Topic: Epistemology and the Demands of Philosophy

What relation does an epistemology have to bear to our ordinary
practices—to what we say and do in ordinary life?  Descartes famously
argued that the right answer is, “Not much.”  He argued that the
right way to fashion an epistemology requires standing back from
ordinary practice and, from a philosophical distance, assessing the
adequacy of what we ordinarily say and do.  We must (he thought) open
ourselves to the possibility that, from this distance, some (perhaps,
even most) of what we say and do in ordinary life will be found
wanting.

This idea is still very much alive in epistemology, and not just
among epistemologists who take seriously the skeptical worries that
Descartes made so famous.  The thought is that there are things we
want from epistemology that we simply cannot expect to get unless we
take philosophical distance from ordinary practice.

Amongst the things we want (the thought goes) is a theory that is
general, that is suitably simple, that makes no important distinction
without providing necessary and sufficient conditions for something’s
falling on one side, rather than another, of the distinction.  We
also want a theory that fits well with our picture of our place in
the world, whether that picture portrays us as special sorts of
creatures (for example, as persons operating in the space of
reasons), or portrays us as just one species of animal among many,
eking out our living in a manner that is in no really important way
different from the way other animals do, or portrays us in some other
way.  And we want a theory that recognizes that pragmatic
considerations influence what we are willing to say in ordinary life,
so that what is true to say in a given circumstance will not always
coincide with what we are willing to say in that circumstance.
Unless we take a position of philosophical distance from ordinary
practice (the thought is), nothing like the sort of theory we want is
going to be available.

J. L. Austin, the avatar of the “ordinary language” approach to
philosophy that was prominent in the middle years of the last
century, had a different view.  He thought that an epistemology, to
be worth its salt, has to be scrupulously faithful to our ordinary
practices.  It is this radical proposal (what it is supposed to mean,
how it could possibly carry conviction, what kind of contribution an
epistemology could possibly be expected to make under the
methodological constraint the proposal would impose) that we will be
examining and evaluating.  Of course, one does not evaluate a
proposal in isolation from others that are available.  So this
attempt to see what sense we can make of Austin’s proposal will take
us on something of a tour of the ways others have conceived of the
methodology of epistemology (including how, from their point of view,
Austin’s conception might be criticized).  Our itinerary will have us
stopping to take a critical look at intuition-based methodologies, a
number of naturalist methodologies, along with methodologies that
provide a comfortable environment for skeptical worries of the
Cartesian sort.  For purposes of comparing and contrasting
methodologies and epistemologies, we will focus primarily on that
part of epistemology that attempts to say something about the nature
and extent of our knowledge of the world around us.