According to one prominent critique of mainstream epistemology, discoveries about what it takes to know or justifiedly believe that p can’t provide the right kind of intellectual guidance. As Mark Webb puts it, “the kinds of principles that are developed in this tradition are of no use in helping people in their ordinary epistemic practices.” In this paper I defend a certain form of traditional epistemology against this “regulative” critique. Traditional epistemology can provide—and, indeed, can be essential for—intellectual guidance. The reason is that, in many cases, how you should proceed intellectually depends on what you already know or justifiedly believe: how you should treat counterevidence to your beliefs, for example, can depend on whether those beliefs count as knowledge. Therefore, to get guidance on how to proceed intellectually, it will often be essential to be able to figure out what you know or justifiedly believe. And to do that it will often be helpful to try to figure out what it takes to count as knowledge or justified belief in the first place. To do this is precisely to engage in mainstream epistemology.

根据对主流认识论的一项著名批评，关于如何知道或合理地相信 p 的发现不能提供正确的智力指导。正如马克·韦伯所说，“在这一传统中发展起来的各种原则对于帮助人们进行普通的认知实践没有任何用处。” 在本文中，我捍卫某种形式的传统认识论来反对这种“规范性”批评。传统认识论可以提供——事实上，对于——智力指导也至关重要。原因是，在许多情况下，你应该如何理智地进行取决于你已经知道或合理相信的事情：例如，你应该如何对待你的信念的反证，可能取决于这些信念是否算作知识。因此，为了获得如何进行智力上的指导，通常必须能够弄清楚你所知道的或合理相信的东西。要做到这一点，首先尝试弄清楚什么才能算作知识或合理的信念，通常会很有帮助。做到这一点，就是搞主流认识论。