Hilary Kornblith

There is a view about the nature of human reason which is held by a large number of contemporary philosophers according to which reason somehow eludes naturalization. The position these philosophers favor, inspired by Kant, sees important connections between the possibility of having propositional attitudes, the capacity to have second-order beliefs, the ability to use language, epistemic agency, and the appropriateness of normative assessment. A sympathetic account of the Kantian picture is presented, and a number of empirical presuppositions to which this view is committed are drawn out. It is then argued that these crucial empirical presuppositions are all mistaken.

There is a worry about the intellectual legitimacy of philosophy. Although the sciences have a progressive history, with later theories largely building on earlier ones, and a tremendous amount of agreement within the scientific community about the approximate truth of current theory, philosophy is different. We do not see a progressive history of philosophical theorizing, and there is little agreement within the philosophical community about which theories are even roughly correct. This not only encourages a certain skepticism about the possibility of philosophical knowledge, but a real question about whether the activity of philosophical theorizing is intellectually legitimate. It is argued here that there are features of a naturalistic methodology in philosophy which have the resources to respond to these concerns.

Wilfrid Sellars recognized a conflict between what he called “the scientific image” of our place in the world, and “the manifest image.” Sellars sought, somehow, to join these views together in spite of their apparent conflict. This chapter argues that we should endorse features of the manifest image only to the extent that they are part of the scientific image. It presents a case study in epistemology, showing how these issues play out in discussion of doxastic deliberation. The manifest image of such deliberation is flatly in conflict with the best current scientific theorizing about the nature of deliberative processes. The only reasonable response to such conflict, the chapter argues, is to embrace the scientific account and reject our first-personal view of deliberation as illusory. This case study is suggestive of a broader conclusion about the relationship between the scientific and the manifest image.

As George Boole saw it, the laws of logic are the laws of thought, and by this he meant, not that human thought is actually governed by the laws of logic, but, rather, that it should be. Boole’s view that the laws of logic have normative implications for how we ought to think is anything but an outlier. The idea that violating the laws of logic involves epistemic impropriety has seemed to many to be just obvious. It has seemed especially obvious to those who see propositional justification as more fundamental than doxastic justification. Whatever other principles are required for defining propositional justification, the laws of logic seem indispensable. The idea that violation of the laws of logic involves some sort of epistemic impropriety—whatever the peculiarities of our psychology may be—has served as a fixed point around which defenders of the fundamentality of propositional justification are united, whatever their other differences. This paper challenges that common thread in defenses of the fundamentality of propositional justification. It is argued that the laws of logic have no bearing whatever on epistemic justification. Once we see why this should be so, the way is paved for seeing why it is that doxastic justification is more fundamental than propositional justification.

A number of philosophers have found inspiration for a distinctive approach to a wide range of epistemological issues in P. F. Strawson’s classic essay, “Freedom and Resentment.” These Strawsonian epistemologists, as I call them, argue that the epistemology of testimony, self-knowledge, promising, and resolving is fundamentally different in kind from the epistemology of perception or inference. We should not see properly formed belief on these topics as evidence-based, for such an objective perspective, in such cases, results in a kind of alienation. This paper explores these Strawsonian themes in recent epistemology, and argues that the Strawsonian approach should be resisted.

"This book provides an introduction to a scientifically informed approach to epistemological questions. Theories of knowledge are often motivated by the need to respond to skepticism. The skeptic presents an argument which seems to show that knowledge is impossible, and a theory of knowledge is called upon to show, contrary to the skeptic, how knowledge is indeed possible. Traditional epistemologies, however, do not draw on the sciences in providing their response to skepticism. The approach taken here, however, shows how an epistemology which is informed by the sciences offers an especially illuminating understanding of the nature of knowledge and what makes it possible. Along the way, a distinctive methodology for philosophy is defended, as is an approach to understanding how inference is conducive to knowledge which highlights various structural similarities between the workings of our perceptual systems and native inferential mechanisms. A perspective on the human capacity to reflect on our beliefs is defended which highlights its importance in cooperative problem solving"--

Over the years, the notion of epistemic agency has played a larger and larger role in Ernest Sosa’s epistemology. In his most recent work, epistemic agency plays an absolutely central role in explaining why it is that our beliefs are subject to normative evaluation. This chapter argues that there are problems with the accounts of epistemic agency which Sosa gives at every stage of his work. More than this, there are other resources within Sosa’s epistemology which can do all the work he calls on epistemic agency to perform. As a result, the problematic appeal to epistemic agency may be deleted without any deleterious effects.

This volume collects ten previously published papers, together with two papers which are new to this volume. At least since Descartes, epistemologists have often worried about total skepticism: their epistemological theorizing is designed to offer a reply to the radical skeptic, showing how knowledge of the physical world is possible. The essays in this volume have a different focus. Skeptical worries are presented, and, in some cases, responded to, but the source of the worries is quite different from the usual Cartesian fare. Work in social psychology raises doubts about areas of knowledge which, for the Cartesian, were thought to be among the most secure: our knowledge of our own mental states by way of introspection, and our knowledge of the nature of reason. The result of these essays, taken together, is an empirically informed, approach to epistemological concerns.

During the 'sixties and 'seventies, Hilary Putnam, Jerry Fodor, and Richard Boyd, among others, developed a type of materialism that eschews reductionist claims.¹ In this view, explana- tions, natural kinds, and properties in psychology do not reduce to counterparts in more basic sciences, such as neurophysiology or physics. Nevertheless, all token psychological entities-- states, processes, and faculties--are wholly constituted of physical entities, ultimately out of entities over which microphysics quantifies. This view quickly became the standard position in philosophy of mind, and reductionism fell out of favor. Recently, however, reductionism has been experiencing a rebirth, and many have suggested that the non-reductive approach was accepted too quickly and too uncritically. In this paper, we attempt to provide a more thorough account of the anti-reductionist position, and, in the process, to defend it against its recent critics.

This article focuses on naturalistic approaches to philosophical methodology. It begins with an overview of naturalism, its relationship with views about the a priori, and the implications of a philosopher’s commitment to naturalism for proper method in philosophy. It then considers the disagreement among naturalists about the tenability of the a priori/a posteriori distinction with respect to naturalism, before turning to a discussion of the use of science to address philosophical questions. It also looks at work in epistemology which draws on results in the cognitive sciences as a way of understanding the nature of knowledge, with particular emphasis on the role of Alvin Goldman in getting epistemologists to pay attention to the import of empirical work for understanding epistemological issues. Finally, it explores experimental philosophy as a methodological approach to philosophical questions and comments on the debate over the legitimacy of armchair methods in philosophy.

In some views, knowledge cannot exist except against the background of certain social practices. Thus, in Davidson's view, there are no beliefs, and thus no knowledge, except in creatures that use and interpret language. In other views, such as Brandom's, belief, and thus knowledge, cannot exist except in creatures that have a social practice of giving and asking for reasons. Finally, there are views in which it is possible to have beliefs without social practices, but it is not possible to have justified beliefs, and hence knowledge, without some relevant social practice, such as holding individuals responsible for the beliefs they have. These views are examined in detail. It is argued that knowledge does not require social practices of any sort whatsoever.

Philosophical investigations in general, and epistemological investigations in particular, typically begin with conceptual analysis. It is argued that an analysis of our concept of knowledge is no more relevant to epistemology than an analysis of our concept of gold would be relevant to the proper conduct of chemistry, for knowledge, like gold, is a natural kind. The role of intuition in philosophical theory construction is discussed, and a naturalistic account of the practice of appealing to intuitions is presented and defended.