DISCUSSION LARRY LAUDAN* AIM-LESS EPISTEMOLOGY? IN SEVERAL recent essays, I have proposed both a criterion for selecting methodological rules and some principles for evaluating cognitive aims.’ I have dubbed the combination of these two ‘normative naturalism’. The approach is naturalistic because it regards epistemology and methodology as co-extensive with the sciences; it is normative because, unlike many forms of naturalism, it retains a significant role for methodological advice and appraisal. Harvey Siegel’s accompanying essay2 raises several doubts about whether normative naturalism will do the jobs I have designed it to perform. The general strategy of Siegel’s paper is to argue (a) that the theory of instrumental rationality (which undergirds my naturalism) has little or no bearing on zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcb epistemic matters and (b) that my machinery for evaluating aims - because it builds upon certain results in the instrumental theory of rationality - is inadequate as an axiology for epistemology. It is important to emphasize at the outset that normative naturalism is a meta-epistemology or, more narrowly, a m&-methodology. It proposes to tell us how justification-rules or methodological rules can themselves be justified or warranted. I have argued that methodological rules of the customary sort (e.g. ‘avoid ad hoc hypotheses’, ‘prefer theories that make surprising predictions’, etc.) are neither mere conventions - as Popper and Lakatos generally held - nor are they intuitively self-certifying (as rule intuitionists would have it). How then are such rules to be justified? How in particular are they to be justified by someone who, like myself, takes seriously the naturalistic injunction to avoid a priori and transcendental arguments? In several recent writings, I have claimed that rules are best seen, especially with respect to their justification, as proposed means to the realization of desired ends. To put it crudely, one is justified in following a methodological rule to the extent that one has good *Department of Philosophy, University of Hawaii at Manoa. 2530 Dole Street, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822-2383, U.S.A. Received 4 November 1989. ‘See especially: Science and V&es (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); “Progress or Rationality? The Prospects for Normative Naturalism”, American Philosophical Quarterly 24, 19- 3 I; and “Normative Naturalism”, Philosophy of Science. forthcoming. ‘Harvey Siegel, ‘Laudan’s Normative Naturalism’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 21 (1990). 295. Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci., Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 315-322, 1990. 0039-3681/90 s3.00 + 0.00 Printed in Great Britain 0 1990. Pergamon Press pk. 31s