Naturalism: its motivations

We began our discussion of naturalism with some slogans. “Philosophy is continuous with the natural sciences”; “there is no first philosophy”. Slogans, I said, don't tell us much. But as the chapters of this text indicate, only something as vague and vatic as these slogans could hope to capture the great variety of philosophical projects that go under the name of “naturalism”. We find some naturalists deploring special philosophical methods, others embracing conceptual analysis. We find some who call themselves physicalists, others dualists, and yet others who reject any metaphysics; some who think that naturalism can provide a framework for a constructive ontology; others who think a kind of quietism is appropriate.

With so many contradictory views all claiming to be naturalist, we might begin to think that the term “naturalism” is empty. Almost any view, it seems, could be termed “naturalist”.

That would overstate things. There is great diversity among naturalists, but some common ground too. All naturalisms begin with an admiring attitude towards science and its achievements. In many cases this admiring attitude is combined with a contempt or distrust for the way that philosophy has been or is conducted. This combination of views has a long history. Many of the advocates of first philosophy, Descartes, Kant and Carnap, shared the same admiration of science or nascent science and distrust of philosophy. Descartes, for example, uses scepticism as a device to sweep away the old Aristotelian foundations of knowledge, so that he can build an entirely new philosophy that makes room for the new mathematical sciences.