Comment on Sagal

Abstract

Paul Sagal offers a compound thesis when he says naturalistic epistemology is the desertion of the traditional philosophical attempt to justify claims for knowledge, which is the suicide of reason. I do agree with him that the traditional activity of philosophy includes as a major item on its agenda the justification of claims for knowledge. I would like to agree with him that W. V. Quine’s naturalistic epistemology consists in the desertion of this task. (As I have argued in my note on Abner Shimony, Shimony’s view of naturalistic epistemology is meant to have the cake and eat it too, but correcting it amounts to either rejecting it altogether or agreeing with Sagal that it amounts to the desertion of the justification of all knowledge claims.) What remains, then, for me to debate is Sagal’s claim that deserting justification of knowledge claims amounts to the suicide of reason. Or, to convert his claim, he says that to reason is to justify claims for knowledge; it is the theory of rationalism as justificationism, which he rightly deems traditional. To disagree with him is to declare non-justificationist rationalism possible, then. My claim is stronger: to stick with justification of knowledge claims, I say, is the suicide of reason. If rationalism is to survive, some non-justificationist, i.e. critical, version of it should be propounded. (The numbering follows that of Sagal.)