W. Quine, Naturalization, Skepticism and Conceptual Change Problem

Abstract

The paper aims to show the relationship between the W. Alston’s idea about the formal independence of the contexts of “being justified” and of “knowing that one is justified” and the means to overcome the problems of skepticism within the naturalized epistemology by W. Quine. Based on some works – “From a Logical Point of View” (1963), “The Ways of Paradox” (1966), “Ontological Relativity” (1969) etc. – an attempt is made to reconstruct close to the text the possible answers that W. Quine may give to the skeptical challenge of the problem of justification of standards of justification and of the “conceptual change” problem. It is shown that W. Quine's response to the skeptical “challenge to natural science that arises from within natural science” can be understood as a reference of the independence of different “epistemic levels”, one of which is set by the “background” theory that provides the understanding of terms such “reality”, “evidence” and “justification”, and the other is related to the search for a more effective representation of the theory and determines the possibility of its change.