Naturalism is the label for the thesis that the tools we should use in answering philosophical problems are the methods and findings of the mature sciences—from physics across to biology and increasingly neuroscience. It enables us to rule out answers to philosophical questions that are incompatible with scientific findings. It enables us to rule out epistemological pluralism—that the house of knowledge has many mansions, as well as skepticism about the reach of science. It bids us doubt that there are (...) facts about reality that science cannot grasp. It gives us confidence to assert that by now in the development of science, absence of evidence is prima facie good grounds for evidence of absence: this goes for God, and a great deal else. (shrink)

Philosophical naturalism, according to which philosophy is continuous with the natural sciences, has dominated the Western academy for well over a century, but Michael Rea claims that it is without rational foundation. Rea argues compellingly to the surprising conclusion that naturalists are committed to rejecting realism about material objects, materialism, and perhaps realism about other minds.

The literature on health and diseases is usually presented as an opposition between naturalism and normativism. This article argues that such a picture is too simplistic: there is not one opposition between naturalism and normativism, but many. I distinguish four different domains where naturalist and normativist claims can be contrasted: (1) ordinary usage, (2) conceptually clean versions of “health” and “disease,” (3) the operationalization of dysfunction, and (4) the justification for that operationalization. In the process I present new (...) arguments in response to Schwartz (2007) and Hausman (2012) and expose a link between the arguments made by Schwartz (2007) and Kingma (2010). Distinguishing naturalist claims at these four domains will allow us to make progress by (1) providing more nuanced, intermediate positions about a possible role for values in health and disease; and (2) assisting in the addressing of relativistic worries about the value-ladenness of health and disease. (shrink)

The prospects for moral realism and ethical naturalism have been important parts of recent debates within metaethics. As a first approximation, moral realism is the claim that there are facts or truths about moral matters that are objective in the sense that they obtain independently of the moral beliefs or attitudes of appraisers. Ethical naturalism is the claim that moral properties of people, actions, and institutions are natural, rather than occult or supernatural, features of the world. Though these (...) metaethical debates remain unsettled, several people, myself included, have tried to defend the plausibility of both moral realism and ethical naturalism. I, among others, have appealed to recent work in the philosophy of language—in particular, to so-called theories of “direct reference” —to defend ethical naturalism against a variety of semantic worries, including G. E. Moore's “open question argument.” In response to these arguments, critics have expressed doubts about the compatibility of moral realism and direct reference. In this essay, I explain these doubts, and then sketch the beginnings of an answer—but understanding both the doubts and my answer requires some intellectual background. (shrink)

Having no recourse to ways of knowing about the natural world, ethical non-naturalists are in need of an epistemology that might apply to a normative breed of facts or properties, and intuitionism seems well suited to fill that bill. Here I argue that the metaphysical inspiration for ethical intuitionism undermines that very epistemology, for this pair of views generates what I call the defeater from cosmic coincidence. Unfortunately, we face not a happy union, but a difficult choice: either ethical intuitionism (...) or ethical non-naturalism, but not both. (shrink)

Ethical naturalism holds that ethical facts about such matters as good and bad, right and wrong, are part of a purely natural world — the world studied by the sciences. It is supported by the apparent reasonableness of many moral explanations. It has been thought to face an epistemological challenge because of the existence of an “is-ought gap”; it also faces metaphysical objections from philosophers who hold that ethical facts would have to be supernatural or “nonnatural,” sometimes on the (...) grounds that ethical thought has a practical role that no thought about purely natural facts could have. Its defenders have argued resourcefully against these challenges. (shrink)

There may be as much philosophical controversy about how to distinguish naturalism from non-naturalism as there is about which view is correct. In spite of this widespread disagreement about the content of naturalism and non-naturalism there is considerable agreement about the status of certain historically influential philosophical accounts as non-naturalist. In particular, there is widespread agreement that G.E. Moore's account of goodness in.

Contemporary philosophy’s three main naturalisms are methodological, ontological and epistemological. Methodological naturalism states that the only authoritative standards are those of science. Ontological and epistemological naturalism respectively state that all entities and all valid methods of inquiry are in some sense natural. In philosophy of mathematics of the past few decades methodological naturalism has received the lion’s share of the attention, so we concentrate on this. Ontological and epistemological naturalism in the philosophy of mathematics are discussed (...) more briefly in section 6. (shrink)

Neo-Aristotelian naturalism purports to explain morality in terms of human nature, while maintaining that the relevant aspects of human nature cannot be known scientifically. This has led some to conclude that neo-Aristotelian naturalism is not a form of ethical naturalism in the standard, metaphysical sense. In this paper, I argue that neo-Aristotelian naturalism is in fact a standard form of ethical naturalism that is committed to metaphysical naturalism about moral truths and presents a distinctive (...) and underappreciated argument for it. I reconstruct the neo-Aristotelian argument for ethical naturalism in terms of a continuity between the ethical domain and the natural domain of life. I argue that clarifying the meta-ethical import of neo-Aristotelian naturalism not only helps to situate it among other positions in meta-ethics, but also facilitates better critical engagement with the view. (shrink)

According to Eugenie Scott, methodological materialism---the view that science attempts to explain the world using material processes---does not imply philosophical materialism---the view that all that exists are material processes. Thus one can consistently be both a scientist and a theist. According to Phillip Johnson, however, methodological materialism presupposes philosophical materialism. Consequently, scientists are unable to see the cogency of supernatural explanations, like creationism. I argue that both Scott and Johnson are wrong: scientists are not limited to explaining tbe world using (...) material processes and science does not presuppose materialism. Thus scientists’ rejection of creationism is not irrational. (shrink)

This chapter compares and contrasts Quine’s naturalism with the versions of two post-Quineans on the nature of science, logic, and mathematics. The role of indispensability in the philosophy of mathematics is treated in detail.

ABSTRACT:This essay describes three commitments that have become central to the author's philosophical outlook, namely, to liberal naturalism, to metaphysical realism, and to the epistemic and ontological objectivity of normative judgments.Liberal naturalismis contrasted with familiar scientistic versions of naturalism and their project of forcing explanations in every field into models derived from one or another particular science. The form ofmetaphysical realismthat the author endorses rejects every form of verificationism, including the author's one-time ‘internal realism’, and insists that our (...) claims about the world are true or false and not just epistemically successful or unsuccessful and that the terms they contain typically refer to real entities. ‘Representationalism is no sin’. The central part of the essay is an account oftruthbased on a detailed analysis of Tarski's theory of truth and of the insights we can get from it as well as of the respects in which Tarski is misleading. The account ofthe objectivity of the normativein this essay draws on insights from Dewey as well as Scanlon. (shrink)

Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism aims to show that naturalism is, as he puts it, ‘incoherent or self defeating’. Plantinga supposes that, in the absence of any God-like being to guide the process, natural selection is unlikely to favour true belief. Plantinga overlooks the fact that adherents of naturalism may plausibly hold that there exist certain conceptual links between belief content and behaviour. Given such links, natural selection will favour true belief. A further rather surprising consequence of (...) the existence of such links is this: even if semantic properties are epiphenomenal, unguided evolution will still favour true belief. (shrink)

Epistemology plays an indisputably normative role in our affairs; it is this which is commonly argued to prevent epistemology's being naturalized. I propose a descriptivist account of epistemology. Epistemic judgments, concepts, and properties are essentially descriptive and only hypothetically and contingently normative. Epistemology enjoys an intimate relationship with human conduct and motivation--and is therefore normative--in virtue of its centrality and widespread utility as a means to our variable ends. Epistemology becomes normative only within the framework of instrumental reason and its (...) normativity is parasitic upon that of the latter. (shrink)

The prior issue of Krisis (42:1) published Critical Naturalism: A Manifesto, with the aim to instigate a debate of the issues raised in this manifesto – the necessary re-thinking of the role (and the concept) of nature in critical theory in relation to questions of ecology, health, and inequality. Since Krisis considers itself a place for philosophical debates that take contemporary struggles as starting point, it issued an open call and solicited responses to the manifesto. This is one of (...) the sixteen selected responses, which augment, specify, or question the assumptions and arguments of the manifesto. (shrink)

This article questions a common reading of Section 230 of Beyond Good and Evil as containing a canonical statement of Nietzsche’s naturalism. The section cannot be read simply as the programmatic statement of an investigative task, and is relatively vague as to its nature. Nietzsche’s aim is aporetic. He presents the naturalist task as involving mental self-cruelty and a struggle with unconscious vanity, suggesting that thinkers have found no way to justify why they choose this task, unless they invoke (...) self-descriptions which are false and belong to a metaphysical conception of truth and inquiry that naturalism must resist. In the Genealogy, Nietzsche revisits this theme and announces his task as that of calling into question these justifications of naturalist inquiry. (shrink)

Accession Number: ATLA0001712242; Hosting Book Page Citation: p 430-452.; Language(s): English; General Note: Bibliography: p 451-452.; Issued by ATLA: 20130825; Publication Type: Essay.

Aesthetic theoriesmayclaim universality, but they are normally conditioned by the aesthetic issues and debates of their own times. Plato and Aristo- tle were motivated both to account for the Greek arts of their day and to connect aesthetics to their general metaphysics and theories of value. Closer to our time, asNo¨el Carroll observes, the theories of Clive Bell and R.G. Collingwood can be viewed as “defenses of emerging avant-garde practices— neoimpressionism, on the one hand, and the mod- ernist poetics of (...) Joyce, Stein, and Eliot on the other.”1 Susanne Langer can be read as provid- ing a justification for modern dance, while the ini- tial version of George Dickie’s institutional the- ory “requires something like the presupposition that Dada is a central form of artistic practice” in order to gain intuitive appeal. The. (shrink)

This text provides an extensive exploration of the relationship between the thought of Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap, providing a new argument for the complementarity of their mature philosophies as part of a collaborative metatheory of science. In arguing that both Neurath and Carnap must be interpreted as proponents of epistemological naturalism, and that their naturalisms rest on shared philosophical ground, it is also demonstrated that the boundaries and possibilities for epistemological naturalism are not as restrictive as Quinean (...) orthodoxy has previously suggested. Both building on and challenging the scholarship of the past four decades, this naturalist reading of Carnap also provides a new interpretation of Carnap’s conception of analyticity, allowing for a refutation of the Quinean argument for the incompatibility of naturalism and the analytic/synthetic distinction. In doing so, the relevance and potential importance of their scientific meta-theory for contemporary questions in the philosophy of science is demonstrated. This text appeals to students and researchers working on Logical Empiricism, Quine, the history of analytic philosophy and the history of philosophy of science, as well as proponents of naturalized epistemology. (shrink)

Scientific knowledge is not merely a matter of reconciling theories and laws with data and observations. Science presupposes a number of metatheoretic shaping principles in order to judge good methods and theories from bad. Some of these principles are metaphysical (e.g., the uniformity of nature) and some are methodological (e.g., the need for repeatable experiments). While many shaping principles have endured since the scientific revolution, others have changed in response to conceptual pressures both from within science and without. Many of (...) them have theistic roots. For example, the notion that nature conforms to mathematical laws flows directly from the early modern presupposition that there is a divine Lawgiver. This interplay between theism and shaping principles is often unappreciated in discussions about the relation between science and religion. Today, of course, naturalists reject the influence of theism and prefer to do science on their terms. But as Robert Koons and Alvin Plantinga have argued, this is more difficult than is typically assumed. In particular, they argue, metaphysical naturalism is in conflict with several metatheoretic shaping principles, especially explanatory virtues such as simplicity and with scientific realism more broadly. These arguments will be discussed as well as possible responses. In the end, theism is able to provide justification for the philosophical foundations of science that naturalism cannot. (shrink)

Simon Blackburn can be seen as challenging those committed to sui generis moral facts to explain the supervenience of the moral on the descriptive. We (like perhaps Derek Parfit) hold that normative facts in general are sui generis. We also hold that the normative supervenes on the descriptive, and we here endeavour to answer the generalization of Blackburn's challenge. In the course of pursuing this answer, we suggest that Frank Jackson's descriptivism rests on a conception of properties inappropriate to discussions (...) of normativity, and we see reason to reject descriptivism generally. We also discuss the views of David Brink, Jonathan Dancy and Bernard Williams in this area. (shrink)

Many political realists reject the idea that the first task for political philosophy is to justify the existence of coercive political institutions. Instead, they say, we should begin with the factual existence of CPIs, and ask how they ought to be structured. In holding this view, they adopt a form of political naturalism that is broadly Aristotelian in character. In this article, I distinguish between two forms that this political naturalism might take - what I call a ‘strong’ (...) form, and a ‘weak’ form - and argue that both ought to be rejected. (shrink)

In this paper I present a new objection to the Aristotelian Naturalism defended by Philippa Foot. I describe this objection as a membership objection because it reveals the fact that AN invites counterexamples when pressed to identify the individuals bound by its normative claims. I present three examples of agents for whom the norms generated by AN are not obviously authoritative: mutants, aliens, and the Great Red Dragon. Those who continue to advocate for Foot's view can give compelling replies (...) to the first two of these examples, but their replies drive the view into an unwelcome result when it faces the last example. I conclude that the concept of being human, on which AN crucially depends, is not as straightforward as Foot's advocates presume. (shrink)

In this essay I discuss the limits of recent attempts to develop a neo-Aristotelian virtue ethic on the basis of a commitment to ‘ethical naturalism.’ By ‘ethical naturalism’ I mean the view that ethics can be founded on claims about what it is for human beings to flourish qua member of the human species, which is analogous to what it is for plants and other animals to flourish qua member of their particular species. Drawing on Charles Taylor’s account (...) of ‘strong evaluation,’ I argue that there are important features of our ethical life that can only be properly understood from a first-personal or phenomenological standpoint as contrasted with the third-personal standpoint of ethical naturalism: viz., (1) The sense of ‘nobility’ in performing virtuous actions for their own sake as a constitutive part of the good life; (2) The nature and extent of other-regarding concern; and (3) The issue of ‘the meaning of life,’ which also raises the issue of the place of ‘transcendence’ in an account of the good life. While I emphasize the need for a deeper engagement with our first-personal evaluative experience, I also discuss the interdependence of the first-personal and third-personal perspectives in the ethical life. (shrink)

This volume considers in depth and carefully a cluster of issues central to contemporary philosophical and social scientific investigation while utilising methods and conceptualisations at the very cutting edge of philosophy.

Phenomenologists such as Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty reject the kind of scientific naturalism or that takes empirical science to be epistemologically and metaphysically privileged over all other forms of enquiry. In this paper, I will consider one of their principal complaints against naturalism, that scientific accounts of things are oblivious to a that is presupposed by the intelligibility of science. Focusing mostly upon Husserl's work, I attempt to clarify the nature of this complaint and state it in the (...) form of an argument. I conclude that the argument is effective in exposing naturalism's reliance upon impoverished conceptions of human experience, and that it also weakens the more general case for naturalism. (shrink)

To develop critical thinking skills, higher order ethical reasoning, a better grasp of the implications of ethical decisions, and a basis for ethical knowledge, it is necessary to explore the philosophical premises foundational to one’s ethical persuasion. No philosophical premises are more important than those pertaining to the nature of human personhood and business’ responsibility to respect the inherent value of human beings. Philosophical naturalism assigns the essence of human personhood strictly to causal interactions of physical matter. Substance dualism, (...) on the other hand, posits both a physical aspect and an immaterial substance to personhood, interacting within the totality of each being. This paper argues for the logical superiority of substance dualism in achieving the overriding objective of discerning ethical knowledge. Substance dualism offers a better explanation – and one that more closely follows the way most people commonly experience themselves and others–than naturalism for free agency and accountability, meaningful moral standards, confidence in knowing what ethical decisions to make, and the moral drive residing in conscience. (shrink)

John McDowell has argued that for human needs to matter in practical deliberation, we must have already acquired the full range of character traits that are imparted by an ethical upbringing. Since our upbringings can diverge considerably, his argument makes trouble for any Aristotelian ethical naturalism that wants to support a single set of moral virtues. I argue here that there is a story to be told about the normal course of human life according to which it is no (...) coincidence that there is agreement on the virtues. Because we are creatures who arrive at personhood only by learning from others in a relation of dependency, we cannot help but see ourselves as creatures for whom non-instrumental rationality is the norm. Those who train others in personhood must view the trainee's interests as having a value independent of their interests and must imbue the trainee with a sense of that value. Extending and preserving the sense of self-worth that we must acquire if we are to acquire personhood requires we see ourselves as creatures who need something like the virtues. (shrink)

ABSTRACT I offer an approach to the problem of life’s meaning which poses a radical challenge to some of the familiar terms of this debate. First, I defend an expansive form of naturalism which involves a rejection of the common assumption that naturalism and theism are logically incompatible and offers a framework from which to rethink some of the central concepts operative in discussions of life’s meaning. Second, I defend a ‘desire solution’ to the problem of life’s meaning. (...) My initial inspiration is Richard Taylor’s version of such a position as articulated in his book Good and Evil. I argue that this solution is best articulated from within an expansive naturalist framework, raise some doubts about Taylor’s metaphysics, and make a connection with the Nietzschean problem of nihilism. (shrink)

This essay will examine scholarly attempts at distilling a proto-ethical philosophy from the Daoist classic known as the Zhuangzi. In opposition to interpretations of the text which characterize it as amoralistic, I will identify elements of a natural normativity in the Zhuangzi. My examination features passages from the Zhuangzi – commonly known as the “knack” passages – which are often interpreted through some sort of linguistic, skeptical, or relativistic lens. Contra such readings, I believe the Zhuangzi prescribes an art of (...) living – or shù [術] – which incorporates a few motifs familiar to certain threads of philosophical naturalism. Building on existing scholarship which treats of the praxeology of the text, I argue that the naturalist themes present in the Zhuangzi support an unusual, but robust, view of moral expertise. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:From Methodological Naturalism to Interpretive Exclusivism About Religious PsychopathologyJosé Eduardo Porcher, PhDA particularly deep form of hermeneutical injustice arises when clinicians undermine a patient’s meaningful interpretation of their alleged psychotic symptoms within a religious framework. Cases like Femi’s (Rashed, 2010) illustrate how diagnosing and treating psychotic symptoms with religious content can perpetuate this injustice. Femi’s symptoms, which were very real, were interpreted solely as indicative of a psychotic (...) episode, without considering the possibility of a religious experience. Although hermeneutical injustice is often caused by negative stereotypes, lack of conceptual resources, implicit biases, practices of epistemic privileging, patronizing attitudes, and wrongful pathologization, I propose that interpretive exclusivism about religious psychopathology plays a pivotal role in causing hermeneutical injustice when attributing psychotic symptoms with religious content—that is, the view that an experience is either psychopathological or religious (Scrutton, 2023). Routinely, on attributing psychosis, the potential for the patient to have a genuine religious experience is disregarded and excluded from the therapeutic process and from the very realm of possibility. Why?In their thoughtful commentary, Rosa Ritunnano and Ian James Kidd do me the favor of not only giving careful attention to my argument, but also elucidating my position and providing avenues for further clarification. Although I have not gone much into what is behind interpretive exclusivism, they are right to point to unquestioning adherence to some form of naturalism. Contrary to what they intimate, however, I do not think we are speaking of different kinds of hermeneutical injustice. As I see it, we are speaking about the same kind of injustice, only at different levels of explanation. In my article, I rhetorically ask why [End Page 241] it is assumed that psychotic and religious experiences cannot coexist, and why it is assumed that the same experience cannot be both a genuine religious experience and an instance of psycho-pathology. Ritunnano and Kidd point in the right direction when they say, “Some interpretations of kinds of experience with religious content can be undermined if one is committed to a metaphysical naturalism” (2024, p. 235).Naturalism can be divided into two components: metaphysical and methodological (Papineau, 2020). The metaphysical component concerns the contents of reality, affirming the absence of “supernatural” or other metaphysically elusive entities. In contrast, the methodological component focuses on approaches to investigating reality and attributes a general authority to the scientific method. Therefore, metaphysical naturalism is the more comprehensive view, as it outright denies the existence of the supernatural. Meanwhile, methodological (or scientific) naturalism refers to a pragmatic approach within scientific inquiry, stating that the right methodology to investigate and research something (where this something might not be immediately obvious to be a scientific topic) is that of science, often particular of natural sciences.Although a commitment to metaphysical naturalism may at times be what lies behind interpretive exclusivism, we do not need to go that far, since a commitment to methodological naturalism is enough to breed unwarranted ontological exclusion in practice (Plantinga, 1997; Ratcliffe, 2003). This in turn leads to interpretive exclusivism which is, I argue, the main theoretical flaw behind the kind of hermeneutical injustice I am trying to flesh out. As Ritunnano and Kidd observe, either tacit or explicit adherence to such ontological exclusion causes individuals to struggle to view another person’s spiritual or religious interpretive framework as coherent or even intelligible. Note, however, that the opposite of interpretive exclusivism—that is, interpretive inclusivism—does not need to affirm that the experience is exclusively or even genuinely religious but rather keeps that question open while considering significant epistemic and meaning-making possibilities.Finally, in his commentary, Alasdair Coles (2024) proposes that I overlook the fact that some individuals undergo psychoses featuring deeply distressing and dark religious imagery, the dismissal of which can be therapeutically beneficial. He also contends that therapists often default to considering all religious content as inauthentic, contrasting this with my alleged stance, which he believes assumes the opposite extreme and may be equally or more harmful. In making these assertions, he misrepresents my argument on two counts. I took care to avoid implying that all religious experiences should be uncritically accepted and that all religious content is inherently... (shrink)

Theistic religions are not the only religions in the West. Many nontheistic religions are religions of energy. This energy is ultimate, optimizing, impersonal, and natural. Although it cannot be worshiped, this energy can be aroused, directed, and shaped. Hence the energy religions involve tools and techniques for the therapeutic application of the ultimate energy to the self. They are technologies of the self. Attention is focused here on four new types of energy religion. These include the religions of consciousness (e.g. (...) the New Stoicism, Westernized Buddhism); the religions of vision (involving the ethical use of entheogens); the religions of dance (e.g. religious raves); and the religions of beauty (e.g. Burning Man). (shrink)

In this paper I propose a naturalist account of the Buddhist epistemological discussion of svasaṃvitti ('self-awareness', 'self-cognition') following similar attempts in the domains of phenomenology and analytic epistemology. First, I examine the extent to which work in naturalized epistemology and phenomenology, particularly in the areas of perception and intentionality, could be profitably used in unpacking the implications of the Buddhist epistemological project. Second, I argue against a foundationalist reading of the causal account of perception offered by Dignāga and Dharmakīrti. Finally, (...) I argue that it is possible to read Dignāga's (and following him Dharmakīrti's) treatment of svasaṃvitti_ as offering something like a phenomenological account of embodied self-awareness. (shrink)

My topic here is metaphilosophy, the question of how philosophy is properly done. For some years now, I've been developing a particularly austere, roughly naturalistic approach to philosophical questions that I call 'second philosophy'. It has seemed to me that one effective way to convey the spirit of second philosophy is to compare and contrast it with other more familiar methods, like transcendental or therapeutic philosophy. Here I hope to pursue this sort of engagement with two other venerable schools of (...) thought: Hume's 'science of man' and Reid's 'philosophy of common sense'. Hume presents a fitting starting point for any discussion of naturalism -- even more so when Reid is on the agenda -- so my first pass at a portrait of the second philosopher traces her relations to the 'scientist of man'. Of course, Hume's cheerfully industrious inquirer eventually lands on the barren rock of skepticism, so we'll also take a second-philosophical look at the kinds of considerations that led poor Hume to his shipwreck. This sets the stage for Reid. (shrink)

A common objection raised against naturalism is that a naturalized epistemology cannot account for the essential normative character of epistemology. Following an analysis of different ways in which this charge could be understood, it will be argued that either epistemology is not normative in the relevant sense, or if it is, then in a way which a naturalized epistemology can account for with an instrumental and hypothetical model of normativity. Naturalism is here captured by the two doctrines of (...) empiricism and gradualism. Epistemology is a descriptive discipline about what knowledge is and under what conditions a knowledge-claim is justified. However, we can choose to adopt a standard of justification and by doing so be evaluated by it. In this sense our epistemic practices have a normative character, but this is a form of normativity a naturalized epistemology can make room for. The normativity objection thus fails. However, in the course of this discussion, as yet another attempt to clarify the normativity objection, such a naturalistic model will be contrasted with Donald Davidson’s theory of interpretation. Even though this comparison will not improve upon the negative verdict upon the original objection, it will be argued that naturalism cannot accept Davidson’s theory since it contains at least one constitutive principle – the principle of charity – whose epistemic status is incompatible with the naturalistic doctrine of gradualism. So, if this principle has this role, then epistemology cannot be naturalized. (shrink)