The American way of Renaissance and the Humanistic Tradition of Greece -- The Aristotelian tradition in American naturalism -- George Santayana and Greek philosophy -- Frederick J.E. Woodbridge and the Aristotelian tradition -- John Dewey and ancient philosophies -- John H. Randall Jr.'s interpretation of Greek philosophy -- The ontology of Herbert W. Schneider -- Ernest Nagel's pragmatism and Aristotle's principle of contradiction -- The naturalistic metaphysics of Justus Buchler -- Naturalism and the platonic tradition.

American naturalists all agree that traditional theism, with its belief in a supernatural personal god who is absolutely transcendent to nature, is inconsistent with the view that nature is all that there is. Yet despite the rejection of the traditional God of theism, some naturalists have found pantheism, with its belief in a divinity thoroughly immanent to nature, congenial. Nonetheless, no philosophically rigorous and systematic juxtaposition of the metaphysical and ethical commitments of pantheism with those of naturalism has (...) been undertaken. This essay seeks to fill that gap by investigating the viability of pantheism from the perspective of the ordinal naturalism of Justus Buchler. Several reasons can be .. (shrink)

Philosophy as a discipline is facing new challenges that will determine its future. The challenges include the historic ones relating to economic conditions and administrative leadership that focuses on preparation for employment in a way that lessens the intellectual development of students. But the new challenges occur in a worldwide democratic recession and in political leadership that seems to be moving toward greater censorship and less academic freedom. In America, this is also occurring with a decline in student enrollment that (...) negatively impacts the liberal arts and particularly philosophy. This article examines the way two forms of American naturalism may respond. John Dewey’s cultural naturalism and George Santayana’s thorough, non-reductive naturalism provide an array of alternatives. I explore alternatives open to philosophers that include abandoning philosophy by leaving the university or becoming an administrator as well as alternatives available if one remains in the university. Finally, I offer four criteria for judging the viability of choosing any of the alternatives. (shrink)

The basic tenets of “classical” naturalism (exemplified in the work of Mead, Buchler, and Randall, among others) are delineated and distinguished from other versions of naturalism. Classical naturalism is also distinguished from reductive materialism and idealism. Nature is asserted to be indefinitely plural and not amenable to monistic or dualistic categorial schemes; that is, the principle of “ontological parity” is maintained. The method of inquiry of naturalism is outlined, along with the notion of truth as perspectivally (...) objective. The metaphysical hypotheses are then used to examine culture. Culture is found to be the specific environment of human being, arising out of, but irreducible to, other natural processes. Culture is described as the cumulative gestures of the human social organism as it discovers and creates itself in mutual constitution with other natural processes and products. (shrink)

Catholic University Of America, Philosophical Series, No 197, Abstract No. 47.

Catholic University Of America, Philosophical Series, No 197, Abstract No. 47.

Naturalism dominated twentieth century American philosophy.1 Naturalism is a philosophical worldview that relies upon experience, reason, and especially science for developing an understanding of reality. Naturalism demands that these three modes of understanding together shall control our notion of reality. Varieties of naturalism emerge because the many essential factors of experience, reason, and science can be coherently related in numerous ways. All naturalisms demand that experience, reason, and science be taken most seriously so that no (...) fourth mode of understanding can be permitted to override them. This triadic unity moderates the excesses of phenomenalism and idealism, and filters out spiritualism and .. (shrink)

Describes the life and accomplishments of the nineteenth-century author best known for his work "Walden" and his dedication to expanding the philosophy of ...

Technology can be based on aesthetic sensibility rather than becoming just one more aggressive assault on nature. Resources for such an alteration of cultural consciousness can be found within the Daoist understanding of nature as unceasing birth, death, and rebirth. The articulation of such a perspective can use the tools developed within the tradition of American Naturalism. Dewey and Peirce, in particular, offer ways of establishing a community of inquiry based on such a sensibility.

In addition to the vast influence of science, American naturalism owes its origins in large part to a reaction against elements in traditional American religion.

In this paper, I would like to focus upon two things. The first concerns the intertwining of naturalism and religion, namely the fact that early American naturalism defined itself as a “secular religion”. This expression sounds like an oxymoron, but the analysis of a dazzling text by Francis Ellingwood Abbot will help us to clarify the concept of “godless religion”, which will be taken up in the following years by all the major naturalists of the time. The (...) second concerns the power of the symbolic dimension of naturalism, especially in the debates of the 1940s. In those years naturalism was engaged in a battle for the survival of democracy. “Science”, “democracy” and “freedom” were not only concepts debated on a theoretical level, but they outlined a system of archetypes by virtue of which post-war liberal and democratic America would build a relevant part of its self-image. (shrink)

The “Morbid Fear of the Subjective” (copyright by Roy Wood Sellars) represents a key-element of the American naturalist debate of the Mid-twentieth century. On the one hand, we are witnessing to the unconditional trust in the objectivity of scientific discourse, while on the other (and as a consequence) there is the attempt to exorcise the myth of the “subjective” and of its metaphysical privateness. This theoretical roadmap quickly assumed the shape of an even sociological contrast between the “democraticity” of (...) natural sciences and the fanaticism implicit in supernatural metaphysical systems. In between these two extremes stood phenomenology, in its early days on American soil. Its notion of “evidence”, which is less easily to naturalize than it might seem, was in fact hardly consistent with the widespread concept of “natural experience” of the world. (shrink)

Cornelius de Pauw was very well known in the last decades of the eighteenth century for his Recherches philosophiques sur les Américains. That work was developed on a naturalist hypothesis that asserted that nature conditioned all living beings. From this, he analyzed and compared American nature, including its animals and inhabitants, and concluded that it was degenerated and inferior in all fields to that of the Old World. This article contends with an author that represents a central link in (...) the eighteenth-century process of indigenous dehumanization. For doing this, the article first points out de Pauw’s context and influences. Second, it expounds his description of American nature and then, as the outcome of this, his characterization of the indigenous “natural” condition. After that, the article considers his reasoning regarding indigenous non-adaptation to Western way of life as a case of moral disengagement. Finally, the author reflects about the type of work de Pauw wrote and stresses his role in promoting the dehumanization and annihilation of the indigenous Americans. (shrink)

This comprehensive collection, bringing together significant essays by leading philosophers of the twentieth century, represents one prominent school of American thought philosophic naturalism. Naturalism holds that nature is objective and can be studied to gain knowledge that is not determined by methodology, perspective, belief, or theory. For the naturalist, "nature" is an all-encompassing concept; nothing is other than natural and any notion of a supernatural realm is rejected. Naturalism, however, cannot be equated with materialistic reductionism or (...) strict determinism. Certain nonmaterial aspects of human existence thoughts, feelings, meanings, values, beliefs, ideals, and free will are included within the scope of the naturalist's approach. (shrink)

If contemporary analytic philosophy can be said to have a philosophical ideology, it undoubtedly is naturalism. Naturalism is often invoked as a motivating ground for many philosophical projects, and “naturalization” programs abound everywhere, in theory of knowledge, philosophy of mind, theory of meaning, metaphysics, and ethics. But what is naturalism, and where does it come from? This paper examines the naturalism debate in midtwentieth-century America as a proximate source of contemporary naturalism. Views of philosophers like (...) Roy Wood Sellars, John Dewey, John Herman Randall, Sydney Hook, and Ernest Nagel are cited, and some of the central tenets of naturalism, such as an adherence to “scientific method” as the sole source of knowledge and the causal/ explanatory closure of the natural world, are explored. The paper ends with a brief discussion of how certain naturalistic constraints lead to some of the problems currently debated in metaethics and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Historical reconstructions of the effects of the intellectual migration are typically informed by one of two conflicting narratives. Some scholars argue that refugee philosophers, in particular the logical positivists, contributed to the demise of distinctly American schools of thought. Others reject this ‘eclipse view’ and argue that postwar analytic philosophy can best be characterized as a synthesis of American and positivist views. This paper studies the fate of one of the most influential schools of U.S. philosophy—Columbia naturalism—and (...) argues that both narratives are part of a larger story. First, I reconstruct the rise of the Columbia school, focusing on its naturalist analyses of science, morality, and religion as well as its contributions to the history of ideas. Next, I trace some of the naturalists’ contacts with German philosophers and show that they encountered a strong bifurcation between historical and scientific philosophy in their discussions. I argue that a similar distinction gradually infected debates between naturalists, eventually resulting in a split within the Columbia school itself. The historically-oriented naturalists, I argue, were overshadowed by the analytic movement, whereas the science-minded naturalists were able to incorporate the views of the émigrés, thereby developing the tradition in new directions. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Santayana: American Naturalism's Early Role Model Some Episodes in the History of the New Naturalism Naturalism in the Last Half of the Twentieth Century.

Many contemporary Anglo-American philosophers describe themselves as naturalists. But what do they mean by that term? Popular naturalist slogans like, "there is no first philosophy" or "philosophy is continuous with the natural sciences" are far from illuminating. "Understanding Naturalism" provides a clear and readable survey of the main strands in recent naturalist thought. The origin and development of naturalist ideas in epistemology, metaphysics and semantics is explained through the works of Quine, Goldman, Kuhn, Chalmers, Papineau, Millikan and others. (...) The most common objections to the naturalist project - that it involves a change of subject and fails to engage with "real" philosophical problems, that it is self-refuting, and that naturalism cannot deal with normative notions like truth, justification and meaning - are all discussed. "Understanding Naturalism" distinguishes two strands of naturalist thinking - the constructive and the deflationary - and explains how this distinction can invigorate naturalism and the future of philosophical research. (shrink)

Against the backdrop of declining support for the humanities in American culture, this presidential address urges the philosophical community to examine itself. Scientific naturalists in particular are invited to apply their theories about the tribal nature of human social groups to their own community. The ultimate goal is to encourage contemporary naturalistic philosophers to reclaim the humanistic appeal of historical naturalists such as William James and David Hume. While the goal of the essay is serious, its tone as a (...) dinnertime address is irreverent, including among other indiscretions an analogy between prominent philosophical naturalists and leaders of the Tea Party. (shrink)

Originally published by Rand McNally & Company in 1969, this volume provides a discussion of the Gilded Age, the decades between the end of the Civil War and the closing of the Spanish-American War. Many aspects of this period are examined, including the transition from a rural-agrarian federation to an industrial, urban nation-state. An intensive study of ideas, this volume fulfills the need for an informative and highly readable work of the intellectual and cultural developments in an important era (...) of American History. (shrink)

Introduction: From legal realism to naturalized jurisprudence -- A note on legal indeterminacy -- Part I. American legal realism and its critics -- Rethinking legal realism: toward a naturalized jurisprudence (1997) -- Legal realism and legal positivism reconsidered (2001) -- Is there an "American" jurisprudence? (1997) -- Postscript to Part I: Interpreting legal realism -- Part II. Ways of naturalizing jurisprudence -- Legal realism, hard positivism, and the limits of conceptual analysis (1998, 2001) -- Why Quine is not (...) a postmodernist (1997) -- Beyond the Hart/Dworkin debate: the methodology problem in jurisprudence (2003) -- Part III. Naturalism, morality, and objectivity -- Moral facts and best explanations (2001) -- Objectivity, morality, and adjudication (2001) -- Law and objectivity (2002). (shrink)

The tendency of postmodernity emphasizes on linguistic deconstruction and construction rather than being and nature. Deconstructive attitude is very meaningful in order to overcome modernity through critiques on reason and rationality. However, I feel still unsatisfactory. It is the beginning of this paper. Taoism is focused on nature's spontaneity as logic and grammar to interpret everything that is Wu-wei as the void. It pays attention to immanent transformation and change in nature. Robert Corrington's Ecstatic Naturalism, as a son of (...) American naturalism and Continental metaphysics, walks confidently on the path of postmodernity of deconstruction. These two thoughts are not far away and seem to be good friends. They are fundamentally different; one is very old, the other is very new. Nevertheless, they are very common in explaining everything through natural process and avoiding causality and anthropocentrism. They are ecstatic and mystical due to the emphasis of spiritual and ecstatic transformation. On the other hand, there is a decisive difference between Taoism and Ecstatic Naturalism. Taoism is truly based on continuity and the connectedness of all things as an organism. There is always a gap and division within Ecstatic Naturalism which can appear in tension, in qualitative difference. This tension and betweenness make orders and signification possible. These differences and gaps are explained by the source of movement as negativity. However, void and nothingness cannot be reduced to negativity in Taoism. Taoism does not like hunger and drives, which cannot support the movement of Tao. The movement of Tao is based on returning to origin. In Taoism, nothingness and the void are basic foundations of all kinds of production and manifestation of Tao. In the universe, continuity and connectedness are always "already@ without human beings' artificial intervention. Therefore, the focus is on harmony and equilibrium rather than on tension or difference. Hunger and drives are not natural in Taoism. Ecstatic Naturalism seeks to construct a sound metaphysics to cover division and to free it from linguistic bondage. Taoism is still skeptical about language and knowledge, i. e., insofar as they do not embody Tao. Spiritual transformation is natural itself through forgetting of the self as desubstantialization of the self, which is quite different from Ecstatic Naturalism, which affirms the reliving powers in the face of the ontological difference. They take two different roads in a sense. However, from the perspective of a Korean American philosopher, they are not quite different but very close. (shrink)

Naturalism's Philosophy of the Sacred furthers the tradition of religious naturalism by offering an approach to the sacred through the metaphysical categories of ordinality and ontological parity put forward by twentieth-century American naturalist Justus Buchler. The book's chief argument is that the most effective antidote to religious violence is an aesthetic interpretation of the sacred understood as an order in and of nature.

This paper analyzes the specific shift in the meaning of “civilization” that took place in texts and documents of early American philosophical naturalism. Particularly, it will focus on the specific role that naturalization plays in the edification of a newly secularized, science-oriented, and democratic society, as well as of a naturalized conception of culture and civilization. Indeed, as the work of many philosophers and intellectuals of the Forties highlights, naturalism represents not only the banner of a new (...) idea of civilization, but at the same time becomes the symbol of a powerful postwar ideology. (shrink)

It is said that America came of age in­tellectually with the appearance of the pragmatic movement in philosophy. _Pragmatic Naturalism _presents a selec­tive and interpretative overview of this philosophy as developed in the writings of its intellectual founders and chief exponents—Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, George Herbert Mead, and John Dewey. Mr. Eames groups the leading ideas of these pragmatic natu­ralists around the general fields of “Na­ture and Human Life,” “Knowledge,” “Value,” and “Education,” treating the primary concerns and special (...) emphasis of each philosopher to these issues. Philosophy students, teachers of phi­losophy, and general readers will find this book a comprehensive overview of American philosophy. (shrink)

This essay compares and contrasts pragmatic naturalism with the more well known position of epistemological naturalism on several pivotal issues, in the process offering a pragmatic critique of the latter. It highlights their common rejection of both foundationalism and a priori methods and their positive claims that: what needs examination is not our concept of knowledge but knowledge itself; knowledge must be understood as tied to the world and as a natural phenomenon to be examined in its natural (...) setting; the epistemic endeavor involves unifying its three traditional projects of giving an account of what knowledge is, explaining how knowledge is possible, and providing useful epistemic advice, thus involving normative considerations; and the method of gaining knowledge in general is continuous with the method of science. Yet, there are very great divergences between the two naturalisms concerning the answers offered, and these are explored and evaluated in the development of the essay. (shrink)

The work of the American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars continues to have a significant impact on the contemporary philosophical scene. His writings have influenced major thinkers such as Rorty, McDowell, Brandom, and Dennett, and many of Sellars basic conceptions, such as the logical space of reasons, the myth of the given, and the manifest and scientific images, have become standard philosophical terms. Often, however, recent uses of these terms do not reflect the richness or the true sense of Sellars original (...) ideas. This book gets to the heart of Sellars philosophy and provides students with a comprehensive critical introduction to his lifes work. The book is structured around what Sellars himself regarded as the philosophers overarching task: to achieve a coherent vision of reality that will finally overcome the continuing clashes between the world as common sense takes it to be and the world as science reveals it to be. It provides a clear analysis of Sellars groundbreaking philosophy of mind, his novel theory of consciousness, his defense of scientific realism, and his thoroughgoing naturalism with a normative turn. Providing a lively examination of Sellars work through the central problem of what it means to be a human being in a scientific world, this book will be a valuable resource for all students of philosophy. (shrink)

1. Naturalism Naturalism, it has been said, is the distinctive development in philosophy over the last thirty years. There has been a naturalistic turn away from the a priori methods of traditional philosophy to a conception of philosophy as continuous with natural science. The doctrine has been extensively discussed and has won considerable following in the USA. This is, on the whole, not true of Britain and continental Europe, where the pragmatist tradition never took root, and the temptations (...) of scientism in philosophy were less alluring. Contemporary American naturalism originates in the writings of Quine, the metaphysician of twentieth-century science. With extraordinary panache, he painted a largescale picture of human nature, of language and of the web of belief. I believe that in almost every major respect, it is, like the picture painted by Descartes, the great metaphysician of seventeenth-century science, mistaken. But it evidently appeals to the spirit of the times. So it is worthy of critical examination and careful refutation. I shall argue that the naturalistic turn is a cul-de-sac – a turn that is to be passed by if we are to keep to the highroad of good sense. Naturalism, like so many of Quine’s doctrines, was propounded in response to Carnap. As Quine understood matters, Carnap had been persuaded by Russell’s Our Knowledge of the External World that it is the task of philosophy to demonstrate that our knowledge of the external world is a logical construction out of, and hence can be reduced to, elementary experiences. Quine rejected the reductionism of Carnap’s Logischer Aufbau, and found the idealist basis uncongenial to his own dogmatic realist behaviourism, inspired by Watson and later reinforced by Skinner. The rejection of reductionism and ‘unregenerate realism’, Quine averred, were the sources of his naturalism (FME 72). What exactly was this? We can distinguish in Quine between three different but inter-related programmes for future philosophy: epistemological, ontological and philosophical naturalism. Naturalized epistemology is to displace traditional epistemology, transforming the investigation into ‘an enterprise within natural science’ (NNK 68) – a psychological enterprise of investigating how the ‘input’ of radiation, etc., impinging on the nerve endings of human beings can ‘ultimately’ result in an ‘output’ of our theoretical descriptions of the external world.. (shrink)

Pragmatism, the philosophy native to America, has once again grown to prominence in philosophical debate around the world. Today, the type of pragmatism that is proving to be of greatest value for fostering discussions with other worldviews is pragmatic naturalism. The fourteen provocative essays in this original collection are all by philosophers who describe themselves as pragmatic naturalists and who are active in the present-day revival of American pragmatism. Pragmatic naturalism, like all varieties of pragmatism, steers clear (...) of the extreme intellectualism too often found in philosophy. Pragmatic naturalism stresses that genuine inquiry must be conducted in a consistently empirical manner and be responsive to real human problems. It also contends that the sciences and their methodologies are superior to other modes of inquiry into the human environment. Despite the curious fact that pragmatism is often taken to be opposed to realism, the essays in this volume assert the interdependence of pragmatism with some type of realistic metaphysical stance. As such they advance the debates over the question of realism by uncovering and investigating the deepest assumptions running through recent Anglo-American philosophy. This excellent collection of high-quality essays on a resurgent school of American philosophy will be of interest to philosophers as well as scholars in the natural and social sciences. (shrink)

Justus Buchler’s 1966 Metaphysics of Natural Complexes seems so unique as to be sui generis. In it he declares that everything discriminable in any way is a “natural complex,” including every fact, substance, particular, process, universal, experience, property, mind, etc., even the concept of a natural complex itself. Every natural complex obtains in multiple orders of relations to other complexes, so each complex has indefinitely many “integrities,” each its function in some order. No complex is any more or less real (...) than any other; witches and whales are equally real, one in an order of historical fiction, another in the order of zoology. The totality of complexes is not a... (shrink)

Is epistemology the opium of modern philosophers, numbing fine minds and filling them with world‐denying dreams? The American pragmatist John Dewey (1859–1952) was convinced that it was, and he thought his brand of naturalism was the proper way to treat this pernicious addiction. In this chapter, I shall present Dewey's audacious and influential defense of this thesis. Audacious, because Dewey attacks assumptions about the nature of mind, knowledge, truth, and reality which have long been central to Western philosophy. (...) Influential, because Dewey's bold polemic has served as a major reference point for several leading pragmatists – Sidney Hook (1902–1989), W.V.O. Quine (1908–2000), Richard Rorty (1931–2007), and Philip Kitcher (b. 1947) – whose naturalist predilections are well known. (shrink)

BOOK REVIEWS 3~3 reaction to them into account. The actual historical dialectic involving Moore, Mal- colm, and Wittgenstein is a good deal more complicated, and more interesting, than the story told here by Stroll. Moving on to Stroll's discussion of Wittgenstein, I should now acknowledge that, so far as I can judge, Stroll offers a largely reliable account of On Certainty. In particular, in the best chapter of the book, on "Wittgenstein's Foundationalism," he makes a convincing case for the view (...) that Wittgenstein, unlike Moore, separates propositional knowledge from the kind of "non-propositional" certainty concerning what "stands fast" for us and which is primarily evinced in our ways of acting. What is less clear to me is just what kind of response to sceptical arguments this amounts to: Stroll says that although at some points Wittgenstein is prepared to countenance, in a relativist spirit which closely adjoins scepticism, radical changes in what is thus cer- tain, by and large towards the end of On Certainty Wittgenstein advances an "absolut- ist" position which rules out such changes. But if this is so , we surely need some arguments why it has to be so. But much here depends on the broader context within which Wittgenstein's position is developed and discussed. Despite noting Wittgenstein's invocation of the conception of man as a "primitive.. (shrink)