How to Standardize a Naturalist
One-page Abstract
John Mayhood
Brown University
The question of naturalistic epistemology and the is-ought divide has already
spawned a significant literature. But Michael Bishop and J.D. Trout (B&T) have recently
(2002; 2005a; 2005b) argued that analytic epistemology as normally practiced has two
additional disadvantages when compared with their naturalistic approach: it has no track
record of sound recommendations across a wide and important range of cases where
empirically-grounded methods like statistical prediction rules (SPRs) have been
successfully applied; (2005b, 710) and it is “culturally imperialistic”, resting its
deliverances completely on the intuitions of an idiosyncratic subset of the population.
(ibid., 705) Here, I argue that these disadvantages are merely apparent; and, partly in
consequence, that B&T’s naturalism does not represent a significant departure from
standard analytic method.
The practical successes of some SPRs and heuristics (hereafter, “empirical
methods”) are interesting data that epistemologists must take into account. But they are
not by themselves objections to standard epistemology, because standard epistemological
theories can model the rationality and justification of these procedures smoothly and
naturally (as I demonstrate, using, in turn, the coherentism that I favor and a modest
foundationalism). The charge of imperialism is more difficult to answer. Here I limit
myself to the observation that B&T’s naturalistic approach is also tacitly imperalistic
because, despite their protestations, it is inextricably tied up with standard
epistemological concerns. For, even granting that we ought to defer to empirical methods
when forming beliefs in specific situations (a distinctively naturalistic claim), we might
still ask why the belief forming methods recommended by empirical methods are justified
(a standard epistemological concern). B&T’s answer is that successful empirical
methods are more reliable than others (2002, S206; 2005a, 699); thus, they answer the
why-question with a straightforward reliabilism. But straightforward reliabilism faces
well-known difficulties that naturalistic methods alone do not seem to solve. So, to the
extent that B&T must engage with these issues, it seems they must avail themselves of
the conceptual methods distinctive of standard epistemology and risk falling into the
cultural imperialism they hope to avoid.
If my arguments succeed, we have two fewer reasons to abandon standard
analytic epistemology in favor of a naturalistic approach. But this is largely because the
two approaches are complementary methods in a single investigation: empirical methods
can provide solid and important data points for epistemological theory; and standard
epistemology, in turn, helps us understand how and why empirical methods confer
knowledge, justification and rationality on their users. Any epistemology that neglects
either of these concerns risks either empirical or conceptual inadequacy.
Works Cited in Abstract
2002. Bishop, M. and J. D. Trout. “50 Years of Successful Predictive Modeling Should
be Enough: Lessons for the Philosophy of Science.” Philosophy of Science 68
(2002): S197-S208.
2005a. ---. Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2005.
2005b. ---. “The Pathologies of Standard Analytic Epistemology.” Nous 39 (2005):
696-714.