Abstract

Philosophical naturalism is the thesis that the entirety of the universe is composed of natural things or processes, and philosophers including Aristotle, Hume, Hegel, Nietzsche, Foucault, Mackie, and Fodor subscribe, in some sense, to it. This elusive commitment has been variously interpreted to mean that everything in the universe is physical or material, or that everything is amenable to scientific investigation, or that nothing is supernatural, or that nothing is known a priori, or that everything is natural in some broader sense of that word. Thus, the thesis is sometimes metaphysical, sometimes epistemological, and sometimes methodological. Indeed, depending on its guise, philosophical naturalism has sometimes seemed a bland and uncontroversial truism, while in others it has seemed a daring, provocative, and, to some, manifestly false view. In this seminar, we will aim to come to grips with philosophical naturalism. Our first project will be to understand different kinds of naturalism, and our second will be to assess whether there is any reason to believe of any of those kinds that it is true. We will attend especially closely to historical and contemporary naturalism in ethics, epistemology, language, and mind.