Quine's Epistemological Thinking Research

Epistemology has become a major realm of philosophical research after theturning of modern philosophy. After the monopoly of natural sciences over the fight tospeak toward the outside world, the merely autonomous domain of philosophyremains human reason. Whereas, a naturalistic trend which arises from modernepistemology has begun to encroach the last territory of philosophy. And the pioneerof naturalism is the American philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine. In thenaturalistic prospects depicted by Quine, epistemology is assimilated into naturalsciences, becoming a common member of the family of science. The task ofepistemologist is no longer abstract philosophical speculation or pure philosophicalanalysis, but to make wide use of the various resources provided by natural scienceand study the activities of human cognition by adopting the methods of empiricalscience. Neither dreaming to pursue ultimate truth nor attempting to lay a foundationfor science, even abandoning the desire to justifying science, naturalisticepistemologist is only contented with researching the natural course of humancognition. He attempts to obtain a partial and progressive comprehension about it, thepurpose of which is to help people increase their knowledge about reality. When itcomes to this naturalistic perspective, somebody is welcome, believing that it canopen up the new field of epistemology, and there are also some opposing voices. InQuine's view, after the failure of phenomenalistic reduction of logical positivism,epistemology can only rescued by naturalization; in the meanwhile, it would resist thethreat imposed by cultural relativitism and nihilism. He advocates employing theresearch method of empirical psychology in dealing with epistemology by inspectinghow human subject reacts in speech to external stimulation. In this way, epistemologyturns into researching the relation between meager input and rich output. It stillstudies the old question of traditional epistemology: given only the evidence of oursenses, how do we arrive at our theory of the world? Therefore, in the psychologysetting, the cause of epistemology will continue to exist, and it furthermore wins thefreedom of utilizing scientific resources. Closely related to this clue, Quine developshis observation sentence theory, scientific methodology, and the theory of referencepsychogenesis, etc. exerting himself in reconstructing the causal process fromstimulation to science on the part of humanity. It's still a thought-worthing problemwhether his naturalism is to unclose a Pandora case or to open up a new horizon forresearching epistemology. In any case, in an age when cognitive sciences are makinggiant strides, epistemology is not going to avoid sciences' challenge or reject theresources of sciences, on the other hand, it will make a profitable effort to seek tocoordinate with sciences through a certain method.