The Psychological Turn

To cite this Article Kornblith, Hilary(1982)'The psychological turn',Australasian Journal of Philosophy,60:3,238 — 2538 — 253Traditional epistemological theorists tried to develop a set of rules which an agent might use to determine what he ought to believe; this was conceived to be the central project of any epistemological theory. These traditional theories were apsychologistic; questions about justified belief were thought to have nothing to do with questions about the psychological processes which in fact occur when beliefs are acquired.
Recently, epistemology has taken a psychological turn. It is now widely believed that questions about the justification of belief cannot be answered independently of questions about a belief's causal ancestry. What effect, if any, does the psychological turn have on the central project of traditional epistemology?
In sections I and II, I outline the differences between psychologistic and apsychologistic epistemology. In section III, I discuss some reasons for thinking that the proper form of an epistemological theory is psychologistic, and in the remaining sections, I explore the implications of psychologising epistemology for traditional epistemological projects.