Inquiry and the epistemic

2012

The focus of the talk is the status and, consequently, the tasks of historical epistemology. In particular, the question at stake is the following: can the history of an epistemic norm bear a normative value in turn? This question raises quite naturally when we consider inquiries in historical epistemology that deal with normative objects, such as the so-called epistemic norms. Indeed, I will use [Daston and Galison 2007] as a starting point for reaching the theoretical problem I want to discuss. I will try to distinguish three key meanings of normativity and then I will focus my attention on two historical moments where the notion of normativity was at the very heart of philosophy of science: I mean the times of logical empiricists, Hans Reichenbach in particular, and the Sixties Neo-positivistic reaction to Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions". I will show how these philosophical arguments, based on the notion of normativity, can be used as theoretical tools in order to provide an answer to my starting question. A line of reasoning borrowed from Kant's Critique of Practical Reason will be another useful theoretical source that I will use. Finally, by the means of these concepts I will provide an answer and, in the conclusion, I will reflect on what I think is the proper task of historical epistemology – a task that I will call “critique” in opposition to normativity.

Balkan Analytic Forum: Normativity & Normativity of Art, 2024

In his famous article "Epistemology Naturalized" (1969), Quine established a novel take on the position of epistemology in philosophical and scientific discourse. According to his views, epistemological questions are a subset of psychological questions, and psychology in itself is a branch of natural science. Thus, epistemology, as understood in the Quinean sense, threatens the very idea of its normative aspects, as natural science is empiristic and, as a result, relies on purely descriptive claims. Hence, the following question arises: Does the naturalized account of epistemology entail the rejection of epistemic norms? In this research, we explore the three possible answers to this question and argue there is a sense of normativity in Quine's naturalized epistemology, but only insofar as we are willing to accept his imperfect notion of the truth.

Synthese, 2017

On his 60th birthday Pascal Engel was presented with a collection of more than fifty 1 1 papers authored by prestigious philosophers that reflected his long career of promotion 2 and development of analytic philosophy in and out of Europe. 1 This special issue brings 3 together a selection of those papers centred on the topics of truth and epistemic norms.

In this paper, my objective is to defend the Quinean argument for a naturalized epistemology. In pursuit of this defense, I will attempt to critically survey objections to naturalism in the context of contemporary western philosophy. I will then examine Quine’s proposal that epistemology should be naturalized. That is, subjecting philosophical assumptions and suppositions of epistemology to scientific methodology and rigour. Objections to Quine’s proposed naturalized epistemology typically assert that certain components of traditional epistemology get lost or loses relevance in a naturalized epistemology. Quine himself appealed for the replacement of traditional epistemological methodologies in favour of a more scientific, externalist account of epistemic foundations.1 However, I will examine whether there are certain traits of traditional epistemology that can remain in naturalized epistemology, such as normative values. Other traits, such as metaphysical concerns of knowledge, are virtually impossible to determine in epistemology, and so would be better to investigate on the presuppositions of naturalism.

The overwhelmingly dominant view of epistemic normativity has been an extreme form of deontology. I argue that although the pull towards deontology is quite understandable, given the traditional concerns of epistemology, there is no good reason for not also adopting a complementary consequentialist notion of epistemic normativity, which can be put to use in applied epistemology. I further argue that this consequentialist notion is not, despite appearances and popular sentiment to the contrary, any less genuinely epistemic than the deontological notion and that it may even be considered more genuinely normative.

Contemporary Phenomenologies of Normativity, 2022

Husserl holds that the theoretical sciences should be value-free, i.e., free from the values of extrascientific practices and guided only by epistemic values such as coherence and truth. This view does not imply that to Husserl the sciences would be immune to all criticism of interests, goals, and values. On the contrary, the paper argues that Husserlian phenomenology necessarily embodies reflection on the epistemic values guiding the sciences. The argument clarifies Husserl's position by comparing it with the pluralistic position developed in feminist epistemology, according to which

Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, 3rd Edition

November 2021. Draft version. For Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, 3rd Edition, (eds.) E. Sosa, M. Steup, J. Turri, & B. Roeber, (Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming).

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 2022

Epistemic Constitutivism (EC) holds that the nature of believing is such that it gives rise to a standard of correctness, and that other epistemic normative notions (e.g., reasons for belief) can be explained in terms of this standard. If defensible, this view promises an attractive and unifying account of epistemic normativity. However, EC faces a forceful objection: that constitutive standards of correctness are never enough for generating normative reasons. This paper aims to defend EC in the face of this objection. I do so in two steps. First, I dispute a crucial assumption underlying the case against EC: that constitutive standards of correctness in general are "reason-giving" only if and because there is also a prior reason to comply with them. Second, I outline a strategy of how EC can meet the challenge of explaining what's special about the activity of believing such that, unlike other standard-governed activities, it is capable of generating normative reasons.

Philosophy Compass

This paper is an opinionated guide to the literature on normative (=good) epistemic reasons. After making some distinctions in §1, I begin in §2 by discussing the ontology of normative epistemic reasons, assessing arguments for and against the view that they are mental states, and concluding that they are not mental states. In §3, I examine the distinction between normative epistemic reasons there are and normative epistemic reasons we possess. I offer a novel account of this distinction and argue that we in fact ought to acknowledge a threefold distinction between objective, possessed, and apparent normative epistemic reasons. In §4, I discuss the question of which normative reasons for doxastic attitudes are the epistemic ones, evaluating reasons against a simple evidentialist answer. Finally, in §5, I look at the role of reasons in epistemology, considering challenges to viewing them as the building blocks of epistemic normativity and maintaining that the challenges recommend a novel bi-level epistemology rather than the marginalization of reasons in epistemology.

Braunstein, JF - Moya Diez, I - Vagelli, M (dir.) L'épistémologie historique. Histoire et méthodes (Éditions de la Sorbonne), 2019

In this chapter, I discuss the normative value of historical epistemology, focusing in particular on the notion of “epistemic norm” advanced by Daston and Galison in their book Objectivity. Drawing from arguments taken by Reichenbach, Kant, and Hume, I argue that historical description cannot have prescriptive force. Thus, historical epistemology cannot have a normative value. Nonetheless, I argue that it provides a useful critique of science, reminding scientists of the historical, contingent nature of scientific objects.

Metaphilosophy, 2003

Traditional epistemology has, in the main, presupposed that the primary task is to give a complete account of the concept knowledge and to state under what conditions it is possible to have it. In so doing, most accounts have been hierarchical, and all assume an idealized knower. The assumption of an idealized knower is essential for the traditional goal of generating an unassailable account of knowledge acquisition. Yet we, as individuals, fail to reach the ideal. Perhaps more important, we have epistemic goals not addressed in the traditional approach -among them, the ability to reach understanding in areas we deem important for our lives. Understanding is an epistemic concept. But how we obtain it has not traditionally been a focus. Developing an epistemic account that starts from a set of assumptions that differ from the traditional starting points will allow a different sort of epistemic theory, one on which generating understanding is a central goal and the idealized knower is replaced with an inquirer who is not merely fallible but working from a particular context with particular goals. Insight into how an epistemic account can include the particular concerns of an embedded inquirer can be found by examining the parallels between ethics and epistemology and, in particular, by examining the structure and starting points of virtue accounts. Here I develop several interrelated issues that contrast the goals and evaluative concepts that form the structure of both standard, traditional epistemological and ethical theories and virtue-centered theories. In the end, I sketch a virtue-centered epistemology that accords with who we are and how we gain understanding.