Wino Epistemology and the Shifting-Sands Problem

AbstractBy making plausible the Diversity Thesis (different people have systematically different and incompatible packages of epistemic intuitions), experimental epistemology raises the specter of the shifting-sands problem: the evidence base for epistemology contains systematic inconsistencies. In response to this problem, some philosophers deny the Diversity Thesis, while others flirt with denying the Evidence Thesis (in normal circumstances, the epistemic intuition that p is prima facie evidence that p is true). We propose to accept both theses. The trick to living with the shifting-sands problem is to expand epistemology's evidential base so as to include scientific evidence. This evidence can provide principled grounds on which to decide between incompatible intuitions. The idea of resolving inconsistencies in an evidential base by adding more independent lines of evidence is commonplace in science. And in philosophy, it is simply Wide Reflective Equilibrium. We contend that the idea that epistemology would depend crucially on scientific evidence seems radical because many traditional epistemologists practice reflective equilibrium that is WIN0, Wide In Name Only. We suggest five different lines of scientific evidence that can be, and have been, used in support of non-WINO epistemologica! theories.Contemporary epistemology gives a prominent role to intuitions about whether, in a certain situation, S knows that p or S is justified in believing that p. Most analytic epistemology proceeds on the assumption that intuitions are a source of evidence in philosophy, just as observations are a source of evidence in science. In normal circumstances, the intuition that p is prima facie evidence that p is true. Philosophers working under the banner of experimental epistemology bring the methods of science to bear on epistemologica! theorizing. Much of their work has involved investigating whether non-philosophers share philosophers' intuitions about philosophically important cases. This has raised considerable debate about the proper role of intuitions in philosophy. In general, analytic epistemologists are considerably more sanguine than experimental epistemologists about whether intuitions are an unproblematic source of evidence for philosophical theorizing.Our goal in this paper is to provide a framework for understanding the role of intuitions in epistemology that will do the apparently impossible: It will be acceptable, in principle at least, to most experimental epistemologists and to most analytic epistemologists who are critical of experimental philosophy. The paper will proceed as follows. In section 1, we introduce some evidence for the diversity thesis: Different people appear to have systematically different intuitions about cases that are crucial to epistemological theorizing. This raises the shifting-sands problem: How is epistemological theorizing supposed to proceed given this apparently inconsistent evidential base? The most natural approach to the problem is to try to narrow the evidential base-to eliminate many of these intuitions as irrelevant. In section 2, we propose to address the shifting-sands problem by expanding the base of evidence relevant to epistemological theorizing. This defangs the shifting-sands problem by adding nonintuitional evidence that can provide us with a principled way to decide which intuitions to reject and which, if any, to retain. This strategy is not radical. It is really nothing more than wide reflective equilibrium (WRE), which takes normative principles to be justified when they are brought into coherence with our particular judgments about cases and our best relevant background theories, including empirical theories. In section 3, we explore some ways in which scientific evidence has been fruitfully brought to bear on epistemological theorizing. Facts about cognitive ethology, and the social functions of epistemic categories, as well as various parts of cognitive science have all been used to construct epistemological theories that genuinely meet the standards of WRE. …