<P> Richard Rorty expanded on these and other arguments in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature in which he criticized attempts by many philosophers of science to carve out a space for epistemology that is entirely unrelated to--and sometimes thought of as superior to--the empirical sciences . W.V. Quine, instrumental in bringing naturalized epistemology back into favor with his essay Epistemology Naturalized (Quine 1969), also criticized "traditional" epistemology and its "Cartesian dream" of absolute certainty . The dream, he argued, was impossible in practice as well as misguided in theory, because it separates epistemology from scientific inquiry . </P> <P> Hilary Putnam has suggested that the reconciliation of anti-skepticism and fallibilism is the central goal of American pragmatism . Although all human knowledge is partial, with no ability to take a "God's - eye - view," this does not necessitate a globalized skeptical attitude, a radical philosophical skepticism (as distinguished from that which is called scientific skepticism). Peirce insisted that (1) in reasoning, there is the presupposition, and at least the hope, that truth and the real are discoverable and would be discovered, sooner or later but still inevitably, by investigation taken far enough, and (2) contrary to Descartes' famous and influential methodology in the Meditations on First Philosophy, doubt cannot be feigned or created by verbal fiat to motivate fruitful inquiry, and much less can philosophy begin in universal doubt . Doubt, like belief, requires justification . Genuine doubt irritates and inhibits, in the sense that belief is that upon which one is prepared to act . It arises from confrontation with some specific recalcitrant matter of fact (which Dewey called a "situation"), which unsettles our belief in some specific proposition . Inquiry is then the rationally self - controlled process of attempting to return to a settled state of belief about the matter . Note that anti-skepticism is a reaction to modern academic skepticism in the wake of Descartes . The pragmatist insistence that all knowledge is tentative is quite congenial to the older skeptical tradition . </P> <P> Pragmatism was not the first to apply evolution to theories of knowledge: Schopenhauer advocated a biological idealism as what's useful to an organism to believe might differ wildly from what is true . Here knowledge and action are portrayed as two separate spheres with an absolute or transcendental truth above and beyond any sort of inquiry organisms used to cope with life . Pragmatism challenges this idealism by providing an "ecological" account of knowledge: inquiry is how organisms can get a grip on their environment . Real and true are functional labels in inquiry and cannot be understood outside of this context . It is not realist in a traditionally robust sense of realism (what Hilary Putnam would later call metaphysical realism), but it is realist in how it acknowledges an external world which must be dealt with . </P> <P> Many of James' best - turned phrases--truth's cash value (James 1907, p. 200) and the true is only the expedient in our way of thinking (James 1907, p. 222)--were taken out of context and caricatured in contemporary literature as representing the view where any idea with practical utility is true . William James wrote: </P>

Which of the following elements is an essential aspect of realism literature