 Quine has been extensively criticized on precisely this score (e.g., Goldman 1986, pp. 2–3; Kim 1988). The key to a successful defense of Replacement Naturalism lies in an explanation of why normative theory without foundationalism is sterile. One worry is that without foundationalism, normative theories are banal. Consider: it is now a familiar result of cognitive psychology that human beings regularly make mistakes in logical reasoning (cf. Stich 1994). So a mere descriptive theory of belief-formation, of the sort Quine appears to recommend, would simply record these mistakes. But shouldn’t epistemology tell us that beliefs ought not to be formed illogically? One can hardly imagine why Quine would disagree: one ought not to form beliefs illogically. But the question is whether this piece of banal advice adds up to a fruitful research program. The descriptive project of Replacement Naturalism may record certain irrational cognitive processes in studying the evidence-theory relationship, but given the underdetermination of theory by evidence, even when we correct for logical mistakes, we still won’t have an account of which of our theoretical beliefs are warranted and which are not. The Quinean intuition is that we’ll learn more from the empirical inquiry than from systematizing our banal normative intuitions about irrationality. More generally, unless we have some foundational point outside our epistemic practices from which to assess the epistemic issues, the project of systematizing our mundane normative intuitions will simply collapse into the descriptive sociology of knowledge. If we can’t stand outside the epistemological boat, then we can do no more than report what it is we do. But it is precisely the viability of such an external standpoint that Quine denies in his embrace of the metaphor of Neurath’s boat. So from within the boat, there is nothing to do but description.