Table Of ContentDominique Kuenzle
Refurbishing Epistemology
Epistemic Studies
Philosophy of Science, Cognition and Mind
Edited by
Michael Esfeld, Stephan Hartmann, Albert Newen
Volume 35
Dominique Kuenzle
Refurbishing
Epistemology
A Meta-Epistemological Framework
ISBN 978-3-11-051941-9
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Acknowledgements
This book is aversion of my Habilitationsschrift (Philosophische Fakultät,Uni-
versity of Zürich). I am grateful for the financial support of the University of
Zürich’s Privatdozenten-Stiftung.
Fortheir friendship andtheir help with my ideas,concepts,arguments and
the manuscript, many thanks to Georg Brun, Alastair Donlon, Javier Kalhat,
Deborah Mühlebach, Peter Schulthess and Nicolas Wüthrich.
Stephanie,FriedaandMathilda:Thankyoueversomuchforyourlove,time
and perspective.Yes, Frieda, lionfish do get scurvy if they stayon Pluto for too
long.Andno,dearreader,thisisn’timpliedbymymeta-epistemologicalframe-
work.
DOI10.1515/9783110525458-202
Contents
Acknowledgements V
Introduction: Retooling the Epistemic Workshop 1
Towards a New Meta-Epistemology 7
. First Development: From Conceptual Analysis to Reflective
Equilibrium 8
. Second Development: Naturalising Epistemology 15
. Third Development: Kuhn and the Sociology of Scientific
Knowledge 23
. Fourth Development: Pragmatist Epistemology 36
. Fifth Development: Feminist Epistemology 56
What Is “Meta-Epistemology”? 68
. From Meta-Ethics to Meta-Epistemology 68
. Conceptions of Meta-Epistemology 77
. A Meta-Epistemological Framework 88
Epistemic States and Performances 97
. Epistemological Functionalism 97
. Systems With a Design and Teleological ESPs 107
. Social Practice and Social-Normative ESPs 116
. Intentional and Conceptual Epistemic Practice 127
Varieties of Norm-Talk 142
. Descriptiveand Normative Purport 142
. Norm-Talk: Basic Conditional Normative Statements 153
. Normative Statements With Descriptive Purport 160
. Normative Statements With Normative Purport 171
. Epistemic Norms and Evaluations 176
Epistemic Evaluations and Concepts 191
. Content-Specification and Evaluation of ESPs 192
. Epistemic Concepts 205
. Assertion, Belief and Knowledge 213
. Consequences of the Framework 222
VIII Contents
Conclusion 237
Bibliography 239
Author Index 251
Subject Index 253
Introduction: Retooling the Epistemic Workshop
Accordingtoawidelysharedtakeonthehistoryofphilosophy,epistemologyen-
joyeditsheydayinearlymoderntimes,beginningwithDescartesandculminat-
ing in Immanuel Kant’s critical and transcendental philosophy. The great En-
lightenment philosophers looked back at a long history of attempts to discover
the most general principles at work in reality and decided that enough was
enough: how can we even hope to determine the general structure of whatever
existsifweareunclearabouthowwerepresenttheworld?IfAristotle,whenla-
belling metaphysics the “first philosophy”, thought of it as having explanatory
and logical priority, then he got that wrong. Before we can ask any questions
about the nature of what we see,think and talk about,we need to inquire into
our own cognitive faculties. Hence the great “epistemological turn” (Sellars
1967) of the Western Enlightenment.
Whenthesecondhalfofthetwentiethcenturygotunderway,thingsdidnot
look good for epistemology. Another revolution had taken place.The baton of
systematicprimacyhadbeenpassedontothephilosophyoflanguage.Philoso-
phy was now predominantly “linguistic”, attempting to solve or dissolve prob-
lemsbyanalysingorreformingthelanguageinwhichtheyarise.Theepistemo-
logical turn gave way to a “linguistic turn”, to quote the title of an influential
anthologyedited by Richard Rorty (1992 [1967]).With a flair for hyperbolic pro-
nouncements,Rortyhimself(1979),followingQuine(1969),wentasfar asinter-
pretingthelinguisticturnasnotonlydemoting,butactuallykillingepistemolo-
gy altogether.
Todayepistemologyisflourishingonceagain.Plentyoffruitfulresearchhas
gone into the analysis or explication of knowledge; sceptical arguments are
being re-evaluated; the nature of epistemic justification is beingdiscussed.Vir-
tue epistemologists and theorists of epistemic values exploit parallels between
epistemologyand normative ethics,social epistemologists reject the individual-
istpresuppositionsoftraditionalepistemology,andfeministepistemologydiag-
noses and removesgendered ideals built into supposedly neutral and objective
epistemic standards. It certainly looks as if the linguistic turn was not quite as
deadly to epistemology as it had been made out to be.
Despite the lively discussions and productive research activities in contem-
porary epistemology, however, the questions raised by the linguistic turn have
neverbeenfullyanswered.Asaworstcasescenario,philosophicalepistemology
could now be in the position of the proverbial cartoon cat who keeps walking
over the precipice into the air, to pay gravity its due only once it looks down
and notices that it ought to fall. In the best case, the epistemological age has
DOI10.1515/9783110525458-001
2 Introduction:RetoolingtheEpistemicWorkshop
neverendedandtheso-called“linguisticturn”wasnothingmorethanamisin-
terpretedandoverblownchangeintheepistemologist’smethodsandconceptual
tools.Realistically,though,thingsaretoocomplextoboildown toeither abest
oraworstcasescenario:contemporaryepistemologistsaresurelywelladvisedto
pursue their research, especially with the tools provided by, the standards of
claritydemandedby,andincloseproximityto,analyticallymindedphilosophy
of language and other neighbouringdisciplines.
Thetroubleisthatwecannotsituatecontemporaryepistemologywithinphi-
losophy,andespeciallyinrelationtothephilosophyoflanguage,ifourtakeon
its defining traits (viz. its topic, aims,conceptualtools and methodology) is in-
sufficiently explicit. And, judging from contemporary debates, and especially
from what tends to be absent from those debates, our take on epistemology’s
aimsandmethodologyisindeedinsufficientlyexplicit.Whatisneededisacon-
ceptuallyconcise and methodologically self-aware meta-epistemological frame-
work,which is what this book aims to provide.
No account of epistemologycan be adequate unless those discussions that
are generally seen as typical instances of epistemological theorising actually
count as epistemological. Accordingly, I shall take the inclusion of traditional
epistemological problems as a criterion of adequacy for any account of episte-
mology. Myown account will be informed by important twentieth-centurychal-
lenges,includingreflectiveequilibrium,naturalism,thesociologyofknowledge,
pragmatism, and feminism, without being knocked over by them.The hope is
thatmeta-epistemologicalclarityhelpstoholdonto,andtospellout,athought
Ihavealwaysfoundconvincing:ifepistemologyisthedescriptiveandnormative
studyofepistemicnorms andstandards,andifeverykind oftheorisingandre-
searchoughttobegovernedbyepistemicnormsandstandards,thenitishardto
seehowthelabel“linguisticturn”couldeverhavelabelledmorethanachange
inmethodologicalfashion andexplanatoryvocabulary.Thequestionofsystem-
atic primacy in philosophy never was a contest between epistemology and the
philosophyoflanguage;itcouldalwaysonlyhavebeenacontestbetweenepis-
temologyandmeta-epistemology.Eitherthelinguisticturnneverhappened,orit
istimefortheepistemologicalU-turn,or,ifweareweddedtoidealsofprogress,
the meta-epistemological turn.
Whatarethemeta-epistemologicaldeficitstoberemediedinthisbook?Soc-
rates, in Plato’s Theaetetus,wants to know what knowledge (“episteme”) is. In
the seventeenth century, the meditating “I” in Descartes’ Meditations gets
downtolaythefoundationsandmethodsforsecureandindubitableknowledge.
Before these foundations are laid, it emerges that perhaps we had better deal
with the puzzling fact that there are good reasons for thinking that we don’t
knowanythingatall.DavidHumewondersjusthow wecantrustourinductive
