I believe, that empirically informed approaches to the question have issued in more illuminating answers than the old armchair approaches. But I think that it would be a terrible mistake to give up on addressing normative questions in epistemology.
Hilary KornblithIt's not just that there is a cooperative spirit of investigation there, where we all recognise that we are engaged in a common project of inquiry. It's also that the philosophers are well-versed in the relevant empirical data, and the scientists are well-versed in the more abstract issues which are typically the central focus of philosophical work.
Hilary KornblithThe experimentalists think that we can only get at our concepts by way of empirical investigation, while the armchair philosophers think that we can skip the experiments and figure things out from our armchairs. What they have in common, however, is regarding our concepts as the targets of philosophical theorising, and I just don't think that, in the vast majority of cases, the subject matter of philosophy has our concepts as its target.
Hilary KornblithI am quite wedded to the view that epistemologists should concern themselves with knowledge rather than our concept of knowledge. The analogy I like to draw here is with our understanding of (other) natural kinds.
Hilary KornblithMy own reasons for favouring talk of natural kinds is just that I believe the best accounts of the success of scientific theories presupposes the existence of natural kinds.
Hilary KornblithThe kind of approach I take is different from much of experimental philosophy. Although the experimental philosophers and I are certainly in agreement about the relevance of empirical work to philosophy, a good deal of their work is devoted to understanding features of our folk concepts, and in this respect, at least, I see them as making the same mistake as those armchair philosophers who are interested in conceptual analysis.
Hilary Kornblith