How can psychology – or cognitive science – help the largely philosophical project of epistemology? One straightforward answer is: By illuminating the processes of perception, memory, deductive and probabilistic reasoning, etc. In other words, by explaining how epistemic agents cognize.

W. V. Quine (1969) proposed that traditional epistemology be replaced by psychology in just this way. Quine has been castigated by philosophers ever since, for proposing (as the critics see it) to eliminate epistemology in favor of psychology. Nonetheless, these kinds of psychological contributions might help epistemologists choose among genuine but controversial epistemological theories (e.g., experiential vs. non-experiential foundationalism), not eliminate epistemological theorizing altogether. A second way in which psychology (or cognitive science) might help epistemology is by focusing on epistemic attributors, or evaluators, rather than epistemic agents.

In making judgments about “knowledge” or “justified belief,” what mental representations of these terms or concepts do attributors recruit? The present talk focuses on this second approach. This is the approach of experimental philosophy (applied to epistemology), which has focused on the diversity of intuitive judgments about knowledge.

In the present talk the focus is on finding psychological and cognitive-scientific tools that can help philosophers appraise competing theories by seeing what predictions can be made about the behavior (i.e., judgments) of evaluators when they apply certain cognitive heuristics. In considering process reliabilism, for example, one might ask what cognitive heuristics are available to evaluators by which they individuate and select process types. The psychological theory of “basic-level” concepts might be helpful here (Erik Olsson). In considering how epistemic evaluations are made (“Is this belief justified or unjustified?”), heuristics posited in other cognitive domains, such as the simulation heuristic posited for theory-of-mind, might be invoked.