 Contemporary discussions of NE tend to take as their starting point Quine’s seminal 1969 paper, “Epistemology Naturalized”. Before considering that work, some background will help to give a sense of the general character of the traditional approach to epistemological theorizing, the various themes running through NE, and the pre-Quinean history of NE. Here, the natural starting point is Descartes, who is widely regarded as “the founder of modern epistemology” (Sosa 2003: 554; cf. BonJour 2002: 6).