Table Of ContentNaturalized Epistemology and
Philosophy of Science
Rodopi Philosophical Studies
7
Edited by
Francisco Miró Quesada
(University of Lima)
Ernest Sosa
(Brown University)
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007
Naturalized Epistemology and
Philosophy of Science
Edited by
Chienkuo Michael Mi and Ruey-lin Chen
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -
Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN: 978-90-420-2198-3
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007
Printed in the Netherlands
Table of contents
Preface 7
Ernest Sosa(Rutgers University, U.S.A.)
Sources and Deliverances 9
Ronald N. Giere(University of Minnesota, U.S.A.)
Modest Evolutionary Naturalism 21
Hilary Kornblith(University of Massachusetts, U.S.A.)
The Naturalistic Project in Epistemology: Where Do We
Go from Here? 39
Joseph Rouse(Wesleyan University, U.S.A.)
Naturalism and Scientific Practices: A Concluding
Scientific Postscript 61
Danielle Macbeth(Haverford College, U.S.A.)
Naturalism in the Philosophy of Mathematics 87
Chienkuo Mi(Soochow University, Taiwan)
What Is Naturalized Epistemology? The Quinean Project 105
Ruey-Lin Chen(Soochow University & National
Chung-Cheng University, Taiwan)
The Structure of Experimentation and the Replication
Degree—Reconsidering the Replication of
Hertz’s Cathode Ray Experiment 129
Patrick Hawley(Hong Kong University, Hong Kong)
Skepticism and the Value of Knowledge 151
Jeu-Jenq Yuann(National Taiwan University, Taiwan)
A Naturalistic Approach of Scientific Methodology:
A Comparative Study of O. Neurath and P. Feyerabend 171
Preface
Naturalized Epistemology and Philosophy of Science
Much has happened in the field of contemporary epistemology since Quine’s
“Epistemology Naturalized” was published in 1969; furthermore, before Ronald
Giere published his article “Philosophy of Science Naturalized”, naturalized
philosophy of science had been pushed by the so-called historical approach.
Kuhm, Lakatos, Feyerabend and Laudan’s historical philosophy of science can
be regarded as a form of it. Without a doubt, philosophy of science is closely
related to epistemology. There is an intimate connection between (normative or
descriptive) knowledge in this naturalistic approach and norms, values, reason-
ing, and knowledge in science and technology.
The naturalistic approach to epistemology and philosophy of science has
been gaining an ever more dominant role. However, with respect to the follow-
ing questions, it is not totally uncontroversial. Both in naturalized epistemology
and in naturalized philosophy of science debates continue. The papers in this
volume address the following questions in particular. In naturalized epistemology
questions include: What exactly is naturalized epistemology? What is the sig-
nificance of this investigation? How can this naturalistic approach be further
developed and applied? Can the normative aspect of epistemology really be
replaced by the descriptive psychology or science in general? In naturalized
philosophy of science the following questions arise: Should philosophers of
science propose any methodological rules or norms for scientific inquiries?
What roles do norms and values play in scientific decision, choice and reason-
ing? What are those different forms of cognition appearing in the scientific
practice?
The 2006 Soochow International Philosophy Conference and Workshop:
“Naturalized Epistemology and Philosophy of Science”, held in Taipei, Taiwan,
aimed to address these questions over four days (May 31 to June 3) of papers
presentations, workshops, panel discussions, and informal conversation. The
papers collected here bring together the keynote lectures and some highlights
of the conference overall.
We would like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude to all those
who have made both the meeting and this publication possible, not least to the
Taiwan National Science Council, the Taiwanese Ministry of Education, and the
Soochow Philosophy Centre (SPC) who jointly funded the conference and work-
shop, and the keynote speakers Ernest Sosa, Ronald Giere, Hilary Kornblith,
8 Preface
and Joseph Rouse, for their much appreciated contributions. We are particu-
larly grateful to Ernest Sosa for his help in publishing this work, as well as to
Chao-Shiuan Liu, the President of Soochow University for his continued
encouragement of the SPC. Finally, we must express our sincere thanks to the
Friends of Soochow Foundation for presenting us with the Edward L. Rada
Award, which substantially supported the publication of this volume.
Chienkuo Mi
Ruey-Lin Chen
Ernest Sosa
Sources and Deliverances
Rutgers University
1. Animal Knowledge and Dependent Tracking
Animal knowledge requires a belief that is “apt,” in that the believer gets it
right not by accident but by tracking the truth, in the following sense.
Tracking. One tracks the truth, outright, in believing that p IFF one would believe that p iff it
were so that p: i.e., would believe if it were so and only if it were so.1
If suitably constituted and environed you might also have an ability to track
over a certain range when appropriately related to facts in that range. Good eye-
sightcan so relate you to a facing surface’s color and shape (when it is not too far,
well enough lit, unoccluded, etc.) that with respect to any relevant proposition
(cid:2)p(cid:3)about the color or shape of the surface, you would believe (cid:2)p(cid:3)iff it were
so that p.2Often there is more than one way to track a truth: you might hear the
bells toll, for example, without seeing them, or you might see them toll with-
out hearing them.
If I see that a bird flies by, but only because I happen to look out the window,
which I might easily not have done, am I then in a condition where the bird would
now be flying by iff I believed it? Obviously I am not. Might not the bird easily
have flown by without my taking any note of that fact, because I was then look-
ing in another direction? Even when I am in fact looking in the right direction,
so long as I might too easily have looked in another direction, it remains too
easily possible that the bird might have flown by without my seeing it; in which
case I do know about the bird as I look out the window despite the fact that it
might easily have been there unnoticed. Outright tracking therefore cannot be a
necessary condition for knowing.
It might be thought that we avoid our problem through strategic relativizing.
Thus the knower wouldbelieve that p if (cid:2)p(cid:3)were a fact to which he was suitably
1 This is Cartesian tracking, not the Nozickian tracking which requires, not that one would
believe that p only if it were so that p, but rather that if it were not so that p then one would not
believe it. It is defended in my “Postscript to ‘Proper Functionalism and Virtue Epistemology’,”
in J. Kvanvig (ed.), Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology(Lanham, Maryland: Rowman
and Littlefield, 1996), pp. 271–280.
2 Here and in what follows ‘(cid:2)p(cid:3)’abbreviates ‘the proposition that p’.
