What Can Psychology Do for Epistemology?

Abstract

Within the analytic tradition—especially under the influence of Frege's anti-psychologism—the thought of incorporating empirical ps ychology in to epistemology was definitely out of bounds. This began to change with the advent of naturalistic epistemology, in which Epistemology and Cognition (1986) played a role. However, there is no settled consensus (even among the naturalistically inclined) as to how, exactly, empirical psychology or cognitive science should contribute to the epistemological enterprise. This is the topic to which the present paper is addressed. The discussion explores four topics or issues in contemporary epistemology to which current research in psychology might make helpful contributions: (1) the generality problem for reliabilism; (2) algorithms and belief-forming processes; (3) epistemology and the Bayesian theory of vision; and (4) the rationality wars and dual-process systems.