Intuitions, Norms, Experiments

Given that his moderate naturalism has him (agreeing and) disagreeing with certain elements both of TE and more “radical” naturalisms, it is not surprising that his position has come in for criticism from both sides. Thus, for example, Feldman (1999, 2012) and BonJour (1994) voice doubts about whether more modest forms of NE are both interesting and correct—whether, that is, plausible instances of the relevance of (e.g.) psychology to epistemology aren’t already accommodated by TE, and whether any genuinely newsworthy bearing of (e.g.) psychology on epistemology really is likely. (Goldman offers a direct response to BonJour at 1999: 26–27; and many of Kornblith’s arguments on behalf of naturalism—e.g., his 1995 and 2001—can be read as a response to such objections.) Once again, however, perhaps more interesting for our purposes is the internecine objection: according to Kornblith, the importance Goldman places upon conceptual analysis stands in the way of his offering a plausible account of epistemic normativity.
In his review of Kornblith’s 2002 book, Goldman writes that “[o]n the question of the basis of epistemic norms, he [Kornblith] has a very insightful and probing discussion” (2005: 409)—see the brief discussion thereof in Section 4.2 above. And, of course, Goldman is hardly averse to seeing true belief as having the sort of instrumental value that Kornblith’s account of epistemic normativity features. However, as Kornblith writes, “in Epistemology and Cognition, empirical concerns play no role at all in explaining the source of epistemic normativity” (2002: 140–141). On that account, rather, it is at the foundational conceptual stage of epistemology that normativity gets a foothold: our epistemic assessments are evaluative (Goldman 1986: 20), and give pride of place to reliability considerations, owing to the contents of the concepts which are deployed therein. In short, Kornblith says, on Goldman’s (1986) account “[n]ormative force seems to derive from semantic considerations alone” (Kornblith 2002: 142). According to Kornblith, however, such a semantic grounding for epistemic normativity is unsatisfactory. In effect, it simply pushes the problem back: why should we care about the concepts—hence, the epistemic standards—that we actually have (2002: 142–145)?
As Kornblith acknowledges, he is not the first to raise such concerns about the normative standings of results obtaining via the conceptual analysis that is characteristic of TE. Stich (1990: 92–93), for example, has raised them previously. As Stich’s discussion makes clear, what would make the envisaged problem pressing is if there were, in fact, genuine diversity in our cognitive processes, epistemic standards, and/or our intuitions about cases. After all, so long as our actual epistemic concepts and evaluations are broadly reliabilist—so long as

اقتباس :: [e]xamining folk epistemic concepts…reveal[s] how truth (true belief) is a primary basis for epistemic evaluation and epistemic achievement (Goldman 2007: 22)

—there is at the very least an important consilience between the results yielded by our conceptual investigation and the account of epistemic normativity that Kornblith favors.
Hence the significance of certain results claimed to have been obtained within “experimental philosophy” (x-phi), itself a recent movement within naturalistic philosophy.[24] For, according to some theorists, there is, in fact, widespread diversity in epistemic intuitions—both within individuals (Swain, Alexander, and Weinberg 2008) and between groups, even (as Jennifer Nagel puts it) “along such epistemically scary fault lines” (Nagel 2012: 495) as ethnicity (Weinberg, Nichols, and Stich 2001) and gender (Buckwalter and Stich 2011). According to those working within x-phi’s “negative” program,[25] (putative) results such as this reveal that there is something deeply flawed about the method of using intuitions to inform one’s philosophical theory. This is the lesson that Bishop and Trout take away from such reported results as well. As they see it, while practitioners of “Standard Analytic Epistemology” (SAE) typically regard NE as unable to accommodate epistemic normativity, it is in fact they who are engaged in a purely descriptive project—namely, the project of giving information

اقتباس :: about the reflective epistemic judgments of a group of idiosyncratic, non-representative people who have been trained to use highly specialized epistemic concepts and patterns of thought. (Bishop and Trout 2005a: 704)

If we want a genuinely normative epistemology, Bishop and Trout suggest (2005a,b), we should abandon SAE altogether and look directly to the empirical findings of “ameliorative psychology”, which promises to give us insight into how we can reason better.[26] The feasibility of this project has been challenged, and on much the same grounds as Goldman (e.g.) objects to Kornblith’s view—namely, because of the apparent indispensability to even an empirically-minded epistemology of a reliance upon intuitions, for instance concerning what the relevant standard of epistemic goodness is (e.g., Stich 2006). And yet, if the studies mentioned above are correct, it’s not clear what kind of authority we should grant such intuitions – or, more generally, the results of armchair philosophical methods such as are found within both TE and Goldman's brand of “moderate naturalism”.
However, those studies have been challenged. For instance, Sosa 2005, Goldman 2010, and Williamson 2013 raise concerns about the interpretation and significance of the reported data (and, to some extent, about the merits of x-phi itself). Just as importantly, others working within an experimental framework have raised questions about those data themselves. Thus, while Weinberg, Nichols, and Stich (2001), for example, claimed to find significant cross-cultural variation in people's epistemic intuitions, several recent studies (Nagel et al. 2013, Seyedsayamdost 2015, Kim and Yuan 2015) have failed to replicate those results. (See too Nagel 2012, 2013; Nagel and Boyd 2014.) In fact, in his most recent work on the subject, Stich – along with his coauthors (see Machery et al. 2015) – has argued for the cross-cultural robustness of certain epistemic intuitions, suggesting that these “may be a reflection of an underlying innate and universal core folk epistemology.” Like NE itself, x-phi raises pressing issues about philosophical methodology and remains the focus of lively debate. The most recent findings just mentioned, however, illustrate how x-phi per se is not at odds with the more traditional concerns and methods that Goldman's moderate naturalism, for example, incorporates: an epistemological theory's being informed by conceptual investigation, or by intuitive judgments, does not automatically fate it to being parochial, and so of only limited interest.

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» Moderate Naturalism 5.1 Conceptual Analysis, Intuitions, and Epistemological Methodology
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Intuitions, Norms, Experiments

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Intuitions, Norms, Experiments

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