The first-person perspective description error in naturalism

In this article, it is shown that in some theories defending the non-reductive nature of the firstperson perspective it is possible to find a very inconsistent attitude. Such theories are associated by the author to a so-called moderate naturalism. The article demonstrates the difference between moderate and radical naturalism. Radical naturalism completely abandons the idea of subjectivity as unobservable from a third-person perspective. On the contrary, moderate naturalism defends the irreducibility of subjectivity, but believes subjectivity to be a part of the nature. As a case of moderate naturalism, the article considers the approaches of Lynne Baker and Thomas Metzinger. Exemplifying these approaches to the first-person perspective, it is shown that in the case of certain work strategies focused on the first-person perspective, it is possible that a so-called description error may appear, by which a description error of subjectivity — when it is placed in the world as a part of nature, existing according to its laws — is understood. The logic of this error points to one of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s statements about the incorrect placement of the eye in the perspective of the eye view itself. If the first-person perspective is introduced as a point of view (or a point of observation), then its subsequent shift to the observation result area leads to description error. If there is no observation, as well as no viewpoint, we lose the very idea of first-person perspective and actually take the position of radical naturalism.

Feckless Reason

Empirical research on aesthetic response poses two challenges to philosophy. The more familiar challenge is that scientific explanations of aesthetic responses debunk what we take to be our reasons for those responses. One reaction to this challenge is an accommodation strategy that seeks to reconcile the scientific findings with an improved understanding of our normative reasons. This paper presents a more fundamental challenge: a well-established body of research in social psychology indicates that we routinely confabulate the reasons we give for our aesthetic response. This challenges the accommodation strategy and suggests that philosophy should adopt a more radical naturalism about aesthetic response.

Spinoza and Early Modern Theology

This chapter argues first that there exists a close relationship between Spinoza’s Bible criticism and his radical naturalism, his conception of human knowledge and science, and second, that this particular conjoining of elements underpins an entire “Radical Enlightenment,” which over many centuries challenged the edifice of Judaeo-Christian-Muslim theology at every level. Spinoza reasons that nobody can demonstrate that Bible-based theology contains any truth at all, and why all men of good will must acquiesce in this whether they like it or not, urging that it is only by separating philosophy from theology and accepting that the theology proclaimed by revealed religion cannot provide universal truths that a more compelling basis for society’s moral and legal order can be found and promoted.

Varietŕ di naturalismo

- Naturalism is a widely accepted trend of contemporary philosophy, the analytic tradition in particular. However, the (dis)continuity between philosophy and the sciences is still controversial. In this paper a survey is presented of the different approaches to philosophical naturalism, focusing on the debate between a pluralistic position and a more restrictive one. The latter is well represented by Sandro Nannini's Naturalismo cognitivo (2007), the best example of "hard" naturalism on the Italian philosophical scene. In contrast with this position, we argue that many genuine philosophical issues, such as the first person perspective of conscious experience and the ontological commitment about social rules, remain "hard problems" for radical naturalism. Keywords: Analytical philosophy, Cognitive science, Hard naturalism, Pluralistic naturalism, Reductionism, Social ontology.