Philosophical Naturalism and the Cognitive Approach to Ritual
| Abstract | Naturalism in philosophy demands that philosophical proposals exhibit a healthy respect for the methods and findings of the empirical sciences, especially when those proposals address the same domains those sciences do. In the twentieth century philosophers became a good deal more circumspect about their physical and biological speculations. If philosophy of science has not largely overshadowed metaphysics, then certainly science itself has become a fundamental constraint on credible metaphysical proposals. Instead of advancing grand metaphysical programs, many twentieth century philosophers have chosen to explore the broader implications of prevailing scientific theories and attempted to disentangle apparent conceptual snarls some seem to contain. The number of domains where philosophers must heed scientific developments has only increased as modern science has progressed. At the outset of the twenty-first century, philosophers who pronounce about matters of mind and language without regard to the cognitive sciences do so at their peril. Some philosophical naturalists suspect that Kripke=s pronouncements about the necessary properties of pains may suffer the same fate as Kant=s assurances about the a priori truth of Newtonian mechanics, Fichte=s insistence about the number of planets in our solar system, and Bergson=s presumptions about the basis of life. When scientific research generates innovative schemes that both systematically organize the pertinent phenomena and supply new explanatory and predictive insights, philosophers= declarations about what is imaginable or about what our concepts demand often appear quaint in retrospect. For the philosophical naturalist, little, if anything, distinguishes some legitimate philosophical endeavors from the theoretical speculations of scientists. Naturalists hold that philosophy enjoys no privilege. Typically, philosophers= only advantages arise from their wider views of things and their increased sensitivities to the structures and strengths of arguments. Certainly, philosophers= guesses are as good as anyone=s, and, given that they are a comparatively intelligent lot, often their guesses are better.. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | No categories specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,875 |
| External links |
  Try with proxy. |
| Through your library | Only published papers are available at libraries |
Similar books and articlesRobert Sinclair (2012). Naturalism and Normativity. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 47 (4).
E. Margolis, R. Samuels & S. Stich (eds.) (2012). The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science. Oxford University Press.
Jaegwon Kim (2003). The American Origins of Philosophical Naturalism. Journal of Philosophical Research 28:83-98.
Tim Lewens (2012). A Surfeit of Naturalism. Metaphilosophy 43 (1-2):46-57.
Lynne Rudder Baker (1998). The First-Person Perspective: A Test for Naturalism. American Philosophical Quarterly 35 (4):327-348.
Pete Mandik & William Bechtel (2002). Philosophy of Science. In Lynn Nadel (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. Macmillan.
Robert Audi (2000). Philosophical Naturalism at the Turn of the Century. Journal of Philosophical Research 25:27-45.
Daniel Andler (2009). The Philosophy of Cognitive Science. In A. Brenner & J. Gayon (eds.), French Studies in the Philosophy of Science: Contemporary Research in France. Springer.
Wenceslao J. Gonzalez (2012). From Mathematics to Social Concern About Science: Kitcher's Philosophical Approach. Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 101 (1):11-93.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2010-12-22Total downloads4 ( #180,507 of 556,888 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #64,931 of 556,888 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
