Naturalized Epistemology and Normativity
Many advocates of naturalized epistemology claim that they do not deny that epistemology is normative. They claim that normal, normative laws of thought tell us how we should proceed if we want to think validly. But thinking validly, according to them, means nothing other than thinking in harmony with the laws of thought, undistorted by the influence of habit, culture, or prejudice. Naturally, empirical psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience are indispensable to discovering these laws of thought, and hence they are indispensable to epistemology.
The naturalist's argument is easily refuted. No experience or analysis could show that valid mental acts arise from the pure, undistorted workings of the natural laws of our thought without begging all of the relevant questions. The criterion the naturalist assumes in differentiating between valid and invalid mental acts is just the criterion the epistemologist is trying to justify in the first place. The naturalist "answered" this epistemological question by changing the subject.
Furthermore, epistemic norms motivate our thinking in the sense that we attempt to make our thought accord with them. For this reason they appear as causal factors in our thinking. However, this leads to a confusion between law as a causal factor and law as a rule. In reality, the laws causally governing mental process P, where P conforms with epistemic norms, are not identical with the norms themselves. To say otherwise would be analogous to saying that the functioning of a calculator is governed by the rules of mathematics it carries out. Naturalizers therefore confuse an actual, causal law or motivation with an ideal, normative law or motivation.
In other words, the naturalist confuses laws serving as norms of cognitive activity with laws that themselves contain the idea of such a norm. The naturalist asserts that the rules by which thought processes like justification are governed are obviously psychologically grounded; therefore the norms of cognition must be grounded in the psychology of cognition. What this prejudice forgets is that logical laws such as the principle of contradiction, modus tollens, and modus ponens can be used normatively even when they do not themselves contain the idea of the norm. The same goes for the norms of empirical investigation like the concept of causation or induction. They can be transformed and transposed into norms which then have actual mental operations as their content, but on their own they are not normative for mental operations at all.
In short, although many naturalists recognize that epistemology is a normative philosophical discipline, they still beg all of the relevant questions, and they still confuse laws as causal factors with laws as rules. This leads them to believe erroneously that description can pick up the weight of normativity. Therefore naturalist epistemology ought to be rejected.
The naturalist's argument is easily refuted. No experience or analysis could show that valid mental acts arise from the pure, undistorted workings of the natural laws of our thought without begging all of the relevant questions. The criterion the naturalist assumes in differentiating between valid and invalid mental acts is just the criterion the epistemologist is trying to justify in the first place. The naturalist "answered" this epistemological question by changing the subject.
Furthermore, epistemic norms motivate our thinking in the sense that we attempt to make our thought accord with them. For this reason they appear as causal factors in our thinking. However, this leads to a confusion between law as a causal factor and law as a rule. In reality, the laws causally governing mental process P, where P conforms with epistemic norms, are not identical with the norms themselves. To say otherwise would be analogous to saying that the functioning of a calculator is governed by the rules of mathematics it carries out. Naturalizers therefore confuse an actual, causal law or motivation with an ideal, normative law or motivation.
In other words, the naturalist confuses laws serving as norms of cognitive activity with laws that themselves contain the idea of such a norm. The naturalist asserts that the rules by which thought processes like justification are governed are obviously psychologically grounded; therefore the norms of cognition must be grounded in the psychology of cognition. What this prejudice forgets is that logical laws such as the principle of contradiction, modus tollens, and modus ponens can be used normatively even when they do not themselves contain the idea of the norm. The same goes for the norms of empirical investigation like the concept of causation or induction. They can be transformed and transposed into norms which then have actual mental operations as their content, but on their own they are not normative for mental operations at all.
In short, although many naturalists recognize that epistemology is a normative philosophical discipline, they still beg all of the relevant questions, and they still confuse laws as causal factors with laws as rules. This leads them to believe erroneously that description can pick up the weight of normativity. Therefore naturalist epistemology ought to be rejected.