Naturalized Epistemology and the Normative

Michael-John Turp

Naturalized Epistemology and the Normative

Article

13/2 - Fall 2008, pages 343-355

Date of online publication: 15 novembre 2008

Date of publication: 01 novembre 2008

Abstract

Gradually emerging from the so-called “linguistic turn,” philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century witnessed what we might follow P. M. S. Hacker in describing as a “naturalistic turn.” This change of direction, an abandonment of traditional philosophical methods in favour of a scientific approach, or critics would say a scientistic approach, has met with widespread approval. In the first part of the paper I look to establish the centrality of the normative to the discipline of epistemology. I then turn to examine Quine's attempt to reduce normative discourse to instrumental rationality, and the more fully developed accounts provided by Stich, Kornblith and Papineau. I argue that these accounts fail because they insist on a constitutive connection between desires and the ends of epistemic activity. I conclude with the suggestion that a more plausible position severs this connection, in favour of an objective, externalist account of ends and reasons.

Keywords

Cite this article

Turp, Michael-John. “Naturalized Epistemology and the Normative.” Forum Philosophicum 13, no. 2 (2008): 335–47. doi:10.35765/forphil.2008.1302.25.

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