The turn to analytic philosophy in Anglophone countries, which is still underway and is spreading elsewhere, has generally involved a retreat from ‘synoptic’ thinking and an almost complete withdrawal from ‘synthetic’ thinking, the creative thinking that in the past has been the source of the greatest contributions of philosophy to science, the humanities and civilization. Analytic philosophy’s ‘naturalistic turn’ led by Willard van Ormond Quine was really a capitulation of philosophy to mainstream reductionist science. So-called ‘continental philosophy’ when it abjures (...) naturalism, offers no real challenge to this. This paper attempts to recover a much more powerful challenge to such analytic philosophy and reductionist science, a philosophy which is naturalist but values synopsis and synthesis along with analysis: speculative naturalism. As such, this is presented as a manifesto not only for philosophy, but for science and the humanities. As Mikhail Epstein argued, the practical outcome of the humanities is the transformation of culture. To transform culture is to transform ourselves, our society and our relationship to each other and to nature. (shrink)

C.D. Broad pointed out that philosophy in the Twentieth Century radically reduced its scope by contracting the methods it deployed. While traditionally philosophers had used analysis, synopsis and synthesis to reveal and overcome the inconsistencies of culture, critical philosophers reduced the role accorded to synopsis and eliminated any role for synthesis. This, it is argued, was a disastrous wrong turn that has led philosophers to embrace scientism, equated with naturalism, which has marginalized and reduced to irrelevance not only most (...) of philosophy, but most of the humanities. Showing how such philosophy evolved from one branch of neo-Kantian philosophy, it is argued there was no reason to constrict philosophy in this way. An alternative, more fruitful but largely misrepresented and submerged tradition of philosophical naturalism deriving from Kant is identified, a tradition which can best be characterized as “speculative naturalism”. This tradition, unlike the tradition of analytic philosophy, has made major contributions to science, and is allying science and the humanities. As Michail Epstein pointed out, while the practical outcome of natural science is technology, the practical outcome of the humanities is the transformation of culture, and ourselves. It is central to the creation of the future. Philosophy associated with speculative naturalism promises to play a major role in the transformation of culture required to overcome the current global ecological crisis. It could provide the foundation for a new “ecological civilization”. (shrink)

My aim in this chapter is argue that aspects of Hegel’s metaphysics, as an example of ‘speculative naturalism’, can and should be seen as offering a powerful conceptual resource for explicating the cognitive pathology of scientism, and for also contributing to the effort of ‘decolonizing the space of reasons’. By ‘scientism’, I mean the view that the ways in which we make sense of things are ultimately justifiable only by the methods and practices of the Naturwissenschaften. I argue (...) that if one is to overcome scientism, one must develop speculative sense-making practices, in which epistemic power can be rooted in the communicative power of discourse about sense-making. Debunking the colonising framework in favour of a pluralist dialectical framework involves reversing the circulation of epistemic power. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to (i) reject the notion that one can ascribe no metaphysical commitments to Hegel; and (ii) argue that the kind of metaphysics one ought to ascribe to Hegel is a robust yet immanent/naturalist variety. I begin by exploring two reasons why one may think Hegel’s philosophical system has no metaphysical commitments. I argue that one of these reasons is based on a particular understanding of Hegel as a post-Kantian philosopher, whereas the second reason is (...) centred on a particular understanding of the philosophical viability of metaphysics as a form of enquiry simpliciter. My discussion of these ways of seeing the motivation for regarding Hegel in an anti-metaphysical way concludes with a rejection of the interpretation of conceiving Hegelianism without metaphysics. I then move on to address what I take to be the more pertinent and serious issue of what kind of metaphysician Hegel was. To this end, I argue that the best way of understanding Hegelian metaphysics is by conceiving of it as a combination of Aristotelian first philosophy and Kantian critique. To put this in the form of a slogan, I interpret Hegel’s metaphysics as a form of speculative naturalism. (shrink)

Meillassoux's criticism of correlationism and the alternative he proposes are compared with Sellars's rationalistic pragmatism. I argue that Meillssoux's rejection of the principle of sufficient reason undermines the intelligibility of science itself, contra Meillassou'x own intentions. Sellars shows how to accept what is true about 'weak' correlationism within a materialistic metaphysics that upholds the PSR.

This paper introduces the philosophy of Grace Andrus de Laguna in order to renew interest in it. I show that, in the 1910s and 1920s, she develops ideas and arguments that are also found playing key roles in the development of analytic philosophy decades later. Further, I describe her sympathetic, but acute, criticism of pragmatism and Heideggerian ontology, and situate her work in the tradition of American, speculative philosophy. Before 1920, we will see, de Laguna appeals to multiple realizability (...) to undermine reductionism in science, to support perspectival, scientific realism and, with help from a private language argument, to favour the view that mental states are classified by behavioural, teleological roles over what came to be called ‘type physicalism’. Her view of speech, mostly developed in the 1920s, tells us that its primary role is coordinating group behaviour rather than expressing thoughts. Belief is understood in terms of its causal role, including its causal relations to other kinds of mental states, when coordinating group behaviour. Thought is similarly understood. In developing her theory of mind, de Laguna rejects the pragmatist claims that belief can be reduced to dispositions to behaviour and that thought’s function is to address specific, rather than general, problems. She also favours meaning holism and rejects the analytic–synthetic distinction. In later work, de Laguna argues that individuals’ activity of self-maintenance brings universals, conceived of as irreducible potentialities, into being and makes them increasingly determinate. Further, she identifies the existence of all individuals with forms of self-maintenance and takes the existence of people to include maintenance of the cultural world. Such a unified treatment of existence, she holds, permits making its evolution intelligible. Heidegger’s view of being is rejected for not permitting this. All de Laguna’s work, we will see, fits a vision of philosophy as the systematic, imaginative and naturalistic examination of being as well as a source of criticism of science. (shrink)

In this précis I summarise the main ideas of my book Philosophy of Psychedelics. The book discusses philosophical issues arising from the therapeutic use of “classic” psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin and LSD. The book is organised around what I call the Comforting Delusion Objection to psychedelic therapy: the concern that this novel and promising treatment relies essentially on the induction of non-naturalistic metaphysical beliefs, rendering it epistemically objectionable. I begin the précis by summarizing material from chapters two and three (...) of the book, which review evidence for the therapeutic efficacy of psychedelics, and the facts about their clinical use that prompt the Comforting Delusion Objection. I then summarize materials from chapters four and five of the book, which argue that psychedelic therapy works neither by experience-independent processes of neuroplasticity, nor by inducing non-naturalistic metaphysical ideations, but by altering mental representations of the self. Next, I summarise the specific, speculative account of how this might work that is developed in chapters six and seven of the book. This account is based on the predictive processing theory of brain function and the self-binding theory of self-representation. Chapters eight and nine of the book argue, on the basis of this account, that psychedelic therapy can have significant epistemic and spiritual benefits that are compatible with a naturalistic worldview. I summarize this material, and then, finally, the overall conclusions about psychedelic therapy drawn in the tenth and final chapter of the book. (shrink)

I raise an epistemic objection to naturalistic metaphysics – the attempt to understand the nature and structure of reality in terms of natural entities, forces, and processes – arguing that we should not expect evolution to have crafted cognitive faculties reliable with respect to recondite metaphysical speculation, and that this gives practitioners of naturalistic metaphysics reason to doubt the deliverances of their work. I conclude by considering some main objections to this kind of skeptical argument.

The Kripkean metaphysical modality (i.e. possibility and necessity) is one of the most important concepts in contemporary analytic philosophy and is the basis of many metaphysical speculations. These metaphysical speculations frequently commit to entities that do not belong to this physical universe, such as merely possible entities, abstract entities, mental entities or qualities not realizable by the physical, which seems to contradict naturalism or physicalism. This paper proposes a naturalistic interpretation of the Kripkean modality, as a naturalist’s response to (...) these metaphysical speculations. It will show that naturalism can accommodate the Kripkean metaphysical modality. In particular, it will show that naturalism can help to resolve the puzzles surrounding Kripke’s a posteriori necessary propositions and a priori contingent propositions. (shrink)

This review essay attempts to present a coherent and reasonably unitary picture of the contemporary ‘speculative turn’ in continental philosophy as charted in Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman, eds, The Speculative Turn: Continental Realism and Materialism (2011). Avoiding a more objective yet more anodyne chapter by chapter summary, I paint an intentionally synoptic view by selecting some common concerns of the authors involved, and group them under five ‘core themes’. Throughout, I try to keep open the (...) comparative channel with the realist tenets of critical realism, and conclude vouching for the necessity for more bridge-building works to appear in the future. (shrink)

The work sketches the main outlines of Indian naturalism as it appears in both systematic and unsystematic speculation before its decline in the Indian Middle Ages, which began around the time of Muhammed.

Michael Glanzberg: Quine on Reference and Quantification: This essay reviews Quine's main theses about the nature of reference and quantification, their origins, and their limitations. It presents Quine's view that reference is a derivative semantic notion, along with his proposal to eliminate proper names, and his speculation about how our ability to refer might develop. Turning to quantification, it shows the close connections between quantifiers and regimentation in Quine's work, and discusses his rejection of second‐order logic and quantification into modal (...) contexts, along with the important connection Quine sees between quantification and ontological commitment. (shrink)

Naturalism, as I understand it, includes cosmological naturalism, ontological naturalism and methodological naturalism. After clarifying these three theses I argue that the combination of ontological with methodological naturalism is untenable. I do so by providing a pro tanto case against ontological naturalism and show that it can be resisted, but only by abandoning methodological naturalism. The pro tanto case is that ontological naturalism requires a version of what I call Redundancy Nominalism, but (...) methodological naturalists should either reject it or at very least treat it, and hence ontological naturalism, as a speculation. (shrink)

Most of the philosophers engaged in the free will debate accept some kind of naturalism constraint. In this chapter, I distinguish three different kinds of naturalism. Strong naturalists hold that philosophical theorizing should be actually guided by current science, whereas weak naturalists avoid postulating any entities or processes that conflict with science (but may take bets on how science will evolve). Mid‐strength naturalism is agnostic about how future science will evolve, but is not actually guided by the (...) science. I argue that though compatibilism tends to fare better on this scale when we consider its relationship to physics, consideration of neuroscience and psychology complicates the picture: major compatibilists engage in as much speculation and scientifically unmotivated postulation of entities and processes as major libertarians. I end by asking whether philosophers engaged in this debate ought to accept that the stronger a view's naturalist credentials, the better warranted it is. (shrink)

Philosophers of science have often noted that naturalism in science arose out of the struggle to free science or natural philosophy from its origin within a religious understanding of the world. The point of naturalism is to replace philosophical speculation with empirical research, and thus to use science to carry out philosophical work. Simultaneous with the rise of naturalism in the philosophy of science was an awareness and broader recognition of the influence of society on scientific inquiry. (...) This chapter will examine the tension between naturalism and the tenets of the sociology of science – that is, the cultural view of science, which is partly if not wholly antinaturalist – in order to determine to what extent, if any, the two are compatible. (shrink)

This is a contribution to the debate on speculative realism deriving from the book The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism, eds Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman. It is also in part a response to Fabio Gironi’s review article on the subject, ‘Between naturalism and rationalism: a new realist landscape’ 2012: 361–87).

This seems to me to be the proper attitude to take toward philosophical proposals about the way things are; they are "likely stories" or "likely accounts," although it is true some speculative philosophers, for example, Spinoza and Hegel, did not think of their systems in such a modest way. Now naturalism strives to be a systematic philosophy, an account of the way things are. Its expression as a philosophy is often loose, although frequent attempts are made to give (...) it internal consistency. One of the loosest and untidiest presentations of a naturalistic philosophy is found in Hans Christian Sandbeck's book, Nature and Destiny. And in another work by William R. Dennes, Some Dilemmas of Naturalism, we see an effort to examine some of the internal difficulties of the system. I intend to examine both in detail; in addition, I will offer some brief comments on Francis Haber's book, The Age of the World, which gives part of the history of naturalism. (shrink)

Contemporary naturalism is changing and scientific reductionism is under challenge from those who advocate a more comprehensive outlook. This special issue of Telos, based on the first Telos Australia Symposium held at Swinburne University in Melbourne in February 2014, introduces some of the key questions in the current debates. It also poses the question of whether more satisfactory political and social thought can be produced if scientific reductionism is replaced by a richer and more hermeneutical naturalism, one that (...) takes more account of philosophical anthropology, actual co-involvements of human beings and their environments, and the potential of more naturalistically grounded approaches to culture. (shrink)

This article revisits the author’s influential account of Nietzche as a philosophical naturalist. It identifies the sources of Nietzsche’s position in the German naturalism of the mid-nineteenth century, in particular the work of Friedrich Lange. His naturalism is, however, “speculative” in that he postulates causal mechanisms not confirmed by science. Nietzsche’s ambition to explain morality naturalistically coexists with a “therapeutic” ambition to induce some readers to escape from morality. The article also addresses doubts that might arise against (...) reading Nietzsche as a naturalist. (shrink)

Using Schelling's philosophy, Ben Woodard examines how an expanded form of naturalism changes how we conceive of the division between thought and world, mathematics and motion, sense and dynamics, experiment and materiality, as well as speculation and pragmatism. Nature, in Schelling's eyes, is not the great outdoors or some authentic pastoral realm, but the various powers, processes and tendencies which run through biology, chemistry, physics and the very possibility of thought itself.

ABSTRACT A profound sense of biological explanations and the social nature of our species were appreciated by Chauncey Wright and American classical pragmatists. Inquiry was understood in the context of social cooperation. One achievement in the evolution of cephalic function is the development of social cooperative behaviors, the cornerstone of our cultural productivity. Classical pragmatism is linked to an expanding sense of human capability, tied to the deepening of human experience. While pragmatism is open-ended, the limits of human function put (...) our advances into a perspective in which the evolution of function is just as apparent as the devolution of function. (shrink)

In my recent book, Art and Engagement (1991), I develop the idea of aesthetic engagement as central to the appreciation of art. The human contribution to the constitution of the "work" of art, I claim, is a critical part of appreciative experience. This contribution, however, is easily misread into the history of the idea of experience that has dominated Western philosophy since the seventeenth century, a history that sees experience as an inner, personal, subjective affair. From this vantage point, the (...) metaphysical implications of an aesthetics of experience seem to lead resolutely to idealism.1 'Experience', however, is a troublesome term precisely because its meaning is equivocal. Despite its association with philosophical idealism, experience allows a range of interpretations in various contexts. Even though aesthetic experience is often understood subjectively, it is mistaken to think that it allows of no other alternative. These comments raise a complex of issues, two of which I want to consider here: first, the metaphysical significance of experience and, second, the bearing of art on metaphysics. (shrink)

Contemporary naturalism is changing and scientific reductionism is under challenge from those who advocate a more comprehensive outlook. This special issue of Telos, based on the first Telos Australia Symposium held at Swinburne University in Melbourne in February 2014, introduces some of the key questions in the current debates. It also poses the question of whether more satisfactory political and social thought can be produced if scientific reductionism is replaced by a richer and more hermeneutical naturalism, one that (...) takes more account of philosophical anthropology, actual co-involvements of human beings and their environments, and the potential of more naturalistically grounded approaches to culture. (shrink)

At present, ‘naturalism’ is arguably the dominant trend in both Anglo-American and European philosophy. Owing to the influence of the works of W.V.O. Quine, Wilfred Sellars, and Hillary Putnam, among others, naturalism both as a methodological and ontological position has become one of the mainstays of contemporary analytic approaches to knowledge, mind and ethics. From the early 1990s onward, European philosophy in the English-speaking world has been witnessing a turn from the philosophies of the subjects of phenomenology, hermeneutics (...) and existentialism and a revival of a certain kind of vitalism, whether Bergsonian or Nietzschean, and also of a certain kind of materialism that is close in spirit to Spinoza’s _Ethics_ and to the naturalism and monism of the early Ionian thinkers. This book comprises essays written by experts in both the European and the Anglo-American traditions such as John Sallis, David Papineau, David Cerbone, Dan Zahavi, Paul Patton, Bernhard Weiss, Jack Reynolds and Benedict Smith, who explore the limit of naturalism and the debate between naturalism and phenomenology. This book also considers the relation between Deleuze’s philosophy and naturalism as well as the critique of phenomenology by speculative realism. This book was originally published as a special issue of the _International Journal of Philosophical Studies. _. (shrink)

William James wrote that the life of religion “consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto.” Naturalism organizes our experiences of the universe within a science-grounded philosophical and/or religious framework aligning it with what is supremely good for our lives. This article describes a science-grounded specific “Framework of Spirituality” identifying part of this unseen order that opens a “spiritual core” within persons as a source of healing (...) and happiness. A cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) expanded process shows how experiences of human worth and dignity are keys to this new awareness and provides speculation for a brain function and evolutionary explanation. Details of this knowledge are related to various perspectives and authors of naturalism—scientific, religious, ecstatic, and ecological—to contribute to a future direction for the understanding, development, and further expression of naturalism. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this article, the author wishes to defend a naturalistic version of phenomenology rooted in and expropriated from William James’s radical empiricism against Max Scheler’s non-naturalistic phenomenology. By drawing from Jack Reynolds’s arguments for a minimal phenomenology, the author posits that radical empiricism is a middle way between the misguided self-sufficiency of transcendental phenomenology and the misguided self-sufficiency of ontological naturalism. The orthodox reading of Scheler as a dualist is found problematic, and in outlining four propositions characteristic of (...) Scheler’s positions, the author motivates resources from Jamesian thought to argue for the superiority of a naturalistic phenomenology. (shrink)

In describing the mystical as a swift and progressive obliteration of empirical individuality and its history, of sensation, of time and space, and of the world’s multiplicity of forms, the otherworldly mystic grossly distorts the experience by interpretive tropes that uproot it from its animal soil of impulse and habit, of human perspective, and attribute its genesis to the intermediation of supernatural factors in order to account for its simplest rudiments. What is presupposed in otherworldly interpretations is that sense experience (...) is the veil of Maya cast over Reality leading man away from the spiritual and, as John Dewey says, “tolerated only as a vehicle through which man may be brought to an intuition of .. (shrink)

I present an account of nihilism, following Foucault and Nietzsche, as a sort of colonization of our thinking by a religious form of normativity, grounded in our submission to truth as correspondence, in the idea that the facts themselves could be binding upon us. I then present Brassier’s radicalization of nihilism and showed how it remains subservient to this religious ideal of truth. I argue, further, that far than showing how a commitment to Enlightenment reason and science demands a cold (...) metaphysics of death, in dismissing the irreducibly plural ways in which what is determines thought, Brassier’s attempt to secure a fit between thought and disenchanted world suggests that the view is an expression of the unliveable condition of nihilism, rather than its proof. Finally, I present a form of naturalism that makes legitimate claim to the legacy of Enlightenment, drawing from French historical epistemology, and dispenses with the problems animating Brassier’s nihilism by radically transforming the concept of truth and how we relate to it. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide the outlines of an alternative metaphilosophical orientation for Continental philosophy, namely, a form of scientific naturalism that has proximate roots in the work of Bachelard and Althusser. I describe this orientation as an “alternative” insofar as it provides a framework for doing justice to some of the motivations behind the recent revival of metaphysics in Continental philosophy, in particular its ecological-ethical motivations. In the second section of the paper, I demonstrate how ecological-ethical issues motivate (...) new metaphysicians like Bruno Latour, Jane Bennett, Timothy Morton, Ian Bogost, and Graham Harman to impute to objects real features of agency. I also try to show how their commitments lead to deep ambiguities in their metaphysical projects. In the final section, I outline a type of scientific naturalism in Continental philosophy that parallels the sort of naturalism championed by Quine, both conceptually and historically, and suggest that it might serve our ecological-ethical purposes better. (shrink)

This article introduces a novel use of technologies to visualize space and temporary structures in public space as a critical and speculative method for artistic research. Imitation and iconification have been vital in visual culture since civilization began. Science has become proficient in picturing invisible matter and numerical data. However, we are limited to visualizing these data in an iconic, ‘understandable’ way, that is, to some extent, reductionist. A non-naturalistic artistic visualization (NNAVi) method is proposed to discover and present (...) the underlying context of objects and space. First, this article discusses the representational function of artistic images and the artistic use of emerging technologies to represent invisible information. Following the discussion, the case study of the virtual reality (VR) artwork The Last Recreational Land shows how NNAVi can be applied. The case study starts with an exploration of the pandemic’s context and nature and then moves to an explanation of the multisensory and immersive setting of the artwork. Interweaving case studies and theoretical references, the article elaborates on how the VR experience is used as a device to respond to the pandemic. By deconstructing the relationship between visualization, imitation and iconification, the article theorizes NNAVi as a new methodology for artistic research that provides tangible insights into the nature of the pandemic. (shrink)

While the debate continues over whether Nietzsche’s conception of the will to power is intended as ontology, biology, psychology, or some variant of the three, there is a significant consensus on many sides that were the will to power intended as an ontology, it would be inconsistent with his anti-metaphysical stance, implausible from a contemporary scientific perspective, and very poorly supported, based only on wild metaphysical speculation or sloppy, pseudo-scientific generalization. In this paper, I suggest, to the contrary, that Nietzsche’s (...) published works contain a substantial, though implied, argument for the will to power as ontology. Further, this ontology and the supporting argument for it are fully consistent with a naturalist methodology. Indeed, I will suggest that Nietzsche believes the will to power ontology follows directly from his rejection of metaphysics and is grounded in a critical form of naturalism. Consequently, even if he is mistaken in this conclusion, we must take the will to power ontology as seriously as we do his critique of metaphysics, for it is intended as a direct consequence of that critique. I will further suggest that, once we have recognized Nietzsche’s implied philosophical argument for the will to power ontology, we can better understand the intended scope and purpose of the theory of the will to power, as well as reject many of the influential interpretations of the concept, including the vitalist (Heidegger, Schacht), intentionalist (Clark), evolutionary (Richardson), and teleological (Reginster) readings. In contrast to these interpretations, I argue that the will to power as ontology follows directly from his rejection of three principal metaphysical presumptions: substance, causal agency, and teleology. As a rejection of substance, the will to power describes reality as consisting of general will, not objects, agents, or discrete wills. As a rejection of causal agency, it describes events as maximal manifestations of power rather than as realized potencies—abilities, motives, or possibilities actualized by efficient causal agencies. Finally, as a rejection of teleology, the will to power is a descriptive principle of action and events as essentially active engagements of obstacles, rather than an explanatory final cause, purpose or aim. Consequently, the will to power is a not a theory of desires, intentions, or drives, but rather a basic descriptive principle of events or activity, describing not agency but the causal process as a whole, and tending not toward accumulating power or overcoming resistance, but rather toward the activity of resistance as such. I conclude that the will to power is a critical ontology about what reality is not, rather than a positive theory of reality, intended not to explain events but to reveal and reject the common metaphysical presuppositions that underlie many common-sense, philosophical and scientific explanations of reality, such as freedom of the will, rational and moral motivation, physical atomism and the concept of natural law. (shrink)

This chapter places Alexander in his intellectual context, focusing on his early 1880s work, and exploring how that flows into his mature work. It considers Alexander’s views on two major late nineteenth century debates about the mind. First, what is the relationship of mind to nature? During this period, idealists were battling with realists over whether mind should be identified with nature. I argue Alexander was always a realist, and speculate on his association with Oxford realism. Second, how did our (...) minds evolve biologically? Some theorists argued for naturalism, whilst others argued for supernaturalism. I argue Alexander was always a naturalist. Despite Alexander’s realism and naturalism, he leans towards both idealism and supernaturalism, sharply distinguishing his realism from that of early analytic philosophers. The final part of the chapter explains that while Alexander’s system won few converts, it was widely admired and remains a grand edifice in the history of speculative metaphysics. (shrink)

This collection of essays was originally designed as an anthology of Lamprecht's earlier articles. However, about one third of the essays collected here are new for this volume and serve to integrate the old essays so that the volume has become "a record of the course of his thought... and a kind of epilogue to his career of philosophical speculation." For Lamprecht, naturalism is a "philosophical position, empirical in method, that regards everything that exists or occurs to be conditioned (...) in its existence or occurrence by causal factors within one all encompassing system of nature." The author seems to be uncomfortable in the face of extreme solutions to philosophic problems. He takes a mediating position between "determinacy and indeterminacy," "causality and contingency," the primacy of "subject-matter" and the primacy of "method." Lamprecht is at his best when exploring the implications of his theories rather than when defending them. His observations on freedom and necessity, the nature of man, the role of historiography in philosophy, and the question of religion bear a richness of insight that must be appreciated regardless of the reader's attitude toward the author's philosophical position.—S. O. H. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 11.2 (2003) 141-156 [Access article in PDF] Music Education as Critical PracticeA Naturalist View Lauri Väkevä University Of Oulu, Finland I This essay defends naturalism as a framework for philosophy of music education. I have three general reasons for supporting naturalism. First, by taking naturalism seriously we can keep our philosophies up-to-date with scientific inquiry. Second, naturalism can emancipate us (...) from transcendental pseudo-questions and instead help us to deal with the empirical problems of everyday life. Third, with naturalism, we can free ourselves from a priori theories of morals and aesthetics and thus view the active part that normative and aesthetic concerns play in human praxis. Even if I endorse naturalism, I do not subscribe to scientism. 1 Rather, I submit to a pragmatist view that stresses the role of philosophy (and science) in dealing with the questions of our life practices. Of the recent perspectives in the philosophy of music education my approach comes closest to the critical praxialism discussed in the MayDay group. 2All in all, I find a lot in common with the praxialist discussion (within or outside the MayDay group) and the kind of pragmatism that follows John Dewey's mature philosophy. 3 However, it seems to me that the naturalist bent of Deweyan pragmatism has not been thoroughly analyzed in our field. 4 One reason for this [End Page 141] might be the bad report that 'hard' or reductive naturalism has been given in connection with the experimental paradigm of music education research. 5 I want to argue that the critical potential of Deweyan pragmatism should not (and cannot) be separated from a naturalist approach. Taken together, critical and naturalist views can contribute to any philosophy, especially in fields that have a long tradition of leaning on otherworldly explanations.In what follows, I begin by outlining (in broad brushstrokes) the historical position of pragmatism and its status in present day philosophy. Next, I focus on the implications of Deweyan naturalist pragmatism and the possibility of maintaining a critical pragmatist attitude with naturalist presumptions in a pedagogical context. In the final part of the essay, I outline an interpretative framework for a critical pragmatism of music education that takes advantage of the naturalizing tendencies in contemporary philosophy without losing its grasp on the things that matter musically. II For a while, pragmatism had a bad name in academic philosophy. This was especially true after the linguistic turn in the first half of the last century. 6 By making the linguistic turn, many philosophers hoped to disassociate themselves from the speculative tradition(s) once and for all. Logical analysts also made it more difficult for philosophers to ignore the findings of scientists. Thus they paved the way for contemporary reductive naturalism that takes science as the measure of what can be known. 7However, analytic philosophers were not alone in their attempt to provide philosophy with scientific rigor. Classical pragmatists, too, had integrated a naturalist penchant in their output. Embracing naturalism with an open-ended experimental spirit, they wanted to focus on "the problems of men" as the chief subject matter of philosophy. 8 To many analytic philosophers, this seemed like a return to armchair speculation with an ingredient of sentimental ethics thrown in for good measure. Worse still, it looked as though the classical pragmatists were giving in to the spirit of the corporate West: speaking of the truth as "cash-value" surely seemed like a blasphemy to intellectuals who sought from formal logic and mathematics a purity of mind to clear up the messiness of everyday experience. 9Logical analysis also had its shortcomings. While many mainstream philosophers turned to logical analysis for clarity and certainty, at the same time they submitted to Cartesian-Kantian mind-body dualism with its problematic epistemology. Thus, they kept supporting the tensions between the rationalist and empiricist or analytic and synthetic domains of knowledge that haunted modernist neo-Kantian arguments.These distinctions turned out to be easy targets for postanalytic critics. 10 [End Page 142]Classical pragmatists anticipated this... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 11.2 (2003) 141-156 [Access article in PDF] Music Education as Critical PracticeA Naturalist View Lauri Väkevä University Of Oulu, Finland I This essay defends naturalism as a framework for philosophy of music education. I have three general reasons for supporting naturalism. First, by taking naturalism seriously we can keep our philosophies up-to-date with scientific inquiry. Second, naturalism can emancipate us (...) from transcendental pseudo-questions and instead help us to deal with the empirical problems of everyday life. Third, with naturalism, we can free ourselves from a priori theories of morals and aesthetics and thus view the active part that normative and aesthetic concerns play in human praxis. Even if I endorse naturalism, I do not subscribe to scientism. 1 Rather, I submit to a pragmatist view that stresses the role of philosophy (and science) in dealing with the questions of our life practices. Of the recent perspectives in the philosophy of music education my approach comes closest to the critical praxialism discussed in the MayDay group. 2All in all, I find a lot in common with the praxialist discussion (within or outside the MayDay group) and the kind of pragmatism that follows John Dewey's mature philosophy. 3 However, it seems to me that the naturalist bent of Deweyan pragmatism has not been thoroughly analyzed in our field. 4 One reason for this [End Page 141] might be the bad report that 'hard' or reductive naturalism has been given in connection with the experimental paradigm of music education research. 5 I want to argue that the critical potential of Deweyan pragmatism should not (and cannot) be separated from a naturalist approach. Taken together, critical and naturalist views can contribute to any philosophy, especially in fields that have a long tradition of leaning on otherworldly explanations.In what follows, I begin by outlining (in broad brushstrokes) the historical position of pragmatism and its status in present day philosophy. Next, I focus on the implications of Deweyan naturalist pragmatism and the possibility of maintaining a critical pragmatist attitude with naturalist presumptions in a pedagogical context. In the final part of the essay, I outline an interpretative framework for a critical pragmatism of music education that takes advantage of the naturalizing tendencies in contemporary philosophy without losing its grasp on the things that matter musically. II For a while, pragmatism had a bad name in academic philosophy. This was especially true after the linguistic turn in the first half of the last century. 6 By making the linguistic turn, many philosophers hoped to disassociate themselves from the speculative tradition(s) once and for all. Logical analysts also made it more difficult for philosophers to ignore the findings of scientists. Thus they paved the way for contemporary reductive naturalism that takes science as the measure of what can be known. 7However, analytic philosophers were not alone in their attempt to provide philosophy with scientific rigor. Classical pragmatists, too, had integrated a naturalist penchant in their output. Embracing naturalism with an open-ended experimental spirit, they wanted to focus on "the problems of men" as the chief subject matter of philosophy. 8 To many analytic philosophers, this seemed like a return to armchair speculation with an ingredient of sentimental ethics thrown in for good measure. Worse still, it looked as though the classical pragmatists were giving in to the spirit of the corporate West: speaking of the truth as "cash-value" surely seemed like a blasphemy to intellectuals who sought from formal logic and mathematics a purity of mind to clear up the messiness of everyday experience. 9Logical analysis also had its shortcomings. While many mainstream philosophers turned to logical analysis for clarity and certainty, at the same time they submitted to Cartesian-Kantian mind-body dualism with its problematic epistemology. Thus, they kept supporting the tensions between the rationalist and empiricist or analytic and synthetic domains of knowledge that haunted modernist neo-Kantian arguments.These distinctions turned out to be easy targets for postanalytic critics. 10 [End Page 142]Classical pragmatists anticipated this... (shrink)

ABSTRACT The proper relationship between phenomenology and naturalism has reemerged as a pressing issue following interdisciplinary developments in the cognitive sciences. Most solutions opt for a naturalized phenomenology, rather than a phenomenological naturalism. This article takes up the latter approach, confronting the implications of Merleau-Ponty's reformulation of Husserl's paradox of subjectivity. I argue that Merleau-Ponty's formulation—which I term “the paradox of madness”—reveals a deep, ontological contingency in what Husserl took to be necessary transcendental structures of consciousness and world, (...) revealing that these transcendental structures are in fact embedded in and contaminated by the very world they constitute and disclose. (shrink)

"Life must be something more than dilettante speculation. And religion a great deal more than mere gratification of the instinct for worship linked with the straight-teaching of irreproachable credos. Religion must be life made true, and life is action, growth, development—begun now and ending never."In September 2016, a first-year student at East Tennessee State University interrupted a Black Lives Matter protest on campus, parading in a gorilla mask. Clad in overalls and barefoot, the young man offered bananas to the protesting (...) students, heckling them.2 When set within a wider historical context, this student's actions evoke a legacy of intimidation in which perceived differences... (shrink)

This book marks the beginning of a new phase in the philosophical investigation of classical and contemporary accounts of the self: canonical boundaries have been crossed and doctrinal justification abandoned in favor of a cosmopolitan ideal of syncretic, theoretically perspicuous, and historically informed systematic reflection. That such reflection bears on so central a concept as the self is only fitting given its implications for a broad range of questions concerning agency, the mind-body problem, and self-knowledge that are now pursued across (...) a number of disciplines, including philosophy, psychology and neuroscience. But Ganeri is not simply interested in bringing the wealth of Indian speculations on the self to bear on contemporary discussions, in the hope of supplying a much-needed corrective lens, fill in some important lacunae, or bring another voice to the table. Rather, the goal is to think with these classical Indian thinkers (of which, no less than 21 are debated at length .. (shrink)

Naturalism is the label for the thesis that the tools we should use in answering philosophical problems are the methods and findings of the mature sciences—from physics across to biology and increasingly neuroscience. It enables us to rule out answers to philosophical questions that are incompatible with scientific findings. It enables us to rule out epistemological pluralism—that the house of knowledge has many mansions, as well as skepticism about the reach of science. It bids us doubt that there are (...) facts about reality that science cannot grasp. It gives us confidence to assert that by now in the development of science, absence of evidence is prima facie good grounds for evidence of absence: this goes for God, and a great deal else. (shrink)