Review by Choice Review
Kornblith (Univ. of Vermont) seeks to extend and modify Quine's proposal for a naturalistic epistemology that emphasized the nonscientific nature of "similarity standard" and "quality spacing" that informs inductive thinking. She claims that it is the causal structure of the world as manifested in natural kinds that provides the natural ground of inductive inference. Interspersed in this anti-conventionalist work are refreshing citations of relevant empirical studies regarding perception and cognition. Kornblith defends a "robust realism" and a nonreductive physicalism. However, the issue of the evolution of our perceptual/cognitive functions is neglected and the insistence that it is underlying properties of objects that form the essence of natural kinds recapitualates the problem of apparent "essential" properties (macrophysical) and "real" unobservable properties. Is circularity avoided? Have not our perceptual/cognitive functions evolved in such a way as to select out the essential features of natural kinds Kornblith stresses? Do we truly know that our inductive inferences are tailored to the ostensible "causal structure of the world"? This is a provocative and succinct approach to evolutionary epistemology. Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduate and above. G. J. Stack; SUNY College at Brockport
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
