Naturalism

Though Althusser often spoke of his commitment to philosophical materialism—a position organically linked to his ongoing elaboration of the specific philosophical effects of Marxism—this paper argues that Althusser’s materialism must also include a commitment to realism and naturalism. Though Althusser does not use these terms himself, he nonetheless remains a realist to the extent that he argues for the capacity of conceptual thought to know a mind-independent reality and a naturalist to the extent that he is a consequent Darwinian (like (...) Engels and Lenin before him) who conceives of cognition as a contingent and evolved phenomenon. It is only on the basis of these considerations that Althusser’s polemic against empiricism can be properly understood and the stakes of his philosophical project properly evaluated. (shrink)

In this précis of The Practical Origins of Ideas: Genealogy as Conceptual Reverse-Engineering (OUP 2021), I summarize the keys claims of the book. The book describes, develops, and defends an underappreciated methodological tradition: the tradition of pragmatic genealogy, which aims to identify what our loftiest and most inscrutable conceptual practices do for us by telling strongly idealized, but still historically informed stories about what might have driven people to adopt and elaborate them as they did. What marks out this methodological (...) tradition, I argue, is that it synthesizes two genres of philosophical genealogy that are standardly set against each other: state-of-nature fictions on the one hand and patiently documentary historiography on the other. These two genres of genealogy are usually taken to be mutually exclusive and to answer to radically different philosophical interests and temperaments. But I offer a systematic account of a tradition that combines both genres into a single genealogical method, augmenting genealogy’s power and range by harnessing the strengths and possibilities of both genres. (shrink)

In this chapter, I explore in what senses Wittgenstein might be taken to support as well as to oppose naturalist approaches to interpreting religious phenomena. First, I provide a short overview of some passages from Wittgenstein’s writings—especially the “Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough”—relevant to the issue of the naturalness of religious phenomena. Second, I venture some possibilities regarding what naturalism might mean in connection with Wittgenstein. Lastly, I explore the bearing of Wittgenstein’s remarks on religion for the interpretation of religious (...) phenomena. Ultimately, I argue that Wittgenstein’s remarks on religion depict a way of thinking about the naturalness of religious phenomena, and that naturalistic depiction is part of the clarificatory work of philosophy. Wittgenstein reminds himself and his readers that religiosity is not something mysterious, per se; it is a core possibility within human life, one which can anchor meaningful living. (shrink)

Although a sizable number of works on analytic philosophy are published in non-Western languages, the literature continues to be written mainly in Western languages, especially English and German. This article makes a case for discussing analytic philosophy in Chinese and argues that it entails a dilemma: it can fulfill either the audience-service or knowledge-service functions but not both at the same time. This is problematic because a standard original or critical philosophical article should fulfill both functions. Then, to challenge the (...) validity of this dilemma, I pose the hypothetical scenario of Jake, who writes a marvelous, purely original publication on analytic philosophy in Chinese. This article posits that the dilemma will not be undermined by such a case and suggests an alternative way to resolve it. (shrink)

The debate concerning the scientific or unscientific status of the social sciences and the question of the (in) applicability of the methods of research in the natural sciences to social investigations are still unsettled in Philosophy of the Social Sciences. Some of the questions which are often asked concerning these issues include: are the social sciences really scientific? Do they merit the name science? Can we apply the same methods used in the natural research to social research? Are the objects (...) of inquiry in both areas the same? Attempts to answer these questions and numerous related others, have polarized Philosophers of the social sciences into two different ideological camps. Those who answer the questions affirmatively are regarded as the naturalists while those who answer negatively are regarded as the anti-naturalists or humanists. However, using the methods of critical argumentation and conceptual clarification, we intend to argue in this paper for a complementary ground between the two. Consequently, we contend that though the methods of the natural and the social sciences are different due to the fact that their respective objects of investigations are not the same, methods of the two fields are imperative to inquiries that would promote human knowledge and aid their intellectual development. This is necessary in order to foster interdisciplinary research and de-compartmentalisation of disciplines. We also intend to argue that the view that the social sciences are not scientific arose from a narrow conception of the term “science.” Our submission, therefore, is that the social sciences, legitimately, are sciences in their own right. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that there is a significant but often overlooked metaphysical distinction to be made between contextualism and contrastivism. The orthodox view is that contrastivism is merely a form of contextualism. This is a mistake. The contextualist view is incompatible with certain naturalist claims about the metaphysical nature of concepts within whichever domain is being investigated, while the contrastivist view is compatible with these claims. So, choosing one view over the other will involve choosing to affirm or (...) deny a significant metaphysical claim. As such, a demarcation ought to be put in place between contextualism and contrastivism. (shrink)

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, naturalism has become one of the most prominent philosophical orthodoxies in the Western academy. Yet naturalism is more often assumed than defended. The Blackwell Companion to Naturalism offers a systematic introduction that defines, discusses and defends philosophical naturalism. Essays tackle naturalism's role in existing cultural conversations, from Libertarianism to Confucianism, and provide detailed examinations of philosophical concepts like metaphysics, realism, feminism, science, free will, and ethics as viewed through a naturalist lens. With contributions (...) from an international array of established and emerging scholars from across the humanities, the collection encapsulates contemporary debates in the field. The Blackwell Companion to Naturalism provides an enlightening and accessible guide for self-identified naturalists and philosophy students who are new to naturalism alike. (shrink)

In this highly original book, Markus Gabriel presents 'Neo-Existentialism', an anti-naturalist view that holds that human mindedness consists in an open-ended proliferation of mentalistic vocabularies. Challenged by Charles Taylor, Andrea Kern and Jocelyn Benoist, Gabriel deftly refutes naturalism's metaphysical claim to epistemic exclusiveness.

Künstlerische Naturnachahmung zielt auf einen gesteigerten Realitätsgrad der Bildwerke. Die Beiträge des Bandes gehen der Frage nach, welche Relevanz Praktiken bildnerischer Beschreibung und Spielarten von Illusionismus haben und inwieweit sich aus der scheinbaren Zurücknahme der künstlerischen Intervention Momente von Objektivität und Ansprüche auf Wahrheit ableiten. Dabei werden die divergierenden Bedeutungen des Naturlismus-Begriffs deutlich.

Contributing to the naturalistic virtue ethics tradition, Natural Citizens applies recent work in the life sciences to develop a form of ethical naturalism that aspires to be non-reductive yet empirically responsible.

Studying evidence law as part of naturalized epistemology means using the tools and results of the sciences to evaluate evidence rules based on the accuracy of the verdicts they are likely to produce. In this chapter, we introduce the approach and address skeptical concerns about the value of systematic empirical research for evidence scholarship, focusing, in particular, on worries about the external validity of jury simulation studies. Finally, turning to applications, we consider possible reforms regarding eyewitness identifications and character evidence.

Bernard Williams thought that philosophy should address real human concerns felt beyond academic philosophy. But what wider concerns are addressed by Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, a book he introduces as being ‘principally about how things are in moral philosophy’? In this article, we argue that Williams responded to the concerns of his day indirectly, refraining from explicitly claiming wider cultural relevance, but hinting at it in the pair of epigraphs that opens the main text. This was Williams’s solution (...) to what he perceived as the stylistic problem of how to pursue philosophy as cultural critique. Taking the epigraphs as interpretative keys to the wider resonances of the book, we show how they reveal Williams’s philosophical concerns – with the primacy of character over method, the obligation to follow orders, and the possibility of combining truth, truthfulness, and a meaningful life in a disillusioned world – to be recognisably rooted in the cultural concerns of post-war Britain. In the light of its epigraphs, the book emerges as the critique of a philosophical tradition’s inadequacies to the special difficulties of its cultural moment. (shrink)

Since its original publication in 1979, The Possibility of Naturalism has been one of the most influential works in contemporary philosophy of science and social science. It is one of the cornerstones of the critical realist position, which is now widely seen as offering perhaps the only viable alternative to positivism and post positivism. This fourth edition contains a new foreword from Mervyn Hartwig, who is founding editor of the Journal of Critical Realism and editor and principal author of the (...) Dictionary of Critical Realism. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a new interpretation of Quine’s epistemology in the hopes of clarifying the relationship between naturalized epistemology and traditional epistemology. Quine’s naturalized epistemology is commonly criticized on the grounds that it amounts to giving up on traditional epistemological projects in favor of projects in natural science. But, I argue, this criticism rests on a mistaken interpretation of Quine’s epistemology. This is because Quine’s naturalized epistemology retains an important meliorative component; part of its aim is to improve (...) our systems of beliefs. Quine’s approach emphasizes improving our beliefs by engaging in conceptual clarification, which is a central part of both traditional and naturalized epistemology, as well as, on Quine’s conception, scientific inquiry. Thus, I argue, a central task of naturalized epistemology is to clarify science from within. Once this is properly understood, it is evident that Quine’s naturalized epistemology constitutes a re-orientation, rather than a wholesale rejection, of the projects of traditional epistemology. (shrink)

Pamela Hieronymi has authored a very insightful book that focuses on one of the most influential articles in 20th century philosophy: P. F. Strawson’s ‘Freedom and Resentment’ (1962). Hieronymi’s principal objective in Freedom, Resentment, and the Metaphysics of Morals is to reconstruct and evaluate the central argumentative strategy in Strawson’s essay. The author’s aim is ‘to show that it can withstand the objections that are both the most obvious and the most serious, leaving it a worthy contender’ (3). In the (...) present commentary, I summarize the main results of Hieronymi’s analysis. I engage with the book’s main themes, noting in due course certain unclarities and some shortcomings, while emphasizing the many valuable insights it offers. (shrink)

Debates about the links between science and ontology are very active in contemporary philosophy, and, in fact, they have always been present. Despite the various philosophical positions on the subject, they all admit the existence of a metaphysical reality. In contrast, metascience holds that such a reality does not exist. This second issue of Mɛtascience presents seven out of twelve articles that have as a common thread either the metascientific ontology or the Bungean ontology.

Les débats sur les liens qui uniraient la science à l’ontologie sont très actifs en philosophie contemporaine, et, en fait, ils ont toujours été présents. Malgré les diverses positions philosophiques sur le sujet, elles admettent toutes l’existence d’une réalité métaphysique. À l’opposé, la métascience soutient qu’une telle réalité n’existe pas. Ce second numéro de Mɛtascience présente sept articles sur douze qui ont comme fil conducteur soit l’ontologie métascientifique soit l’ontologie bungéenne.

This chapter considers how Liberal Naturalism interacts with the main problems and theories in the philosophy of perception. After briefly summarising the traditional philosophical problems of perception and outlining the standard philosophical theories of perceptual experience, it discusses whether a Liberal Naturalist outlook should incline one towards or away from any of these standard theories. Particular attention is paid to the work of John McDowell and Hilary Putnam, two of the most prominent Liberal Naturalists, whose work was also very influential (...) in the philosophy of perception. There is also a section focusing on colour, an especially important topic not only for debates about perceptual experience but also for debates concerning how our ‘manifest image’ of the natural world relates to our best theories in the physical sciences. (shrink)

Ernest Nagel played a key role in bridging the gap between American philosophy and logical empiricism. He introduced European philosophy of science to the American philosophical community but also remained faithful to the naturalism of his teachers. This paper aims to shed new light on Nagel’s intermediating endeavors by reconstructing his philosophical development in the late 1920s and 1930s. This is a decisive period in Nagel’s career because it is the phase in which he first formulated the principles of his (...) naturalism and spent a year in Europe to visit the key centers of logical empiricism. Building on a range of published and unpublished papers, notes, and correspondence—including hundreds of pages of letters to his close friend Sidney Hook—I reconstruct Nagel’s philosophical development, focusing especially on the philosophical influence of John Dewey, Morris R. Cohen, Rudolf Carnap, and Hans Reichenbach. (shrink)

Prior research found correlations between reflection test performance and philosophical tendencies among laypeople. In two large studies (total N = 1299)—one pre-registered—many of these correlations were replicated in a sample that included both laypeople and philosophers. For example, reflection test performance predicted preferring atheism over theism and instrumental harm over harm avoidance on the trolley problem. However, most reflection-philosophy correlations were undetected when controlling for other factors such as numeracy, preferences for open-minded thinking, personality, philosophical training, age, and gender. Nonetheless, (...) some correlations between reflection and philosophical views survived this multivariate analysis and were only partially confounded with either education or self-reported reasoning preferences. Unreflective thinking still predicted believing in God whereas reflective thinking still predicted believing that (a) proper names like ‘Santa’ do not necessarily refer to entities that actually exist and (b) science does reveal the fundamental nature of the world. So some robust relationships between reflection and philosophical tendencies were detected even among philosophers, and yet there was clearly more to the link between reflection and philosophy. To this end, demographic and metaphilosophical hypotheses are considered. (shrink)

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 3, Page 401-413, May 2022.

The Things in Heaven and Earth develops and applies the American philosophical naturalist tradition of the mid-20th century, specifically the work of three of the most prominent figures of what is called Columbia Naturalism: John Dewey, John Herman Randall Jr., and Justus Buchler. The book argues for the philosophical value and usefulness of this underappreciated tradition for a number of contemporary theoretical and practical issues, such as the modernist/postmodernist divide and debates over philosophical constructivism. Pragmatic naturalism offers a distinctive ontology (...) of constitutive relations. Relying on Buchler's ordinal ontology and on the relationality implicit in Dewey's instrumentalism, the book gives a detailed account of this approach in chapters that deal with issues in systematic ontology, epistemology, constructivism and objectivity, philosophical theology, art, democratic theory, foreign policy, education, humanism, and cosmopolitanism. (shrink)

This is the first collection to present a comprehensive overview of liberal naturalism. Essential reading for students and researchers in all areas of philosophy it will be of particular interest for those studying philosophical naturalism, philosophy of science, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and ethics.

This chapter first seeks to identify Huw Price's reasons for holding that "object naturalism" can be undermined by "subject-naturalistic" inquiry. It then addresses five questions about how his project bears on the prospects for a liberal naturalism. (1) Does Price’s strategy depend on his requirement that the relevant inquiry into human discourse and thought be conducted in natural-scientific terms? (2) Is Price’s strategy even compatible with that requirement? (3) Does the worldview Price arrives at amount to a liberal naturalism, i.e. (...) a naturalism that could be obtained by relaxing a more restrictive version? (4) Is Price’s strategy consistent with a liberal naturalism? (5) Should a proponent of Price’s strategy accept a liberal naturalism? (shrink)

The thesis identifies two strands in Rorty’s philosophy. One is an orientation towards practice in opposition to the traditional philosophical emphasis on theoretical knowledge. The other is Rorty’s anti-representationalist conception of knowledge. Rorty argues that these strands are mutually supporting, while the author argues they are incompatible. The nominal aim of Rorty’s anti-representationalism is to overcome many traditional dualisms of theoretical philosophy, such as subject and object, mind and world, and theory and practice. The thesis argues that anti-representationalism does not (...) and cannot achieve this aim, since what is required to overcome these dualisms is the recognition of the practical basis of knowledge, with which anti-representationalism is incompatible. The author agrees with much of Rorty’s critique of foundationalist epistemology, but argues in opposition to Rorty that anti-representationalism does not follow necessarily from this critique. Where Rorty locates the error of traditional epistemology in the very notion that knowledge and language can represent the world, the author argues that this idea is benign. The fundamental problem is the desire to anchor our conceptual scheme to an external structure independently of human practice — but this idea can be rejected without abandoning the notion of representation. The thesis also looks to explain why Rorty takes anti-representationalism to follow naturally from a rejection of foundationalism. The motivation is located in Rorty’s fundamental metaphysical orientation, which is naturalistic. Anti-representationalism is the product of the wish to promote a naturalistic worldview without succumbing to scientism. In this way Rorty hopes to unite the manifest and scientific images of man. The author argues that this cannot be done from within a naturalistic metaphysics. (shrink)

Discovering laws of nature was a way to worship a law-giving God, during the Scientific Revolution. So why should we consider it worthwhile now, in our own more secularized science? For historical perspective, I examine two competing early modern theological traditions that related laws of nature to different divine attributes, and their secular legacy in views ranging from Kant and Nietzsche to Humean and ‘governing’ accounts in recent analytic metaphysics. Tracing these branching offshoots of ethically charged God-concepts sheds light on (...) how our ethical ideals and ideas of natural order can still be valuably integrated. Early modern intellectualists valued the law-governed order of nature as a sign of divine Reason. In turn, Reason traditionally ascribed to God has now been partly reclaimed for humans, reframing the value of natural order anthropocentrically, in terms of the value of our own intelligence. Alternatively, Reason may be reclaimed for nature itself, as in an ‘objective’ idealism or metaphysical rationalism. However, beyond divine Reason, an influential voluntarist tradition in theology stressed a connection between laws of nature and God’s Power or free Will. Tracking how divine Power has been reinvested in human beings provides a broader context for instrumentalism and related lineages of empiricism. But secularization can also transfer Power from God to the impersonal natural world. In this light, current scientific interest in lawlike order may also reflect the inherent value of brute necessity or inhuman causal power in nature: this is a deeper way to reject anthropocentrism and to show our respect for the environment. (shrink)

Filosofian piirissä on viime aikoina käyty intensiivistä keskustelua metafysiikan naturalisoinnista ja tieteellisen metafysiikan mahdollisuudesta. Yksi tämän keskustelun keskeisistä teoksista on James Ladymanin ja Don Rossin (sekä osin John Collierin ja David Spurrettin) kirjoittama Every Thing Must Go (2007). Tässä kirjassa Ladyman ja Ross puolustavat, omien sanojensa mukaan, neopositivistista skientismiä. Heidän ohjelmansa on skientistinen, koska Ladymanin ja Rossin mukaan tiede on ainoa tapa tutkia todellisuutta objektiivisesti. Neopositivismi ilmenee puolestaan siinä, että heidän ohjelmansa tukeutuu eräänlaiseen verifikaatioperiaatteeseen. Ladymanin ja Rossin verifikaatioperiaate ei kuitenkaan (...) perustu, toisin kuin aiempien positivistien vastaava, kielelliseen merkitykseen tai suoriin havaintoihin vaan tiedeyhteisöön. Tiedeyhteisö päättää, mitkä kysymykset ja teoriat ovat tutkimisen arvoisia. Ladyman ja Ross esittelevät kirjassaan kaksi metafyysistä ohjelmaa: negatiivisen ja positiivisen. Toisaalta he pyrkivät kritisoimaan analyyttistä metafysiikkaa, jota he pitävät liiaksi irtautuneena nykytieteestä, ja toisaalta antamaan oman naturalistisen metafysiikkansa. Pyrimme tässä artikkelissa osoittamaan, että Ladymanin ja Rossin positiivinen ohjelma on jännitteessä, tai jopa ristiriidassa, heidän negatiivisen ohjelmansa kanssa. Tämä näkyy Ladymanin ja Rossin sitoutumisesta modaalirealismiin ja siinä, miten he yrittävät oikeuttaa sitoumuksensa. Jännitteen vuoksi Ladymanin ja Rossin on luovuttava joko modaalirealismista tai metafysiikalle antamistaan tiukoista vaatimuksista. (shrink)

Neurath (1932) suggests that in our quest for scientific knowledge “we are like sailors who have to rebuild their ship on the open sea, without ever being able to dismantle it in dry-dock and reconstruct it from its best components”. Neurath's boat features in discussions of various philosophical ideas, including the debate with foundationalism and coherentism about justification, the ethics literature on reflective equilibrium, and naturalistic approaches to metaphilosophy.

Lynne Baker’s case for the incompatibility of naturalism with the first-person perspective raises a range of questions about the relationship between naturalism and the various properties involved in first-person perspectives. After arguing that non-qualitative properties—most notably, haecceities like being Lynne Baker—are ineliminably tied to first-person perspectives, this paper considers whether naturalism and non-qualitative properties are, in fact, compatible. In doing so, the discussion focus on Shamik Dasupgta’s argument against individuals and, in turn, non-qualitative properties. Several strategies for undermining Dasgupta's argument (...) are considered, drawing on de re laws and haecceitistic possibilities. Finally, an analogy is drawn between naturalism and platonism regarding mathematical entities and naturalism's parallel commitment to individuals. I conclude that naturalists are obliged to posit non-qualitative properties. (shrink)

Responses to Naturalism: Critical Perspectives from Idealism and Pragmatism.

In this paper, I describe some strategies for teaching an introductory philosophy of science course to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) students, with reference to my own experience teaching a philosophy of science course in the Fall of 2020. The most important strategy that I advocate is what I call the “Second Philosophy” approach, according to which instructors ought to emphasize that the problems that concern philosophers of science are not manufactured and imposed by philosophers from the outside, but (...) rather are ones that arise internally, during the practice of science itself. To justify this approach, I appeal to considerations from both educational research and the epistemology of testimony. In addition, I defend some distinctive learning goals that philosophy of science instructors ought to adopt when teaching STEM students, which include rectifying empirically well-documented shortcomings in students’ conceptions of the “scientific method” and the “nature of science.” Although my primary focus will be on teaching philosophy of science to STEM students, much of what I propose can be applied to non-philosophy majors generally. Ultimately, as I argue, a successful philosophy of science course for non-philosophy majors must be one that advances a student’s science education. The strategies that I describe and defend here are aimed at precisely that end. (shrink)

Our main goal in this paper is to present and scrutinize Reichenbach’s own naturalism in our contemporary context, with special attention to competing versions of the concept. By exploring the idea of Reichenbach’s naturalism, we will argue that he defended a liberating, therapeutic form of naturalism, meaning that he took scientific philosophy to be a possible cure for bad old habits and traditional ways of philosophy. For Reichenbach, naturalistic scientific philosophy was a well-established form of liberation. We do not intend (...) to suggest that Reichenbach acted as an inventor of naturalism; nonetheless, invoking the term and the idea of ‘naturalism’ is more than a simple rhetorical strategy for rehabilitating Reichenbach as a forerunner of this field. We think that his ideas can make a valuable contribution to contemporary debates, and that he presents an interesting case among the other scientifically oriented proponents of his time. After presenting a short reconstruction of the meaning of naturalism—or, more appropriately, naturalisms—in order to be able to correctly situate Reichenbach within his own as well as a systematic context, we discuss Reichenbach’s naturalism against the background of his scientific philosophy, his views on the relation of common-sense knowledge to science, and his efforts at popularization. To delve deeper into this topic, we present a case study to show how Reichenbach argued that in both scientific and philosophical discussions, it is necessary to move from the request and value of truth to probability. And, finally, we argue that the liberation of knowledge and nature was a socio-political program for Reichenbach, who talked about his own scientific philosophy as “a crusade.” By emphasizing this aspect of Reichenbach’s naturalism, we may be in a better position to situate him in the history of analytic philosophy in general, and in the yet-to-be-written narrative of the naturalistic movement in particular. (shrink)

Physicalism is often characterized as an empirical hypothesis. But according to an alternative conceptualization, it is instead a stance or an attitude. I analyze Roy Wood Sellars’s materialist philosophy in order to show that it is a counterexample to a specific physicalist empirical hypothesis: the minimal completeness of the physical. However, it is arguably not reducible to a stance: it is a meaningful metaphysical thesis with substantive cognitive content.

We examine a prominent naturalistic line on the method of cases, exemplified by Timothy Williamson and Edouard Machery: MoC is given a fallibilist and non-exceptionalist treatment, accommodating moderate modal skepticism. But Gettier cases are in dispute: Williamson takes them to induce substantive philosophical knowledge; Machery claims that the ambitious use of MoC should be abandoned entirely. We defend an intermediate position. We offer an internal critique of Macherian pessimism about Gettier cases. Most crucially, we argue that Gettier cases needn’t exhibit (...) ‘disturbing characteristics’ that Machery posits to explain why philosophical cases induce dubious judgments. It follows, we show, that Machery’s central argument for the effective abandonment of MoC is undermined. Nevertheless, we engineer a restricted variant of the argument—in harmony with Williamsonian ideology–that survives our critique, potentially limiting philosophy’s scope for establishing especially ambitious modal theses, despite traditional MoC’s utility being partially preserved. (shrink)