Naturalism Reconsidered

Abstract

Naturalism has many differing senses, some positive and some negative. While it is used in positive senses by tradition of analytical philosophy, with Ludwig Wittgenstein its best example, and by me tradition of phenomenology, with Maurice Merleau-Ponty its best exemplar, it also has an extremely negative sense on both of these fronts. In fact, botii Merleau-Ponty and Wittgenstein in their basic thrusts adamantly reject reductionistic Although Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology rejects that Husserl rejects, early on found a place for truth of naturalism. In a parallel way, Wittgenstein accepts a certain positive sense of naturalism, while rejecting Quine's kind of naturalism, which has great affinities with that rejected by phenomenology. It is aim of this essay to investigate common ground in views of Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty regarding that they each espouse and that which they each adamantly reject. We will first consider view of Wittgenstein before turning to that of MerleauPonty in an attempt to bring out common ground between them. Wittgenstein's Naturalism Despite their protestations to contrary, skeptics consistently act as though external world, other minds, etc., exist. They simply cannot help believing, regardless of doubts they may air. believed where skepticism and instinct clash, instinct wins out: To bring us to so salutary a determination, nothing can be more serviceable, than to be once thoroughly convinced of force of Pyrrhonian doubt, and of impossibility, that anything, but strong power of natural instinct, could free us from it.1 David Pears has noted that as soon as Hume traces idea of causal necessity back to its origin .. . halts his inquiry.2 But if [Hume] had known how brain works, Pears confidently adds, he would have taken his investigation . . . into neurology.3 Equating with some kind of scientific reductionism is not uncommon. In a survey of philosophy of language and mind from 1950-1990, Tyler Burge simply assumed that naturalism was, in fact, interchangeable with physicalism.4 Indeed, for several decades this view has been widely accepted mostly due to overwhelming influence of W. V. O. Quine. In Epistemology Naturalized, Quine suggests that epistemology should rely on techniques and assumptions of natural sciences. Epistemology, or something like it, simply falls into place as a chapter of . . . natural science. It studies a natural phenomenon, viz., a physical human subject. This human subject is accorded a certain experimentally controlled input . . . and in fullness of time subject delivers as a description of three dimensional external world and its history. The relation between meager input and torrential is a relation that we are prompted to study.3 Accordingly, a naturalized epistemology is supposed to offer a scientific explanation of how the meager input and torrential output are related. It will also provide a scientific explanation of how it is that some of our beliefs come to be knowledge and others do not. Wittgenstein advocates something quite different in kind. Wittgenstein would probably place Quine's reductive, scientific in a language-game, where reasons and explanations can be offered. Wittgenstein's own suggestion, however, occurs at a lower level, a non-ratiocinated animal or primitive level.6 At this level, we do not depend on explication or justification. Rather, at this level, our convictions about world, other minds, etc., are borne out in what we unreflectively do, not in what we say, nor in reasons why we say what we say. Although Wittgenstein's is quite different from Quine's, philosophers, like Pears, nonetheless believe it should have ranged more freely across border between philosophy . …