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NATURALISMS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2020

Amanda Bryant
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Abstract

The word ‘naturalism’ has a bewildering array of uses in philosophy. Roughly speaking, it connotes pro-scientific attitudes and approaches. This article introduces the subject of naturalism by sketching a history of pro-scientific attitudes and approaches in philosophy, from their origins in the early modern period through to the present day. It then distinguishes a number of distinct families of naturalism: metaphysical, logico-linguistic, epistemological, and methodological. The resulting taxonomy encompasses a plurality of loosely related views rather than a number of variations on a single clear and unified theme.

Type
Research Article
Information
Think , Volume 19 , Issue 56 , Autumn 2020 , pp. 35 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy, 2020

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References

Further Reading

Clark, K. J. (ed.) The Blackwell Companion to Naturalism (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2016). (A sizeable volume with chapters on a variety of naturalisms.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Devitt, M., ‘Naturalism and the A Priori’, Philosophical Studies 92 (1998), 45–65. (A defence of Quinean epistemological naturalism.)Google Scholar
Maddy, P., Second Philosophy: A Naturalistic Method. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). (A defence of methodological naturalism.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Papineau, D., ‘Naturalism’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2020 Edition), Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/naturalism/>. (An encyclopaedia entry that distinguishes ontological from methodological naturalism.)Google Scholar
Garrett, D., ‘Reasons to Act and Believe: Naturalism and Rational Justification in Hume's Philosophical Project’, Philosophical Studies, 132 (2007), 1–16. (A discussion of Hume's naturalism.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar