7627
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You can't reduce epistemology to psychology, because that presupposes epistemology [Maund on Quine]
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Full Idea:
There is something seriously misguided about Quine's project of reducing epistemology to psychology, since psychology, like any of the natural sciences, presupposes an epistemology.
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From:
comment on Willard Quine (Epistemology Naturalized [1968]) by Barry Maund - Perception Ch.1
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A reaction:
I wonder if epistemology presupposes psychology? Belief, for example, is a category of folk psychology, which could be challenged. There is a quiet battle going on between philosophy and science.
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8871
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We should abandon a search for justification or foundations, and focus on how knowledge is acquired [Quine, by Davidson]
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Full Idea:
Quine is suggesting that philosophy should abandon the attempt to provide a foundation for knowledge, or otherwise justify it, and should instead give an account of how knowledge is acquired.
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From:
report of Willard Quine (Epistemology Naturalized [1968]) by Donald Davidson - Epistemology Externalized p.193
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A reaction:
If you are going to explain how 'knowledge' is acquired, you'd better know what knowledge is. My suspicion is that Quine would be quite happy (in the pragmatist tradition) to just focus on belief, and forget about knowledge entirely.
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8899
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Epistemology is a part of psychology, studying how our theories relate to our evidence [Quine]
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Full Idea:
Epistemology falls into place as a chapter of psychology, and hence of natural science. ..We study meagre input and torrential output, to see how evidence relates to theory, and in what ways one's theory of nature transcends any available evidence.
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From:
Willard Quine (Epistemology Naturalized [1968], p.83)
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A reaction:
It depends what you are interested in. If you just want to know what makes humans tick, then Quine is your man, but if you want to know things in general, and want to know how to get it right, then the normative side of epistemology is unavoidable.
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16736
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Explanation is generally to deduce it from something better known, which comes in degrees [Boyle]
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Full Idea:
Generally speaking, to render a reason of an effect or phenomenon is to deduce it from something else in nature more known than itself, and consequently there may be diverse kinds of degrees of explication of the same thing.
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From:
Robert Boyle (Certain Physical Essays [1672], II:21), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 23.4
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A reaction:
There is a picture of a real explanatory structure to nature, from which we pick bits that interest us for entirely pragmatic reasons. Boyle and I are as one on this matter.
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16737
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The best explanations get down to primary basics, but others go less deep [Boyle]
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Full Idea:
Explications be most satisfactory that show how the effect is produced by the more primitive affects of matter (bulk, shape and motion) but are not to be despised that deduce them from more familiar qualities such as heat, weight, fluidity, fermentation.
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From:
Robert Boyle (Certain Physical Essays [1672], II:22), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 23.4
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A reaction:
[Compressed, and continued from Idea 16736] So there is a causal structure, and the best explanations go to the bottom of it, but lesser explanations only go half way down. So a very skimpy explanation ('dormative power') is still an explanation.
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