: the 'conservative' takes such problems
seriously, either answering them on their own terms or, if persuaded that
this cannot be done, acquiescing in scepticism. A reformist recognizes that
the traditional problems cannot be addressed on their own terms but urges
that they be reformulated: a deep philosophical anxiety was located but
misdescribed within the tradition and if only we reformulate the issue in

the right way, the anxiety can be laid to rest. Thus Kant affirmed that it
was a scandal that philosophers still sought reassurance about the existence
of the external world, and he proposed that we could recover our philo-
sophical purity if only we reformulated the issue in accordance with the
transcendental philosophy.12 The radical simply rejects the traditional prob-
lems: in the words of another philosophical radical (with whom Quine
would have little sympathy), the scandal is that we still look for reassurance
about the external world.
The plausibility of Dreben's identification of Quine's radicalism explains
the common reactions to naturalized epistemology. When asked how we
can have knowledge of external things, it is perfectly natural to respond by
offering an account of how photons are selectively reflected by the surfaces
of objects, or how they are absorbed by rods and cones in the retina, of
how information is passed through ganglion cells to the visual cortex, and
thus (through neurophysiological processes which others understand better
than I but no one understands fully), expectations are formed about objects
in surrounding space. Moreover, we are aware that this is a reliable process,
giving rise to a preponderance of true beliefs. In Thompson Clarke's phrase,
this is a 'plain man's' response:13 it addresses the question as an ordinary
empirical claim about the world and offers a defensible answer to it as so
understood. But just as G. E. Moore's proof of the external world seems
not to engage with the philosophical question which is expressed in the
same words as the empirical one but differs from it in content, so this
scientific response (which is, in effect Quine's) fails to engage with the
question posed when philosophers ask how (or whether) we can have
knowledge of the external world, or indeed of anything else. The radical
approach breaks with tradition not in rejecting a fashionable answer to that
philosophical question, nor even in rejecting particular ways of formulating
it: rather, the radical response simply rejects the question. The only
question which can be formulated in that form of words is the plain
man's empirical one. To borrow a slogan of naturalized epistemology: the
discipline constitutes a branch of psychology or natural science.
For all that it rejects this traditional philosophical problem, this radical
stance can be a distinctively philosophical one. But there are difficult issues
surrounding the radical's participation in philosophical discussion. If he
will not use the vocabulary in which the traditional problems are posed, it
is unclear how he can respond to the questions and anxieties of his dispu-
tants, for those objections will be posed in ways that take for granted the
traditional vocabulary. I can see four possibilities here. One, the least
radical, is to mount a philosophical argument, grounded perhaps in a
distinctive theory of meaning, which asserts the meaningless or point-
lessness of the philosophical problem. I am more than a little sceptical
about the prospects for success if this strategy is adopted, not least because
unless the philosopher breaks with his naturalism in arguing for his theory
of meaning, the same problem is likely to recur. Alternatively, one might
explore the history of the tradition, revealing (for example) how Descartes's
engagement with the problem of the external world makes sense only
against the background of some assumptions about mind, matter, and God
which we no longer find compelling. A third strategy employs other kinds
of philosophical therapy, disarming and destabilizing the assumptions and
argument employed within the tradition to motivate the concern with
sceptical challenges.14
But a fourth strategy is the most interesting one. Unlike the first three
it makes little attempt to engage with the 'tradition' at all. Rather, it shows
or exhibits the groundlessness of their questions and concerns by ignoring
them. It treats in a systematic way all those issues which do arise, and thus
exhibits the fact that the other questions can be avoided or that they only
arise if the traditional philosopher is allowed to set the agenda. The tradition
is committed to the idea that philosophical issues arise, naturally and
inevitably, from reflection that forms part of the everyday concerns of life.
It may be possible for the radical philosopher to exhibit that this is not so,
without arguing systematically for it. Philosophical revelation can be shown
but cannot be articulated or formulated where it rests upon resistance to,
or rejection of, a range of questions and a distinctive vocabulary.
This is a crude taxonomy, but I think it helps us to understand the
character of some of the debates that have surfaced around Quine's defence
of naturalized epistemology. His work contains elements of the second
strategy (he alludes to the role of scientific misconceptions about vision in
supporting the view that the immediate objects of perception are visual
images rather than external things). And the third strategy surfaces
occasionally (as when traditionalists are dismissed as squeamish or as
overreacting to facts about perceptual error and illusion). But Quine's
insouciance about whether he is continuing the epistemological tradition
or abandoning it and his reluctance seriously to engage with those who
take the tradition seriously appear to involve the final kind of response.
He starts from an assurance that scientific knowledge is the only kind of
knowledge worthy of serious philosophical attention, and his practice is
intended to display that philosophical reflection will not force him to depart
from this. The first half of this paper traces one way of thinking of
naturalized epistemology, one that reflects this perspective. Towards the
end, things will be made slightly more complicated, but the general point
argued for will remain.
The dialectical position of one who wants to engage with this kind of
philosophical radicalism is a difficult one: anxieties and problems are apt
to be expressed which cry out to be addressed and which take for granted
Epistemology and Evaluation All
the vocabulary of the traditional problems. The difficulty is that of showing,

in a non-question begging way, that there are problems which the 'radical'
fails to take seriously which genuinely do arise out of reflection on the
matters at issue, of showing that the radical's vision is blinkered rather
than rigorously and admirably austere. If we try to evaluate Plantinga's
objections, for example, we have to consider not only whether a naturalist
account of 'warrant' is available, but also whether this evaluative concept
is actually required. If Quine's practice could show that the lack of this
concept did not prevent him carrying out his inquiries in an ordered and
responsible way, then he may be able to ignore the objection.
III. Some Issues of Epistemic Evaluation

It will be useful to list some evaluative issues that might be supposed to
arise in the course of carrying out inquiries and which are taken seriously
by the 'tradition'.
(a) Issues of global legitimation. I have in mind here the problem of the
external world and the problem of induction. The evaluative issues that
emerge require us to identify very general components of our 'cognitive
apparatus', for example 'the senses' or 'inductive reasoning', and then to
provide an explanation of why we are entitled to rely upon them.
(b) General concepts of epistemic appraisal. Much recent philosophical
writing on epistemology attempts to elucidate evaluative concepts like
'knowledge' or 'justified belief or 'warrant'. It seeks a description of
the circumstances under which we attach these values to propositions,
hypotheses, or sentences and, ideally, an explanation of why we are
interested in such evaluations. A limited vocabulary of very general terms
of epistemic appraisal is proposed, and the demand is made that epi-
stemologists should explicate the elements of this vocabulary.
(c) General principles of epistemic evaluation. A number of philosophers
and logicians have sought a systematic confirmation theory or inductive
logic, an account of rules or principles we employ in comparing and
assessing hypotheses in the light of evidence.
It is notable that Quine has contributed to none of these endeavours -
although he has made some general remarks about confirmation and the
testing of theories. And his critics have urged that naturalized accounts of
knowledge and reason are powerless to provide such things. Barry Stroud
argues, for example, that the problem of scepticism about the external
world cannot be dismissed and cannot be addressed by a naturalist.15 And,
in the course of explaining why 'reason cannot be naturalized', Hilary
Putnam has suggested that a naturalistic explanation of justified belief or
warranted assertibility or reason is not to be had, but that it is a matter of
central philosophical importance that an account of this value should be

provided.16
We can contrast with these:
(d) Particular evaluations that are internal to particular inquiries. I might
discuss the best way to check whether my plane's take-off will be delayed,
or I might wonder whether my colour judgments are to be trusted under a
neon light.
These evaluations will be unproblematic for a naturalistic philosopher:
in making them I rely upon straightforwardly factual information. The
results of the evaluations are expressed in straightforwardly factual claims:
the airline is more likely than the airport inquiry desk to have up-to-date
information about flight delays; light from fluorescent tubes has a jagged
spectral emission profile which means that objects can look different under
neon and under other forms of white light.17 As Quine has put it, normative
epistemology is a kind of applied science: we use scientific results to
evaluate specific means to ends. And it is by no means obvious that our
questions need to be posed using terms from the small and general evalu-
ative vocabulary alluded to above.
I shall argue that Quine has a principled basis for rejecting the philo-
sophical tasks described in (a)-(c) above and that (of course) the evaluations
mentioned under (d) present no challenge to his position. The difficult
issue concerns whether we need to use evaluations in the course of inquiries
which do not belong to these four categories. As Quine admits, the
challenge raised by the role of evaluations in inquiry to the ambitions of a
naturalized epistemology concerns a risk of circularity. Behind it lies a
principle:
P: If we are called upon to defend an evaluative procedure E, we

cannot consistently rely upon factual information or other norms or
evaluations which would become dubitable were our defence to fail.
It is clear that we rely upon such a principle in making evaluations of kind

(d). It seems likely that it undermines any use of naturalistic or scientific
information in responding to issues of type (a) and (b) (and perhaps [c]).
The naturalized epistemologist seems to have two strategies open for
avoiding the threat of circularity which is thereby presented. He or she
may:
1. Deny that the sorts of evaluative procedures described in (a) and (b)
need defence. There is a philosophically interesting task of describing
these procedures and then explaining how they work and how they
achieve their (unquestioned) success. But since there is no real basis for
doubting them, there is no need to defend them. The questions they

address are never live ones.
Or:
2. Deny that these kinds of evaluative procedures actually have a role in

our cognitive activities at all. The broad epistemic 'kinds' suggested by
this epistemic vocabulary are a philosophical invention which has no
place in the reflective kind of inquiry with which we are concerned.
There simply are no such questions as those posed by the problem of
the external world and the problem of justification. We may face
problems of comparing and evaluating competing answers to a given
question, but (for example) there is no need to appeal to a general

evaluative notion of 'justified belief when we try to do that.
Many passages in Quine's writings suggest that he supports strategy 1. I

suggest that he should favour strategy 2 (and I am inclined to hope that he
does in fact do so).18 In sections IV-VIII we examine some remarks about
epistemic evaluation which are found in Quine's writings. In the closing
sections of the paper we turn to a consideration of the circumstances under
which a critic could quite reasonably fail to be impressed by these claims.
IV. Quine's Epistemic Norms

We begin with 'Two dogmas of empiricism', noting first that the positivists'
analytic/synthetic distinction does promise an account of epistemic eval-
uation of the sort that some find to be missing in Quine's work. Analytic
truths formulate norms to be adhered to in accommodating our dispositions
to assert theoretical sentences to each other and to our perceptual claims.
And their status as 'analytic' provides a non-threatening account of the
authority of these norms. Carnap's distinction between internal and external
questions, together with his attempts to formulate systems of inductive
logic, offer materials for understanding the evaluations involved in what
we might call rational self-control: rational reconstructions of our practices
are thus means to give greater clarity and greater self-control. The first
anxiety I address, suggested by the final section of 'Two dogmas', is that
with the elimination of the analytic/synthetic distinction we are left, so to
speak, at sea, without an account of norms and thus without any form of
guidance in responding to anomalous experience.
Recall Quine's metaphor: 'total science is like a field of force whose
boundary conditions are experience':
A conflict with experience at the periphery occasions readjustments in the interior
of the field. Truth values have to be redistributed over some of our statements.
Réévaluations of some statements entail réévaluation of others, because of their
logical interconnections - the logical laws being in turn simply certain further
statements of the system . . . But the total field is so underdetermined by its
boundary conditions, experience, that there is much latitude of choice as to what
statements to reëvaluate in the light of any contrary experience.19
And the corollaries:
(1) Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic
enough adjustments elsewhere in the system.
(2) Conversely, by the same token, no statement is immune to revision.
What is the force of 'can be held true'? If it is a psychological 'can', then its
relevance to general issues of epistemic evaluation is problematic. Moreover,

if it is a psychological 'can' it is simply untrue: we do not have that much
freedom of manoeuvre. There is no real sense in which I am now free to revise
logical principles in order to restore order to my corpus of opinions. At best,
we can point to a very few specific contexts in which particular inquirers
affirmed that they thought they were free to revise specific logical principles.
If it means 'can legitimately', then the suggestion is that we are confronted
by a wide range of alternative ways of restoring order to our corpus of opinions
and that there are no norms which determine which of those we should prefer.
In trying to reason well, we have less help than we might have wished and few
resources available to defend the revisions we choose when facing someone
else who has decided differently. If it means 'can without contradiction', then
the further issue of what we should do has yet to be addressed. The metaphors
do not appear to do justice to our experience of rearranging our beliefs and
evaluating our achievements. We need to make evaluations and we receive
insufficient guidance on how to carry them out: the only real constraint is the
pragmatic one of experience.
Of course, this is only appearance. We must understand Quine's claim
against the background of its target: it is to be understood as a denial that
there are general principles or truths whose role is distinctively normative,
providing rules to guide us in adjusting our opinions. We do not settle
empirical or factual matters against the background of a framework of
analytic truths or logical principles which are not eligible for reassessment
in order to make sense of experience. Or if we agree with Carnap that the
rules of our framework may themselves be revised if that provides the best
way of making sense of things, we do not accept that the normative
considerations which are relevant to these revisions are of a different kind
to those which they provide themselves for the evaluation of ordinary
internal or physical claims. If we are to make sense of the norms that guide
us when we revise our beliefs and theories, we must not do so by appeal
to statements whose sole function is to serve as norms. It is never an

essential feature of the meaning of a sentence that it expresses a rational
norm. Statements which, in one context, are understood as simple state-
ments of fact may, in other contexts, have a normative role, being appealed
to when we want to defend our choice of revisions of our opinions.
The difficulty that many people have had with the 'confirmation theory'
defended in these early papers is that they have read the passages cited as
sketches towards answers to questions of the first three forms given above.
If you believe that we need answers to those questions, then you will
be disappointed by the answers you appear to find in 'Two dogmas of
empiricism'. The passage is better read, I suggest, as resisting certain claims
which are offered as answers to questions of these first three sorts.
Once they are read as general positive normative principles, as if we
were stepping back from our system of knowledge as a whole and asking
how we tell whether it is a good one, then it is unsurprising that these
papers are read as defending a kind of anti-realism or instrumentalism: any
coherent system of sentences will do so long as it passes the pragmatic test
of fitting experience; all we desire is a system of myths which we can use
to find our way around. Indeed it is not clear to me that there is a reading
of the 'can' in these formulations which makes sense in Quinean terms,
which makes the claims (even approximately) true, and which avoids
instrumentalism. Quine is here (I suggest) adopting a term from his rival's
vocabulary and showing where they should be led if they take their own
outlook seriously. My best reading of the 'can' is: 'there is no valid norm
which forbids us from . . . '. The point is negative rather than positive.
In 'Five milestones of empiricism', Quine returned to his holism and
declared himself a 'moderate holist':
Science is neither discontinuous nor monolithic. It is variously jointed, and loose
in the joints in varying degrees. In the face of recalcitrant observation, we are free
to choose which statements to revise and what to hold fast, and these alternatives
will disrupt various stretches of theory in various ways and in varying degrees.20
There is a strong suggestion here of a further normative influence upon
our attempts to settle our opinions. There remains the suggestion that we
are free to choose between a number of different revisions: in some sense
of 'can', we can adopt any of a number of revisions. And, further, there is
a suggestion that we can order these revisions according to how disruptive
they are. Finally, we encounter the normative bite: there is an implicit
suggestion that we should keep revision to the minimum. Normative con-
siderations are introduced which limit our freedom.
Readers of The Roots of Reference (and chapter 1 of Word and Object)
will recall two related epistemic standards alluded to there.21 In terminology
reminiscent of William James's assertion that theories are intended to effect
a marriage between previous knowledge and new experience, which is
to be achieved through the minimum disruption to accepted theory, is

compatible with removing the intellectual strain induced by our perceptual
surprise thereby achieving a useful predictive instrument, we find Quine
urging that the fundamental epistemic norms are conservatism and simpli-
city. This offers a neat explanation of how what we might think of as a
straightforward empirical claim might have normative force: if we could
only cease assenting to a sentence by tolerating large-scale revisions in our
corpus of beliefs, then we should prefer those revisions in our opinions
which accord with what it requires; if accepting one revision rather than
another decreases simplicity and consilience, appealing to a variety of
explanatory mechanisms or ad hoc saving hypotheses where otherwise a
single explanatory framework might suffice, then we ought to prefer the
second revision to the first.
Can the normativity objection take root at this point? One way to
interpret these passages suggests that it might. We might imagine ourselves
standing back from our two proposed revisions, wondering which to adopt.
We notice that R^ is simpler or less radical in its implications than R2. We
then recall that conservatism and simplicity are cognitive virtues, and so
we resolve to exercise our freedom by 'choosing' R^ And having made this
move, in a more reflective moment, we might ask whether we are right to
value simplicity and conservatism. Perhaps we should have preferred the
more complex or more radical alternative R2. Do we here find a normative
issue which a naturalized epistemology - or a naturalized account of reason -
cannot intelligibly address? Does simplicity serve as an epistemic virtue in
the way that this objection seems to require? And if so, can a naturalized
epistemology explain why simple theories are likely to be true?
V. Simplicity, Passivity, and Shallow Reflection

We find a useful discussion of simplicity in the first chapter of Word and
Object, and it does not fit at all clearly the picture just presented. The first
point I wish to note is that, for Quine, 'the sifting of evidence' is a 'strangely
passive affair'.22 Quine asserts that 'we just try to be as sensitively responsive
as possible to the ensuing interplay of chain stimulations'. This already
suggests that Quine is unsympathetic to the picture of cognition just
suggested, where we consciously attempt to formulate and evaluate our
standards in order to take some kind of full responsibility for how well our
inquiries are conducted. Indeed the sole area in which 'activity' is involved
lies in securing further experiences and stimulations by positioning our-
selves appropriately and conducting experiments. Simplicity does, however,
feature in our 'conscious policy': 'Consciously the quest seems to be for
the simplest story.' But, and this is important: 'this supposed quality of
Epistemology and Evaluation All
simplicity is more easily sensed than described.' In other words, con-

siderations of simplicity do not enter through our use of precise criteria or
measures of the relative simplicity of competing hypotheses. Indeed, Quine
conjectures that our 'vaunted sense of simplicity, or likeliest explanation,
is in many cases just a feeling of conviction attaching to the blind resultant
of the interplay of chain stimulations in their various strengths'.
I should emphasize two points here, which together comprise what I call
the 'shallowness of epistemic reflection'. First, in evaluating hypotheses,
we are surprisingly passive: we do not try to take responsibility for every
step of what we are doing but we are content for much to occur below the
level of control and consciousness. And second, if we make evaluations
which we naturally describe using the word 'simplicity', it is not obvious
that a single value is involved, and it is far from clear that we need to
formulate what simplicity involves or to be reflective in making judgments

of simplicity.
Perhaps 'simplicity' does not name a single virtue but rather draws
attention to a family of related more specific virtues which are relied upon.
For example:
(i) Evaluations involved in everyday casual observation, as, for example,

when we decide that we are encountering for a second time an object
we have seen before. According to Quine, we decide 'in such a way as
to minimize, to the best of [our] unconscious ability, such factors as
multiplicity of objects, swiftness of interim change of quality and
position, and, in general, irregularity of natural law'.
(ii) In statistical reasoning, we choose the law which enables us to draw
the smoothest simplest curve through a graphical representation of our
data, and to obtain a simple curve we will, if necessary, massage the
data a little.23
The search for simplicity is 'implicit in unconscious steps [of reasoning] as

well as half explicit in deliberate ones'. It is unclear that it should be, or
even could be, fully explicit.
So there are evaluations that we are guided by. But since they rarely
take the form of articulated normative principles, they are rarely explicitly
present in our deliberations and reasoning does not require us to formulate
them carefully. Questions about them do not arise. Can a naturalized
epistemology deal with them? Are there questions we ought to ask about
them, and which we will ask about them if we are philosophically reflective
about our practice, and which Quine has to ignore? Notice that questions
can arise at two different stages: we might ask general questions about
whether we should trust our 'sense' of simplicity; and we might raise issues
about its effects in particular cases - where we make a simplicity judgment
in response to a particular question in a particular context. These are global

questions and local questions respectively. The first introduces 'simple' as
a general term of appraisal, perhaps as part of a general attempt to elucidate
'justified belief or 'warrant'. The second, local, question does not do this.
They require us to evaluate our different senses of simplicity, in particular
contexts, as cognitive instruments.
What global questions might there be? First, we could try to formulate
and articulate 'the principle of simplicity'. But this may not be possible and
there is no reason to think that it would matter if we could not complete
the task. It is only if we think that reflection must (in principle) be deep
rather than shallow - if we have what may be an excessively intellectualist
picture of cognition - that this is necessary. So long as we can work with
our sense of simplicity, and so long as (in each particular case) we can point
to the features that contribute to simplicity or complexity, we may do all

that intellectual responsibility requires.
We might ask whether we should trust our intuitive simplicity judgments.
One answer to this is simply that the burden of proof lies with someone
who wants to question them. Such would be the disruption in our corpus
of confident opinions if we did cease to trust our sense of simplicity, that
it could never be rational to do so: simplicity and conservatism count
against it. We may be interested in explaining why it serves us so well, but
we have no basis for doubting it. I suppose we might point to all the
cognitive achievements it has yielded: how could it be untrustworthy? But
that would be to offer an answer to a question which does not arise.24 Our
sense of simplicity is not an instrument which we need to calibrate. Another
answer is to question the assumption that there is such a thing as 'our sense
of simplicity'. As suggested, the term denotes a wide, and possibly various,
family of dispositions that we have. It is quite possible that we might come
to question some member of this family. The sense of simplicity and order
which might lead someone to favour astrology as a means of prediction can
be criticized: either it misapplies standards of evidence which are elsewhere
useful, or it manifests a flawed logical sensibility. But this presents a local
question rather than a global one: it investigates simplicity judgments in
one area while resting on our simple view of the world. There is little
reason to suppose that it calls for a kind of investigation which could not
be embraced by a naturalistic philosopher: it can be handled in technological
terms.
I mentioned the task of explaining why it is good to trust our 'implicit
or half explicit' sense of simplicity. Quine offers some reasons: 'the neuro-
logical mechanism of the drive for simplicity is undoubtedly fundamental
though unknown, and its survival value is overwhelming.25 While relevant
to explaining much of our everyday confidence in our sense of simplicity,
such evolutionary arguments will not do the whole job: there is no reason
to expect natural selection to equip us to be good at theoretical science, so

unless the latter needs no evaluative procedures which are not grounded
in our everyday reasoning practice a further explanatory issue arises. The
success of our statistical techniques may receive a mathematical defence,
and we can expect cognitive psychology to offer many insights into the
reliability (and unreliability) of our faculties. Quine also urges strategic
reasons for trusting simple theories - since we find them simple, they are
easy to understand, apply, and test. There is no reason to suppose that there
is any explanatory task which escapes the net of a naturalistic explanation of
things. Where genuine questions arise, they turn out to be local rather than
global. And, in that case, we need not be disturbed by fears of circularity.
It seems to be only if we attach an excessive value to reflection and to the
intellectual monitoring of our activities, only if we are suspicious of 'pass-
ivity' rather than welcoming of it, that there is a problem. So long as we

accept the 'shallowness of epistemic reflection' and insist that the only
normative issues that arise are local rather than global ones, there need be
no normative issues arising naturally out of our practice which a naturalized
epistemologist cannot address. We can at least see that Quine's approach
to epistemology is not simply blind to fundamental epistemic issues.
It is worth noting two things about this shallowness of epistemic reflec-
tion. First, it accords with experience. Philosophers who want us to seek
the kind of neurotic self-control over our beliefs favoured by latter-day
Cartesians need to provide us with special positive reasons for doing so: it
is not part of our pre-philosophical practice of epistemic reflection. Second,
there is no reason to suppose that our 'passive' acknowledgement of the
overall satisfactory nature of our answer to a question is something that
could have been secured through explicit conscious application of reasons
and principles. When we look for explicit principles and seek conscious
monitored self-control, then the force of Cartesian sceptical challenges can
appear undeniable. Once we accept that the role of passivity in weighing
evidence is ineliminable, and once we reject the assumption that intellectual
responsibility requires explicit monitoring and self-control, then our
inability to respond to them directly is no longer threatening.
VI. Resisting Naturalized Epistemology

In section II I raised the possibility that it may be possible for Quine to
defend satisfactorily his adoption of naturalized epistemology even if he is
powerless to persuade his critics that they are mistaken. In order to see
how this can be so, we return to the argument, employed by Plantinga
among others, which urges that it is irrational to endorse naturalized
epistemology because natural selection casts doubt upon the claim that our
cognitive apparatus is suitably designed for uncovering the truth. The

conclusion is that if we wish to remain confident that we are able to discover
the truth about nature, we should not insist upon the naturalistic claim that
our cognitive faculties are the products of natural selection; if we are to be
naturalists, we should follow Stich in abandoning realism.26
As noted earlier, Plantinga cites a letter of Darwin's:
With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind,
which has been developed from the mind of lower animals, are of any value or at
all trustworthy. Would one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are
any convictions in such a mind?
The underlying point is: 'Evolution is interested not in true belief but in
survival and fitness. It is therefore unlikely that our faculties have the
production of true belief as a proximate or any other function, and the

probability of our faculties being reliable (given naturalistic evolution)
would be fairly low.27 Our faculties have to enable us to feed, find mates,
fight and so on, and this calls for sources of reliable information in very
specific contexts for very selective purposes. There is no reason for con-
fidence that the possession of these virtues should equip us with faculties
for providing us with knowledge of the microstructure of matter or the
origins of the Universe.
This argument is probably effective against a position which appeals to
natural selection to meet a global or general demand for justification: it
will not do to say 'we can rest content with our practices of inquiry because
natural selection has ensured that we will be good at science'. But a
naturalized epistemologist has no need to take such general questions
seriously and should doubt that there is anything interesting to be said
about them. But what are we to make of the uses Quine does make of
natural selection? For example, in discussing induction he asked why our
'innate spacing of qualities' so fits 'the functionally relevant groupings in
nature as to make our inductions tend to come out right'. He continues:
There is some encouragement in Darwin. If people's innate spacing of qualities is
a gene-linked trait, then the spacing that has made for the most successful inductions
will have tended to predominate through natural selection. Creatures inveterately
wrong8in their inductions have a pathetic tendency to die before reproducing their
kind.*
This is a very limited use of natural selection: all Quine finds is 'some
encouragement', and he is concerned to establish only a relatively minor
point about our 'subjective quality space'. What does the argument estab-
lish? With respect to the sorts of qualities we discriminate in our ordinary
experience, natural selection is likely to ensure that we find salient the
similarities and differences which are relevant to significant laws and gen-
eralizations in our experience. We are good predictors in these local and
everyday contexts. This does not establish that we will be equally good at
discerning relevant similarities when doing theoretical science, but nor does
it establish that we will not be good at this. The success of science over the
last few centuries, the naturalist might respond, shows that our innate
quality space provides us with a bridgehead into the kinds of distinctions
we need to make when we move away from the everyday. But the naturalist
is not committed to expecting natural selection to do the whole job.29
However, such arguments may carry more weight for Plantinga, in view
of a major difference between his overall view of the world and Quine's.
It is the unspoken starting point of Quine's philosophy that scientific
knowledge is our best knowledge: the best hope for philosophy is to emulate
science and to study science. Science is innocent until proved guilty, while
other kinds of inquiry (ethical deliberation concerned with how to live in

a flourishing or fulfilling way, metaphysical investigations into the mode of
being of God, etc.) need to be defended before they can be carried out.
Naturalistic epistemology cannot hope to convert or convince someone
who is already convinced of the interest and possibility of such inquiries.
And it is possible that those who possess such convictions could reveal or
display the availability of the evaluations on which such inquiries depend
by showing in their practice the possibility of sensitive intelligent inquiries
of these sorts which actually make progress. Even if the Quinean life is a
possible one, giving rise to no evaluative questions that it cannot settle, a
critic might find it an impoverished one that misses out on certain rewarding
inquiries and activities.
Now Plantinga begins with an ontological outlook which recognizes the
intelligibility of theological questions: his epistemological investigation
must allow that it is at least an open question whether beliefs in the deity
can be warranted. In that case, he may be right to be dissatisfied with a
naturalized epistemology, but he would be right on the basis of con-
siderations which need not carry any weight for Quine. There are questions
whose presuppositions are not naturalistic in content which thinkers other
than Quine find important and alive. If Quine is to make sense of questions
about the objectivity of ethics, or about theological matters at all, he will
reinterpret them so that they are understood naturalistically. Given Quine's
underlying commitment to science, he is warranted in doing this. But his
opponents will be frustrated when they ask why they should follow him in
this commitment. They will not view them as questions about how to
integrate ethical judgments and theological claims into a naturalistic view
of the world. Rather they will see them as questions about whether claims
to knowledge that are not themselves naturalistic meet appropriate stan-
dards of evidence and warrant. They confront issues that demand to be
addressed using global terms of evaluation.
But if Quine's critics find these issues compelling and important - and if
Quine cannot persuade them that they are wrong to do so - it is not at all
obvious that Quine himself is required to take them into account. If the
questions do not arise for him, he does not need to deal with them. He
need only confront the naturalistic issues of how people came to be
interested in such issues. It seems that both Quine and his critics are rational
to stick to their guns. If Quine can show that it h possible to live and inquire
coherently without addressing these issues, his critics need not conclude
that they are required to do so. If someone believes (before becoming
involved in epistemological issues) that a range of claims may have epistemic
merit which do not fit into the naturalistic view of the world, then he or
she is likely to confront evaluative issues which cannot be addressed within
a naturalized epistemology. If (like Quine) one lacks this initial belief, then
a naturalized epistemology may meet all one's needs. To refute Quine's

position, one would need to show that this standpoint is internally inco-
herent, and it is unclear that this has been done.
VII. Epistemic Ends: Prediction and Empiricism

We noted in the first section that Quine's response to the problem of
epistemic norms involves seeing normative issues as technological, as con-
cerned with the relations of means to ends. In that case, one way to object
to naturalized epistemology is to claim that norms are required which
specify which ends we should adopt for our inquiries. Questions about
epistemic ends could be of two sorts: local or global. We specify a global
epistemic end when we characterize our goals using very general terms of
appraisal: we seek a coherent body of beliefs or a body of theory which is
simple and empirically confirmed or true answers to our questions. Local
ends are specified when we announce that we wish to discover why water
expands on freezing or when the sun will set tonight. Local ends take for
granted much of our substantive view of the world and emerge out of
indeterminacies in our body of information. They are internal to physics
or common sense or whatever field of knowledge we are concerned with.
Are there global issues which Quine should deal with but which his nat-
uralized epistemology will not permit him to deal with?
Much in Quine's writings suggest that there are not. He often suggests
that he defends a contextualist account of inquiry: all our investigations
arise against the background of a settled view of the world, making minor
judgments against a view of things which is not questioned. This fits his
claim that epistemology is internal to science and it accords with his defence
of a disquotational account of truth. One would immediately conclude
that his view allows no room for global epistemic ends which resist the
'technological' style of defence, were it not that he occasionally makes

claims which look like answers to such general or global issues. Two claims
are relevant here, both of which are formulated clearly in Pursuit of Truth.
First there is the claim that prediction is the 'checkpoint' of science: it is
the test of a theory. Simplicity and the like are favoured because they
encourage us to adopt theories which will meet this ultimate 'checkpoint',
prediction. If simple theories fail to meet the checkpoint, they are to be
rejected; simplicity is valued as a means to successful prediction.
If prediction serves this 'ultimate' role, then it appears to be a general
global norm and to specify a global aim for our scientific investigations.
But Quine denies both of these claims. Thus we read:
Not that prediction is the main purpose of science. One major purpose is under-
standing. Another is control and modification of the environment. Prediction can
be a purpose, but the present point is that it is the test of a theory, whatever the
purpose.30
But the claim that prediction is the 'test' would seem to have normative
purport. Not so:
[W]hen I cite predictions as the checkpoints of science, I do not see that as
normative. I see it as defining a particular language game, in Wittgenstein's phrase:
the game of science, in contrast to other good language games such as fiction and
poetry. A sentence's claim to scientific status rests on what it contributes to a theory
whose checkpoints are in prediction.31
In effect, the claim that prediction is the checkpoint of science is analytic.
Other norms can be assessed according to how well they enable us to
develop theories that meet this criterion, by how well they contribute to
the success of science. If there is a question of whether I should submit my
beliefs to this test, it is an external question: it concerns which game I
should play. This connects with the point of the last section. If a critic
begins from a position of sympathy to a non-naturalistic perspective, a
genuine normative issue will arise about whether to subject one's inquiries
to this checkpoint. If that is your position, naturalized epistemology may
prove disappointing. Within naturalized epistemology, adoption of the
checkpoint of prediction cannot be defended: its adoption is a trivial matter
that needs no defence.
But second, there is a global norm, one which can seem vanishingly close
to the claim about prediction:
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 impacts on our sensory receptors.32
This 'crowning norm' 33 might, in principle, be abandoned. But even if
science abandoned empiricism, prediction would still be the checkpoint.
The possibility that Quine considers is that we could come to recognize

that telepathy and clairvoyance could turn out to be useful sources of
information, providing non-sensory means for evaluating predictions. We
might 'take on as further checkpoints the prediction of telepathic and divine
input as well as sensory input',34 but we would still be playing the same
game. We might prefer to retain 'empiricism', claiming that in such cases
new senses have been discovered. The key point is that there can be norms
concerning how predictions are to be tested, but there can be no norm of
science decreeing that predictions form the checkpoint.
This paper does not present a wholesale defence of naturalized epis-
temology. My aim has been to examine the resources available to a Quinean
for making sense of epistemic norms and to consider the role of Quine's
underlying commitment to science in the account he gives of the discipline.
NOTES
1 The Pursuit of Truth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 19.
2 Ibid., p. 19.
3 Quine's insistence that he would, if necessary, give up the word 'epistemology' and admit
that he has changed the subject should provide little solace for the proponent of the
'tradition'. If 'naturalized epistemology' is not 'epistemology properly so called', then
epistemology is of little interest or importance.
4 The relations between this style of objection to naturalized epistemology and standard
lines of objection to the 'naturalistic fallacy' in ethics should be apparent.
5 Ibid.
6 This style of objection is encountered in works such as Barry Stroud's The Significance of
Philosophical Scepticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).
7 For example, it could be argued that we can make sense of epistemic reflection only if we
accept a form of essentialism which obliges us to make sense of quantifying into contexts
of propositional attitude.
8 Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
The arguments alluded to are in chs XI and XII.
9 'Warrant' is identified as whatever has to be added to true belief to yield knowledge.
10 Stephen Stich, The Fragmentation of Reason (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), p. 56.
Stich's aim is to defend a distinctively 'pragmatist' conception of our aims in inquiry, one
which denies that discovering the truth is among our cognitive goals. Plantinga notes that
Darwin expressed a similar concern in a letter (see section V below).
11 Burton Dreben, 'Putnam, Quine - and the Facts', Philosophical Topics 20 (1992), p. 296.
12 Dreben's example of a 'reformist' is Hilary Putnam.
13 Thompson Clarke, 'The Legacy of Skepticism', Journal of Philosophy 69 (1979), pp. 754-
69.
14 I think here of Wittgenstein's On Certainty, in which it is suggested that misconceptions
about our practices lead us to claim 'knowledge' of our fundamental epistemic commit-
ments. Once the term 'knowledge' is used, we lose sight of their distinctive role and, at
the same time, invite challenges of the sort that lead to scepticism.
15 Barry Stroud, The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1984), ch. I.
16 Hilary Putnam, 'Why Reason Cannot be Naturalized', Synthese 52 (1982), pp. 3-23.
17 C. L. Hardin, Color for Philosophers (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1988), p. 197, n. 16.
18 With the exception of the general principle of empiricism general concerns of knowledge
and justification have no place in his writings: see The Pursuit of Truth, op. cit., p. 19. The
second approach involves the denial of what Michael Williams has called 'epistemological
realism': see Unnatural Doubts (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).
19 Quine, From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953),
ch. II, at pp. 42-43.
20 Quine, Theories and Things (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 67-
72.
21 Quine, The Roots of Reference (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1973), and Word and Object
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960).
22 Word and Object, op. cit., p. 19.
23 This point is clearly made in Pursuit of Truth, op. cit., p. 20.
24 As an explanation, it resembles the claim used by common-sense philosophers to defend
common-sense certainties: everything counts for them and nothing counts against them.
As Wittgenstein pointed out, this requires us to be able to make sense of 'counting for' in
such cases. When beliefs are very deeply embedded in our overall system of the world, it
is doubtful that we can do this. The same goes for our sense of simplicity, which is formed
by our overall view of things.

25 If there is not unified notion of simplicity but just a family of dispositions to favour particular
hypotheses in particular circumstances, one might wonder whether 'the neurological
mechanism' refers to anything here.
26 I shall not discuss Plantinga's claim that one can consistently adopt naturalized epistemology
only if one believes in God.
27 Warrant and Proper Function, op. cit., p. 219.
28 Quine, Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press,
1969), p. 126.
29 One relevant complication should be mentioned here. The anti-naturalist may object that
predictive success is no guarantee of truth. Theories may be useful for predictive purposes
even if they are not true. One wonders then what notion of truth the critic is making use
of, and recalls that Quine generally construes truth as a device of disquotation and
emphasizes that prediction is the checkpoint of theory.
30 Pursuit of Truth, op. cit., p. 2.
31 Ibid., p. 20.
32 Ibid., p. 19.
33 Ibid., p. 33.
34 Loc. cit.
Received 10 June 1994
Christopher Hookway, Department of Philosophy, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston,

Birmingham B15 2TT, England

Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy

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To cite this article: Christopher Hookway (1994) Naturalized epistemology and

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00201749408602368

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Naturalized Epistemology and

The paper explores Quine's 'naturalized epistemology', investigating whether its

genuine issues, often discussed under the title of 'epistemology', which

response to conflicts and surprises. Epistemology grows out of an attempt

spective psychology would be no philosophical ally of Quine's. In that case,

be sustained even if Quine's naturalism embraced a richer version of

epistemological value which naturalists must ignore. Alternatively, one

II. Dialectical Matters: Quine's 'Radicalism'

misdescribed within the tradition and if only we reformulate the issue in

the vocabulary of the traditional problems. The difficulty is that of showing,

III. Some Issues of Epistemic Evaluation

central philosophical importance that an account of this value should be

P: If we are called upon to defend an evaluative procedure E, we

It is clear that we rely upon such a principle in making evaluations of kind

doubting them, there is no need to defend them. The questions they

2. Deny that these kinds of evaluative procedures actually have a role in

question, but (for example) there is no need to appeal to a general

Many passages in Quine's writings suggest that he supports strategy 1. I

IV. Quine's Epistemic Norms

relevance to general issues of epistemic evaluation is problematic. Moreover,

to statements whose sole function is to serve as norms. It is never an

to be achieved through the minimum disruption to accepted theory, is

V. Simplicity, Passivity, and Shallow Reflection

simplicity is more easily sensed than described.' In other words, con-

formulate what simplicity involves or to be reflective in making judgments

(i) Evaluations involved in everyday casual observation, as, for example,

The search for simplicity is 'implicit in unconscious steps [of reasoning] as

in response to a particular question in a particular context. These are global

to the features that contribute to simplicity or complexity, we may do all

to expect natural selection to equip us to be good at theoretical science, so

ivity' rather than welcoming of it, that there is a problem. So long as we

VI. Resisting Naturalized Epistemology

cognitive apparatus is suitably designed for uncovering the truth. The

production of true belief as a proximate or any other function, and the

other kinds of inquiry (ethical deliberation concerned with how to live in

a naturalized epistemology may meet all one's needs. To refute Quine's

VII. Epistemic Ends: Prediction and Empiricism

'technological' style of defence, were it not that he occasionally makes

The possibility that Quine considers is that we could come to recognize

by our overall view of things.

Received 10 June 1994

Christopher Hookway, Department of Philosophy, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston,

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