Abstract
This chapter discusses of the nature of philosophical naturalism and its relation to scientific method. The discussion takes its cue from an interdisciplinary examination of the naturalization of the philosophy of mind by Kievit et al. (2011), who employ statistical methods to construct psychometric models of both the identity and supervenience theories of the mind-body relation. For the most part, the focus of the chapter is on methods of inquiry. After a brief discussion of two different attitudes to naturalized philosophy, two well-known views of naturalism in the philosophy of mind are presented and considered in relation to the naturalism of Kievit et al. Thereafter, some limitations of structural equation modelling, which is the authors’ method of choice, are noted, as is the useful but neglected method of inference to the best explanation. Philosophers and psychologists are encouraged to use one another’s methods, to the benefit of both.
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Notes
- 1.
Despite its separatist conception of philosophy, classical empiricism’s prescriptions for the conduct of inquiry have exerted a palpable influence on psychological science (e.g., the attraction of operational definitions, the heavy use of Fisherian statistical procedures, and the steadfast neglect of theory by the publication manual guidelines of the American Psychological Association).
- 2.
A major debate between realists and empiricists in contemporary philosophy of science pivots around Bas van Fraassen’s (1980) constructive empiricism and his criticisms of scientific realism. This debate, and other debates between realists and antirealists, have been widely ignored by psychologists.
- 3.
An important part of Quine’s philosophical motivation for adopting naturalism is his scepticism about a priori knowledge. He famously argued that it is impossible to draw a sharp distinction between truths of meaning, or analytic truths, which are known a priori, and truths of fact, or synthetic truths, which are known a posteriori.
- 4.
The Canberra Plan is so called because many of its early proponents were philosophers associated with the Australian National University in Canberra. Frank Jackson and Philip Petit are prominent among them.
- 5.
A sceptical philosopher might argue that much psychological knowledge is superficial and far from the truth, and that it, therefore, ought not to seriously constrain philosophical theorizing about the mind. I think there is something to be said for this view, but it needs to be argued for on a case-by-case basis with a detailed examination of the epistemic credentials of the knowledge claims in question.
- 6.
- 7.
I don’t mean to suggest that we should subscribe to Bennett and Hacker’s Wittgensteinian view that empirical considerations do not bear on the process of conceptual analysis. Sytsma (2010) is a recent discussion and demonstration of the relevance of empirical investigations to conceptual analysis.
- 8.
In this chapter, I have assumed, but not argued for, the tenability of scientific realism. I think that a form of inference to the best explanation provides us with the best argument for scientific realism but that its justificatory force is modest. See Psillos (1999) for a general justification of scientific realism in terms of inference to the best explanation, and Boyd (1996) for an argument to the best explanation that justifies a realist understanding of scientific methods.
- 9.
It might be thought that because Laudan is a critic of scientific realism, his normative naturalism sits uncomfortably with the naturalistic realism adopted in this commentary. However, as Capaldi and Proctor (2000) pointed out, Laudan is not an antirealist, and he does not believe that his position refutes scientific realism. Many scientific realists will find Laudan’s normative naturalism, or something like it, congenial to their philosophical outlook.
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Haig, B.D. (2018). Philosophical Naturalism and Scientific Method. In: Method Matters in Psychology. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 45. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01051-5_1
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