Abstract

This paper defends and extends Quine’s version of a naturalistic epistemology, and defends it against criticism, especially that offered by Kim, according to which Quine’s naturalism deprives epistemology of its normative role, and indeed of its relevance to psychological states, such as beliefs, whose warrant epistemology aims to assess. I defend Quinean epistemology’s objections to the epistemic pluralism associated with other self-styled naturalistic epistemologies, and show how recent theories in the philosophy of psychology which fail to account for the intentionality of psychological states in fact provide a cognitive foundation for an eliminativist epistemology which both honors Quine’s strictures and helps us accommodate important findings and results in experimental psychology and cognitive science