Naturalized Epistemology and the Normative

• Authors: Michael-John Turp
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Gradually emerging from the so-called “linguistic turn,” philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century witnessed what we might follow P. M. S. Hacker in describing as a “naturalistic turn.” This change of direction, an abandonment of traditional philosophical methods in favour of a scientific approach, or critics would say a scientistic approach, has met with widespread approval. In the first part of the paper I look to establish the centrality of the normative to the discipline of epistemology. I then turn to examine Quine's attempt to reduce normative discourse to instrumental rationality, and the more fully developed accounts provided by Stich, Kornblith and Papineau. I argue that these accounts fail because they insist on a constitutive connection between desires and the ends of epistemic activity. I conclude with the suggestion that a more plausible position severs this connection, in favour of an objective, externalist account of ends and reasons.

Keywords

EN

linguistic turn; epistemology; naturalism; Quine, Willard van Orman

• Publisher: Akademia Ignatianum w Krakowie
• Journal: Forum Philosophicum
• Year: 2008
• Volume: 13
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 343-355

Dates

published

2008

Contributors

author

Michael-John Turp

• Durham University, United Kingdom

References

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Identifiers

DOI

10.5840/forphil200813226

URI

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=36814881&lang=pl&site=ehost-live

URI

http://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase?openform&fp=forphil&id=forphil_2008_0013_0002_0335_0347