Abstract

'Naturalism' is a controversial label in philosophy; it can express the rejection of all things supernatural and the refusal to embrace a priori rationalism. And it can also be presented as a manifestation of scientism, the refusal to draw any distinctions between philosophy and the sciences. One origin of contemporary debates about naturalism goes back to century‐old debates about psychologism in logic. John Stuart Mill, among others, claimed that psychology could provide theoretical foundations for research in logic. Quine argued that the relations between experience and our beliefs were a causal matter that could be best studied in psychology. The philosophical problems that we face include epistemological questions about how we can answer skepticism, logical questions about the normative standards we should adopt in our reasoning and inquiry, and metaphysical issues concerning the nature of necessity and questions about universals and laws.