Quine's Naturalized Epistemology

Mike Mackus Matthew Benton Philosophy 220 December 12th, 2008 (Un)Naturalized Epistemology Epistemology has found itself in search of certainty- a Cartesian certainty- since the moment Descartes put in our minds the frightful idea that an evil demon could, at present, be tricking us. The skeptic was born and the epistemologist has fought a fierce battle since. Epistemology has sought a criteria on which one might be able to use the word ‘knowledge’ and be able to attribute the possession of knowledge. Thus, in essence, epistemology sets its aim to examine if we have grounds for particular beliefs about the world and hence a foundation on which empirical science can stand. So if we grant that our senses are accurate then the goal of the epistemologist should be to take these senses and proceed to see if our beliefs about the world are derivable from them. But, here, Quine interjects. He claims it is apparent that such a goal for epistemology is likely to be impossible. As support for this Quine draws from the recent failure of philosophers of mathematics to reduce all arithmetic to logic. Gödel dealt a swift blow with his two incompleteness theorems leading many to the conclusion that there is no way to ground for mathematical knowledge and thus impossible to display mathematical certainty. If a system so simple and so crucial to the empirical sciences cannot be proven to stand on a solid foundation then what is the hope for epistemology? Quine argues that the pitfalls of studying the foundations of mathematics are, similarly, the burdens that epistemology is faced with. The studies of mathematics can be divided evenly among the conceptual and the doctrinal. The conceptual studies aim to define terms and clarify them, often in terms of one another. The doctrinal studies establish laws by proving them, some

derived from other laws and some derived from self-evident axioms. Thus if the mathematical concepts are clear enough to be translated in terms of logic then the truths of mathematics would be truths of logic. Likewise, epistemology can be seen as having a division between conceptual and doctrinal studies. If epistemology looks to ground knowledge in our sensory experience of the world then the conceptual side is explaining the physical world in sensory terms; the doctrinal side is then the establishment of laws of knowledge- that is, using those sensory terms in order to justify knowledge of particular truths. However, we have already seen that any axiomatic system will either be incomplete or inconsistent; thus, even if we were to couch our sensory terms in logical and set-theoretic language, as Quine suggests we might, this would not assure that any and all statements are provable. Given such a position, Quine recommends that epistemology can and should rid itself of all this “creative reconstruction” and “make-believe” (294). Quine asks, if the epistemologist is to admit that all an individual has to form his beliefs are his sensory experiences of the world then why not simply strive to understand how one moves from sensory experience to belief? That is, epistemology can simply consider itself a sub-branch of psychology. The goal of epistemology would be straightforward: a subject has a stimulation of his sensory receptors; the subject, from this sensory input, then forms a belief about the external world; the epistemologist would examine this causal relationship between the subject’s experience and his belief. Quine admits that this transition in epistemological aims appears circular. If the goal of epistemology is to find a grounds for which one can be said ‘to know that p’ from empirical evidence and thus reveal grounds for all empirical sciences then the epistemologist should not be able to use psychology, or any other empirical science for that matter, as a tool in his investigations. Quine, however, refutes any crime or wrong-doing in such circularity. Rather, he holds that this

circularity does not pose a problem given that epistemology is to give up on any hopes of deducing science from sensory experience and observation. The circularity would indeed be a problem for a traditional account of epistemology attempting to do what Quine holds is likely to be impossible (discover grounds for certainty). But if the goal is to instead understand how sensory stimuli lead to beliefs and how observations lead to science then, Quine argues, we are entitled to use any means available. As we have seen, Quine provides a list of reasons to propose that epistemology’s traditional aim is perhaps both misdirected and futile. Quine’s proposed naturalized epistemology places epistemology under the umbrella of psychology; epistemology becomes a member of the natural sciences. As we have also seen, this move can only be made by removing a key aspect of traditional epistemology: the normative element. Quine offers a view of epistemology that deletes any need for prescription: sensory stimuli in a subject result in the subject generating a belief; that causal relationship is the object of study. That is, instead of questioning how beliefs ought to be formed, Quine seems to be arguing that how one does is how one should. While this new project Quine suggests may very well be worthy of study, he is right to believe that it is a job for the psychologist. The epistemologist cannot rid himself of the normative element for a number of reasons. First and foremost, Quine’s naturalized epistemology is a venture to study how beliefs are formed; traditional epistemology states as its goal almost always that it is searching for how knowledge is attained and what exactly can qualify as knowledge. Epistemology is only concerned with how beliefs are formed at a secondary level; the central concern is why such beliefs are formed and whether or not such beliefs are justified. In taking up the naturalized epistemology that Quine proposes we essentially end the quest for knowledgewe remove that which was our goal in the first place. We lose any hope of understanding what

knowledge is. No matter to what degree one agrees with Quine, however misdirected or far off our dreams of Cartesian certainty are, in disbanding with a prescriptive epistemology that explains a proper way in which how to form beliefs we are conceding to the skeptic. A descriptive epistemology is simply not adequate in satisfying the aims of what a theory of knowledge is: description of belief formation is not a criteria for assessing the right one has to hold a belief. Furthermore, the behaviorist psychology that Quine resorts to as an umbrella for epistemology is not necessarily in agreement with the cognitive approach of the majority of today’s cognitive psychologists. Quine puts forward a simplistic model of stimulus and response. However, such crude behaviorist models of uncomplicated causation have been getting weededout of psychology for decades. Today’s psychologist would likely answer in-step with the prescriptive epistemologist and ask “Why? Why is this belief formed as opposed to any other? And is there grounds for holding such a belief? If not, what is wrong- what evidence is missing or being misused?”. Cognitive psychology, while not directly pursuing the questions of justification and knowledge, admits to the existence of internal states of mind; that is, the subject does have conscious applications of certain processes, indeed epistemic ones. The subject does not simply have sensory experiences and immediate beliefs. Many beliefs require informal (and possibly formal) methods of inference. A person is able, if the epistemologist provides them, to apply epistemic reasoning that is sound. The individual has a conscious input on what beliefs he may form; the simple cause-and-effect model that Quine would have us follow is not so straight forward: there is a space between the stimulus and the belief formation that the individual is entitled- in this gap between evidence and belief the subject must apply some method as to determine what is a proper conclusion to draw. This is the exact space where prescriptive

epistemology stakes out its domain and argues over what that method ought to be in order to arrive at beliefs that equate to knowledge. The behaviorist mold no longer fits in psychology and thus cannot be applied make-shiftily to epistemology. Lastly, it is not necessarily the case that Gödel’s proof of incompleteness has the same impact on epistemology as it does on reducing mathematics to logic and set theory. Epistemology does not have to be a formal axiomatic system and, moreover, a criteria for knowledge does not appear to be of the same nature as the system of numbers. Most epistemology struggles to rid itself of the need for intuitive judgments; this, however, does not have to be a bad thing. Intuition is integral to the means by which we determine if attributions of knowledge are accurate and intuitions are far from a formal representation. While providing as formal an account as possible for epistemic requirements is a worthy goal, it may just not be exactly what epistemology needs to do. An account of how to accurately arrive at beliefs and how beliefs may qualify as knowledge may be provided by a simple criteria, possibly a simple check-list: is the belief justified, is it true (in addition to whatever else may prove to be a necessary condition for a sufficient account)? If one does not embrace Quine’s indeterminacy of translation then there is room to argue that epistemology does not face the huge barriers Quine props up.