Download or read book Norms, Naturalism and Epistemology written by J. Knowles and published by Springer. This book was released on 2003-11-04 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the field of epistemology, naturalism holds that there are no a priori norms for guiding our belief-formation: we must start our inquiries in situ , assuming some beliefs and the general reliability of our basic cognitive practices to justify others. Naturalized epistemology seeks to motivate norms for cognitive enquiry on such a naturalistic basis. The author argues that, whilst naturalism must be embraced, this more abmitious project is in vain: to the extent one can justify naturalistic norms, they are not needed for optimal rational belief-formation.