Department of Philosophy

Faculty

Michael Bishop

Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment. 2005. Oxford University Press.

J.D. Trout and I started this project in 2000. Our goal was to write a book that was interesting, opinionated, accessible, and fun to read. Here are some excerpts from the first two pages of chapter 1: Excerpts [pdf].

The cover photo is a still of the great Buster Keaton from his movie, The General.

Here’s what some people have said about the book:

“Bishop and Trout have written a wonderful book. Their goal is nothing less than a radical reorientation of contemporary epistemology. Rejecting the analytic enterprise of explicating our concepts of justification and knowledge, they instead seek a return to an epistemology which would provide rules for the direction of the mind. Empirically informed and philosophically sophisticated, this is a lively and challenging book.”

     --Hilary Kornblith, Professor of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

“This book should be read by anyone interested in the foibles and fallibility of human reasoning, and in how an empirically informed view of human knowledge and understanding may help yield not only good philosophy, but also improved policy, better thinking and greater well being.”

     --Eldar Shafir, Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs, Princeton University

“This is a brilliant and useful essay integrating theoretical philosophy and empirical psychology to the benefit of both disciplines. The essay is a paradigm example of how a philosophical perspective can bring order and new insights into scientific practice. The book led me to reorganize my understanding of research on judgment and decision making and its implications. I had several new insights into the relationships between philosophical epistemology and scientific psychology. And, perhaps, best of all it was fun to read.”

     --Reid Hastie, Professor of Behavioral Science, University of Chicago

“Bishop and Trout argue that there are normative, reason-guiding assumptions embedded in scientific practice, and these normative assumptions can be used to assess strategies or mechanisms of reasoning quite generally. To make the point, they focus on psychology, and make explicit the sorts of normative recommendations to be found in the work of leading researchers like Meehl, Dawes, Nisbett and Gigerenzer. They go on to argue that this approach to epistemology is superior to the more familiar approach that is widespread in analytic epistemology. One of the surprising critiques they offer of analytic epistemology is that it is not normative enough, and that their thoroughly naturalistic approach to epistemology does significantly better on this score. All of this material is fresh, original and exciting. It might even be right! But right or wrong, I think it is a safe bet that it will attract a great deal of attention, and that Bishop & Trout will be recognized as two of the most interesting and innovative people working in the area where philosophy of science, epistemology and empirical psychology come together.”

     --Stephen Stich, Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy, Rutgers University