A Science-Based Critique of Epistemological Naturalism in Quine’s Tradition Reto Gubelmann A Science-Based Critique of Epistemological Naturalism in Quine’s Tradition Reto Gubelmann A Science- Based Critique of Epistemological Naturalism in Quine’s Tradition Reto Gubelmann University of Zurich Zurich, Switzerland ISBN 978-3-030-24523-8 ISBN 978-3-030-24524-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24524-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Für Nathalie Preface In this book, I venture a critical assessment of epistemological natural- ism. Proponents of this position hold that there is no knowledge outside of science, since the empirical-scientific method (or methods) of justify- ing claims or theories is without alternative. Therefore, if epistemology is to deliver knowledge, it has to itself become immanent to science. Often, critics of epistemological naturalism argue that the doctrine cannot accommodate some important aspect of human existence, say altruistic behavior. One weakness of this approach is that epistemolog- ical naturalists can always adopt an eliminativist or reductivist attitude with regard to the phenomenon in question: naturalists can argue that altruism either does not exist, or that it can be reduced to biological functions such as the reproductive success of groups. This book is different. Rather than focusing on phenomena that are traditionally conceived to be external to empirical science, it focuses on empirical science itself. With regard to this phenomenon, epistemolog- ical naturalists cannot adopt an eliminativist position, and adopting a reductivist one comes at a considerable cost. Furthermore, I am trying to meet my naturalistic counterpart on her own ground not only with regard to the subject matter (empirical vii viii Preface science), but also with regard to the epistemic way in which I approach this subject matter: I try to support my central claims and arguments with detailed discussions of first-order scientific data. When arguing that it is an open question whether empirical science is able to explain how our access to empirical reality supports our scientific theorizing, I am making extensive use of first-order scientific results and experiments (such as habituation and preferential looking experiments). Even when my claim is squarely metaphilosophical, such as when I am urging that the scientific realism debate belongs to philosophy and not to science, I am making my case from within science, arguing that the debate transcends the bona fide epistemic practices of the sciences, and I am supporting my case with detailed analyses of actual discussions in the history of natural science. When beginning the research for this study, one of my basic (but rather vague) working hypotheses was that the richness and diversity of actual scientific research militates against the austere and monolithic nature of epistemological naturalism. I think that my discussion of contemporary perceptual psychology in Sect. 4.2 and of Perrin’s exper- iments to establish the reality of atoms in Chapter 9 support more spe- cific versions of this general working hypothesis. Hence, this book’s contribution to the ongoing debate about episte- mological naturalism—and about the metaphilosophy of epistemology in general—consists in arguing that there are grounds within science to question epistemological naturalism. By reviewing insights from linguis- tics, psychology as well as from the history of natural science, I argue that science itself points beyond itself to epistemic practices that are clearly distinct from empirical science. Part of the research on which this book is based has been supported by The University of Zurich’s Candoc grant number FK-13-068 as well as The Swiss National Science Foundation’s doc.Mobility grant number P1ZHP1-161979. Parts of Chapters 2, 3, and 7 draw on and elaborate ideas previ- ously published in “From Shared Stimuli to Preestablished Harmony: The Development of Quine’s Thinking on Intersubjectivity and Objective Validity”, HOPOS, 9, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/703253. Figure 4.2 is reproduced with permission from Yang, Jiale, So Kanazawa, Preface ix Masami K. Yamaguchi, and Ichiro Kuriki (2013). “Investigation of color constancy in 4.5-month-old infants under a strict control of luminance contrast for individual participants”. In: Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 115.1, p. 130. I am grateful to the following people for their comments and criti- cism of various ideas and arguments in this book: Karim Bschir, Tyler Burge, Johannes Corrodi, David Dolby, Charles Djordjevic, Matthias Egg, Zacharias Flouris, Hans-Johann Glock, Gary Hatfield, Penelope Maddy, Christoph C. Pfisterer, Nicole Rathgeb, Katia Saporiti, Peter Schulthess, Kyle Stanford, Marco Toscano, Sander Verhaegh, Christian Weibel, Sebastian Wyss, and the audiences at the Free University of Amsterdam, the Universities of Helsinki, Pretoria, Vilnius, and Zurich. St. Gallen, Switzerland Reto Gubelmann Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Epistemological Naturalism 4 1.1.1 Its Central Claim: Justificatory Monism 5 1.1.2 Its Practice: Naturalized Epistemology as Empirical Psychology 9 1.1.3 Some Structural Aspects 13 1.2 The Content and General Argument of the Book 16 References 19 2 Quine I: The Bold Physicalism of Word and Object 21 2.1 The Theoretical Background of Quine’s Naturalized Epistemology 23 2.1.1 Eschatological Physicalism 25 2.1.2 A Physicalistic Ban on Final Causes 33 2.1.3 Behaviorism: The Physicalist’s Psychology 37 2.1.4 Source- and Checkpoint-Empiricism 40 xi xii Contents 2.2 The Elegantly Physicalistic, But Flawed Account of Word and Object 43 2.2.1 The Account of Word and Object 43 2.2.2 The Flaw: Stimulus Meanings Are Private 49 References 52 3 Quine II: The Evolutionary-Perceptual Account 55 3.1 Quine’s Struggle to Explain Intersubjectivity 55 3.1.1 Natural Kinds: A Transitory Period 56 3.1.2 The Advent of Innate Perceptual Similarity Standards 59 3.1.3 An Emphatic Interlude 65 3.1.4 Finally: A Preestablished Harmony of Similarity Standards 69 3.2 Summary: Quine’s Naturalized Epistemology 73 3.3 Two Internal Problems for Quine’s Eschatological Physicalism 78 3.3.1 Quine’s Invocations of Natural Selection Are Probably Unscientific 78 3.3.2 Quine’s Infant Needs to Understand Final Causation 83 References 90 4 Burge: Proto-Predicates in Perceptual Representations 93 4.1 Contemporary Perceptual Psychology 95 4.2 Burge’s Case for Objective Representation in Perception 104 4.3 Why Even Quine Should Take Perceptual Psychology Seriously 112 4.4 Conclusion: A Step Forward, but Only a Step 118 References 119 5 Maddy: Conceiving Logic as an Innate Cognitive Mechanism 121 5.1 Spelkean Nativism and Maddy’s Pre-linguistic Rudimentary Logic 124