Abstract

W. H. Sheldon has recently remarked that philosophical naturalism of the type propounded by John Dewey and his followers boils down to materialism in a new guise. Of course, any effort to relate human experience to the physical world within which it arises is open to the general charge of “materialism.” But naturalism can be called “materialistic” in a more specific sense if it tends to pass cavalierly over those aspects of experience upon which older philosophers have based a sharp contrast between experience and nature. This, I take it, is the primary complaint against recent naturalism, and it has its roots, I believe, in the influence of modern psychological theory upon philosophical thought.