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The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 15.3 (2001) 228-250



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Naturalism, Transcendental Conditions, and the Self-Discipline of Philosophical Reason 1

Sami Pihlström
University of Helsinki


1. Introduction:
Naturalism in Contemporary Philosophy

Naturalism has been the received metaphilosophical view within epistemology and the philosophy of science since the 1980s. In brief, it urges that science (and our knowledge acquisition in general) is an element of the natural world along with everything else. There is no privileged, aprioristic point of view of "first philosophy" over and above our empirical science itself, although such a standpoint is still assumed, in different ways, by old-fashioned empiricists, epistemological foundationalists, Popperian critical rationalists, and many contemporary scientific realists--in short, by most traditional analytic philosophers. 2 Instead, science must be investigated scientifically; a scientific theory of science should be our aim. This kind of naturalistic program has been defended by, among others, Ronald Giere (1988) and Richard Boyd (1992). We may also classify Arthur Fine's (1996) "nonrealistic" or "postrealistic" and postphilosophical "natural ontological attitude" (NOA) as a species of naturalism in this sense. According to Fine, all attempts to interpret and justify science philosophically, from a higher perspective lying outside science, are in vain. 3 [End Page 228]

The background of contemporary naturalism lies in W. V. Quine's "naturalized epistemology," a project launched by Quine's famous 1969 paper. 4 Obviously, Quinean epistemology is an epistemology of science, since scientific knowledge (as an extension of everyday knowledge) is all that Quine is interested in; thus, there is no major difference between the general naturalization of epistemology that Quine demands and the more specific naturalizations of the philosophy of science suggested by Boyd, Fine, and Giere, among others.

Naturalism and physicalism are closely related doctrines--indeed, for many philosophers, almost identical ones. Quine's ontology, as is well known, is austerely physicalistic and reductionistic. In ontological questions, he argues, we must follow science, and physics is, from the ontological point of view, the basic science. Physicalism is, for Quine, the scientific ontology, which we arrive at through empirical inquiry. Empiricism, the main epistemological principle operative in natural science, is itself a scientifically established principle. These two are "reciprocally contained" within each other, as Roger Gibson (1988), one of Quine's most distinguished exegetes and followers, has explained. We rely on empiricism in justifying physicalism, while empiricism should, on the bottom level, be formulated in physicalistic terms, i.e., with reference to physical particles and rays striking our sensory surfaces. We could, at least in principle, give a physical description of empiricism as the method of scientific inquiry into the structures of the physical world. According to the naturalist, this circle is not a vicious one, but a self-confirming and, above all, self-conscious one.

This view, summarized in the "reciprocal containment thesis" (as Gibson calls it), might simply be labeled scientism. 5 It is important to observe that Quine's naturalized science of science is based on a thoroughly consistent philosophical position. Quine was, I think, the most consistent of thinkers. 6 Nevertheless, one could argue that there is a fundamental limit to what such a naturalized science of science can, from a philosophical point of view, tell us about science. Quineans may simply leave something out of their picture. It is, of course, a commonplace to claim that naturalization destroys genuine normativity in epistemological (as well as, for that matter, semantic, ethical, and aesthetic) matters. 7 Although I agree with this line of argumentation against excessive naturalism (cf. Pihlström 1996b, 1998b), I now wish to examine a somewhat different, though connected, line. A caveat, however, is in order: I do not think that Quinean philosophers would accept the premises of the arguments that follow--or even my basic worry about the limits of naturalization. There are things one can hardly argue to those whose philosophical temperaments (to use William James's expression) differ significantly from one's own. 8

Even though this is not the right place for any full-blown critique of contemporary naturalism, several...

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