Norms, Naturalism and Epistemology - The Case for Science Without Norms (Electronic book text)

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 justfy others. Naturalized epistemololgy seeks to motivate norms for cognitive enquiry on such a naturalistic basis. The author argues that, whilst naturalism must be embraced, this more ambitious project is in vain - to the extent one can justify naturalistic norms, they are not needed for optimal rational belief formation.