66%
Confidence
Belief overview
Fallibilism and public revision
Beliefs should remain open to correction.
2
Supportive
0
Contrary
1
Neutral
What it is: Naturalism normally assumes that any human hypothesis or theory can be revised.
How the position understands it: Knowledge advances by critique, testing, comparison of evidence, and willingness to correct errors.
Basis and context: Fallibilism connects naturalism to scientific practice and to certain pragmatist currents.
Debates and variations: There is debate about whether this posture should be absolute or compatible with stable commitments in other areas.
Documentary evidence
Supportive
Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
A defense of skepticism, evidence, and public inquiry.
Reference: Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World.
Content: Sagan values the critical examination of extraordinary claims and the public discipline of evidence.
Use in debate: It is widely used for fallibilism and the rejection of explanatory supernatural appeals.
W. V. O. Quine, Epistemology Naturalized
A central text of naturalized epistemology.
Reference: W. V. O. Quine, essay Epistemology Naturalized.
Content: Quine proposes treating human knowledge as part of the natural world and investigating it with empirical support.
Use in debate: It is a decisive source for naturalized epistemology.
Neutral
Charles Taylor, A Secular Age
An analysis of secular modernity and the naturalistic social imaginary.
Reference: Charles Taylor, A Secular Age.
Content: Taylor examines how modernity made an immanent and often naturalistic view of the world plausible.
Use in debate: It is useful as a neutral interpretive source on the cultural place of naturalism.