  A third distinction concerns descriptive versus prescriptive approaches to epistemology and the growth of human knowledge. Traditionally, epistemology has been construed as a normative project whose aim is to clarify and defend conceptions of knowledge, foundations, evidential warrant and justification. Many have argued that neither the EEM programs nor the EET programs have anything at all to do with epistemology properly (i.e., traditionally) understood. The basis for this contention is that epistemology, properly understood, is a normative discipline, whereas the EEM and EET programs are concerned with the construction of causal and genetic (i.e., descriptive) models of the evolution of cognitive capacities or knowledge systems. No such models, it is alleged, can have anything important to contribute to normative epistemology (e.g., Kim 1988). The force of this complaint depends upon how one construes the relationship between evolutionary epistemology and the tradition. 