Hilary Kornblith - Knowledge As A Natural Kind

Knowledge As A Natural Kind

Kornblith is perhaps most well known for his defense of the view that knowledge is a natural kind. This claim is defended in his book "Knowledge and its Place in Nature" (Oxford University Press, 2002) where Kornblith argues that knowledge, as it is being studied in cognitive ethology, is a sufficiently robust and inductively valuable category to qualify as a natural kind. Consequently, he claims, the proper method for epistemology is empirical, contrary to what has been assumed by most epistemologists, who traditionally have proceeded by way of conceptual analysis and the probing of intuitions rather than by way of empirical investigation.

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