The victory of realism over idealism at the start of the twentieth century, and of scientific realism over logical empiricism and pragmatism in the mid twentieth century, is a striking phenomenon that calls for historical explanation. In this paper I propose an externalist account, looking at the social and political reasons why realism became attractive, rather than considering the internal factors–the merits of the arguments in favour of realism. I look at the agenda of Roy Wood Sellars’critical realismwhich was not (...) narrowly theoretical, but very much related to his concerns for the development of American society post WW1, as expressed inThe Next Step in Democracy(1916b) andThe Next Step in Religion(1918). I discuss the significance of technocracy in America – not only the increasing influence of scientists and engineers in government, but also the diffusion of the view that social issues are best addressed by scientific, technical means. Counter-cultural critics of technocracy, such as Roszak (1969) claimed that a “scientific world-view” provided an “ideology” for this system of governance. We will see that RW Sellars was explicitly involved in the task of building a scientific world-view, but with political goals that were probably not realised by the post-war establishment. (shrink)

This chapter explores Nagel’s polemics. It shows these have a two-fold character: (i) to defend liberal civilization against all kinds of enemies. And (ii) to defend what he calls ‘contextual naturalism.’ And the chapter shows that (i-ii) reinforce each other and undermine alternative political and philosophical programs. The chapter’s argument responds to an influential argument by George Reisch that Nagel’s professional stance represents a kind of disciplinary retreat from politics. In order to respond to Reisch the relationship between Nagel’s philosophy (...) of science and his politics is explored and this chapter shows how both are anchored in what Nagel once called his ‘contextual naturalism’—a metaphysics that resists imposing the unity of the world and treats all entities as embedded in a wider network of entities. Part of the argument traces out how Nagel’s views on responsible speech and professionalism reflect a distinct understanding of the political role of philosophers of science. (shrink)

A systematic theory of naturalism, bridging metaphysics and the science of complexity and emergence.

Phenomenology, currently the most active philosophical movement on the European scene, has shown persistent concern for psychological problems and principles, and for the science of psychology in general. This concern has taken the form of various attempts to amend psychology according to phenomenological precepts and methods with the intent of providing it with a new metaphysical basis. Recent examples of this trend are the textbook of Snygg and Combs and the two books published in France by the philosopher, Merleau-Ponty.

Is Joseph Margolis a member of the often neglected school of “Columbia naturalism”? Columbia naturalism promoted a distinctive non-reductive nationalism in mid-twentieth-century America. Inspired by pragmatism, and Dewey in particular, its members included Ernest Nagel, John Herman Randall, Joseph Blau, Herbert Schneider, and Justus Buchler. Margolis received his degree from Columbia in 1953. Neither his early work in aesthetics nor his mature attempt to justify pragmatic themes in an uncompromising dialogue with analytic and continental philosophy seems particularly “Columbian.” Neither does (...) his radical endorsement of a kind of relativism. However, Margolis is after all some kind of naturalist. Furthermore, the Columbians shared a forgotten doctrine, called “objective relativism.” If the combination of naturalism and relativism is a Columbian fruit, Margolis may have has fallen closer to the tree than first appears. (shrink)

Le texte que nous avons choisi de traduire pour ce numéro de Théorèmes constitue une réponse à une recension de William Herbert Sheldon, parue dans The Journal of Philosophy en 1945 et dans laquelle Sheldon critiquait le volume collectif Naturalism and the Human Spirit [Krikorian, 1944], auquel John Dewey, Sidney Hook et Ernst Nagel avaient tous les trois contribué. Le poids des empreintes respectives de Dewey, Hook et Nagel dans l’écriture de « Are Naturalists Materialists? » n’est pas très...

The basic tenets of “classical” naturalism (exemplified in the work of Mead, Buchler, and Randall, among others) are delineated and distinguished from other versions of naturalism. Classical naturalism is also distinguished from reductive materialism and idealism. Nature is asserted to be indefinitely plural and not amenable to monistic or dualistic categorial schemes; that is, the principle of “ontological parity” is maintained. The method of inquiry of naturalism is outlined, along with the notion of truth as perspectivally objective. The metaphysical hypotheses (...) are then used to examine culture. Culture is found to be the specific environment of human being, arising out of, but irreducible to, other natural processes. Culture is described as the cumulative gestures of the human social organism as it discovers and creates itself in mutual constitution with other natural processes and products. (shrink)

1. Introduction. Nowadays metaphysics is so far out of fashion, with scientists at any rate, that a few words of justification may be required for putting it in relation with science, as in this paper.Metaphysics is nothing occult, nor is it necessarily dogmatic or allied to theology. Strictly, it is a science itself, the science of being. But since a large section of being—even the whole of it, according to some metaphysics—consists of phenomena, and since the ostensible business of natural (...) science is with phenomena, a distinction has to be made. The use of ‘metaphysics’ in this paper is restricted to the non-phenomenal mode of being. More explicitly, it is restricted to formal and general things, such as category, class, variable, relation, order. General words, which I take to be all the words except certain proper names, are, accordingly, metaphysical signs; and the metaphysical matrix is by no means limited to science but extends to all discourse in which there are general terms. (shrink)