I’m doing some work on the role of experimental methods in epistemology, and am currently trying to work out how to think about one particular challenge to utilizing such methods, flowing from a fairly influential take on the role of epistemology. I would be very interested to hear how people think that the challenge can be met. The challenge runs as follows:
On one influential (albeit far from uncontroversial) view, true belief is considered the (only) epistemic goal, and epistemology taken to be part of the cross-disciplinary business of aiding inquirers in trying to attain that goal. (I have in mind, primarily, people like Goldman, Kornblith, and possibly, at one point, Kitcher, as proponents of a view like this.) It is, of course, an empirical question whether or not the particular concepts we use and norms that they figure in are such that employing them will be conducive to forming true belief. Consequently, someone taking this view will not only welcome extensive interaction with research in social and cognitive psychology on the truth-conductivity of our cognitive (and possibly adaptive) heuristics and prevailing social practices, but also grant that such research might very well show that our current epistemic discourses are in need of refinement or revision.
If this is your view of epistemology, what methodological role could be filled by the methods of experimental epistemology and, particularly, by surveys of epistemic folk intuitions? Here are two possible answers, together with responses that I imagine someone defending the view at issue would give:
1. Surveys of epistemic folk intuitions enable us to identify any biases or cross-cultural variations in our intuitions, and thereby gain a better understanding of one traditionally prominent source of data used in the justification of epistemological theories, possibly for the purpose of putting restrictions on that source.
This, I imagine, would be an answer in line with what Nadelhoffer and Nahmias (2007) refer to as Experimental Descriptivism and Restrictionism. Studies conducted so far do, indeed, suggest that epistemic intuitions not only are susceptible to order effects (Swain, Alexander and Weinberg 2008), but may also vary across cultures (Weinberg, Nichols and Stich 2001). That is worrisome exactly to the extent that epistemic intuitions play an important role in the justification of epistemological theories. But on the present view, epistemological theories are justified not with reference to claims about what hypothetical scenarios are intuitively described in terms of what epistemic notions, but with reference to empirical claims about what concepts or norms are such that they pick out states, processes, or activities that tend to steer people like us toward forming true belief. Consequently, any order effects would seem to be largely nonthreatening to the practice of epistemology, so construed (since intuitions are not provided with any evidential role), and any cross-cultural variations simply suggest that different cultures might need to employ different epistemic discourses, in so far as they face different epistemic challenges. Whether the particular variations in questions actually serve the cultures in question well, however, would still be a question answered with reference not to intuitions (or surveys thereof), but to empirical investigations into truth-conductivity, on the model of social and cognitive psychology.
In light of this, we may try to specify the role of experimental epistemology as follows:
2. Even if we reject the idea that intuitions play a justificatory role in epistemology, surveys of epistemic folk intuitions may still serve to fix the subject matter of epistemology, by mapping out our folk epistemology -- or folk epistemologies, if the evidence concerning cross-cultural differences is on point -- in a systematic and comprehensive manner.
This suggestion would be more in line with what Nadelhoffer and Nahmias (2007) refer to as Experimental Analysis. After all, epistemology needs to start somewhere, and accounts of our current epistemic concepts and norms -- as revealed by our intuitions -- arguably serve the non-trivial role of fixing the subject matter (cf. Goldman 1992). However, given the possibility of aforementioned kinds of refinements and revisions, it’s less clear that we are better off with the kind of systematic and comprehensive accounts that properly conducted surveys, undoubtedly, can deliver, rather than with the approximate accounts that may be provided by most competent users of the corresponding epistemic terms. More specifically, focusing on competent users will guarantee the relevance of the accounts in question for actual inquirers, while still acknowledging that what’s crucial, as far as epistemology goes, is not knowing whether or not the approximate accounts provided capture all the idiosyncrasies of our epistemic intuitions, but determining whether the candidate notions and norms introduced by way of such approximate accounts, as a matter of empirical fact, can be said to serve us well, given our epistemic goal.
Borrowing some terminology from Prinz’s (2008) treatment of empirical and experimental philosophers (roughly corresponding to philosophers that mine the empirical data of scientists and philosophers that collect data themselves, respectively), we can refer to the challenge at issue as the empirical epistemologist’s challenge to experimental epistemology. Again, I would love to hear if anyone has any ideas about how this kind of challenge can be met.
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