Abstract

Fodor argues that naturalistic psychology is defective as a research program because it requires psychology to wait until the rest of science is complete before psychological questions can be addressed. The reason given for thinking that naturalistic psychology requires that all the facts be in, unless I'm mistaken, is that naturalistic psychology requires that the organism's relation to its environment figure in a description of the organism's psychological state, and we don't know what the environment is like until the results of biology, chemistry, and physics are available. If Fodor's claim about naturalistic psychology were correct, one would also expect that a "naturalistic biology" that violates methodological solipsism is likewise impossible.