Naturalistic Epistemology and Its Critics

1995 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 237-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilary Kornblith ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 34-58
Author(s):  
William J. Talbott

In Chapter 2, the author critically discusses the epistemologies of David Hume and Immanuel Kant. The author distinguishes the skeptical Hume from the naturalist Hume. The author presents the skeptical Hume’s philosophy as a response to what he calls Berkeley’s puzzle. He argues that Hume’s skeptical arguments are self-refuting and self-undermining and that Hume’s analysis of cause is an example of an explanation-impairing framework substitution. Hume’s solution to his skeptical arguments was a new kind of epistemology, a naturalistic epistemology. The author presents Kant’s epistemology as a response to the state of rationalist metaphysics at the time of Kant’s first Critique. Kant’s epistemology was similar to Hume’s in one important respect. Just as Hume had psychologized the idea of causal necessity, Kant psychologized the idea of metaphysical necessity. The author argues that both solutions were a form of relativism. This chapter primarily serves to motivate a search for a non-skeptical, non-relativist, non-Platonist theory of epistemic rationality.


2013 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-69
Author(s):  
Algimantas Valantiejus

Santrauka. Antroje straipsnio dalyje konkretinamos ir analizuojamos paralelės 1) tarp postempiristinės mokslo filosofijos ir postanalitinės sociologijos, 2) tarp epistemologijos sampratos natūralizavimo filosofijoje ir racionalumo sampratos pragmatizavimo sociologijoje. Teigiama, kad metodologinė racionalumo problema sociologijoje yra siauresnė epistemologinio santykio tarp filosofijos ir mokslo dalis. Analizuojant filosofinės nuostatos natūralizavimo šiuolaikinėje sociologijoje tendencijas skiriamos dvi – analitinė ir postanalitinė – pozicijos. Nagrinėjama normatyvinė santykio tarp racionalumo normų ir mokslinių objektyvumo kriterijų problema abiejose pozicijose. Pagrindiniai žodžiai: racionalumas, normatyvumas, natūralizmas, a priori problema, reliatyvizmas. Key words: rationality, normativity, naturalism, the problem of the a priori, relativism. ABSTRACT THE PROBLEM OF RATIONALITY IN SOCIOLOGY (II) The second part of the article aims to articulate and explicate the parallels between post-empiricist scientific philosophy and post-analytical sociology, and between the conception of naturalistic epistemology in philosophy and the conception of pragmatic rationality in sociology. The article argues that the methodological problem of rationality in sociology is the part of the larger epistemological relationship between philosophy and science. Normative relationship between the norms of rationality and the criteria of scientific objectivity is analyzed in two main perspectives of contemporary sociology – analytical and post-analytical.


Author(s):  
Nenad Miščević

The naturalistic epistemology of individual knowledge should follow the procedure usual in the epistemology of science: generalize from suc- cesfull cognitive practices!In the case of naturalistic epistemology the data base — the cogitive practices it is supposed to generalize, are practices based on cognitive skills, like perceptual cognition, language acquisition and use and inference. This would then make cognitive psychology a guide for epistemology


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