Naturalistic Epistemology: Selected Papers - Hardcover

by Hilary Kornblith (Author)

This volume draws together influential work by Hilary Kornblith on naturalistic epistemology. The naturalistic approach sees epistemology not as a matter of analysis of concepts, but as an explanatory project constrained and informed by work in the cognitive sciences. These essays expound and defend Kornblith's distinctive view of how we come to have knowledge of the world. He offers critical discussion of alternative approaches, such as foundationalism, the coherence theory of justification, internalism, and externalism; and he discusses social epistemology, the role of intuitions in philosophical theorizing, epistemic normativity, and the ways in which philosophical theories may be informed by empirical considerations. Kornblith aims to show how an epistemology which is based in the sciences of cognition may provide the understanding and intellectual illumination which has always been the goal of philosophical theorizing.

Author Biography

Hilary Kornblith, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Hilary Kornblith is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is the author of Inductive Inference and its Natural Ground (MIT, Press, 1993); Knowledge and its Place in Nature (OUP, 2002); and On Reflection (OUP 2012).