This chapter examines the influence of the empirical sciences (e.g., physics, biology, psychology) in contemporary analytic philosophy, with focus on philosophical theories that are guided by findings from the empirical sciences. Scientific approaches to philosophy follow a tradition of philosophical naturalism associated with Quine, which strives to ally philosophical methods and theories more closely with the empirical sciences and away from a priori theorizing and conceptual analysis.

Alasdair MacIntyre: narrative introduction to his work In the wake of the publication of the last book of the British philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity: An Essay on Desire, Practical Reasoning, and Narrative, this work proposes a way to understand his bibliographical production in the context of the narrative of his life and his intellectual career. It is elaborated a periodization of the itinerary of MacIntyre, based on the references that the author himself has made of (...) his academic life and in the proposals of several scholars of his thought. It is concluded that the narrative examination of MacIntyre’s work reveals that his philosophical project is basically marked by Aristotle and Aquinas, whose thought helped our author a solid proposal on the main issues of moral philosophy and philosophy of religion. This work is conceived as introductory because it focuses only on MacIntyre’s books, but it’s expected to serve as a solid basis for a thorough critical study —especially from a chronological perspective— of his entire work, which includes chapters of books, papers, interviews, among others. (shrink)

Both Carnap and Quine made significant contributions to the philosophy of mathematics despite their diversed views. Carnap endorsed the dichotomy between analytic and synthetic knowledge and classified certain mathematical questions as internal questions appealing to logic and convention. On the contrary, Quine was opposed to the analytic-synthetic distinction and promoted a holistic view of scientific inquiry. The purpose of this paper is to argue that in light of the recent advancement of experimental mathematics such as Monte Carlo simulations, limiting mathematical (...) inquiry to the domain of logic is unjustified. Robustness studies implemented in Monte Carlo Studies demonstrate that mathematics is on par with other experimental-based sciences. (shrink)