Abstract

Robert Corrington likes to delineate “ecstatic naturalism” by comparing and contrasting it with three other naturalistic philosophies. The first is descriptive naturalism, which conceives of nature as nonconscious, utterly vast, resistant to categorial reduction, and indifferent to human needs and desires. Descriptive naturalists, from John Dewey, George Santayana, and Justus Buchler to Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, espouse a form of materialism that mitigates or repudiates religious sensibilities, puts a methodological premium on scientific inquiry, and grants material and efficient causality explanatory priority. The second mode of naturalism, the honorific, views nature differently, even oppositely..