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Naturalized epistemologyand epistemic evaluationChristopher Hookway aa Department of Philosophy , University ofBirmingham , Edgbaston, Birmingham, B152TT, EnglandPublished online: 29 Aug 2008.

To cite this article: Christopher Hookway (1994) Naturalized epistemology andepistemic evaluation, Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 37:4,465-485, DOI: 10.1080/00201749408602368

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Inquiry, 37, 465-85

Naturalized Epistemology andEpistemic Evaluation

Christopher HookwayUniversity of Birmingham

The paper explores Quine's 'naturalized epistemology', investigating whether itsadoption would prevent the description or vindication of normative standardsstandardly employed in regulating beliefs and inquiries. Quine's defence ofnaturalized epistemology rejects traditional epistemological questions rather thanusing psychology to answer them. Although one could persuade those sensitive tothe force of traditional epistemological problems only by employing the kind ofargument whose philosophical relevance Quine is committed to denying, Quine cansupport his view by showing how scientific inquiry need not confront any evaluativeissues which cannot be addressed in naturalistic terms. A survey of Quine's ownepistemological writings supports this account of his position: naturalizedepistemology, it is argued, requires acceptance of the shallowness of epistemicreflection, and traditional epistemology employs general epistemic norms andprinciples which Quine endeavours to show that we can do without. The closingsections of the paper argue that Quine can consistently resist recent criticisms byAlvin Plantinga in spite of the fact that an unsympathetic reader could reasonablybe unimpressed by this resistance. Finally, an attempt is made to understand thenormative role of Quine's empiricism and of his claim that prediction is thecheckpoint of inquiry.

I. Naturalized EpistemologyQuine's approach to epistemological issues is resolutely naturalistic. Ques-tions concerning how theory is confirmed by evidence and how observationyields truths about external things are to be tackled within natural science;there is no role for a philosophical theory, independent of the sciences,which assures us of the reliability of the methods used in scientific inves-tigations. He recognizes that by identifying epistemology as an enterprisethat is internal to natural science, he rejects what some may take to becentral to the 'epistemological tradition' (namely 'the Cartesian dream ofa foundation for scientific certainty firmer than scientific method itself).1

The retention of the term 'epistemology' signals that he is still concernedwith 'what has been central to traditional epistemology, namely the relationof science to its sensory data',2 but Quine does not care overmuch aboutthe term. The important question is not that of whether Quine's 'naturalizedepistemology' is 'epistemology correctly so-called'.3 It is rather: are there

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genuine issues, often discussed under the title of 'epistemology', whichQuine's more general philosophical naturalism prevents us taking seriously?Does he close down discussion too early? Thus a number of critics haveurged that Quine fails to find room for concepts and categories that arefundamental to our (and science's) ways of making sense of ourselves andour activities. My aim in this paper is to look (in rather general terms) atwhether this charge (in one of its forms) can be mounted and how far itcan be resisted.

A common criticism of Quine's 'epistemology' is that epistemology is anormative discipline, while its Quinean replacement can only describe theprocesses which produce our developing theory of the world.4 It may bedenied that Quine can make sense of normative claims within epistemologyat all. We often reflect upon how we ought to revise our opinions inresponse to conflicts and surprises. Epistemology grows out of an attemptto be reflective about such reflections, and a scientific account of how ourtheories are arrived at ignores questions about how they ought to bedeveloped and defended. Quine rejects this criticism: 'Insofar as theoreticalepistemology gets naturalized into a chapter of theoretical science, sonormative epistemology gets naturalized into a chapter of engineering:the technology of anticipating sensory stimulation.'5 So long as epistemicevaluation is concerned with assessing technical means to achieving fixedcognitive ends, normativity need present no problem for the naturalist.

The more interesting forms of the objection point to particular eval-uations which arise out of reflective inquiry which cannot be understood in'technological' terms. Cartesians claim, for example, that we need to defendour view of the world as a whole against sceptical attack, vindicating thesenses as a source of information about external things and defending thelegitimacy of induction. This need is supposed to be evident to common-sense philosophical reflection upon our opinions.6 Quine's repudiation ofthe Cartesian tradition requires him to deny that any such defence isrequired. Since it would plainly be circular to rely upon informationobtained from induction and the senses in combating Cartesian scepticism,naturalized epistemology would fail if we were not warranted in doing so.

Even if 'Cartesian' worries do not disturb us, there may be epistemicnorms which cannot be understood in 'technological' terms. A critic maycomplain that Quine's approach to epistemology ignores issues of genuineepistemic concern. My primary concern in the paper is with how far suchobjections can be sustained. Quine's naturalism claims that many issuestraditionally investigated by philosophers interested in epistemology areproperly located within psychology. To give this claim some 'naturalistic'bite, we must add that these issues belong to a kind of psychology whichis to be classified along with the natural sciences. Somebody who thoughtthat epistemology formed part of a distinctively philosophical or intro-

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spective psychology would be no philosophical ally of Quine's. In that case,there are two forms such dissatisfaction with Quine's philosophy can take.First one could take issue with the details of his view of psychology, claimingthat we need, if we are to organize the quest for knowledge responsibly, amore robust notion of content than he is prepared to allow us. A criticmight insist that it is only by employing a richer apparatus of propositionalattitudes than Quine can find room for that we can make sense of what itis to do science, and then use this as the basis of a kind of reductio ofnaturalized epistemology.7 And this stance might be supported by arguingthat Quine's resistance to the use of a robust notion of content rests ontheses about synonymy or reference which rest upon aspects of his natu-ralism which are independently open to challenge.

The kind of objection I am concerned with here is different, and it couldbe sustained even if Quine's naturalism embraced a richer version ofpsychology and a more sympathetic attitude towards intentional contentand the propositional attitudes. Epistemology is concerned with the activi-ties we engage in when we try to extend our knowledge: typically, we raisequestions and we try to answer them. These activities typically involveevaluations: we attempt to monitor our opinions and carry out inquiries ina controlled and responsible manner. In the face of perceptual surprise,we try to reassign truth-values among our corpus of accepted propositionsor sentences in as rational and responsible a manner as we can. Thisrequires us to make evaluations of how well hypotheses are supported bythe available evidence. We assess arguments and strategies of inquiry, and,most crucially, we reflect in a second-order fashion upon the norms andvalues which govern this activity. This kind of reflection requires us toevaluate our evaluative procedures, and it provides one point at whichphilosophical (and most significantly epistemological) reflection emerges.The second form of dissatisfaction with the Quinean approach chargesthat it requires a distinctive form of blinkeredness: if one is to 'live' thephilosophical outlook involved in naturalized epistemology, one would beoblivious of the need to engage in reflection of these kinds. And thisamounts to more than an admirable philosophical 'tunnel vision'. It involvesturning away from basic features of our experience.

There are two forms the objection might take, and both surface in AlvinPlantinga's recent book Warrant and Proper Function} First, one mightdeny that Quinean epistemology has the resources to describe fundamentalepistemic norms. Thus Plantinga's analysis of 'warrant'9 exploits a func-tionalist analysis of cognitive faculties, and asserts that a belief is warrantedonly if it is produced or sustained by cognitive systems that are functioningproperly. His examination of some attempts to give naturalistic expla-nations of the notion of function within the philosophy of biology leads tothe suspicion that none is available. This suggests that there is a fundamental

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epistemological value which naturalists must ignore. Alternatively, onecould hold that although fundamental norms can be described, a naturalisticepistemology cannot explain why we are correct to rely on these norms:the search for a 'technological vindication' fails. Thus Plantinga suggests(like that noted friend of naturalism, Stephen Stich)10 that while naturalselection is likely to equip us with faculties that will enable us to survivelong enough to reproduce and bring up our young, it is unlikely to favourfaculties that will be reliable at producing true beliefs. If Darwin is correct,the argument runs, our cognitive endowment is likely to be a poor meansto our cognitive ends. These examples are intended as illustrative. It is notmy intention to defend them here.

Finally, we should note a structural form of the normativity objection.Quine suggests that all epistemic evaluation is concerned with the assess-ment of means to ends. It may be objected that we are also able to evaluateour ends in inquiry, fixing goals that motivate us in inquiry. If normativeissues do arise concerning the propriety of our epistemic ends, they cannotbe made sense of in the means/ends terms that Quine favours. This mayindicate a further limitation of naturalized epistemology.

II. Dialectical Matters: Quine's 'Radicalism'First, however, we must consider some complexities in the dialecticalposition of someone trying to defend (or criticize) naturalistic epistemology.When we try to evaluate objections to naturalized epistemology, it isimportant to distinguish two separate contexts of justification. We can askwhether Quine is in a position to persuade his critics that his naturalizedepistemology offers them all that they could reasonably require; and wecan ask whether he can satisfy himself that there are no challenges thatshould lead him to reconsider his position. It is natural to suppose thatunless he can achieve the former, then his claim to have achieved the lattershould ring hollow. In the remainder of this introduction, I suggest thatthe position is more complex than that: he may be justified in adhering tonaturalized epistemology, although he cannot present arguments that wouldpersuade his critics that they too should do so.

Burton Dreben has recently characterized Quine as a philosophicalradical.11 The mark of this radicalism lies in his attitude towards what arereferred to as 'traditional philosophical problems'. We might contrast threephilosophical stances as follows: the 'conservative' takes such problemsseriously, either answering them on their own terms or, if persuaded thatthis cannot be done, acquiescing in scepticism. A reformist recognizes thatthe traditional problems cannot be addressed on their own terms but urgesthat they be reformulated: a deep philosophical anxiety was located but

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misdescribed within the tradition and if only we reformulate the issue inthe right way, the anxiety can be laid to rest. Thus Kant affirmed that itwas a scandal that philosophers still sought reassurance about the existenceof the external world, and he proposed that we could recover our philo-sophical purity if only we reformulated the issue in accordance with thetranscendental philosophy.12 The radical simply rejects the traditional prob-lems: in the words of another philosophical radical (with whom Quinewould have little sympathy), the scandal is that we still look for reassuranceabout the external world.

The plausibility of Dreben's identification of Quine's radicalism explainsthe common reactions to naturalized epistemology. When asked how wecan have knowledge of external things, it is perfectly natural to respond byoffering an account of how photons are selectively reflected by the surfacesof objects, or how they are absorbed by rods and cones in the retina, ofhow information is passed through ganglion cells to the visual cortex, andthus (through neurophysiological processes which others understand betterthan I but no one understands fully), expectations are formed about objectsin surrounding space. Moreover, we are aware that this is a reliable process,giving rise to a preponderance of true beliefs. In Thompson Clarke's phrase,this is a 'plain man's' response:13 it addresses the question as an ordinaryempirical claim about the world and offers a defensible answer to it as sounderstood. But just as G. E. Moore's proof of the external world seemsnot to engage with the philosophical question which is expressed in thesame words as the empirical one but differs from it in content, so thisscientific response (which is, in effect Quine's) fails to engage with thequestion posed when philosophers ask how (or whether) we can haveknowledge of the external world, or indeed of anything else. The radicalapproach breaks with tradition not in rejecting a fashionable answer to thatphilosophical question, nor even in rejecting particular ways of formulatingit: rather, the radical response simply rejects the question. The onlyquestion which can be formulated in that form of words is the plainman's empirical one. To borrow a slogan of naturalized epistemology: thediscipline constitutes a branch of psychology or natural science.

For all that it rejects this traditional philosophical problem, this radicalstance can be a distinctively philosophical one. But there are difficult issuessurrounding the radical's participation in philosophical discussion. If hewill not use the vocabulary in which the traditional problems are posed, itis unclear how he can respond to the questions and anxieties of his dispu-tants, for those objections will be posed in ways that take for granted thetraditional vocabulary. I can see four possibilities here. One, the leastradical, is to mount a philosophical argument, grounded perhaps in adistinctive theory of meaning, which asserts the meaningless or point-lessness of the philosophical problem. I am more than a little sceptical

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about the prospects for success if this strategy is adopted, not least becauseunless the philosopher breaks with his naturalism in arguing for his theoryof meaning, the same problem is likely to recur. Alternatively, one mightexplore the history of the tradition, revealing (for example) how Descartes'sengagement with the problem of the external world makes sense onlyagainst the background of some assumptions about mind, matter, and Godwhich we no longer find compelling. A third strategy employs other kindsof philosophical therapy, disarming and destabilizing the assumptions andargument employed within the tradition to motivate the concern withsceptical challenges.14

But a fourth strategy is the most interesting one. Unlike the first threeit makes little attempt to engage with the 'tradition' at all. Rather, it showsor exhibits the groundlessness of their questions and concerns by ignoringthem. It treats in a systematic way all those issues which do arise, and thusexhibits the fact that the other questions can be avoided or that they onlyarise if the traditional philosopher is allowed to set the agenda. The traditionis committed to the idea that philosophical issues arise, naturally andinevitably, from reflection that forms part of the everyday concerns of life.It may be possible for the radical philosopher to exhibit that this is not so,without arguing systematically for it. Philosophical revelation can be shownbut cannot be articulated or formulated where it rests upon resistance to,or rejection of, a range of questions and a distinctive vocabulary.

This is a crude taxonomy, but I think it helps us to understand thecharacter of some of the debates that have surfaced around Quine's defenceof naturalized epistemology. His work contains elements of the secondstrategy (he alludes to the role of scientific misconceptions about vision insupporting the view that the immediate objects of perception are visualimages rather than external things). And the third strategy surfacesoccasionally (as when traditionalists are dismissed as squeamish or asoverreacting to facts about perceptual error and illusion). But Quine'sinsouciance about whether he is continuing the epistemological traditionor abandoning it and his reluctance seriously to engage with those whotake the tradition seriously appear to involve the final kind of response.He starts from an assurance that scientific knowledge is the only kind ofknowledge worthy of serious philosophical attention, and his practice isintended to display that philosophical reflection will not force him to departfrom this. The first half of this paper traces one way of thinking ofnaturalized epistemology, one that reflects this perspective. Towards theend, things will be made slightly more complicated, but the general pointargued for will remain.

The dialectical position of one who wants to engage with this kind ofphilosophical radicalism is a difficult one: anxieties and problems are aptto be expressed which cry out to be addressed and which take for granted

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the vocabulary of the traditional problems. The difficulty is that of showing,in a non-question begging way, that there are problems which the 'radical'fails to take seriously which genuinely do arise out of reflection on thematters at issue, of showing that the radical's vision is blinkered ratherthan rigorously and admirably austere. If we try to evaluate Plantinga'sobjections, for example, we have to consider not only whether a naturalistaccount of 'warrant' is available, but also whether this evaluative conceptis actually required. If Quine's practice could show that the lack of thisconcept did not prevent him carrying out his inquiries in an ordered andresponsible way, then he may be able to ignore the objection.

III. Some Issues of Epistemic EvaluationIt will be useful to list some evaluative issues that might be supposed toarise in the course of carrying out inquiries and which are taken seriouslyby the 'tradition'.

(a) Issues of global legitimation. I have in mind here the problem of theexternal world and the problem of induction. The evaluative issues thatemerge require us to identify very general components of our 'cognitiveapparatus', for example 'the senses' or 'inductive reasoning', and then toprovide an explanation of why we are entitled to rely upon them.

(b) General concepts of epistemic appraisal. Much recent philosophicalwriting on epistemology attempts to elucidate evaluative concepts like'knowledge' or 'justified belief or 'warrant'. It seeks a description ofthe circumstances under which we attach these values to propositions,hypotheses, or sentences and, ideally, an explanation of why we areinterested in such evaluations. A limited vocabulary of very general termsof epistemic appraisal is proposed, and the demand is made that epi-stemologists should explicate the elements of this vocabulary.

(c) General principles of epistemic evaluation. A number of philosophersand logicians have sought a systematic confirmation theory or inductivelogic, an account of rules or principles we employ in comparing andassessing hypotheses in the light of evidence.

It is notable that Quine has contributed to none of these endeavours -although he has made some general remarks about confirmation and thetesting of theories. And his critics have urged that naturalized accounts ofknowledge and reason are powerless to provide such things. Barry Stroudargues, for example, that the problem of scepticism about the externalworld cannot be dismissed and cannot be addressed by a naturalist.15 And,in the course of explaining why 'reason cannot be naturalized', HilaryPutnam has suggested that a naturalistic explanation of justified belief orwarranted assertibility or reason is not to be had, but that it is a matter of

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central philosophical importance that an account of this value should beprovided.16

We can contrast with these:(d) Particular evaluations that are internal to particular inquiries. I might

discuss the best way to check whether my plane's take-off will be delayed,or I might wonder whether my colour judgments are to be trusted under aneon light.

These evaluations will be unproblematic for a naturalistic philosopher:in making them I rely upon straightforwardly factual information. Theresults of the evaluations are expressed in straightforwardly factual claims:the airline is more likely than the airport inquiry desk to have up-to-dateinformation about flight delays; light from fluorescent tubes has a jaggedspectral emission profile which means that objects can look different underneon and under other forms of white light.17 As Quine has put it, normativeepistemology is a kind of applied science: we use scientific results toevaluate specific means to ends. And it is by no means obvious that ourquestions need to be posed using terms from the small and general evalu-ative vocabulary alluded to above.

I shall argue that Quine has a principled basis for rejecting the philo-sophical tasks described in (a)-(c) above and that (of course) the evaluationsmentioned under (d) present no challenge to his position. The difficultissue concerns whether we need to use evaluations in the course of inquirieswhich do not belong to these four categories. As Quine admits, thechallenge raised by the role of evaluations in inquiry to the ambitions of anaturalized epistemology concerns a risk of circularity. Behind it lies aprinciple:

P: If we are called upon to defend an evaluative procedure E, wecannot consistently rely upon factual information or other norms orevaluations which would become dubitable were our defence to fail.

It is clear that we rely upon such a principle in making evaluations of kind(d). It seems likely that it undermines any use of naturalistic or scientificinformation in responding to issues of type (a) and (b) (and perhaps [c]).

The naturalized epistemologist seems to have two strategies open foravoiding the threat of circularity which is thereby presented. He or shemay:

1. Deny that the sorts of evaluative procedures described in (a) and (b)need defence. There is a philosophically interesting task of describingthese procedures and then explaining how they work and how theyachieve their (unquestioned) success. But since there is no real basis for

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doubting them, there is no need to defend them. The questions theyaddress are never live ones.

Or:

2. Deny that these kinds of evaluative procedures actually have a role inour cognitive activities at all. The broad epistemic 'kinds' suggested bythis epistemic vocabulary are a philosophical invention which has noplace in the reflective kind of inquiry with which we are concerned.There simply are no such questions as those posed by the problem ofthe external world and the problem of justification. We may faceproblems of comparing and evaluating competing answers to a givenquestion, but (for example) there is no need to appeal to a generalevaluative notion of 'justified belief when we try to do that.

Many passages in Quine's writings suggest that he supports strategy 1. Isuggest that he should favour strategy 2 (and I am inclined to hope that hedoes in fact do so).18 In sections IV-VIII we examine some remarks aboutepistemic evaluation which are found in Quine's writings. In the closingsections of the paper we turn to a consideration of the circumstances underwhich a critic could quite reasonably fail to be impressed by these claims.

IV. Quine's Epistemic NormsWe begin with 'Two dogmas of empiricism', noting first that the positivists'analytic/synthetic distinction does promise an account of epistemic eval-uation of the sort that some find to be missing in Quine's work. Analytictruths formulate norms to be adhered to in accommodating our dispositionsto assert theoretical sentences to each other and to our perceptual claims.And their status as 'analytic' provides a non-threatening account of theauthority of these norms. Carnap's distinction between internal and externalquestions, together with his attempts to formulate systems of inductivelogic, offer materials for understanding the evaluations involved in whatwe might call rational self-control: rational reconstructions of our practicesare thus means to give greater clarity and greater self-control. The firstanxiety I address, suggested by the final section of 'Two dogmas', is thatwith the elimination of the analytic/synthetic distinction we are left, so tospeak, at sea, without an account of norms and thus without any form ofguidance in responding to anomalous experience.

Recall Quine's metaphor: 'total science is like a field of force whoseboundary conditions are experience':

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A conflict with experience at the periphery occasions readjustments in the interiorof the field. Truth values have to be redistributed over some of our statements.Réévaluations of some statements entail réévaluation of others, because of theirlogical interconnections - the logical laws being in turn simply certain furtherstatements of the system . . . But the total field is so underdetermined by itsboundary conditions, experience, that there is much latitude of choice as to whatstatements to reëvaluate in the light of any contrary experience.19

And the corollaries:

(1) Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drasticenough adjustments elsewhere in the system.

(2) Conversely, by the same token, no statement is immune to revision.

What is the force of 'can be held true'? If it is a psychological 'can', then itsrelevance to general issues of epistemic evaluation is problematic. Moreover,if it is a psychological 'can' it is simply untrue: we do not have that muchfreedom of manoeuvre. There is no real sense in which I am now free to reviselogical principles in order to restore order to my corpus of opinions. At best,we can point to a very few specific contexts in which particular inquirersaffirmed that they thought they were free to revise specific logical principles.If it means 'can legitimately', then the suggestion is that we are confrontedby a wide range of alternative ways of restoring order to our corpus of opinionsand that there are no norms which determine which of those we should prefer.In trying to reason well, we have less help than we might have wished and fewresources available to defend the revisions we choose when facing someoneelse who has decided differently. If it means 'can without contradiction', thenthe further issue of what we should do has yet to be addressed. The metaphorsdo not appear to do justice to our experience of rearranging our beliefs andevaluating our achievements. We need to make evaluations and we receiveinsufficient guidance on how to carry them out: the only real constraint is thepragmatic one of experience.

Of course, this is only appearance. We must understand Quine's claimagainst the background of its target: it is to be understood as a denial thatthere are general principles or truths whose role is distinctively normative,providing rules to guide us in adjusting our opinions. We do not settleempirical or factual matters against the background of a framework ofanalytic truths or logical principles which are not eligible for reassessmentin order to make sense of experience. Or if we agree with Carnap that therules of our framework may themselves be revised if that provides the bestway of making sense of things, we do not accept that the normativeconsiderations which are relevant to these revisions are of a different kindto those which they provide themselves for the evaluation of ordinaryinternal or physical claims. If we are to make sense of the norms that guideus when we revise our beliefs and theories, we must not do so by appeal

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to statements whose sole function is to serve as norms. It is never anessential feature of the meaning of a sentence that it expresses a rationalnorm. Statements which, in one context, are understood as simple state-ments of fact may, in other contexts, have a normative role, being appealedto when we want to defend our choice of revisions of our opinions.The difficulty that many people have had with the 'confirmation theory'defended in these early papers is that they have read the passages cited assketches towards answers to questions of the first three forms given above.If you believe that we need answers to those questions, then you willbe disappointed by the answers you appear to find in 'Two dogmas ofempiricism'. The passage is better read, I suggest, as resisting certain claimswhich are offered as answers to questions of these first three sorts.

Once they are read as general positive normative principles, as if wewere stepping back from our system of knowledge as a whole and askinghow we tell whether it is a good one, then it is unsurprising that thesepapers are read as defending a kind of anti-realism or instrumentalism: anycoherent system of sentences will do so long as it passes the pragmatic testof fitting experience; all we desire is a system of myths which we can useto find our way around. Indeed it is not clear to me that there is a readingof the 'can' in these formulations which makes sense in Quinean terms,which makes the claims (even approximately) true, and which avoidsinstrumentalism. Quine is here (I suggest) adopting a term from his rival'svocabulary and showing where they should be led if they take their ownoutlook seriously. My best reading of the 'can' is: 'there is no valid normwhich forbids us from . . . '. The point is negative rather than positive.

In 'Five milestones of empiricism', Quine returned to his holism anddeclared himself a 'moderate holist':Science is neither discontinuous nor monolithic. It is variously jointed, and loosein the joints in varying degrees. In the face of recalcitrant observation, we are freeto choose which statements to revise and what to hold fast, and these alternativeswill disrupt various stretches of theory in various ways and in varying degrees.20

There is a strong suggestion here of a further normative influence uponour attempts to settle our opinions. There remains the suggestion that weare free to choose between a number of different revisions: in some senseof 'can', we can adopt any of a number of revisions. And, further, there isa suggestion that we can order these revisions according to how disruptivethey are. Finally, we encounter the normative bite: there is an implicitsuggestion that we should keep revision to the minimum. Normative con-siderations are introduced which limit our freedom.

Readers of The Roots of Reference (and chapter 1 of Word and Object)will recall two related epistemic standards alluded to there.21 In terminologyreminiscent of William James's assertion that theories are intended to effecta marriage between previous knowledge and new experience, which is

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to be achieved through the minimum disruption to accepted theory, iscompatible with removing the intellectual strain induced by our perceptualsurprise thereby achieving a useful predictive instrument, we find Quineurging that the fundamental epistemic norms are conservatism and simpli-city. This offers a neat explanation of how what we might think of as astraightforward empirical claim might have normative force: if we couldonly cease assenting to a sentence by tolerating large-scale revisions in ourcorpus of beliefs, then we should prefer those revisions in our opinionswhich accord with what it requires; if accepting one revision rather thananother decreases simplicity and consilience, appealing to a variety ofexplanatory mechanisms or ad hoc saving hypotheses where otherwise asingle explanatory framework might suffice, then we ought to prefer thesecond revision to the first.

Can the normativity objection take root at this point? One way tointerpret these passages suggests that it might. We might imagine ourselvesstanding back from our two proposed revisions, wondering which to adopt.We notice that R̂ is simpler or less radical in its implications than R2. Wethen recall that conservatism and simplicity are cognitive virtues, and sowe resolve to exercise our freedom by 'choosing' R^ And having made thismove, in a more reflective moment, we might ask whether we are right tovalue simplicity and conservatism. Perhaps we should have preferred themore complex or more radical alternative R2. Do we here find a normativeissue which a naturalized epistemology - or a naturalized account of reason -cannot intelligibly address? Does simplicity serve as an epistemic virtue inthe way that this objection seems to require? And if so, can a naturalizedepistemology explain why simple theories are likely to be true?

V. Simplicity, Passivity, and Shallow ReflectionWe find a useful discussion of simplicity in the first chapter of Word andObject, and it does not fit at all clearly the picture just presented. The firstpoint I wish to note is that, for Quine, 'the sifting of evidence' is a 'strangelypassive affair'.22 Quine asserts that 'we just try to be as sensitively responsiveas possible to the ensuing interplay of chain stimulations'. This alreadysuggests that Quine is unsympathetic to the picture of cognition justsuggested, where we consciously attempt to formulate and evaluate ourstandards in order to take some kind of full responsibility for how well ourinquiries are conducted. Indeed the sole area in which 'activity' is involvedlies in securing further experiences and stimulations by positioning our-selves appropriately and conducting experiments. Simplicity does, however,feature in our 'conscious policy': 'Consciously the quest seems to be forthe simplest story.' But, and this is important: 'this supposed quality of

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simplicity is more easily sensed than described.' In other words, con-siderations of simplicity do not enter through our use of precise criteria ormeasures of the relative simplicity of competing hypotheses. Indeed, Quineconjectures that our 'vaunted sense of simplicity, or likeliest explanation,is in many cases just a feeling of conviction attaching to the blind resultantof the interplay of chain stimulations in their various strengths'.

I should emphasize two points here, which together comprise what I callthe 'shallowness of epistemic reflection'. First, in evaluating hypotheses,we are surprisingly passive: we do not try to take responsibility for everystep of what we are doing but we are content for much to occur below thelevel of control and consciousness. And second, if we make evaluationswhich we naturally describe using the word 'simplicity', it is not obviousthat a single value is involved, and it is far from clear that we need toformulate what simplicity involves or to be reflective in making judgmentsof simplicity.

Perhaps 'simplicity' does not name a single virtue but rather drawsattention to a family of related more specific virtues which are relied upon.For example:

(i) Evaluations involved in everyday casual observation, as, for example,when we decide that we are encountering for a second time an objectwe have seen before. According to Quine, we decide 'in such a way asto minimize, to the best of [our] unconscious ability, such factors asmultiplicity of objects, swiftness of interim change of quality andposition, and, in general, irregularity of natural law'.

(ii) In statistical reasoning, we choose the law which enables us to drawthe smoothest simplest curve through a graphical representation of ourdata, and to obtain a simple curve we will, if necessary, massage thedata a little.23

The search for simplicity is 'implicit in unconscious steps [of reasoning] aswell as half explicit in deliberate ones'. It is unclear that it should be, oreven could be, fully explicit.

So there are evaluations that we are guided by. But since they rarelytake the form of articulated normative principles, they are rarely explicitlypresent in our deliberations and reasoning does not require us to formulatethem carefully. Questions about them do not arise. Can a naturalizedepistemology deal with them? Are there questions we ought to ask aboutthem, and which we will ask about them if we are philosophically reflectiveabout our practice, and which Quine has to ignore? Notice that questionscan arise at two different stages: we might ask general questions aboutwhether we should trust our 'sense' of simplicity; and we might raise issuesabout its effects in particular cases - where we make a simplicity judgment

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in response to a particular question in a particular context. These are globalquestions and local questions respectively. The first introduces 'simple' asa general term of appraisal, perhaps as part of a general attempt to elucidate'justified belief or 'warrant'. The second, local, question does not do this.They require us to evaluate our different senses of simplicity, in particularcontexts, as cognitive instruments.

What global questions might there be? First, we could try to formulateand articulate 'the principle of simplicity'. But this may not be possible andthere is no reason to think that it would matter if we could not completethe task. It is only if we think that reflection must (in principle) be deeprather than shallow - if we have what may be an excessively intellectualistpicture of cognition - that this is necessary. So long as we can work withour sense of simplicity, and so long as (in each particular case) we can pointto the features that contribute to simplicity or complexity, we may do allthat intellectual responsibility requires.

We might ask whether we should trust our intuitive simplicity judgments.One answer to this is simply that the burden of proof lies with someonewho wants to question them. Such would be the disruption in our corpusof confident opinions if we did cease to trust our sense of simplicity, thatit could never be rational to do so: simplicity and conservatism countagainst it. We may be interested in explaining why it serves us so well, butwe have no basis for doubting it. I suppose we might point to all thecognitive achievements it has yielded: how could it be untrustworthy? Butthat would be to offer an answer to a question which does not arise.24 Oursense of simplicity is not an instrument which we need to calibrate. Anotheranswer is to question the assumption that there is such a thing as 'our senseof simplicity'. As suggested, the term denotes a wide, and possibly various,family of dispositions that we have. It is quite possible that we might cometo question some member of this family. The sense of simplicity and orderwhich might lead someone to favour astrology as a means of prediction canbe criticized: either it misapplies standards of evidence which are elsewhereuseful, or it manifests a flawed logical sensibility. But this presents a localquestion rather than a global one: it investigates simplicity judgments inone area while resting on our simple view of the world. There is littlereason to suppose that it calls for a kind of investigation which could notbe embraced by a naturalistic philosopher: it can be handled in technologicalterms.

I mentioned the task of explaining why it is good to trust our 'implicitor half explicit' sense of simplicity. Quine offers some reasons: 'the neuro-logical mechanism of the drive for simplicity is undoubtedly fundamentalthough unknown, and its survival value is overwhelming.25 While relevantto explaining much of our everyday confidence in our sense of simplicity,such evolutionary arguments will not do the whole job: there is no reason

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to expect natural selection to equip us to be good at theoretical science, sounless the latter needs no evaluative procedures which are not groundedin our everyday reasoning practice a further explanatory issue arises. Thesuccess of our statistical techniques may receive a mathematical defence,and we can expect cognitive psychology to offer many insights into thereliability (and unreliability) of our faculties. Quine also urges strategicreasons for trusting simple theories - since we find them simple, they areeasy to understand, apply, and test. There is no reason to suppose that thereis any explanatory task which escapes the net of a naturalistic explanation ofthings. Where genuine questions arise, they turn out to be local rather thanglobal. And, in that case, we need not be disturbed by fears of circularity.It seems to be only if we attach an excessive value to reflection and to theintellectual monitoring of our activities, only if we are suspicious of 'pass-ivity' rather than welcoming of it, that there is a problem. So long as weaccept the 'shallowness of epistemic reflection' and insist that the onlynormative issues that arise are local rather than global ones, there need beno normative issues arising naturally out of our practice which a naturalizedepistemologist cannot address. We can at least see that Quine's approachto epistemology is not simply blind to fundamental epistemic issues.

It is worth noting two things about this shallowness of epistemic reflec-tion. First, it accords with experience. Philosophers who want us to seekthe kind of neurotic self-control over our beliefs favoured by latter-dayCartesians need to provide us with special positive reasons for doing so: itis not part of our pre-philosophical practice of epistemic reflection. Second,there is no reason to suppose that our 'passive' acknowledgement of theoverall satisfactory nature of our answer to a question is something thatcould have been secured through explicit conscious application of reasonsand principles. When we look for explicit principles and seek consciousmonitored self-control, then the force of Cartesian sceptical challenges canappear undeniable. Once we accept that the role of passivity in weighingevidence is ineliminable, and once we reject the assumption that intellectualresponsibility requires explicit monitoring and self-control, then ourinability to respond to them directly is no longer threatening.

VI. Resisting Naturalized EpistemologyIn section II I raised the possibility that it may be possible for Quine todefend satisfactorily his adoption of naturalized epistemology even if he ispowerless to persuade his critics that they are mistaken. In order to seehow this can be so, we return to the argument, employed by Plantingaamong others, which urges that it is irrational to endorse naturalizedepistemology because natural selection casts doubt upon the claim that our

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cognitive apparatus is suitably designed for uncovering the truth. Theconclusion is that if we wish to remain confident that we are able to discoverthe truth about nature, we should not insist upon the naturalistic claim thatour cognitive faculties are the products of natural selection; if we are to benaturalists, we should follow Stich in abandoning realism.26

As noted earlier, Plantinga cites a letter of Darwin's:

With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind,which has been developed from the mind of lower animals, are of any value or atall trustworthy. Would one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there areany convictions in such a mind?

The underlying point is: 'Evolution is interested not in true belief but insurvival and fitness. It is therefore unlikely that our faculties have theproduction of true belief as a proximate or any other function, and theprobability of our faculties being reliable (given naturalistic evolution)would be fairly low.27 Our faculties have to enable us to feed, find mates,fight and so on, and this calls for sources of reliable information in veryspecific contexts for very selective purposes. There is no reason for con-fidence that the possession of these virtues should equip us with facultiesfor providing us with knowledge of the microstructure of matter or theorigins of the Universe.

This argument is probably effective against a position which appeals tonatural selection to meet a global or general demand for justification: itwill not do to say 'we can rest content with our practices of inquiry becausenatural selection has ensured that we will be good at science'. But anaturalized epistemologist has no need to take such general questionsseriously and should doubt that there is anything interesting to be saidabout them. But what are we to make of the uses Quine does make ofnatural selection? For example, in discussing induction he asked why our'innate spacing of qualities' so fits 'the functionally relevant groupings innature as to make our inductions tend to come out right'. He continues:

There is some encouragement in Darwin. If people's innate spacing of qualities isa gene-linked trait, then the spacing that has made for the most successful inductionswill have tended to predominate through natural selection. Creatures inveteratelywrong in their inductions have a pathetic tendency to die before reproducing theirkind.*8

This is a very limited use of natural selection: all Quine finds is 'someencouragement', and he is concerned to establish only a relatively minorpoint about our 'subjective quality space'. What does the argument estab-lish? With respect to the sorts of qualities we discriminate in our ordinaryexperience, natural selection is likely to ensure that we find salient thesimilarities and differences which are relevant to significant laws and gen-eralizations in our experience. We are good predictors in these local and

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everyday contexts. This does not establish that we will be equally good atdiscerning relevant similarities when doing theoretical science, but nor doesit establish that we will not be good at this. The success of science over thelast few centuries, the naturalist might respond, shows that our innatequality space provides us with a bridgehead into the kinds of distinctionswe need to make when we move away from the everyday. But the naturalistis not committed to expecting natural selection to do the whole job.29

However, such arguments may carry more weight for Plantinga, in viewof a major difference between his overall view of the world and Quine's.It is the unspoken starting point of Quine's philosophy that scientificknowledge is our best knowledge: the best hope for philosophy is to emulatescience and to study science. Science is innocent until proved guilty, whileother kinds of inquiry (ethical deliberation concerned with how to live ina flourishing or fulfilling way, metaphysical investigations into the mode ofbeing of God, etc.) need to be defended before they can be carried out.Naturalistic epistemology cannot hope to convert or convince someonewho is already convinced of the interest and possibility of such inquiries.And it is possible that those who possess such convictions could reveal ordisplay the availability of the evaluations on which such inquiries dependby showing in their practice the possibility of sensitive intelligent inquiriesof these sorts which actually make progress. Even if the Quinean life is apossible one, giving rise to no evaluative questions that it cannot settle, acritic might find it an impoverished one that misses out on certain rewardinginquiries and activities.

Now Plantinga begins with an ontological outlook which recognizes theintelligibility of theological questions: his epistemological investigationmust allow that it is at least an open question whether beliefs in the deitycan be warranted. In that case, he may be right to be dissatisfied with anaturalized epistemology, but he would be right on the basis of con-siderations which need not carry any weight for Quine. There are questionswhose presuppositions are not naturalistic in content which thinkers otherthan Quine find important and alive. If Quine is to make sense of questionsabout the objectivity of ethics, or about theological matters at all, he willreinterpret them so that they are understood naturalistically. Given Quine'sunderlying commitment to science, he is warranted in doing this. But hisopponents will be frustrated when they ask why they should follow him inthis commitment. They will not view them as questions about how tointegrate ethical judgments and theological claims into a naturalistic viewof the world. Rather they will see them as questions about whether claimsto knowledge that are not themselves naturalistic meet appropriate stan-dards of evidence and warrant. They confront issues that demand to beaddressed using global terms of evaluation.

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But if Quine's critics find these issues compelling and important - and ifQuine cannot persuade them that they are wrong to do so - it is not at allobvious that Quine himself is required to take them into account. If thequestions do not arise for him, he does not need to deal with them. Heneed only confront the naturalistic issues of how people came to beinterested in such issues. It seems that both Quine and his critics are rationalto stick to their guns. If Quine can show that it h possible to live and inquirecoherently without addressing these issues, his critics need not concludethat they are required to do so. If someone believes (before becominginvolved in epistemological issues) that a range of claims may have epistemicmerit which do not fit into the naturalistic view of the world, then he orshe is likely to confront evaluative issues which cannot be addressed withina naturalized epistemology. If (like Quine) one lacks this initial belief, thena naturalized epistemology may meet all one's needs. To refute Quine'sposition, one would need to show that this standpoint is internally inco-herent, and it is unclear that this has been done.

VII. Epistemic Ends: Prediction and EmpiricismWe noted in the first section that Quine's response to the problem ofepistemic norms involves seeing normative issues as technological, as con-cerned with the relations of means to ends. In that case, one way to objectto naturalized epistemology is to claim that norms are required whichspecify which ends we should adopt for our inquiries. Questions aboutepistemic ends could be of two sorts: local or global. We specify a globalepistemic end when we characterize our goals using very general terms ofappraisal: we seek a coherent body of beliefs or a body of theory which issimple and empirically confirmed or true answers to our questions. Localends are specified when we announce that we wish to discover why waterexpands on freezing or when the sun will set tonight. Local ends take forgranted much of our substantive view of the world and emerge out ofindeterminacies in our body of information. They are internal to physicsor common sense or whatever field of knowledge we are concerned with.Are there global issues which Quine should deal with but which his nat-uralized epistemology will not permit him to deal with?

Much in Quine's writings suggest that there are not. He often suggeststhat he defends a contextualist account of inquiry: all our investigationsarise against the background of a settled view of the world, making minorjudgments against a view of things which is not questioned. This fits hisclaim that epistemology is internal to science and it accords with his defenceof a disquotational account of truth. One would immediately concludethat his view allows no room for global epistemic ends which resist the

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'technological' style of defence, were it not that he occasionally makesclaims which look like answers to such general or global issues. Two claimsare relevant here, both of which are formulated clearly in Pursuit of Truth.

First there is the claim that prediction is the 'checkpoint' of science: it isthe test of a theory. Simplicity and the like are favoured because theyencourage us to adopt theories which will meet this ultimate 'checkpoint',prediction. If simple theories fail to meet the checkpoint, they are to berejected; simplicity is valued as a means to successful prediction.

If prediction serves this 'ultimate' role, then it appears to be a generalglobal norm and to specify a global aim for our scientific investigations.But Quine denies both of these claims. Thus we read:

Not that prediction is the main purpose of science. One major purpose is under-standing. Another is control and modification of the environment. Prediction canbe a purpose, but the present point is that it is the test of a theory, whatever thepurpose.30

But the claim that prediction is the 'test' would seem to have normativepurport. Not so:

[W]hen I cite predictions as the checkpoints of science, I do not see that asnormative. I see it as defining a particular language game, in Wittgenstein's phrase:the game of science, in contrast to other good language games such as fiction andpoetry. A sentence's claim to scientific status rests on what it contributes to a theorywhose checkpoints are in prediction.31

In effect, the claim that prediction is the checkpoint of science is analytic.Other norms can be assessed according to how well they enable us todevelop theories that meet this criterion, by how well they contribute tothe success of science. If there is a question of whether I should submit mybeliefs to this test, it is an external question: it concerns which game Ishould play. This connects with the point of the last section. If a criticbegins from a position of sympathy to a non-naturalistic perspective, agenuine normative issue will arise about whether to subject one's inquiriesto this checkpoint. If that is your position, naturalized epistemology mayprove disappointing. Within naturalized epistemology, adoption of thecheckpoint of prediction cannot be defended: its adoption is a trivial matterthat needs no defence.

But second, there is a global norm, one which can seem vanishingly closeto the claim about prediction:

The most notable norm of naturalized epistemology actually coincides with that oftraditional epistemology. It is simply the watchword of empiricism: nihil in mentequod non prius in sensu. This is a prime specimen of naturalized epistemology, forit is a finding of natural science itself, however fallible, that our information aboutthe world comes only through impacts on our sensory receptors.32

This 'crowning norm'33 might, in principle, be abandoned. But even ifscience abandoned empiricism, prediction would still be the checkpoint.

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The possibility that Quine considers is that we could come to recognizethat telepathy and clairvoyance could turn out to be useful sources ofinformation, providing non-sensory means for evaluating predictions. Wemight 'take on as further checkpoints the prediction of telepathic and divineinput as well as sensory input',34 but we would still be playing the samegame. We might prefer to retain 'empiricism', claiming that in such casesnew senses have been discovered. The key point is that there can be normsconcerning how predictions are to be tested, but there can be no norm ofscience decreeing that predictions form the checkpoint.

This paper does not present a wholesale defence of naturalized epis-temology. My aim has been to examine the resources available to a Quineanfor making sense of epistemic norms and to consider the role of Quine'sunderlying commitment to science in the account he gives of the discipline.

NOTES

1 The Pursuit of Truth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 19.2 Ibid., p. 19.3 Quine's insistence that he would, if necessary, give up the word 'epistemology' and admit

that he has changed the subject should provide little solace for the proponent of the'tradition'. If 'naturalized epistemology' is not 'epistemology properly so called', thenepistemology is of little interest or importance.

4 The relations between this style of objection to naturalized epistemology and standardlines of objection to the 'naturalistic fallacy' in ethics should be apparent.

5 Ibid.6 This style of objection is encountered in works such as Barry Stroud's The Significance of

Philosophical Scepticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).7 For example, it could be argued that we can make sense of epistemic reflection only if we

accept a form of essentialism which obliges us to make sense of quantifying into contextsof propositional attitude.

8 Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).The arguments alluded to are in chs XI and XII.

9 'Warrant' is identified as whatever has to be added to true belief to yield knowledge.10 Stephen Stich, The Fragmentation of Reason (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), p. 56.

Stich's aim is to defend a distinctively 'pragmatist' conception of our aims in inquiry, onewhich denies that discovering the truth is among our cognitive goals. Plantinga notes thatDarwin expressed a similar concern in a letter (see section V below).

11 Burton Dreben, 'Putnam, Quine - and the Facts', Philosophical Topics 20 (1992), p. 296.12 Dreben's example of a 'reformist' is Hilary Putnam.13 Thompson Clarke, 'The Legacy of Skepticism', Journal of Philosophy 69 (1979), pp. 754-

69.14 I think here of Wittgenstein's On Certainty, in which it is suggested that misconceptions

about our practices lead us to claim 'knowledge' of our fundamental epistemic commit-ments. Once the term 'knowledge' is used, we lose sight of their distinctive role and, atthe same time, invite challenges of the sort that lead to scepticism.

15 Barry Stroud, The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1984), ch. I.

16 Hilary Putnam, 'Why Reason Cannot be Naturalized', Synthese 52 (1982), pp. 3-23.17 C. L. Hardin, Color for Philosophers (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1988), p. 197, n. 16.

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18 With the exception of the general principle of empiricism general concerns of knowledgeand justification have no place in his writings: see The Pursuit of Truth, op. cit., p. 19. Thesecond approach involves the denial of what Michael Williams has called 'epistemologicalrealism': see Unnatural Doubts (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).

19 Quine, From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953),ch. II, at pp. 42-43.

20 Quine, Theories and Things (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 67-72.

21 Quine, The Roots of Reference (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1973), and Word and Object(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960).

22 Word and Object, op. cit., p. 19.23 This point is clearly made in Pursuit of Truth, op. cit., p. 20.24 As an explanation, it resembles the claim used by common-sense philosophers to defend

common-sense certainties: everything counts for them and nothing counts against them.As Wittgenstein pointed out, this requires us to be able to make sense of 'counting for' insuch cases. When beliefs are very deeply embedded in our overall system of the world, itis doubtful that we can do this. The same goes for our sense of simplicity, which is formedby our overall view of things.

25 If there is not unified notion of simplicity but just a family of dispositions to favour particularhypotheses in particular circumstances, one might wonder whether 'the neurologicalmechanism' refers to anything here.

26 I shall not discuss Plantinga's claim that one can consistently adopt naturalized epistemologyonly if one believes in God.

27 Warrant and Proper Function, op. cit., p. 219.28 Quine, Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press,

1969), p. 126.29 One relevant complication should be mentioned here. The anti-naturalist may object that

predictive success is no guarantee of truth. Theories may be useful for predictive purposeseven if they are not true. One wonders then what notion of truth the critic is making useof, and recalls that Quine generally construes truth as a device of disquotation andemphasizes that prediction is the checkpoint of theory.

30 Pursuit of Truth, op. cit., p. 2.31 Ibid., p. 20.32 Ibid., p. 19.33 Ibid., p. 33.34 Loc. cit.

Received 10 June 1994

Christopher Hookway, Department of Philosophy, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston,Birmingham B15 2TT, England

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