Abstract

‘What is knowledge?’ In intuition-based epistemology the question is often considered to concern how ‘knowledge’ is used linguistically or conceptually rather than what knowledge is. In addition, since intuitions are used as evidence despite empirical experiments indicating that people’s intuitions vary a great deal and that little conclusive systematicity can be found, it is argued that approaches with such a focus cannot provide a solid foundation to answer the initial question.

By instead looking at naturalistic approaches, a pluralistic cognitive epistemological approach which accepts ontological naturalism, methodological cooperative naturalism, and evolutionary naturalism can be identified. Given this approach – close to that of Hilary Kornblith – it is possible to look at how various relevant sciences see the natural phenomenon of knowledge. This provides a complement to Kornblith’s sole focus on cognitive ethology.

By also including the perspectives of cognitive psychology and evolutionary systems theory a new view of knowledge is made possible. The emerging picture indicates that the natural phenomenon of knowledge plausibly can be seen as consisting in dynamic internal survival-beneficial structures. For higher organisms, such structures importantly involve reflexive and reflective memory processes that (satisficingly) reliably produce (satisficingly) true beliefs.