A stitchwork quilt: Or how I learned to stop worrying and love cognitive relativism

Abstract

Abstract The work of cognitive psychologists, philosophical naturalists, post‐modernists, and other such epistemic subversives conspires to endanger the well being of traditional analytic epistemology. Stephen Stich (et tu Stich) has contributed his design for epistemology's coffin. I look hard at his proposed radical revision of epistemology. The ostensible target of Stich's analysis is the traditional enterprise of analytic epistemology. It is, however, the conceptual pillars that underpin both the traditional analytic and naturalist epistemologies that are the primary focus. It is a conceptual domain neutral to the priorists and naturalists which Stich calls normative cognitive monism. Normative cognitive monism is the view that there is a unique system of cognitive processes that people should use. The point of Stich's analytical exercise is to disabuse us of the belief that there is such a unique and global set of standards by which cognitive performance is to be evaluated. He argues that all the evi...