Hilary Kornblith

This paper defends an approach to epistemology which treats the study of knowledge as on a par with the study of natural kinds. Knowledge is seen as a natural phenomenon subject to empirical investigation. In particular, it is argued that work in cognitive ethology is relevant to understanding the nature of knowledge, and that this approach sheds light on traditional philosophical questions about knowledge, including questions about the source of epistemic normativity.

Introspection plays an ineliminable role in affording us with self-knowledge, or so it is widely believed. It is argued here that introspective evidence, by itself, is often insufficient to ground reasonable belief about many of our mental states, and the knowledge we do have of much of our mental life is crucially dependent on other sources.

Naturalism in philosophy has a long and distinguished heritage. This is no less true in epistemology than it is in other areas of philosophy. At the same time, epistemology in the English speaking world in the first half of die twentieth century was dominated by an approach quite hostile to naturalism. Now, at the close of the twentieth century, naturalism is resurgent.

Ernest Sosa draws a distinction between animal knowledge and reflective knowledge, and this distinction forms the centerpiece of his new book, A Virtue Epistemology . This paper argues that the distinction cannot do the work which Sosa assigns to it.

Some philosophers believe that epistemological theories are a priori knowable. Others weaken this claim slightly, arguing that epistemological theorizing is properly conducted “from the armchair.” It is argued here that even this claim is far too strong. This paper defends the view that epistemological theorizing must take account of empirical work in psychology, and, without this, epistemology inevitably loses touch with the very phenomena it seeks to account for.

Book Information Epistemology: Classic Problems and Contemporary Responses. By Laurence BonJour. Rowman and Littlefield. Lanham MD. 2002. Pp. viii + 289. Hardback, US$75. Paperback, US$23.95.