Naturalized epistemology is the proposal that the theory of knowledge bears a close relation to empirical studies of cognition. The proposal was first made by W. V. O. Quine in his influential article, "Epistemology Naturalized" (1969). Quine is usually interpreted as subscribing to replacement naturalism: epistemology is to be replaced with empirical psychology. But his proposal may well fall short of full replacement.

In his article, Quine distinguishes conceptual studies, which seek to clarify concepts by defining some of them in terms of others, from doctrinal studies, which attempt to establish laws by proving them. The conceptual studies, were they successful, would facilitate the doctrinal ones because clarifying concepts increases the chance that truths that would otherwise go unrecognized will come to be obvious or come to be perceived as "derivable from obvious truths" (p. 70). Quine allows that progress was made in conceptual studies when Jeremy Bentham...