Conclusion: Science without Norms

Abstract

In this book, I have been arguing for my overarching thesis that, to the extent we can make sense of them as genuine, we have no need for naturalistic epistemic norms, either in everyday life or in science. The arguments assume a certain understanding of naturalism that can be motivated as a reaction to the failures of what I called TE. The project of NE builds on naturalism, but seeks to go further in specifying concrete norms for enquiry. I have considered several broad varieties of theories of such norms — different varieties of NE — which I take to be exhaustive of the possibilities: AP, AF and P (and, supplementarily, NP). In relation to AP and AF, I have not, for the main part, argued that their conception of norms is incoherent, or that the norms they propose cannot be justified in the ways they suppose they can be, but simply that, given the assumptions necessary to justify the norms, it turns out that they are not in fact required for optimal belief-formation. In relation to P and NP I have argued that it is only dubiously coherent to see natural psychological principles as norms; and that there is, partly because of this, no motivation for doing so against the backdrop of naturalism. I have also given reasons for thinking that any more weakly naturalistic theory of norms that seeks to maintain a role for distinctively apriori thinking in epistemology at the same time as taking account of empirical resources can only make sense of norms necessary for optimal belief-formation insofar as these correspond to the apriori information.