Ethics Naturalized: Ethics as Human Ecology

Abstract

Abstract In “Epistemology Naturalized,” Quine suggested that epistemology be assimilated to psychology. The trouble with this idea is apparent. Psychology is not in general concerned with norms of rational belief, but with the description and explanation of mental performance and mentally mediated performance and capacities. The right way to think of epistemology naturalized is not, therefore, one in which epistemology is a “chapter of psychology,” but rather to think of naturalized epistemology as having two components: a descriptivegenealogical-nomological component and a normative component. Furthermore, not even the descriptive-genealogical-nomological component will consist of purely psychological generalizations, for much of the information about actual epistemic practices will come from biology, cognitive neuroscience, sociology, anthropology, and history-from the human sciences broadly construed. More obviously, normative epistemology will not be part of psychology, for it involves the gathering together of norms of inference, belief, and knowing that lead to success in ordinary reasoning, expert practical reasoning of the sort exhibited by good cooks and auto mechanics, and in science.