Sellars was committed to the irreducibility of the semantic, the intentional, and the normative. Nevertheless, he was also committed to naturalism, which is prima facie at odds with his other theses. This paper argues that Sellars maintained his naturalism by being linguistically pluralistic but ontologically monistic . There are irreducibly distinct forms of discourse, because there is an array of distinguishable functions that language and thought perform, but we are not ontologically committed to the array of apparently non-natural entities or (...) relations mentioned in the metalanguage. However, there is an underlying relation between language and world presupposed by all empirically meaningful language. In his early work Sellars sought to describe this relation in linguistic terms as a form of 'pure description', but inadequacies in that notion drove him towards the naturalistic relation between language and world that he came to call 'picturing'. (shrink)

In this chapter, we examine the naturalist approach in the philosophy of memory through the lens of the simulation theory of memory. On the theory, episodic memory is a kind of constructive simulation performed by a functionally specialized neurocognitive system. Taking naturalism to be a kind of methodological stance characterized by a cluster of epistemic guidelines, we illustrate the roles these guidelines have played in the development of the theory. We show how scientific evidence has guided both the selection of (...) the research question and the initial elaboration of the theory. We demonstrate how such evidence has led the simulationist to reject a familiar, commonsense picture of memory. We also trace the recent radicalization of the theory, highlighting the simulationist's continual reflection on their concepts and assumptions. In the spirit of such reflection, we end by outlining some outstanding challenges for the theory. (shrink)

This chapter is an invited contribution to a book on the naturalness of theistic belief. I start by considering ordinary usage of the term 'natural'. I then clarify how I shall use the terms 'naturalism', 'theism', 'worldview' and 'big picture'. I consider the demographic spread of commitment to theistic big pictures and naturalistic big pictures. I consider the distribution of happiness over those committed to theistic big pictures and naturalistic big pictures. I consider the (...) distribution of reasons over those committed to theistic big pictures and naturalistic big pictures. I consider whether intuitive considerations favour one kind of big picture over the other. As it often the case, I draw somewhat irenic conclusions from these considerations. (shrink)

The aim of this expository paper is to give an informal overview of a plausible naturalistic case for free will. I will describe what I take to be the main naturalistically motivated challenges for free will and respond to them by presenting an indispensability argument for free will. The argument supports the reality of free will as an emergent higher-level phenomenon. I will also explain why the resulting picture of free will does not conflict with the possibility that the (...) fundamental laws of nature are deterministic, and I will address some common objections. (shrink)

An increasingly common form of naturalism associated with the study of morality is what might be called “scientific naturalism,” which takes as its subject matter various empirical phenomena associated with talk of “morality” and aims to subject them to scientific inquiry, just like any other empirical phenomena. This is unproblematic when it comes to scientific investigations into the origins of the human capacity for normative guidance or moral emotions, or the neurophysiology associated with moral feeling and behavior, but things get (...) much more complicated when it comes to the project of explaining our moral beliefs. It is, of course, an empirical phenomenon that we hold the moral beliefs we do, so it may seem obvious that this too can be causally explained using scientific tools. But, while there is room for scientific inquiry into causal factors, such as evolutionary influences, that have plausibly helped to shape many moral beliefs to some degree, it is a mistake to assume that our moral beliefs across the board can best be explained through appeal exclusively to scientifically accessible causes. This scientific naturalist exclusivity assumption is in fact deeply problematic, overlooking (or prematurely dismissing) the possibility that at least many of our moral beliefs are best explained through our grasping of good reasons for them – considerations we correctly understand as justifying them, though this is not something that shows up in scientific causal explanations. It is easy to miss this point about the potential role of the appreciation of justification by the believing mind when considering moral judgments simply from the external perspective of an amoral anthropologist, but it becomes clear when taking up the internal perspective of the committed moral agent, as when thinking about why we ourselves believe that human trafficking is wrong. This matters because, while science is invoked by those who purport to provide “debunking explanations” of our moral beliefs across the board (showing them to result simply from causal factors insensitive to any objective moral facts), they are actually relying on the scientific naturalist exclusivity assumption, thus begging the question against their opponents, who hold that we have knowledge of objective morality as a result of grasping good reasons for it. I explore these complexities surrounding the explanation of our moral beliefs and argue that while the picture advocated by debunkers remains a possibility, it is certainly not established by science, and recent arguments purporting to debunk the idea of knowable, objective morality fail. (shrink)

Contemporary naturalism has two components. The first is ontological, and says, roughly, that all and only what the sciences say exists, really does exist. The other is methodological, and it says that only scientific explanations are legitimate explanations. Together these commitments promise a coherent picture of the world that is nicely integrated with an attractive epistemology. Despite the obvious appeal of naturalism, I would like to sound a note of caution. First, I would like to argue that naturalism's ontological commitment (...) cannot be vindicated. Not, that is, that it is false; rather, I argue that any attempt to show that it is true presupposes that it is not. Second, I argue that methodological naturalism is false. But, again, the problem is not straightforward. I will not claim that there are gaps in the explanations offered by science, such that the scientific project would be incomplete without emendation. Instead I argue that the goodness of an explanation depends, in part, on how the event to be explained is described, and that, some events, under some descriptions, call for non-scientific explanations. (shrink)

Naturalism is a term that stands for a family of positions that endorse the general idea of being true to, or guided by, “nature”, an idea as old as Western thought itself (e.g. Aristotle is often called a naturalist) and as various and open-ended as interpretations of “nature”. Since the rise of the modern scientific revolution in the seventeenth century, nature has increasingly come to be identified with the-worldas-studied-by-the-sciences. Consequently, naturalism has come to mean a set of positions defined in (...) terms of the scientific image of nature or the methods of scientific inquiry. In this brief article I shall focus upon explicating three versions of scientific naturalism: 1) naturalism in the arts especially literature; 2) philosophical naturalism; and 3) naturalism in the social sciences. These different naturalisms correspond to different ways of appealing to science, whether it be adopting a scientific stance towards human and social life, or a broadly empirical approach to inquiry in general, or a scientific worldview. Naturalism in field of the arts refers to art that depicts everyday subjects in a ‘realistic’ manner, one free from stylisation, idealization or academic convention. Although the term has been used to describe a style of painting since the late seventeenth century (e.g. Caravaggio’s), it only became an important term of art criticism in the nineteenth century, Gustave Courbet being one of the leading examples. Naturalism as a literary category was first applied to a genre of French fiction exemplified by Emile Zola, which builds on the anti-romantic ‘realist’ fiction of Gustav Flaubert and Honoré de Balzac, writers who deliberately adopt a scientific – that is, detached and objective -- approach to human life. The vision of the human depicted in naturalist literature owes much to a picture of the world suggested by Darwin’s theory of evolution: a purposeless, Godless world of competitive striving where the notion of free will is treated with suspicion.. (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)

I discuss "Poetic Naturalism" -- there is only one world, the natural world, but there are many ways of talking about it -- both as a general concept, and how it accounts for our actual world. I talk about emergence, fundamental physics, entropy and complexity, the origins of life and consciousness, and moral constructivism.

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)

In the intriguing final chapter of his book Warrant and Proper Function, Alvin Plantinga argues that naturalism, conjoined with a neo-Darwinian picture, is self-defeating. This argument has drawn its fair share of critical response. Plantinga in turn has recently responded in his as yet unpublished manuscript ‘Naturalism Defeated’. This first volley of debate has helped bring into focus several points of contention between Plantinga and his critics, but to date, the logical structure of the argument has not been an element (...) of the discussion. In this paper I argue that the logical structure of Plantinga’s argument has been misconstrued – that it does not show that naturalism is self-defeating. I argue further that properly reconstructed, it fails to make the case for the (ordinary) defeat of naturalism as well. (shrink)

This paper proposes that pictures are functional objects which figure in norm‐governed practices of usage yet whose specific function is to present the world as it looks to acculturated perceivers. Pictorial content presents the way the world looks to a subject's acculturated perceptual grasp. Hence, pictorial content needs to be explained in terms of a theory of perceptual content, but a novel theory which departs from the two‐stage sensation‐based approach to perception and the polarization between naturalism and conventionalism that (...) it engenders. Following a diagnosis of this polarization, I invoke a novel theory of perception that explains perceptual content as conceptually articulated and determinate in character. I show that (1) pictures present content of the same distinctive determinate type as perceptual content; and that (2) pictures do so by invoking perceptual experience and perceptual processes that are of the same kind as those invoked by actual scenes. This perceptualist approach considers and explains the role of norms as well as of the nature of our visual processes, allowing us to allocate the insights of both conventionalism and naturalism to their proper theoretical roles. (shrink)

Most of the philosophers engaged in the free will debate accept some kind of naturalism constraint. In this chapter, I distinguish three different kinds of naturalism. Strong naturalists hold that philosophical theorizing should be actually guided by current science, whereas weak naturalists avoid postulating any entities or processes that conflict with science (but may take bets on how science will evolve). Mid‐strength naturalism is agnostic about how future science will evolve, but is not actually guided by the science. I argue (...) that though compatibilism tends to fare better on this scale when we consider its relationship to physics, consideration of neuroscience and psychology complicates the picture: major compatibilists engage in as much speculation and scientifically unmotivated postulation of entities and processes as major libertarians. I end by asking whether philosophers engaged in this debate ought to accept that the stronger a view's naturalist credentials, the better warranted it is. (shrink)

This review essay attempts to present a coherent and reasonably unitary picture of the contemporary ‘speculative turn’ in continental philosophy as charted in Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman, eds, The Speculative Turn: Continental Realism and Materialism (2011). Avoiding a more objective yet more anodyne chapter by chapter summary, I paint an intentionally synoptic view by selecting some common concerns of the authors involved, and group them under five ‘core themes’. Throughout, I try to keep open the comparative channel (...) with the realist tenets of critical realism, and conclude vouching for the necessity for more bridge-building works to appear in the future. (shrink)

This article argues for a version of sacred naturalism within the framework of a processual metaphysics that characterizes the cosmos as an interplay between Chaos (disunity) and Logos (unity). I argue that although creativity is highly valuable from the perspective of life and humanity, at a cosmic scale it is overshadowed by the universal tendencies toward conservation and destruction. Within this metaphysical picture I develop a naturalist notion of the sacred as a phenomenological object inspiring particularly intense feelings of inner (...) harmony but functioning eudaemonically to strengthen mind, body, and soul against forms of Chaos, whether anomie, stress, or personal conflict. After developing some criteria for a sacred but immanent meta-unity in contrast to the transcendental unities of traditional religion, I describe how the unity of the cosmos might be experienced as a sacred object by emphasizing its heterarchical, aesthetic and life-affirming dimensions. (shrink)

I trace a brief history of philosophical discussion of the concept WOMAN and identify two key points at which, I argue, things went badly wrong. The first was where when it was agreed that the concept WOMAN must identify a social not biological kind. The second was where it was decided that the concept WOMAN faced a legitimate challenge of being insufficiently “inclusive”, understood in a certain way. I’ll argue that both of these moves are only intelligible, if at all, (...) in the context of an anti-naturalist picture drawn from either post-structuralism or radical feminism. They become incoherent when adopted by methodological naturalists, who – especially when concerned to track oppression and discrimination – have no good reason to deny that WOMAN refers to a pre-given, biological kind. (shrink)

During the first half of the twentieth century, mainstream answers to the foundational crisis, mainly triggered by Russell and Gödel, remained largely perfectibilist in nature. Along with a general naturalist wave in the philosophy of science, during the second half of that century, this idealist picture was finally challenged and traded in for more realist ones. Next to the necessary preliminaries, the present paper proposes a structured view of various philosophical accounts of mathematics indebted to this general idea, laying the (...) ground for a desirable integration of their strenghts. (shrink)

During the first half of the twentieth century, mainstream answers to the foundational crisis, mainly triggered by Russell and Gödel, remained largely perfectibilist in nature. Along with a general naturalist wave in the philosophy of science, during the second half of that century, this idealist picture was finally challenged and traded in for more realist ones. Next to the necessary preliminaries, the present paper proposes a structured view of various philosophical accounts of mathematics indebted to this general idea, laying the (...) ground for a desirable integration of their strenghts. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The contributors to this volume engage with issues of normativity within naturalised philosophy. The issues are critical to naturalism as most traditional notions in philosophy, such as knowledge, justification or representation, are said to involve normativity. Some of the contributors pursue the question of the correct place of normativity within a naturalised ontology, with emergentist and eliminativist answers offered on neighbouring pages. Others seek to justify particular norms within a naturalised framework, the more surprising ones including naturalist takes on the (...) a priori and intuitions. Finally, yet others examine concrete examples of the application of norms within particular epistemic endeavours, such as psychopathology and design. The overall picture is that of an intimate engagement with issues of normativity on the part of naturalist philosophers – questioning some of the fundamentals at the same time as they try to work out many of the details. (shrink)

Dorion Sagan observes that pioneering ethologist Jakob von Uexküll tends to be read in contrasting ways, as a “humble naturalist” pre-empting current research in biosemiotics, animal perception and agency; and as a “biologist-shaman,” gesturing to a transcendental realm where the life-worlds of animals interconnect in a vast symphony of nature. In both cases the tools of the laboratory are thought to generate complete pictures of the invertebrates that Uexküll studies, in unity with their environments. As Giorgio Agamben points out, (...) these experiments form part of an abstract mechanism that produces the human, by isolating instinctual life as an object for study and management from social and ethical modes of existence. What these readings neglect to consider is that Uexküll imagines his experiments through a Picture Book frame. We argue that for Uexküll there is always something fabulous and child-like about the enterprise of reconstructing the subjective environments of the small animals he works with. Drawing on Bernard Stiegler, we propose the Picture Book as a particular technics, or tertiary memory, that cultivates modes of attention that are associated with childhood and are open to the emergence of partial objects and relations. Considered through the Picture Book frame, the Umwelten of insects and other small animals are no longer fixed but are drawn and redrawn in partial expressive ways, through the uncanny picturing – or what Brian Massumi would call “semblances” – of different configurations of animal, technology, human relations. By considering the Picture Book as a technic for ecological thought and imagination, our paper will explore how the small creatures that Uexküll describes might enable the emergence of new ethical sensibilities and relations. (shrink)

Philosophical analyses of science tend to ignore illustrations, implicitly regarding them as theoretically dispensible. If challenged, it is suggested that such neglect is justifiable, because the use of illustrations only leads to faulty reasoning, and thus is the mark of bad or inadequate science. I take as an example one of the most famous illustrations in the history of evolutionary biology, and argue that the philosophers' scorn is without foundation. I take my conclusions to be support for a naturalistic (...) approach to philosophy. (shrink)

I begin by arguing that a consistent general naturalism must be understood in terms of methodological maxims rather than metaphysical doctrines. Some specific maxims are proposed. I then defend a generalized naturalism from the common objection that it is incapable of accounting for the normative aspects of human life, including those of scientific practice itself. Evolutionary naturalism, however, is criticized as being incapable of providing a sufficient explanation of categorical moral norms. Turning to the epistemological norms of science itself, particularly (...) those governing the empirical testing of specific models, I argue that these should be regarded as conditional rather than categorical and that, as such, can be given a naturalistic justification. The justification, however, is more cognitive than evolutionary. The historical development of science is found to be a better place for applying evolutionary ideas. After briefly considering the possibility of a naturalistic understanding of mathematics and logic, I turn to the problem of reconciling scientific realism with an evolutionary picture of scientific development. The solution, I suggest, is to understand scientific knowledge as being “perspectival” rather than absolutely objective. I first argue that scientific observation, whether by humans or instruments, is perspectival. This argument is extended to scientific theorizing which is regarded not as the formulation of universal laws of nature but as the construction of principles to be used in the construction of models to be applied to specific natural systems. The application of models, however, is argued to be not merely opportunistic but constrained by the methodological presumption that we live in a world with a definite causal structure even though we can understand it only from various perspectives. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to critically assess the idea that reasons for action are provided by desires (the Model). I start from the claim that the most often employed meta-ethical background for the Model is ethical naturalism; I then argue against the Model through its naturalist background. For the latter purpose I make use of two objections that are both intended to refute naturalism per se. One is G. E. Moore’s Open Question Argument (OQA), the other is Derek (...) Parfit’s Triviality Objection (TO). I show that naturalists might be able to avoid both objections in case they can vindicate the reduction proposed. This, however, leads to further conditions whose fulfillment is necessary for the success of vindication. I deal with one such condition, which I borrow from Peter Railton and Mark Schroeder: the demand that naturalist reductions must be tolerably revisionist. In the remainder of the paper I argue that the most influential versions of the Model are intolerably revisionist. The first problem concerns the picture of reasons many recent formulations of the Model advocate. By using an objection from Michael Bedke I show that on this interpretation obvious reasons won’t be accounted for by the Model. The second problem concerns idealization that is also often part of the Model. Invoking an argument by Connie Rosati, I show that the best form of idealization, the ideal advisor account, is inadequate. Hence, though not knock down arguments as they were intended to be, OQA and TO do pose a serious threat to the Model. (shrink)

Ethical realists hold that our ethical concepts, thoughts, and claims are in the business of representing ethical reality, by representing evaluative or normative properties and facts as aspects of reality, and that such representations are at least sometimes accurate. Non-naturalist realists add the further claim that ethical properties and facts are ultimately non-natural, though they are nonetheless worldly. My aim is threefold: to elucidate the sort of representation involved in ethical evaluation on realist views; to clarify what exactly is represented (...) and how non-naturalism comes into the picture for non-naturalists; and to defend worldly non-naturalism against some objections. The first question addressed is how we should model evaluation on any realist view, which should in turn guide the identification of which properties and facts are credibly regarded as ‘evaluative’ ones. Then the question is: what role might non-natural properties and facts play, and how are they related to what is represented in ethical evaluation? Once that is clear, we will be in a position to answer certain objections to non-naturalist realism from Jackson, Gibbard, Bedke, and Dreier. I argue that the objections all mischaracterize the role played by non-natural properties and facts on plausible versions of non-naturalist realism. (shrink)

The paper seeks to refute Skorupski's claim in _English-Language Philosophy 1750-1945 that Kant's philosophy was consciously antinaturalist. Skorupski has two related views: (1) that Kant consciously recognised steps from naturalism to empiricism and then to scepticism, and rejected naturalism; (2) that the rejection of naturalism issues in a transcendental account of the mind as outside nature. (1) Is vulnerable to the textual point that Kant never associates naturalism explicitly with the argument Skorupski notes. Indeed the textual references to naturalism do (...) not indicate a clear, single, view of that doctrine in Kant. (2) Is vulnerable to the by now well-known objections to such a traditionalist picture of the mind 'making nature' and so being quite distinct from it. The paper shows that such a naive traditionalist account is over-simple. (shrink)

Philip Kitcher is one of the most distinguished philosophers of our days. Since the rise of philosophy of biology in the 1960s Kitcher has deeply influenced and inspired many of the debates in this field. Among his most important books are The Advancement of Science (1993), In Mendel’s Mirror: Philosophical Reflections on Biology (2003), and Science in a Democratic Society (2011). However, Kitcher’s philosophical interest is not restricted to the philosophy of science. Rather, he has also made groundbreaking contributions to (...) ethics, to the philosophy of religion, to the philosophy of literature, to the philoso-phy of mathematics, and, most recently, to pragmatism. From a general perspective, two features of Kitcher’s work are particu-larly noteworthy. First, in most of his writings it becomes apparent that he takes a naturalistic stance. Kitcher characterizes himself as having an “impulse to naturalism”, which means that he resists the expansionist tendency to invoke entities or processes that are quite different from those studied in the various branches of inquiry (like Platonic forms or other abstract entities, Cartesian egos, and faculties of pure reason). Kitcher has explicated his naturalistic stance in The Naturalists Return (1992) and refined it in various recent works. Second, the philosophical questions that always have urged Kitcher most are questions that matter to human lives. Just to mention a few examples, these are questions like “How do we reconcile our scientific picture of the world with religion?”, “In which way does social practice impact scientist’s search for knowledge?”, or “How do we understand and improve our moral practices?”. In recent years Kitcher has argued that his focus is not merely due to his personal interests. Rather, he thinks that the only philosophical problems that are significant are those whose solution makes a difference to contemporary human life. Philosophers would be wise to focus on these pragmatically relevant kinds of questions, rather than addressing questions that are isolated from real life. In defending this claim, Kitcher expresses his affinity to the pragmatist tradition of Dewey and others. Thus, the second major characteristic of Kitcher’s work is that he takes up a pragmatist stance. Although Kitcher’s naturalistic and pragmatist impulses are discernible in most of his writings, he has only lately started to explicitly defend what he now calls pragmatic naturalism. His work on pragmatic naturalism contains innovative insights into questions about naturalism and pragmatism, while at the same time providing a meta-philosophical, unificatory framework for his longstanding work in various philosophical fields. Kitcher’s paper that is printed in this volume is one of the first publications in which he sets out his idea of pragmatic naturalism. This volume is the result of the 15th Münster Lectures in Philosophy which were hosted by the Department of Philosophy of the University of Münster from the 27th to the 29th of October 2011. The basic idea of the Lectures is to give advanced students of the Department the opportunity to get into discus-sion with important philosophers of our days. In line with what has become by now a venerable tradition, Kitcher gave a lecture to a public audience on the first evening of the Lectures, and he participated in a colloquium on the following two days. At this colloquium, eight groups of advanced students and faculty members presented papers on a wide range of topics from Kitch-er’s work. Both the lecture and the papers are published in this volume. In addition, it contains Kitcher’s detailed replies to the colloquium papers. (shrink)

Philosophical naturalism in the spirit of Wilfred Sellars has historically sought to present a unified picture of the world, in which values, meanings, and minds find a place in the natural universe. But a number of recent thinkers have questioned the very idea of “the world” as a unified whole, arguing instead for disunity in the various discourses human beings use to talk about things. In this article I consider three such pluralist views. First, I take up the work of (...) Huw Price, who combines pluralism and naturalism; then, I look at Markus Gabriel and Raymond Geuss, whose rejection of the ideas of “world” and “worldview” is not tied to naturalist presuppositions. In response to these views, I defend weaker conceptions of “the world” and “worldview,” utilizing Hans-Georg Gadamer's idea of the “medium of language” and making the case for the unifying effects of language across the plurality of discourses. (shrink)

In current philosophical research, there is a rather one-sided focus on the foundations of proof. A full picture of mathematical practice should however additionally involve considerations about various methodological aspects. A number of these is identified, from large-scale to small-scale ones. After that, naturalism, a philosophical school concerned with scientific practice, is looked at, as far as the translations of its epistemic principles to mathematics is concerned. Finally, we call for intensifying the interaction between both dimensions of practice and epistemology.

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY PRIZE for the best published book in the history of philosophy [Awarded in 2010] _______________ -/- Although it is widely recognized that David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40) belongs among the greatest works of philosophy, there is little agreement about the correct way to interpret his fundamental intentions. It is an established orthodoxy among almost all commentators that skepticism and naturalism are the two dominant themes in this work. The difficulty has been, (...) however, that Hume's skeptical arguments and commitments appear to undermine and discredit his naturalistic ambition to contribute to "the science of man". This schism appears to leave his entire project broken-backed. The solution to this riddle depends on challenging another, closely related, point of orthodoxy: namely, that before Hume published the Treatise he removed almost all material concerned with problems of religion. Russell argues, contrary to this view, that irreligious aims and objectives are fundamental to the Treatise and account for its underlying unity and coherence. It is Hume's basic anti-Christian aims and objectives that serve to shape and direct both his skeptical and naturalistic commitments. When Hume's arguments are viewed from this perspective we can solve, not only puzzles arising from his discussion of various specific issues, we can also explain the intimate and intricate connections that hold his entire project together. This "irreligious" interpretation provides a comprehensive fresh account of the nature of Hume's fundamental aims and ambitions in the Treatise. It also presents a radically different picture of the way in which Hume's project was rooted in the debates and controversies of his own time, placing the Treatise in an irreligious or anti-Chrisitan philosophical tradition that includes Hobbes, Spinoza and freethinking followers. Considered in these terms, Hume's Treatise constitutes the crowning achievement of the Radical Enlightenment. (shrink)

If there is to be a natural theory of consciousness that would satisfy both philosophers and scientists, it must be based on naturalistic data and minimal clutter accumulated from semantic arguments. Carruthers offers a 'natural' theory of consciousness that is rather myopic. To explore the evolutionary basis of consciousness, a natural theory should include comparative psychological and neurological data that encompass nonlinguistic measures. Such an approach could provide a clearer picture of the adaptive function, mechanisms, and origins of consciousness.

In current philosophical research, there is a rather one-sided focus on the foundations of proof. A full picture of mathematical practice should however additionally involve considerations about various methodological aspects. A number of these is identified, from large-scale to small-scale ones. After that, naturalism, a philosophical school concerned with scientific practice, is looked at, as far as the translations of its epistemic principles to mathematics is concerned. Finally, we call for intensifying the interaction between both dimensions of practice and epistemology.

The ethical naturalist asks us to take seriously the idea that practical norms are a species of natural norms, such that moral goodness is a kind of natural goodness. The ethical naturalist has not demonstrated, however, how it is possible for a power of reason to be governed by natural norms, because her own attempts to do this have led her into a dilemma. If she takes the first horn and stresses that ethical naturalism provides objective, natural norms of the (...) species, then she fails to show how such norms are practical, or operative from a deliberative point of view. If she takes the second horn and stresses that ethical naturalism yields a picture of knowledge of human life that is practical because it comes through virtuous dispositions of intellect and will, then she fails to have an account of how it is knowledge of facts about a life form, potentially accessible to a non-human knower. In this paper, I argue that one potential resolution to this dilemma can be found in the writings of Thomas Aquinas. On a broadly Thomist account of practical reason, the first principles of practical reason are our common human ends or goods, which are constitutive of a good human life. The work of practical reason on this naturalistic account is twofold: to conceive and order these ends into some general conception of how to live, and to apply this general conception to the particular situations of one’s life in order to realize one’s vision of the good life, here and now. (shrink)

The thesis of this paper is, first, that ecological thinking—which takes its point of departure from specifically located, multifaceted analyses of knowledge production and circulation in diverse demographic and geographic locations—can generate more responsible knowings than the reductivism of the positivist post-Enlightenment legacy allows; and second, that ecological thinking can spark a revolution comparable to Kant’s Copernican revolution, which recentered western thought by moving “man” to the center of the philosophical-conceptual universe. Kantian philosophy was parochial in the conception of “man” (...) on which it turned: a recognition central to feminist, Marxist, post-colonial and critical race theory. It promoted a picture of a physical and human world centered on and subservient to a small class and race of men who were uniformly capable of achieving a narrowly-conceived standard of reason, citizenship, and morality. As humanism vied with theism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so ecological thinking vies with capitalism at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Here I outline its promise. (shrink)

Recently, there has been some excitement about the potential explanatory payoffs the newish metaphysical notion of grounding seems to have for metaethical non-naturalism. There has also been a recent upsurge in the debate about whether non-naturalism is implausibly committed to some acts being wrong because of some sui generis piece of ontology. It has, in response, been claimed that once we have a clear enough picture of the grounding role of moral laws on non-naturalism, this is not (objectionably) so. This (...) move, I argue, is inconsistent with certain constraints on what non-naturalist-friendly moral laws must be for them to do the explanatory work non-naturalism requires of them elsewhere. In other words, there is tension between the grounding reply to the supervenience objection and the grounding structure implied by some responses to the normative objection. (shrink)

Feinberg and Mallatt, in their presentation of neurobiological naturalism, have suggested that visual consciousness was acquired by early vertebrates and inherited by a wide range of descendants, and that its neural basis has shifted to nonhomologous nervous structures during evolution. However, their evolutionary scenario of visual consciousness relies on the assumption that visual consciousness is closely linked with survival, which is not commonly accepted in current consciousness research. We suggest an alternative idea that visual consciousness is linked to a specific (...) class of agency, consequently justifying their phylogenetic claim. We also examine the implication of their phylogenetic claim: visual consciousness is homologous across vertebrates, but its neural basis is not. This apparent incongruence illustrates a general phenomenon of homology, and that the resulting hierarchical view of visual consciousness and its neural basis can be straightforwardly accommodated by neurobiological naturalism. Throughout these discussions, we aim to address the potential theoretical issues in neurobiological naturalism and refine the picture illustrated by Feinberg and Mallatt regarding phylogenetic distribution and trajectories of visual consciousness. (shrink)

Philippa Foot's Natural Goodness is in the midst of a cool reception. It appears that this is due to the fact that Foot's naturalism draws on a picture of the biological world at odds with the view embraced by most scientists and philosophers. Foot's readers commonly assume that the account of the biological world that she must want to adhere to, and that she nevertheless mistakenly departs from, is the account offered by contemporary neo-Darwinian biological sciences. But as is evident (...) in her notion of function, Foot does not employ an evolutionary view of the biological world. I will attempt to show, first, that it is for good reason that Foot is not operating with an evolutionary view of function; her views do not aim to unseat evolutionary views of function, but instead simply have quite different theoretical goals. Second, I aim to underline the importance to Foot's naturalism of the fact that we are practically reasoning creatures. The profundity of Foot's ethical naturalism rests in how she approaches our nature as practically reasoning creatures. In this aspect of Foot's thought, there is a significant Kantian strain that is surprising to find in someone who calls herself an ethical naturalist. 1. (shrink)

This paper argues that Aristotelian ethical naturalism can combine two commitments that are often held to be incompatible: (a) a commitment to a strong form of ethical objectivity and (b) a thoroughgoing historicism about ethical value. The notions of species and life-form invoked by ethical naturalism do not, I argue, rely upon an ahistorical picture of human nature. I develop this idea by building upon Philippa Foot's defence of ethical naturalism in Natural Goodness. I go on to argue that linguistic (...) changes in the ways we articulate the conditions of human flourishing can be understood, in some cases, as transforming those very conditions. (shrink)

This article introduces a novel use of technologies to visualize space and temporary structures in public space as a critical and speculative method for artistic research. Imitation and iconification have been vital in visual culture since civilization began. Science has become proficient in picturing invisible matter and numerical data. However, we are limited to visualizing these data in an iconic, ‘understandable’ way, that is, to some extent, reductionist. A non-naturalistic artistic visualization (NNAVi) method is proposed to discover and present (...) the underlying context of objects and space. First, this article discusses the representational function of artistic images and the artistic use of emerging technologies to represent invisible information. Following the discussion, the case study of the virtual reality (VR) artwork The Last Recreational Land shows how NNAVi can be applied. The case study starts with an exploration of the pandemic’s context and nature and then moves to an explanation of the multisensory and immersive setting of the artwork. Interweaving case studies and theoretical references, the article elaborates on how the VR experience is used as a device to respond to the pandemic. By deconstructing the relationship between visualization, imitation and iconification, the article theorizes NNAVi as a new methodology for artistic research that provides tangible insights into the nature of the pandemic. (shrink)

Ian James has carved a rigorous analysis of four philosophers—Jean-Luc Nancy, François Laruelle, Catherine Malabou and Bernard Stiegler—who not only engage with the limits of thought through variegated, albeit embedded, disciplinary tendencies but have also, arguably, spearheaded a critical reorientation of continental philosophy, slowly opening the doors for transcending the traditional terms of the analytic-continental divide by engaging with a pluralized understanding of the sciences. A parallel plexus of American naturalist philosophy accompanies James’ analysis, as he stakes the claim that (...) these four thinkers engage with pluralist ontologies and the limit-conditions of the real to stoke a proximal entanglement between philosophy and science. However, The Technique of Thought is by no means a synoptic account of Nancy, Laruelle, Malabou and Stiegler, as James surveys discourses in philosophy of mind, quantum gravity, causality and biosemiology to index various recent horizons of thought and their developments. The rigor and deft with which James approaches scientific-realist perspectives produce a rich picture of post-metaphysical thinking. (shrink)

This essay some first steps toward the naturalization of what I call rational intentionality or alternatively type II intentionality. By rational or type II intentionality, I mean that full combination of rational powers and content-bearing states that is paradigmatically enjoyed by mature intact human beings. The problem I set myself is to determine the extent to which the only currently extant approach to the naturalization of the intentional that has the singular virtue of not being a non-starter can be aggregated (...) up into an account of rational intentionality. I have in mind a broadly defined family of accounts whose main members are the indicator/information-theoretic approach of Dretske (1988), the asymmetric dependence theory of Jerry Fodor (1987, 1990, 1994) and the teleo-semantics of Ruth Millikan (1984, 1993). Somewhat inaccurately, I will call this family of approaches the information-theoretic family. To be sure, there is only a rough family resemblance among the members of the information-theoretic family. Indeed, several intense quarrels divide the members of that family one from another, but the precise outcome of those internecine struggles is not directly relevant to the aims of this essay. ² Taken collectively, the information-theoretic family yields a compelling picture of the place of at least a crude form of intentionality -- what I call frog-like or type I intentionality -- in the natural order. Though frog-like or type I intentionality is, I think, a genuine species of intentionality, it may subsist in the absence of rational powers. It is that species of intentionality enjoyed by irritable creatures who, following Brandom (1994). (shrink)

Nietzsche’s late writings present a value opposition of health and decadence based in his conception of organic life. While this appears to be a moral ideal that risks the naturalistic fallacy of directly deriving norms from facts, it instead describes a meta-ethical ideal: the necessary conditions for any kind of moral agency. Nietzsche’s ideal of health not only evades but also dissolves the naturalistic fallacy by suggesting that the specific content of morality is irrelevant. If health is measured (...) by power over one’s drives rather than the environment, then the source of moral conflict—organic life’s essential tendency toward domination—is surmounted by successful integration of any moral norms, regardless of content. Nietzsche’s concept of health draws on his characterization of organic life as essentially ‘exploitation’: growth through domination of the environment (BGE 259, GM II: 12). In animals, power coincides with happiness, while health and decadence track the correspondence between instinct and happiness (TI II: 11). This simple picture is complicated by the Genealogy, where Nietzsche depicts human nature as an animal illness caused by civilization’s disruption of the natural correspondence of instinct and happiness. Civilization shapes this ‘sick animal’ into the distinctly human ‘sovereign individual’ (GM III: 13, II: 2), restoring the harmony of instinct and happiness in an internal hierarchy of drives. So, sovereign individuality is a distinctly human model of health. Although life is exploitation, human health does not coincide with greater environmental power, but rather an internal qualitative expansion of power: greater variety and tension among drives, greater ‘wholeness in diversity’ in the ‘social structure’ of the self (BGE 212, 12). Nonetheless, health is not a moral criterion, but instead the precondition of moral agency. The subordination of drives to a commanding hierarchy grounds the ability to uphold any moral principles at all, to make and keep promises to oneself and others. Moral agency coincides, in turn, with overcoming the source of moral conflict in organic life’s drive for growth. The unification of opposing drives provides pleasure in power over oneself rather than one’s environment, the ‘happiness of high tension’ among drives (BGE 260), and in environmental resistance, a need for ‘equal opponents’ (TI IX: 38, EH 1: 7). Consequently, Nietzsche’s meta-ethical ideal supports a moral pluralism that supports any moral content. Moral conflicts arise precisely to the degree individuals are incapable of achieving moral agency, but they dissolve as moral agency of any kind is more widely achieved. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

I will argue that the natural law theory of morality, when extended into a political theory of justice, results in a picture of political justice much like that of public reason liberalism. However, natural law political theory, I argue, need not entail a natural law theory of morality. While facts about what societies ought to do supervene upon facts about what is good for human beings, there are distinct goods involved and distinct reasons for action. Rather, considerations taken from the (...) common good as guiding public policy results in a two-layer approach to public reasonability, resembling features of both consensus and convergence accounts of public reason. Consequently, the differences between natural law and classical public reason liberalism are significant but are not as significant as might have otherwise appeared. In fact, natural law political theory might be a more consistent development of the idea of a public reason than those of classical liberalism. (shrink)

Processing the motivational relevance of a visual scene and reacting accordingly is crucial for survival. Previous work suggests the emotional content of naturalistic scenes affects response speed, such that unpleasant content slows responses whereas pleasant content accelerates responses. It is unclear whether these effects reflect motor-cognitive processes, such as attentional orienting, or vary with the function/outcome of the motor response itself. Four experiments manipulated participants’ ability to terminate the picture and, thereby, the response’s function and motivational value. Attentive orienting (...) was manipulated via picture repetition, which diminishes orienting. A total of N = 81 participants completed versions of a go/no-go task, discriminating between distorted versus intact pictures drawn from six content categories varying in positive, negative, or neutral valence. While all participants responded faster with repetition, only participants without offset control exhibited slower responses to unpleasant and accelerated responses to pleasant content. Emotional engagement, measured by the late positive potential, was not modulated by attentional orienting, suggesting that the interaction between repetition and offset control is not due to altered emotional engagement. Together, results suggest that response time changes as a function of emotional content and sensitivity to attention orienting depends on the motivational function of the motor response. (shrink)

This paper draws from the resources of Iris Murdoch''s moral philosophy to analyze the ethical status of the emotions at two related levels of reflection. Methodologically, it argues that a recovery of the emotions requires a revised notion of moral theory which affirms the basic orientation of consciousness to some notion of value or the good. Such a theory challenges many of the rationalist premises which in the past have led moral theory to reject the role of emotions in ethics. (...) In particular, it acknowledges the centrality of moral psychology to ethics and reclaims the notion of consciousness rather than the will as the primary mode of human moral being. At a second, more substantive level, the paper explores the relation between the emotions and consciousness. Specifically, it defends a cognitivist and reflexive theory of the emotions which affirms a strong relation between the emotions and our evaluative beliefs. On this view, the emotions reflexively mediate our relation to objective value. In order to earn their cognitive status, however, the emotions must be tested in relation to a critical principle in order to guard against the egoistic tendencies of consciousness to build up images of reality to serve its own purposes. Therefore, a theory of the Good must be part of the critical content of a reflexive theory of the emotions. (shrink)

From the perspective of at least some of our valuing practices, the advance of the sciences can seem to constitute a threat. The question I take up in this dissertation is whether or not naturalism--understood as the picture of the world and of ourselves bequeathed to us by the sciences--should be understood as a threat to our moral practices, to moral living. On the account I defend, the knowledge we gain from empirical inquiry need not undermine moral living in toto, (...) although a naturalistic mindset does raise some possibly dangerous questions for particular inherited moral norms and ideals. In defense of my claim that the examined life need not destroy the moral life, I develop a social view of morality. On this view, both moral authority and moral justification are viewed as fundamentally social phenomena, and morality itself as a tool for social living. With a case study on the development of the ethics of care, I illustrate ways in which a concern for empirically truthful representations of humanity can also dovetail with liberatory political concerns. That is, I defend not only the claim that moral living can survive critical scrutiny, but also the claim that it can be enriched by this scrutiny--that the truth can be transformative. Expansive moral ideals, such as those humanist views that see progress in the expansion of our moral vocabularies and institutions, are compatible with a naturalistic outlook, I argue. However, a strong defense of humanist views, according to which such ideals flow unproblematically from the nature of reason or from the history of ethical practice, does not seem possible. A weak defense of humanism, which connects the ideals of humanists to more widely held values, seems more promising. In working socially and politically for their cause, I contend that humanists in some sense have the truth on their side: sexist, racist, classist, or otherwise inegalitarian views regularly trade in falsehoods and obfuscation. Empirically truthful accounts of particular inherited norms and ideals thus continue to be dangerous, at least for those invested in the continued existence of the corresponding institutions. (shrink)

This article will investigate the ways in which Polish illustrated press contributed to communicating and reporting the work of Polish émigré naturalists working in Latin America to the Polish general public living in the Prussian, Russian and Austrian partitions of the Polish‐Lithuanian Commonwealth 1844–1885. It examines the ways in which illustrations were used to shape the public's opinion about the significance of these migrants’ scientific achievements. The Polish illustrated press, its authors and editors were instrumental in shaping the public's perceptions (...) of the reach of Polish scientists, and exploring their impact on broader scientific debates, thereby situating Polish people and their work in a global context. The didactic and opinion‐making role of the illustrated press was highly influential among Polish audiences during this period, at a time when the survival of Polish identity, culture, language, and education was uncertain. Illustrated weeklies were one of the vectors through which high science was made accessible to the Polish public. A study of pictures in Polish illustrated press will help to explain how they contributed towards shaping the images in the public eye of naturalists’ scientific work, and discourses about science and its actors more broadly. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aestheticism, Homoeroticism, and Christian Guilt in The Picture of Dorian GrayJoseph CarrollSince the advent of the poststructuralist revolution some thirty years ago, interpretive literary criticism has suppressed two concepts that had informed virtually all previous literary thinking: (1) the idea of the author as an individual person and an originating source for literary meaning, and (2) the idea of "human nature" as the represented subject and common frame of (...) reference for literary depictions. Under the tutelage of Barthes, Derrida, and Foucault, literary critics learned to speak of authors, characters, settings, and plots not as individuals situated in a natural world but as discursive formations constituted by the circulation of linguistic, cultural, and ideological energies. In the three decades during which poststructuralism has dominated academic literary study, a different kind of revolution—evolutionary, Darwinian, and naturalistic—has been transforming the social sciences. Sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, Darwinian anthropology, behavioral ecology, cognitive archaeology, and behavioral genetics do not all agree with one another in every respect, but they are all nonetheless aspects or phases of a common research program. The central working hypothesis in this program is that the human species, like all other species, has evolved in an adaptive relation to its environment and that as a consequence it has a distinct, genetically transmitted, species-typical set of characteristics—anatomical, physiological, hormonal, neurological, and behavioral. That set of characteristics is what in common language is meant by "human nature." Literature has always given us subjectively evocative depictions of human nature, and Darwinian social science is now giving us a more comprehensive and scientifically precise account of it. The sense of [End Page 286] individual agency is one crucial aspect of human nature, and that aspect is now being explored in complementary ways by personality psychology and by cognitive neuroscience.1Over the past decade or so, a scattered handful of literary scholars has broken away from the dominant poststructuralist paradigm and has sought to make use of the new scientific information on human nature.2 The simplest and most obvious way to use this information is to examine the behavior depicted in literary texts and to correlate that behavior with "human universals," that is, with forms of behavior that appear in every known culture and that thus appear to be embedded in the nature of the species. Seeking depictions of universals has produced valuable results for literary study, but this first move in Darwinian criticism does not exhaust the range of possibility in the analysis of literary meaning. Human nature is complex and sometimes divided against itself; individuals vary, and some variations depart from species-typical patterns, even in the most adaptively crucial aspects of survival and reproduction. Moreover, literary meaning involves more than the represented subject matter. Authors imbue texts with meanings and affects peculiar to themselves; authors engage in communicative transactions with audiences; and texts have formal and aesthetic properties that are not reducible to represented subject matter. All of these aspects of the total literary situation are part of literary meaning, and all of them can and should fall within the range of analysis available to Darwinian literary study.3Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray offers two special challenges to Darwinian criticism. First, the novel is saturated with homoerotic sexual feeling, and it thus defies any simple reading in terms of behavior oriented to reproductive success. Second, the central conflicts in the novel involve two competing visions of human nature, and in their conceptual structure neither of those visions corresponds very closely to the quasi-Darwinian conceptual structure implicit in most realist and naturalist fiction. One vision derives from the aestheticist doctrines of Walter Pater, and the other from a traditional Christian conception of the soul. Pater's ideas about human motives and the human moral character are at variance both with Christianity and with Darwinism. Christianity and Darwinism share certain concepts of the human moral and social character, but they couch those concepts in different idioms, and they would invoke wholly different causal explanations for how human nature came to be the way it is. Wilde does not develop his themes in Darwinian terms, but the novel can still be read [End Page... (shrink)