Abstract

Naturalistic epistemology is commonly dismissed on the grounds that it is merely a descriptive enterprise, and thus has no normative force. The aim of this thesis is to show that such a dismissal is ill-considered, and that there are important and interesting ways in which the descriptive and the normative interact in naturalistic epistemology. Indeed, in rejecting the conception of epistemology as 'first philosophy' in favour of a conception of epistemology as continuous with science, the naturalistic epistemologist is denying that there is any a priori or transcendental position which could serve to mark off epistemology as a uniquely privileged normative enterprise, uncontaminated by descriptive concerns. The argument for the claim that there can be no rigid separation of the normative and the descriptive is developed through a consideration of W.V.O. Quine's views on naturalistic epistemology; computational, evolutionary and social approaches to knowledge; and Charles Taylor's attack on naturalism and epistemology