Simulation and epistemic competence

Increasingly, epistemology is taking the articulate form of an investigation into how we manage, and perhaps might better manage, the cognitive chores of producing, modifying, and generally maintaining belief sets with a view to having a true and systematic understanding of the world. Although this approach has continuities with earlier philosophy, it admittedly makes a departure from the tradition of epistemology as first philosophy. Such investigations are termed “naturalized epistemologies” insofar as they help themselves to scientific information regarding (1) human cognitive capacities and (2) the possibilities for social organization in the pursuit of the classical epistemic goal. Epistemology on this model has been on the rise at least since Quine’s classic manifesto, “Epistemology Naturalized,” declared our principled freedom from the obligation to provide a first philosophy.