Willard Van Orman Quine

Aspects of Quine’s Naturalized Epistemology 43
was to make empiricism itself more empirical by defending the legitimacy
of treating it as a branch of empirical science. He did not,
however, pay much attention to the experimental aspects of the program
that he championed. Instead, his reflections are pitched at a
very high speculative level. He defended the place of speculation in
“The Nature of Natural Knowledge” in these words:
[A] speculative approach...seems required to begin with, in order to isolate
just the factual questions that bear on our purposes. For our objective here
is still philosophical – a better understanding of the relations between evidence
and scientific theory. Moreover, the way to this objective requires
consideration of linguistics and logic along with psychology. This is why
the speculative phase has to precede, for the most part, the formulation of
relevant questions to be posed to the experimental psychologist. (NNK 78)
This may seem innocent enough, but someone with strong naturalistic
commitments might balk at the thought that relevant questions
can be antecedently formulated and then handed over to the experimentalist
for resolution. Opposed to this is the doctrine that genuine
questions arise within the context of ongoing inquiry in reaction to
the vicissitudes it encounters – a standpoint championed by C. S.
Peirce and later by John Dewey. If this is correct, then it is contrary
to the naturalistic spirit to defer reference to experimental data in
the way that the passage just cited suggests. In becoming naturalized,
epistemology has to get its hands dirty sooner that Quine seemed to
acknowledge.
Interestingly, Quine at times did adopt something like a Peircean
theory of inquiry – particularly as grounds for dismissing traditional
epistemological concerns. 12 This emerged in a video panel
discussion with Quine in which I participated (along with Martin
Davies, Paul Horwich, and Rudolph Fara). Davies asked Quine how
he would deal with the Cartesian challenge that he (Quine) might,
at the very moment, be asleep and dreaming. Quine responded as
follows:
I am ruling the dream hypothesis out in the sense that I dismiss it as very
unlikely. And I think that this is the mood in which we do our thinking
generally, that there is plenty to worry about in the way of things that could
interfere with our hypotheses, and show that we are wrong in them. And we
worry about the likeliest ones [that is, those most likely to give us trouble]. 13
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