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February 12, 2008
Experimental philosophy and naturalized epistemology
I left the following comment over at the Experimental Philosophy blog, in response to an inquiry about the connection between those two issues:
I don't know too much about the experimental philosophy angle, but I have a new paper coming out in the Southern Journal Philosophy that evaluates the Kim/Quine debate. So if you'll give me the opportunity to do some (relevant) plugging:http://www.benbayer.com/wholequine.pdf
As you'll see from this paper, I agree with the first commenter that naturalized epistemologists are not much interested in folk concepts. To whatever extent they are, it's mostly for the purpose of refashioning folk concepts, and "explicating" them (a la Carnap) to serve their own, pragmatically-oriented purposes.
At the same time, there may be data out there of interest to X-philes that is relevant to evaluating naturalized epistemology. I pursue one of these leads in chapter 5 my dissertation (and in a paper derived therefrom), where I argue that Quine's own explication of intentional idioms can find a home in current "simulation theory" accounts of folk psychology. But I argue that the problems with simulation theory--some traditional ones, some of my own devising--are even bigger problems for naturalism than they are for ST.
http://www.benbayer.com/dissertation.pdf
http://www.benbayer.com/simulationtheory.pdfGood luck with your work.
Ben Bayer
Posted by Ben at February 12, 2008 01:46 PM