Il naturalismo oggi

This paper tries to draw a map of the various versions of naturalism to which the current philosophical debate aims – from the most radical, or ‘hard’ ones, to the mildest, or liberal ones – and of the different projects of naturalization that are associated to them. In particular, in the first paragraphs, the present article will consider Timothy Williamson’s and Penelope Maddy’s attempts to inherit the demands of naturalism without declaring to be a naturalist (Williamson), or without making naturalism an empty slogan or a kind of masked first philosophy (Maddy). In the second part, the connections between epistemological naturalism and ontological or metaphysical naturalism will be analysed. The questions will be: (1) is it possible to be naturalist with regard to epistemology without being naturalist with regard to ontology?; (2) is it possible to be ontologically naturalist without being epistemologically naturalist?

Methodologies in Epistemology

This chapter outlines the method of “function-first epistemology” and highlights some of its benefits. This method involves three broad steps: we start with a prima facie plausible hypothesis about the role of some epistemic concept (norm, practice) in human life; then we try to determine what a concept (norm, practice) having this role must be like; finally, we examine the extent to which the concept (norm, practice) we have described matches our everyday judgments. To highlight what is distinctive and fruitful about function-first epistemology, this approach is compared to four alternatives: reductive conceptual analysis, knowledge-first epistemology, reverse engineering epistemic evaluations, and epistemological naturalism. Each of these approaches is shown to face limitations that function-first epistemology does not. This meta-epistemological groundwork provides the basis for the rest of the book, which uses the function-first method to answer some of the most challenging questions in epistemology.

Down to Earth

The rise of naturalism in the earth sciences is discussed in terms of the disappearance from the geological literature of references to the Bible and God. From Immanuel Kant’s ground-breaking nebular hypothesis of 1755, such references were to be found with decreasing frequency in the leading treatises that dealt with the origin and historical development of Earth. Biblical cosmogony and God-talk were not included in the new earth and planetary sciences but relegated to the sphere of metaphysics. Especially Alexander von Humboldt, by the middle of the nineteenth century, proved trend-setting, and the Humboldtian approach of epistemological naturalism acquired predominance. All the same, in many instances, the disentanglement of geology and theology did not go with anti-religious sentiment but with what Ronald Numbers refers to as the privatization of religion.

Induction and Epistemological Naturalism

Epistemological naturalists reject the demand for a priori justification of empirical knowledge; no such thing is possible. Observation reports, being the foundation of empirical knowledge, are neither justified by other sentences, nor certain; but they may be agreed upon as starting points for inductive reasoning and they function as implicit definitions of predicates used. Making inductive generalisations from observations is a basic habit among humans. We do that without justification, but we have strong intuitions that some inductive generalisations will fail, while for some other we have better hopes. Why? This is the induction problem according to Goodman. He suggested that some predicates are projectible when becoming entrenched in language. This is a step forward, but not entirely correct. Inductions result in universally generalised conditionals and these contain two predicates, one in the antecedent, one in the consequent. Counterexamples to preliminary inductive generalisations can be dismissed by refining the criteria of application for these predicates. This process can be repeated until the criteria for application of the predicate in the antecedent includes the criteria for the predicate in the consequent, in which case no further counterexample is possible. If that is the case we have arrived at a law. Such laws are implicit definitions of theoretical predicates. An accidental generalisation has not this feature, its predicates are unrelated. Laws are said to be necessary, which may be interpreted as ‘“Laws” are necessarily true’. ‘Necessarily true’ is thus a semantic predicate, not a modal operator. In addition, laws, being definitions, are necessarily true in the sense of being necessary assumptions for further use of the predicates implicitly defined by such laws. Induction, when used in science, is thus our way of inventing useful scientific predicates; it is a heuristic, not an inference principle.

Naturalized philosophy of mathematics

There are three types of naturalism in the philosophy of mathematics: metaphysical, epistemological and methodological. Metaphysical naturalists maintain that all entities are natural. One reading of this claim is that mathematical ontology is the ontology of natural science - which of course leads immediately to the question as to just what ontology is indispensably needed by the natural sciences. Another reading is that all mathematical entities are spatiotemporal. This view faces considerable difficulties, as it seems to go against the claims and methods of mathematics. Epistemological naturalists maintain that we can only know about entities spatiotemporally or causally connected to us. Though prima facie plausible, epistemological naturalism has encountered resistance on many fronts. Methodological naturalism sees scientific standards, suitably understood, as authoritative. In its canonical version, science is construed as natural science, and thus the acceptability of mathematics is linked to its role in natural science. The most obvious argument for this form of methodological naturalism is the success argument: natural science is the most successful sphere of human inquiry and should consequently trump other disciplines. However, it turns out that the success argument is difficult to develop convincingly. Some philosophers also believe, controversially, that there is room for a naturalism that takes the authoritative standards in the philosophy of mathematics to be those of mathematics itself.

Induction and Epistemological Naturalism

Epistemological naturalism dismisses the notion that epistemology is a basis for theempirical sciences. In particular, it rejects the demand for a general justification of induction. Makinginductive generalisations is a basic habit among humans. There is no such thing as a logic of inductiveinference. The role of induction in science is heuristic; it is our way of inventing new theoreticalpredicates and developing theories. We discover new laws by applying inductive thinking; but this isnot any kind of inference which can be evaluated as more or less rational.

Wittgenstein’s Rain in the ‘Philosophical Desert’: Pragmatist Ideas in Post-War Oxford

Although Wittgenstein described post-war Oxford as a ‘philosophical desert’, his ideas greatly fertilized Oxford philosophy. This chapter deals with the role pragmatist ideas played in this influence. Neither Wittgenstein nor Oxford conceptual analysts (Ryle, Austin, Strawson, Grice) were part of the historical movement of ‘Pragmatism’ (Peirce, James, Dewey, Mead, Lewis), yet both display intriguing similarities and dissimilarities with ideas that are pragmatist in a looser sense. They subscribe to the fundamental tenet that philosophically contentious concepts must be elucidated by characterizing their role within human practices. There is a shared tendency to avoid both epistemological naturalism and ontological super-naturalism, and contrasting attitudes towards meta-philosophical naturalism and matters of philosophical style. As regards meaning, there are parallel transitions from reference to use. Whereas Wittgenstein and the Oxonians are alethic realists, pragmatist theories make truth dependent on our beliefs or expediences. At the same time, they all acknowledge an anthropological dimension to the bearers of truth-values—propositions—which are understood as thinkables and sayables.