The Naturalistic View does not makes any claims on the conditions for knowledge, instead it deals with the proper role of science in epistemology in accordance with the Standard View of knowledge.
Proponents of the Naturalistic View argue people are irrational in forming beliefs which is rooted in a survival instinct, to overestimate how many dried fish we will need to survive the winter is infinately better than underestimating. It is because of logical mistakes which draws criticism from the naturalists. How is it that we can claim to have any knowledge?
Alleged human irrationality is illustrated by the following example in which you have to rank the likelihood of the propositions about the person following an initial description. Tim is 20 years old, has a girlfriend, is shy, and intelligent. He plays football for his college.
a. Tim is a proffesional football player.
b. Tim is married.
c. Tim is married and a proffesional football player.
If you answered c., as people frequently do in examples such as this, than you are wrong because while it is nice to believe Tim is married and a proffesional football player it totally violates the rules of probability. It is much less likely for Tim to be both married and a proffesional football player than for him to be just one of the two. It is from examples such as this that it is clear people frequently give incorrect and unreasonable answers to questions which in turn makes them irrational.
OK, that's good. I think you have a good grasp of this one! [Familiarity shown.]
ReplyDeleteIf we treat this as a Thetis II type concept - focusing on the idea of Naturalism as giving us a reason to be skeptical that we have knowledge - you could try to use your knowledge of another theory of knowledge (Cartesian Foundationalism, maybe) to respond to that problem, and evaluate that response. Can CF deal with this problem, or is this kind of 'specially crafted' to really hammer someone who likes CF?