A Science-Based Critique of Epistemological Naturalism in Quine's Tradition

Reto Gubelmann

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9783030245245
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Epistemology in Philosophy

At the intersection of epistemology, metaphilosophy, and philosophy of science, this exciting new book examines the epistemic limits of empirical science. It makes a unique contribution to research on epistemological naturalism in Quine's tradition by criticizing the position based on first-order data from empirical psychology and the history of natural science. This way, it meets the naturalist on their own ground not only regarding subject matter, but also regarding their epistemic methods. The book explores the works of a variety of philosophers in the field, including W. V. Quine, Penelope Maddy, Tyler Burge, Stathis Psillos and Howard Sankey.

By carefully considering experimental results from behaviourism as well as developmental and perceptual psychology, Gubelmann finds that none of these disciplines can furnish the epistemic means to successfully naturalize the central cognitive preconditions of scientific theorizing. Furthermore, Gubelmann presentsnovel arguments for the claims that epistemological naturalists are committed to scientific realism, and that they are unable to defend this position. Based on these results, Gubelmann concludes that epistemology is not part of empirical science, which directly contradicts epistemological naturalism.

© The Author(s) 2019

Reto GubelmannA Science-Based Critique of Epistemological Naturalism in Quine’s Traditionhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24524-5_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Reto Gubelmann¹

(1)

University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Reto Gubelmann

Email: [email protected]

Keywords

Epistemological naturalismNaturalized epistemologyJustificatory monismNaturalismMaddyQuine

End Abstract

Ever since the beginning of modern science and its emancipation from “natural philosophy”, philosophers have marveled at the successes and the epistemic¹ discipline of modern science. Immanuel Kant, in his preface to the second edition of the “Critique of Pure Reason”, states that, in contrast to natural science, philosophy has been unable to walk the secure path of a science. Instead, it is, and has always been, a mere groping among concepts (Kant 1998 [1987], pp. XIVf.). In response to this untenable situation, Kant intends to refashion philosophy so that it displays the desirable epistemic properties of natural science.

Kant’s conviction that modern natural science poses a challenge to the self-understanding of philosophy is by no means an exception; rather, it is the rule. Given the lack of consensus, progress and discipline of philosophy, when compared to empirical science, many philosophers have begun to worry whether the supposed insights provided by philosophical inquiry are trustworthy. Indeed, it has become a question of serious consideration whether there is anything deserving of the title of knowledge outside of empirical science.

Epistemological naturalism, the topic of this book and one of the most influential epistemological positions in contemporary western philosophy, answers this question with a clear “no”. The position stands in the tradition championed by Kant: epistemological naturalists seek to refashion epistemology to set it on the secure path of a science. What clearly distinguishes epistemological naturalism from proposals such as Kant’s is that naturalism requires that epistemology adopt the same epistemic methods that are in use in the natural sciences. Following W. V. O. Quine (1981, p. 72), in a first approximation, epistemological naturalism can be characterized as rejecting any dualism in epistemology. In particular, it rejects the idea that epistemology and natural science have different epistemic resources and methods.

What is the general appeal of epistemological naturalism? Mostly, epistemological naturalists share the basic perspective of scholars like Kant: when compared with the epistemic merits of empirical science, philosophy, as traditionally practiced, seems to have little to recommend itself. Additionally, epistemological naturalists are typically particularly impressed by the instrumental and predictive success of empirical science. In the past four centuries, this success has been one of the most noteworthy phenomena in human intellectual life. From Newtonian physics to computational biology, from immunology to meteorology, empirical sciences have delivered theories that have vastly increased our power over our environment as well as our bodies, and they have delivered successful predictions of phenomena such as cosmic background radiation that were long thought to be far beyond the scope of human understanding.

As a consequence, it might seem natural to expect that this conquest of empirical science has no principled limits. It seems natural to expect that the epistemic methods of science (whatever they may be precisely), can be applied with equal success to any subject matter whatsoever.

The study presented in this book critically assesses the prospects of this naturalistic expectation; it does so in a notorious philosophical way, by focusing the attention on the subject itself: Can empirical science come to terms with its epistemic self, can it address it, using its tried and tested methods, as a phenomenon with (prospects of) the same success that it has had with so many other phenomena? With regard to these questions, that is, when the focus lies on science itself, the epistemological naturalist is committed to showing that empirical science is epistemically self-sufficient. The goal is to show that science does not need any other epistemic means than its own scientific ones—even in epistemological matters, which include examining and justifying its own way of justifying theories and hypotheses.

Note that the target of my critical analysis is not what is traditionally conceived as empirical science itself, but rather a certain epistemological position regarding science. According to this position, reflection about topics like scientific verification, truth, or possible conflicts between scientific and common-sense insights are to be addressed using essentially the same epistemic means that are used in everyday scientific inquiry.

In the literature, epistemological naturalism (see Horwich 2014, p. 38) is generally conceived as the position that “[o]nly the scientific method can deliver genuine knowledge”, which of course echoes the claim phrased above, according to which there is no knowledge outside of science. This is not to say that there is only one version of epistemological naturalism. Rather, there are at least as many versions of epistemological naturalism as there are positions on how exactly science justifies its hypotheses and theories. It will soon become clear that Quine steadfastly defends an empiricist conception of how scientific justification works, and that he thinks he can support this conception in an austerely scientific way.

Epistemological naturalism is commonly distinguished from ontological and methodological naturalism, compare Glock (2003, pp. 27–28). What unites all of the three general kinds of naturalism is the conviction that philosophy should imitate science, although they differ from each other by imitating science in an epistemological, an ontological, or a methodological dimension.

Plantinga (2002, p. 1) conceives of naturalism as an ontological thesis, namely as the rejection of the existence of any supernatural beings, such as a god. Stricter versions of ontological naturalism, such as the one endorsed by Rosenberg (2014), amount to variants of materialism, mechanism, or physicalism. I will show that Quine endorses a sophisticated version of physicalism, and hence a version of ontological naturalism.

Methodological naturalists urge that philosophy adopt the methods of science (compare Papineau 2015). However, these methods are almost always the methods of justifying claims, which means that, for the most part, methodological naturalism is epistemological naturalism by another name.²

In the remainder of this introductory chapter, I develop my conception of epistemological naturalism (Sect. 1.1), and I provide an overview on the content and the general argument of this book (Sect. 1.2).

1.1 Epistemological Naturalism

Epistemological naturalism is best conceived as consisting of two elements, one of them being a central claim, defining a central structural property of the position, what I call ‘justificatory monism’. The other element constitutes a positive research agenda, namely the project of pursuing epistemology as a branch of empirical psychology, what I call ‘naturalized epistemology’. Figure 1.1 gives an overview on this terminology.

Fig. 1.1

An overview on the terminology used in this book

(Source Author)

In the following, I introduce justificatory monism as well as naturalized epistemology, and I detail their relationship. I do so with a focus on Quine, the pioneering theoretician of the position, while also introducing the position of Penelope Maddy, whose subtle and innovative position will be discussed throughout the book.

1.1.1 Its Central Claim: Justificatory Monism

Naturalized epistemology is motivated by the conviction that epistemological reflection about natural science must be conducted using the same epistemic means that are used in first-order scientific inquiry. This conviction, in turn, is typically grounded in the belief that empirical-scientific justification is the only kind of justification available (this being a sufficient, but not a necessary condition for naturalized epistemology, see below, Sect. 1.1.3). I call this conviction, according to which there is only one basic way to justify any claim whatsoever, thus rejecting any kind of fundamental epistemic dualism, justificatory monism.

Note that the bare claim of justificatory monism does not specify what empirical-scientific justification amounts to—it does not even specify that the relevant kind of justification should be empirical. Hence, as such, the claim is almost hopelessly unspecific. What I call versions of justificatory monism involve a specific conception of justification. Furthermore, this book is about empiricist versions of justificatory monism, that is, versions of justificatory monism whose conception of scientific verification is recognizably empirical.

Note that, throughout the book, I am using “(empirical) verification” interchangeably with “(empirical) justification”—even though “empirical verification” is more common than “empirical justification”. This is because I do not want, even on the linguistic level, to presuppose what is at issue. My naturalistic counterpart maintains that there is only one sort of justification; by systematically using, say, “justification” in the context of deductive arguments, and “verification” in the context of empirical support, I would implicate from the start that my counterpart is wrong.

Quine defines his justificatory monism in opposition to the view that there is an epistemically higher mode of inquiry, what Quine calls ‘first philosophy’:

The fifth move, finally, brings naturalism: abandonment of the goal of a first philosophy. It sees natural science as an inquiry into reality, fallible and corrigible but not answerable to any supra-scientific tribunal, and not in need of any justification beyond observation and the hypothetico-deductive method [emphasis RG]. (Quine 1981, p. 72)

In this passage, Quine characterizes naturalism by means of two claims. Naturalism rejects the idea that first philosophy constitutes a tribunal to which science must answer. Considering the context, the tribunal probably does not judge the moral or legal standing of science, but rather its epistemic standing. Hence, first philosophy is in a position to decide whether the insights obtained by science are sufficiently warranted. That naturalism rejects this idea means that there is no higher court with the authority to judge the insights of science. In other words, the verdicts of science are final.

The second characteristic claim of naturalism is con...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Quine I: The Bold Physicalism of Word and Object
• 3. Quine II: The Evolutionary-Perceptual Account
• 4. Burge: Proto-Predicates in Perceptual Representations
• 5. Maddy: Conceiving Logic as an Innate Cognitive Mechanism
• 6. Quine’s Empiricist Justificatory Monism
• 7. Why Justificatory Monism Needs Scientific Realism
• 8. Scientifically Defending Realism I: Psillos’ Holistic Approach
• 9. Scientifically Defending Realism II: Maddy’s Piecemeal Realism
• 10. Conclusion
• Back Matter