Normative naturalism is a view about the status of epistemology and philosophy of science; it is a meta-epistemology. It maintains that epistemology can both discharge its traditional normative role and nonetheless claim a sensitivity to empirical evidence. The first sections of this essay set out the central tenets of normative naturalism, both in its epistemic and its axiological dimensions; later sections respond to criticisms of that species of naturalism from Gerald Doppelt, Jarrett Leplin and (...) Alex Rosenberg. (shrink)

Normative naturalism is primarily a metaphysical doctrine: there are normative facts and properties, and these fall into the class of natural facts and properties. Many objections to naturalism rely on additional assumptions about language or thought, but often without adequate consideration of just how normative properties would have to figure in our thought and talk if naturalism were true. In the first part of the paper, I explain why naturalists needn’t think that normative (...) properties can be represented or ascribed in wholly non-normative terms. If so, certain prominent objections to normative naturalism fail. In the second part, I consider the objection that normative properties are “just too different” from (other) natural properties to themselves be natural properties. I argue that naturalists have no distinctive trouble making sense of thought and talk involving forms of “genuine” or “authoritative” normativity which can drive a non-question-begging form of the objection. (shrink)

This paper considers normative naturalism, understood as the view that (i) normative sentences are descriptive of the way things are, and (ii) their truth/falsity does not require ontology beyond the ontology of the natural world. Assuming (i) for the sake of argument, I here show that (ii) is false not only as applied to ethics, but more generally as applied to practical and epistemic normativity across the board. The argument is a descendant of Moore's Open Question Argument (...) and Hume's Is-Ought Gap. It goes roughly as follows: to ensure that natural ontology suffices for normative truth, there must be semantically grounded entailments from the natural truths to the normative truths. There are none. So natural ontology does not suffice for normative truth. (shrink)

In this paper I address some shortcomings in Larry Laudan's normative naturalism. I make it clear that Laudan's rejection of the "meta-methodology thesis", or MMT is unnecessary, and that a reformulated version MMT can be sustained. I contend that a major difficulty that attends Laudan's account is his contention that a naturalistic philosophy of science cannot accommodate any a priori justification of methodological rules, and consider what sort of naturalism might best replace Laudan's. To do this, I (...) discuss Michael Friedman's account of a relativised a priori and show that it is consistent with naturalistic philosophy of science and that it can help form the basis of a plausible normative naturalism. In particular, this Discussion shows that Laudan's rejection of any a priori justification of methodological rules is unjustified and inconsistent with scientific practice. Finally, I point the way to a version of normative naturalism that includes MMT and accounts for the role of constitutive a priori principles within science. (shrink)

Rejecting Klein's claims that normative epistemology and naturalism are mutually exclusive, I defend the normative naturalism of my "Epistemology in an Age of Cognitive Science". When insisting that epistemic standards simultaneously external to, superior to, and independent of those of science do not exist, I hold neither that science exhausts standards of rationality nor that relevant extra-scientific considerations do not exist. Cognitive science may transform how we pose some normative questions in epistemology. Concurring with Klein (...) that the burden of evidence resides with normative naturalism, I explore suggestive proposals that Churchland and Thagard have offered on just this front. (shrink)

In a recent exchange, John Worrall and Larry Laudan have debated the merits of the model of rational scientific change proposed by Laudan in his book Science and Values. On the model advocated by Laudan, rational change may take place at the level of scientific theory and methodology, as well as at the level of the epistemic aims of science. Moreover, the rationality of a change which occurs at any one of these three levels may be dependent on considerations at (...) the remaining levels. Yet, in spite of the avowedly anti-relativistic motivation of Laudan's model, Worrall criticizes Laudan for irrevocably relativizing scientific rationality to historically variant methodological standards. (shrink)

Laudan's normative naturalism' claims to account for the success of science by construing theories and other claims as methodological rules interpreted as defeasible hypothetical imperatives for securing cognitive ends. We ask two questions regarding the adequacy for medicine of Laudan's meta- methodology. First, although Laudan denies that general aims can be assigned to a science, we show that this is not the case for medicine. Second, we argue that Laudan's account yields mixed results as a tool for evaluating (...) methodological rules in medicine. These shortcomings call into question the adequacy of normative naturalism as a meta-methodology for science. (shrink)

The prescriptive force of methodological rules rests, I argue, on the acceptance of scientific theories; that of the most general methodological rules rests on theories in the philosophy of science, which differ from theories in the several sciences only in generality and abstraction. I illustrate these claims by reference to methodological disputes in social science and among philosophers of science. My conclusions substantiate those of Laudan except that I argue for the existence of transtheoretical goals common to all scientists and (...) concrete enough actually to have bearing on methodology. And I argue that Laudan is committed to such goals himself, willy nilly. (shrink)

In previous work, I defended Larry Laudan against the criticism that the axiological component of his normative naturalism lacks a naturalistic justification. I argued that this criticism depends on an equivocation over the term 'naturalism' and that it begs the question against what we are entitled to include in our concept of nature. In this paper, I generalize that argument and explore its implications for Laudan and other proponents of epistemic naturalism. Here, I argue that a (...) commitment to naturalism in the methods and aims of science inevitably entails a kind of epistemic relativism. However, I argue that this should not be interpreted as a reductio of naturalism, since the admission of contextually based standards and aims of science does not result in quietism when it comes to important questions concerning scientific rationality. (shrink)

The fundamental issue dividing normative naturalists and non-naturalists concerns the nature of normativity. Non-naturalists hold that the normativity of moral properties and facts sets them apart from natural properties and facts in an important and deep way. As Derek Parfit explains matters, the normative naturalist distinguishes between normative concepts and the natural properties to which these concepts refer and also between normative propositions and the natural facts in virtue of which such propositions are true when they (...) are true. This chapter explains Parfit's Soft Naturalist's Dilemma. Parfit thinks that normative naturalism is "close to nihilism". According to normative naturalism, normative claims are intended to state facts. Naturalism denies that there are such facts, and yet Soft Naturalism claims that there nevertheless is reason to continue to have normative concepts and to use normative sentences. There is the 'eliminativist' strategy of arguing that in fact no property is normative since all normative properties are natural and no natural property is normative. (shrink)

Normative links have been considered a problem for reductionist theories of mind, primarily because of lack of isomorphism between intentional and non-intentional conceptual schemes. The paper suggests a more radical tension between normative rationality and scientific naturalism. Normative explanations involve the recognition that agents are also subjects of experience. The distinctive form of intelligibility they bestow requires engagement with such subjectivity.

There has been much discussion concerning the consequences of 'going natural', i.e., of replacing a priori epistemology with empirical psychology. Traditionalists claim that a naturalized epistemology is not viable—to eliminate the normative from an account of knowledge is to cease to do epistemology at all. Naturalists claim that a naturalized account is the only viable one—assuming, in step with the urgings of Quine, that there are no standards independent of (and external to) science, science itself must act as the (...) sole epistemic norm. In the wake of the above debate some epistemologists have attempted to argue in favor of, and develop, a middle-ground position— normative naturalism . Such a position is intended to be consistent with the naturalist's intuition that the traditional search for a 'first philosophy'is misguided and consistent with the traditionalist's intuition that a complete elimination of the normative would leave epistemology impotent. In this paper I will examine one argument in favor of a normative naturalism . / will show that such a proposal is inherently problematic and argue that naturalism and normativity are mutually exclusive concepts. Therefore, I suggest that, even in the 'age of cognitive science', epistemologists continue to do traditional epistemology by attempting to develop, a priori , the general criteria for determining the justificatory status of our (scientific) beliefs. (shrink)

Jonathan Knowles argues against theories that seek to provide specific norms for the formation of belief on the basis of empirical sources: the project of naturalized epistemology. He argues that such norms are either not genuinely normative for belief, or are not required for optimal belief formation. An exhaustive classification of such theories is motivated and each variety is discussed in turn. He distinguishes naturalized epistemology from the less committal idea of naturalism, which provides a sense in which (...) we can achieve epistemic normativity without norms. (shrink)

In the field of epistemology, naturalism holds that there are no a priori norms for guiding our belief-formation: we must start our inquiries in situ, assuming some beliefs and the general reliability of our basic cognitive practices to justify others. Naturalized epistemology seeks to motivate norms for cognitive enquiry on such a naturalistic basis. The author argues that, whilst naturalism must be embraced, this more abmitious project is in vain: to the extent one can justify naturalistic norms, they (...) are not needed for optimal rational belief-formation. (shrink)

Unlike more standard non-normative naturalizations of epistemology and philosophy of science, Larry Laudan's naturalized philosophy of science explicitly maintains a normative dimension. This paper critically assesses Laudan's normative naturalism. After summarizing Laudan's position, the paper examines (1) Laudan's construal of methodological rules as 'instrumentalities' connecting methodological means and cognitive ends; (2) Laudan's instrumental conception of scientific rationality; (3) Laudan's naturalistic account of the axiology of science; and (4) the extent to which a normative philosophy of (...) science can be naturalized. It is concluded that Laudan's normative naturalism is as problematic as its non-normative naturalist cousins. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that theism is superior to metaphysical naturalism in explaining moral phenomena, especially with regard to the practical aspect of morality. In this article, I will firstly clarify what this practical aspect amounts to and present two challenges against metaphysical naturalism, by John Mackie and Richard Joyce. Then, I will critically engage with two main attempts to argue for the superiority of theism over metaphysical naturalism: One of them is the appeal to the existence (...) of afterlife, and the other is Robert Merrihew Adams’ divine command metaethics. I will argue that both are problematic for different reasons. Relying on the main aspects of Adams’ metaethical framework, I will advance my proposal to maintain the practical aspect of morality which lends theism superiority over metaphysical naturalism, and then follow with certain implications of the proposal for theistic metaethics. (shrink)

Eric Scerri has argued that chemists using ab initio calculations pursue a partial reduction of chemistry to physics, while accepting that full reduction (through axiomatization) is impractical. He characterizes this view as Popperian and naturalistic. However, Popper's position on reduction is not naturalistic, as he rejected axiomatization for different reasons.

The problem of how we can be both animals living in a causal world and agents acting through norms, principles, and rules in that same world persists. Many have understood this as a clash between science and our ordinary ways of talking. For many, this clash has been resolved in favour of the scientific image, either by reducing the intentional and normative to the causal laws of behaviourism or by eliminating our 'folk psychology' altogether in favour of a syntactic (...) or computational model of mind. Drawing on Wittgenstein, I argue that this mislocates the problem and so misunderstands what is required for its resolution. Our sophisticated language games are grounded in a bedrock of normative similarity judgments. The role these play in our language games can be seen most clearly in the initiate learning situation, that of the child just learning language or the pupil receiving first instruction in arithmetic. It is here that we can look for an accommodation of causality and normativity by understanding the relation between the novice and the master of the practice. (shrink)

Several authors have argued for taxonomic pluralism in biology -the position that there is a plurality of equally legitimate classifications of the organic world. Others have objected that such pluralism boils down to a position of anything goes. This paper offers a response to the anything goes objection by showing how one can be a discerning pluralist. In particular, methodological standards for choosing taxonomic projects are derived using Laudan's normative naturalism. This paper also sheds light on why taxonomic (...) pluralism occurs in biology as well as illustrates the usefulness of normative naturalism. (shrink)

There are two chief tasks which confront the philosophy of scientific method. The first task is to specify the methodology which serves as the objective ground for scientific theory appraisal and acceptance. The second task is to explain how application of this methodology leads to advance toward the aim(s) of science. In other words, the goal of the theory of method is to provide an integrated explanation of both rational scientific theory choice and scientific progress.

We argue for a naturalistic account for appraising scientific methods that carries non-trivial normative force. We develop our approach by comparison with Laudan’s (American Philosophical Quarterly 24:19–31, 1987, Philosophy of Science 57:20–33, 1990) “normative naturalism” based on correlating means (various scientific methods) with ends (e.g., reliability). We argue that such a meta-methodology based on means–ends correlations is unreliable and cannot achieve its normative goals. We suggest another approach for meta-methodology based on a conglomeration of tools and (...) strategies (from statistical modeling, experimental design, and related fields) that affords forward looking procedures for learning from error and for controlling error. The resulting “error statistical” appraisal is empirical—methods are appraised by examining their capacities to control error. At the same time, this account is normative, in that the strategies that pass muster are claims about how actually to proceed in given contexts to reach reliable inferences from limited data. (shrink)

Larry Laudan (Philosophy of Science, 57(1), 44-59, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 21(2), 315-322) proposes and defends a naturalistic philosophy of science called normative naturalism. The paper will delineate the cardinal features of normative naturalism and some of the critiques against it. The objective of the paper is to present an analytical review of normative naturalism. The objections raised in this paper are limited to evaluating Laudan’s normative naturalism in the (...) light of his theory of axiology. We will assess whether Laudan’s interpretation of the hierarchical model is historically accurate, the instrumental conception of scientific methodology, and the naturalness of the axiological criterion. The analysis of Laudan’s account of axiology reveals some inherent contradictions in his normative naturalism. We propose a strategy to rectify these inconsistencies in order to make Laudan’s normative naturalism compatible with his naturalistic project. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to document Laudan's rejection of the appeal to intuition in the context of his development of normative naturalism. At one point in the development of his methodological thinking, Laudan appealed to pre-analytic intuitions, which might be employed to identify episodes in the history of science against which theories of scientific methodology are to be tested. However, Laudan came to reject this appeal to intuitions, and rejected this entire approach to the evaluation of (...) a theory of method. This is an important stage in the development of his normative naturalist meta-methodology. (shrink)

I distinguish among three senses in which meaning may be said to be normative, one trivial, the other two more robust. According to the trivial sense, meaningful expressions have conditions of correct application. According to the first robust sense, these conditions are determined by norms. According to the second robust sense, statements about these conditions have normative implications. Normativity in one or the other of the robust senses, but not in the trivial sense, is commonly thought to pose (...) a threat to naturalism. I argue that, given its trivial normativity, meaning cannot be normative in the first robust sense but it is normative in the sense that statements about the meaning of terms have hypothetical normative implications that are essential to meaning. I further argue that this normativity itself poses no threat to naturalism. Rather, this normativity follows from the fact that the trivial normativity of meaning precludes its naturalization. (shrink)

Although Donald Davidson is best known for his account of motivating reasons, towards the end of his life he did write about normative reasons, arguing for a novel form of realism we might call anomalous naturalism: anomalous, because it is not just non-reductive but also non-revisionary, refusing to compromise in any way on the thought that the prescriptive authority of normative reasons is objective and reaches to all possible agents; naturalism, because it still treats normative (...) properties as perfectly ordinary causal properties, and thus avoids many of the epistemological problems that bedevil realisms of the sort recently advanced by Thomas Nagel, Derek Parfit, and T. M. Scanlon. In the first section of the paper, I discuss Davidson’s understanding of objective prescriptivity and one important challenge that it faces. In the second section, I show how an answer to this challenge can be found in Davidson’s holism of the mental. As we shall see, Davidson’s holism of the mental makes the possibility of strongly prescriptive properties much easier to take seriously. In the final section of the paper, I take up various grounds for doubting that such properties could also be causal. (shrink)

Normative cognition seems rather important, even ineliminable. Communities that lack normative concepts like SHOULD, IS A REASON TO, JUSTIFIES, etc. seem cognitively handicapped and communicatively muzzled. And yet a popular metaethic, normative naturalism, has a hard time accommodating this felt ineliminability. Here, I press the argument against normative naturalism, consider some replies on behalf of normative naturalists, and suggest that a version of sophisticated subjectivism does the best job preserving the importance and ineliminability (...) of the special, normative way of thinking. (shrink)

The article presents a critical discussion of Larry Laudan's naturalistic metamethodological theory known as normative naturalism (NN). I examine the strongest extant objection to NN, and, with reference to ideas in Freedman ( Philosophy of Science , 66 (Proceedings), pp. S526-S537, 1999), show how NN survives it. I then go on to outline two problems that really do compromise NN. The first revolves around Laudan's conception of the relationship between scientific values and the history of science. Laudan argues (...) we can make sense of progress in science without seeing great scientists in the past as having held the cognitive values and methodological rules we hold today as important for science. I argue this is extremely implausible, and moreover that Laudan must see our values today as justified by reference to the values of past scientists if he is to avoid a pernicious form of relativism. The second problem with NN is that its conception of methodological rules--as hypothetical imperatives linking cognitive means to ends--is untenable. Such rules would not be needed in a scientific community; moreover it is doubtful whether they should class as rules at all. I conclude by suggesting that the distinction between cognitive means and ends which undergirds Laudan's view is intuitively not well founded, and in any case does not provide sufficient materials for a viable normative naturalized epistemology. (shrink)

The paper addresses the question whether semantic naturalism is undermined by the thought that semantic concepts are normative.

What I hope to do in this paper is to see whether Laudan’s normative naturalism may suggest a third alternative to normativism-naturalism dilemma in the analytical philosophy of science. In criticizing the view that all methodological rules are to be specified in the form of hypothetical imperatives, I offer the idea that a theory of scientific rationality (including its normative dimension) must go beyond the usual analytical format of “rational reconstruction”. It is precisely this idea that (...) opens the door for a hermeneutic alternative to normative naturalism. On this alternative, one has to pay attention to the contextual normativity of doing scientific research, if one wants to give an account of the articulation of methodological rules and norms. (shrink)

Consider normative properties and facts, such as facts consisting in something's being what you ought to do, or the property of being morally wrong. Normative naturalism is the view that normative properties and facts such as these exist, and that they are natural properties and facts. Some suspect, however, that normativity is incompatible with a wholly naturalistic worldview: that the normative couldn't be natural because it's somehow “just too different” from the natural. I critically examine (...) recent forms of this “just too different” objection to normative naturalism, with a view to making the debate accessible to a general philosophical audience. (shrink)

_Normativity and Naturalism in the Social Sciences_ engages with a central debate within the philosophy of social science: whether social scientific explanation necessitates an appeal to norms, and if so, whether appeals to normativity can be rendered "scientific." This collection brings together contributions from a diverse group of philosophers who explore a broad but thematically unified set of questions, many of which stem from an ongoing debate between Stephen Turner and Joseph Rouse on the role of naturalism in (...) the philosophy of the social sciences. Informed by recent developments in both philosophy and the social sciences, this volume will set the benchmark for contemporary discussions about normativity and naturalism. This collection will be relevant to philosophers of social science, philosophers in interested in the rule following and metaphysics of normativity, and theoretically oriented social scientists. (shrink)

This chapter argues that the best way for a non-naturalist to explain why the normative supervenes on the natural is to claim that, while there are some sui generis normative properties whose essences cannot be fully specified in non-normative terms and do not specify any non-normative sufficient conditions for their instantiation, there are certain hybrid normative properties whose essences specify both naturalistic sufficient conditions for their own instantiation and sufficient conditions for the instantiation of certain (...) sui generis normative properties. This is the only metaphysical explanation for supervenience on offer, the chapter argues, that can both clearly maintain the pre-theoretical commitments of non-naturalism, and provide a metaphysical explanation not just for supervenience, but for all metaphysical necessities involving natural and normative properties. (shrink)

Normativity concerns what we ought to think or do and the evaluations we make. For example, we say that we ought to think consistently, we ought to keep our promises, or that Mozart is a better composer than Salieri. Yet what philosophical moral can we draw from the apparent absence of normativity in the scientific image of the world? For scientific naturalists, the moral is that the normative must be reduced to the nonnormative, while for nonnaturalists, the moral is (...) that there must be a transcendent realm of norms. _Naturalism and Normativity_ engages with both sides of this debate. Essays explore philosophical options for understanding normativity in the space between scientific naturalism and Platonic supernaturalism. They articulate a liberal conception of philosophy that is neither reducible to the sciences nor completely independent of them—yet one that maintains the right to call itself naturalism. Contributors think in new ways about the relations among the scientific worldview, our experience of norms and values, and our movements in the space of reason. Detailed discussions include the relationship between philosophy and science, physicalism and ontological pluralism, the realm of the ordinary, objectivity and subjectivity, truth and justification, and the liberal naturalisms of Donald Davidson, John Dewey, John McDowell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Should philosophers of science offer methodological prescriptions about how science ought to be practiced, or should they rest content with describing ways it has actually been practiced over time? Do the standards by which good science is assessed remain stable over time? How should rival philosophies of science be evaluated, and what role ought history of science play in such assessments? This book engages such questions while introducing a range of key ideas and debates by examining the four positions named (...) in its subtitle: Logical Reconstructionism, Descriptivism, Normative Naturalism, and Foundationalism. Why 1945 to 2000? After World War II, as graduate programs and journals were established, philosophy of... (shrink)

Non-naturalism—roughly the view that normative properties and facts are sui generis—may be combined either with cognitivism or with non-cognitivism. The chapter starts by explaining how the metaphysically necessary connections between the natural and the normative raise an explanatory challenge for realist non-naturalism, and how it is not at all obvious that quasi-realism offers a way of escaping the challenge. Having briefly explored different kinds of accounts of what it is to have thoughts concerning metaphysical necessity, it (...) then proceeds to argue that once we understand the explanatory challenge in the light of a quasi-realist take on normative judgments, this challenge takes the shape of a first-order normative issue, and will be answerable by the quasi-realists’ lights. When it comes to explaining the necessary connections between the normative and the natural, all will be fine, it seems, if non-naturalists just go a little quasi. (shrink)

Since Boorse [Philos Sci 44(4):542–573, 1977] published his paper “Health as a theoretical concept” one of the most lively debates within philosophy of medicine has been on the question of whether health and disease are in some sense ‘objective’ and ‘value-free’ or ‘subjective’ and ‘value-laden’. Due to the apparent ‘failure’ of pure naturalist, constructivist, or normativist accounts, much in the recent literature has appealed to more conciliatory approaches or so-called ‘hybrid accounts’ of health and disease. A recent paper by Matthewson (...) and Griffiths [J Med Philos 42(4):447–466, 2017], however, may bear the seeds for the revival of purely naturalist approach to health and disease. In this paper, I defend their idea of Biological Normativity against recent criticism by Schwartz [J Med Philos Forum Bioethics Philos Med 42(4):485–502, 2017] and hope to help it flower into a revival of naturalist approaches in the philosophy of medicine. (shrink)

There seem to be things we ought not to believe and others we are permitted to believe. Belief is treated as a normative phenomenon both in everyday and academic discourse. At the same time, normativity can be seen as a threat to a naturalistic understanding of the world. Whilst naturalistic claims are of descriptive nature, norms are prescriptive. It is usually held that they cannot be reduced to statements of fact. This problem is also pertinent to the normativity of (...) belief. How is such a phenomenon to be understood within a naturalist framework? -/- Sullivan-Bissett provides a naturalistic account of epistemic normativity in which she explains epistemic normativity in terms of biological functions of belief-producing mechanisms. Importantly, her account is error-theoretic: She argues that we mistake doxastic strategies, which are at best normative in a hypothetical sense, to be categorical epistemic norms. -/- In continuation of Sullivan-Bissett’s account, I draw attention to one of the belief-producing mechanisms which is responsible for bringing about these mistaken beliefs. I claim that normative conformity – a social-learning mechanisms – brings about our beliefs in the existence and categorical validity of epistemic norms. Keeping with the evolutionary perspective employed by Sullivan-Bissett, I answer questions about the function and phylogeny of our mistaken beliefs in epistemic normativity by means of normative conformity and in line with Sullivan-Bissett’s account. (shrink)

As indicated by its title, this book provides an overview of philosophy of science in the twentieth century. It focuses mostly on post-WWII philosophy of science, but it discusses earlier developme...

In this paper, I criticize naturalized epistemology. To this end, I critically examine several versions of naturalistic epistemology (Quine, Kornblith, and Plantinga). While Quine’s epistemology eschews any kind of normativity not invoked in science, Kornblith’s and Plantinga’s views attempt to explain normativity in the light of descriptivity. I provide an argument against them. The upshot of my argument is that since we are self-conscious beings, we have reflective ability to see what we ought to believe. In other words, the fact (...) that we are self-conscious beings requires us to find reason for our belief. I argue that naturalistic epistemology cannot capture that idea, since it is only concerned with third-person, impersonal approach. It simply shifts our thinking about justification from a subjective or first-person perspective to an objective or third-person perspective. Therefore, naturalistic epistemology, even if it is a weak version, is untenable in that it simply ignores human consciousness and its role in justification of beliefs. (shrink)

There is an unresolved stand-off between ontological naturalism and phenomenological thought regarding the question whether normativity can be reduced to physical entities. While the ontological naturalist line of thought is well established in analytic philosophy, the phenomenological reasoning for the irreducibility of normativity has been largely left ignored by proponents of naturalism. Drawing on the work of Husserl, Heidegger, Schütz, Stein and others, I reconstruct a phenomenological argument according to which natural science (as the foundation of naturalization projects) (...) is itself a part of the essentially normative life-world to the effect that ontological naturalism faces a bootstrapping problem. I aim to demonstrate that this stand-off is grounded in a deep disagreement about the possibility of reduction. I close by arguing that this deep disagreement turns on the question which conception about the nature of (natural) science is true. This result pits a perfectionist model of science (implied by ontological naturalism) against a pragmatist conception of science (in favour of the phenomenological argument). The motivation is that transforming the disagreement about the controversial principle into a disagreement about conceptions of science may help to offer a foundation for different attempts at solving the stand-off. (shrink)

A common objection raised against naturalism is that a naturalized epistemology cannot account for the essential normative character of epistemology. Following an analysis of different ways in which this charge could be understood, it will be argued that either epistemology is not normative in the relevant sense, or if it is, then in a way which a naturalized epistemology can account for with an instrumental and hypothetical model of normativity. Naturalism is here captured by the two (...) doctrines of empiricism and gradualism. Epistemology is a descriptive discipline about what knowledge is and under what conditions a knowledge-claim is justified. However, we can choose to adopt a standard of justification and by doing so be evaluated by it. In this sense our epistemic practices have a normative character, but this is a form of normativity a naturalized epistemology can make room for. The normativity objection thus fails. However, in the course of this discussion, as yet another attempt to clarify the normativity objection, such a naturalistic model will be contrasted with Donald Davidson’s theory of interpretation. Even though this comparison will not improve upon the negative verdict upon the original objection, it will be argued that naturalism cannot accept Davidson’s theory since it contains at least one constitutive principle – the principle of charity – whose epistemic status is incompatible with the naturalistic doctrine of gradualism. So, if this principle has this role, then epistemology cannot be naturalized. (shrink)