Contemporary Naturalism Research Articles

Antinaturalistische Strategien in Jenseits von Gut und Böse

Abstract Antinaturalistic Strategies in Beyond Good and Evil . Naturalistic interpretations of Nietzsche’s thought ultimately appeal to two arguments. On the one hand, when tracing various human phenomena back to processes sufficiently explicable by the natural sciences, it would appear that Nietzsche was pursuing a de facto naturalization program. On the other hand, in BGE 230, the need for the naturalization of human beings as a whole is often interpreted as an argument de jure. After outlining some basic features of contemporary naturalism and showing its incompatibility with Nietzsche’s philosophy, I argue in this paper that neither the de jure nor the de facto argument can be understood in a naturalistic sense. The task of “translating man back into nature” in BGE 230 is indeed turned against a point of view held by “old metaphysical bird-catchers.” An analysis of the manuscript and a comparison of it with the preface to HH I, in which this figure is used in the opposite sense, suggests rather that Nietzsche conceives of the renaturalization of the human in a deceptive way, that is, as one of those numerous “snares and nets for unwary birds” scattered throughout his works. Widening this view, a similar dynamic arises with respect to the de facto argument. In the concluding section, I highlight how, in On the Prejudices of Philosophers, certain naturalization operations are countered by as many arguments to the contrary. Such sudden shifts in perspective seem to indicate, at least in Beyond Good and Evil, a desire to subvert naturalism from within.

A Critical Assessment of Shafer-Landau’s Ethical Non-Naturalism

I focus on the ethical non-naturalism of Russ Shafer-Landau. First, I spend a good bit of time specifying the nature of two versions of naturalism and arguing that one is embraced ubiquitously—more importantly, should be embraced—by contemporary naturalists. I do so because if I am right about this, before we investigate the details of Shafer-Landau’s ethical non-naturalism, there will be a significant burden of proof for him to meet. In my view, that burden is strong enough to justify the claim that a critic’s epistemic task is merely to provide undercutting defeaters for Shafer-Landau’s position, and not to proffer rebutting defeaters, though I will attempt to supply both. After presenting a crucial characterization of contemporary naturalism followed by a critique of naturalist emergent properties, I state and critique Shafer-Landau’s ontology followed by the same for his epistemology. Both will be evaluated with a particular focus on their plausibility to support his ethical non-naturalism.

Johann Friedrich Herbart: Grandfather of Analytic Philosophy by Frederick C. Beiser

Reviewed by: Johann Friedrich Herbart: Grandfather of Analytic Philosophy by Frederick C. Beiser Nabeel Hamid BEISER, Frederick C. Johann Friedrich Herbart: Grandfather of Analytic Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. xii + 321 pp. Cloth, $85.00 This volume is the newest installment in Frederick Beiser's emerging series of intellectual biographies of nineteenth-century German figures who are relatively little known in the Anglophone world. Following monographs on Hermann Cohen (2018) and David Friedrich Strauß (2020), Beiser's latest subject is Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841), a contemporary of Schelling and Hegel best known in his century as a founder of scientific psychology and an educational theorist. Beiser's motive for presenting Herbart to today's Anglophone readers, however, has to do with neither of those dimensions of his legacy. His claim on Herbart's behalf is bold: that he was the one who "first outlined . . . our modern conception of the purpose and method of philosophy." According to Beiser, Herbart was the first to advance the idea that "philosophy is primarily an analysis of concepts, that it is a second-order logical enterprise that examines concepts rather than a first-order empirical discipline (physics, biology) that uses them." Thus, he bestows upon Herbart the moniker indicated in the book's subtitle: "If Russell and Frege are the fathers of analytical philosophy, Herbart is its grandfather." Beiser supports his central genealogical thesis with several specific claims that would draw Herbart into the orbit of contemporary philosophical naturalism: that Herbart conceived philosophy as an examination of the logic of the sciences; that Frege borrowed Herbart's slogan, "reworking of concepts" (Bearbeitung der Begriffe) to describe the business of philosophy; that Herbart upheld a sharp fact/value [End Page 543] distinction; and that he formulated a "method of relations" for the analysis of concepts derived strictly from the given. Most importantly, perhaps, given the received story of the origins of analytic philosophy as a reaction to (British) German Idealism, Beiser frames Herbart as an early opponent of the speculative systems of Fichte and Schelling, and as the source of an alternative development of transcendental idealism that anticipated the later neo-Kantian movement. Whether Herbart's claim to ancestry is convincing remains for his putative descendants to judge. To specialists in the history of nineteenth-century philosophy, Beiser's pitch to analytic philosophers risks appearing reductive. Indeed, a striking feature of Herbart's reception is its ambivalence. During the time when he was widely read, authors as varied in their intellectual orientations as Wilhelm Dilthey, Ernst Mach, and Matthias Jakob Schleiden contended with Herbart as, in turn, a progenitor of psychologism, a pioneer of the application of mathematics to mental phenomena, and a dogmatic scholastic, all before Frege leaned on Herbart to propose conceptual analysis as the distinctive task of philosophy that would save it from irrelevance in the face of the forward march of the positive sciences. Meanwhile, Herbart's most compelling claim to distinction, that he initiated (along with Jakob Friedrich Fries) a naturalistic alternative to the Fichte-Schelling-Hegel school of post-Kantian philosophy, has been defended previously, including in Anglophone scholarship (notably by Gary Hatfield in The Natural and the Normative). Beiser's attempt to give Herbart a place in the genealogy of analytic philosophy comes at the inevitable cost of evading some of the tensions in Herbart's work that account for his complex influence. Beiser's story—told in the lucid, engaging style we have come to expect from him—spans the length of Herbart's life and career. It also provides a clear overview of all major aspects of his teaching—from metaphysics and psychology, to pedagogy, ethics, and aesthetics. The narrative is divided into thirteen chapters. The first four cover Herbart's childhood in Oldenburg, student years in Jena, and his time in Interlaken as private tutor to an aristocratic Swiss family, which proved crucial for his lifelong interest in pedagogical theory. The next three turn to Herbart's first academic post in Göttingen and his decisive break with his teacher, Fichte, which led to his early efforts to formulate an alternative metaphysics and ethics, the latter notably infused with a Romantic idea of...

:Experimental: American Literature and the Aesthetics of Knowledge

:<i>Experimental: American Literature and the Aesthetics of Knowledge</i>

Why education should engage in the inner curriculum of the mind

ABSTRACT Both contemporary naturalist and deconstructivist theories share the suspicion of invoking an emphatic subject in education while not being able to address the question of what education is for in a constructive and value-based way. However, while naturalist theory also focuses on the human mind and its evolutionary origins, deconstructivism is preoccupied with the social constraints of subjectivation. The following takes up the idea that a core value of education is the enhancement of human wellbeing by referring to Ergas’s call for a contemplative turn towards mindful education and relating it to naturalist evolutionary theory about the human mind. This attempt turns out to be promising because mindful education addresses the problem of wellbeing without postulating a non-naturalist realm of emphatic subjectivity. To take up the deconstructivist critique, socio-cultural problems that arise from the idea of mindful education and its relation to naturalist thinking are discussed.

Flugbilder. Franz Ludwig Pfyffers „Relief der Urschweiz“ und andere Geländemodelle als Medien der wissenschaftlichen Aneignung der Alpen im späten 18. Jahrhundert

Among the processes of “conquering, developing and appropriating mountains” is occupied by the emergence of mountain topography. In the eighteenth century raised relief, as a terrain model, played one of the most important roles in this process.&#x0D; This was a period when more reliable topographic data began to be collected on the basis of measurements carried out across the Alps. Possibilities of their cartographic representation were limited at the time. A graphic method for presenting orthogonal projection by means of contour curves was not invented until the nineteenth century. Before that three-dimensional terrain models were the only way to correctly represent various levels of landscape. Terrain models were accepted at the time as the best method for presenting mountain landscapes.&#x0D; The first attempt to carry out a comprehensive measurement of the Alps over a vast area of a continuous mountain range and represent it on a low relief was made in 1786 and concerned an area in central Switzerland around Lake Lucerne. At that time Franz Ludwig Pfyffer von Wyher, an officer in French service, became famous for advanced surveying techniques and terrain models, both civilian and military. His famous relief depicts around one-tenth of today’s Switzerland, with two-thirds of the area encompassing the Alps and foot of the Alps. From that moment on other authors began to create their models of Alpine landscape. These reliefs were appreciated by contemporary naturalists, especially those studying the Alps, because they enabled them to view the complex topography of the range, which had been impossible before. They drew attention to a number of natural and geological phenomena, and made it possible to come up with new findings relating to the following questions: At what altitude should the snow line be placed? Where is the boundary of vegetation? Where do coniferous forests begin? Where is the line of glaciers? What is the structure of the mountains? Obviously, they were not sufficient to provide all answers to the above questions, but thanks to a “bird’s eye” perspective they made it possible to place special studies of the various disciplines within a broader context, both with regard to the relevant subject matter and between disciplines.

Z lotu ptaka. „Relief Praszwajcarii” Franza Ludwiga Pfyffera oraz inne modele terenu jako media naukowego zawłaszczania Alp w późnym XVIII wieku

Among the processes of “conquering, developing and appropriating mountains” is occupied by the emergence of mountain topography. In the eighteenth century raised relief, as a terrain model, played one of the most important roles in this process.&#x0D; This was a period when more reliable topographic data began to be collected on the basis of measurements carried out across the Alps. Possibilities of their cartographic representation were limited at the time. A graphic method for presenting orthogonal projection by means of contour curves was not invented until the nineteenth century. Before that three-dimensional terrain models were the only way to correctly represent various levels of landscape. Terrain models were accepted at the time as the best method for presenting mountain landscapes.&#x0D; The first attempt to carry out a comprehensive measurement of the Alps over a vast area of a continuous mountain range and represent it on a low relief was made in 1786 and concerned an area in central Switzerland around Lake Lucerne. At that time Franz Ludwig Pfyffer von Wyher, an officer in French service, became famous for advanced surveying techniques and terrain models, both civilian and military. His famous relief depicts around one-tenth of today’s Switzerland, with two-thirds of the area encompassing the Alps and foot of the Alps. From that moment on other authors began to create their models of Alpine landscape. These reliefs were appreciated by contemporary naturalists, especially those studying the Alps, because they enabled them to view the complex topography of the range, which had been impossible before. They drew attention to a number of natural and geological phenomena, and made it possible to come up with new findings relating to the following questions: At what altitude should the snow line be placed? Where is the boundary of vegetation? Where do coniferous forests begin? Where is the line of glaciers? What is the structure of the mountains? Obviously, they were not sufficient to provide all answers to the above questions, but thanks to a “bird’s eye” perspective they made it possible to place special studies of the various disciplines within a broader context, both with regard to the relevant subject matter and between disciplines.

Contemporary Naturalism, God, and the Methodological Relevance of Thomas Aquinas

AbstractThis article claims that the strict methodological considerations of contemporary philosophical naturalism do not hinder serious philosophical reference to the thought of Thomas Aquinas because his methodological principles are just as rigorous. The methodology of Thomas Aquinas is not explicitly stated in the Summa Theologiae. Therefore, the Summa contra Gentiles and On being and essence are referenced to clarify what Thomas seems to have thought about relationship between philosophy and theology. The work of Fiona Ellis is an example of how a contemporary philosopher can methodologically justify taking a position of qualified naturalism. Ellis calls this expansive naturalism. This methodology desires to accept a type of naturalistic philosophy. Yet, Ellis holds that expansive naturalism is able to employ theology as a resource for philosophy without falling into the trap of superstition. In order to arrive at this contemporary reflection, there is a very brief sketch of recent intellectual history concerning the relationship between philosophy and theology.

Animality, Self-Consciousness, and the Human Form of Life: A Hegelian Account

AbstractThis article develops a Hegelian account of self-consciousness by grounding it in being animal. It draws on contemporary naturalist and rationalist philosophy to support a transformative picture of the relationship between self-consciousness and animal purposes, setting work by Danielle Macbeth, Terry Pinkard, Michael Thompson, and Matthew Boyle into dialogue with two passages from Hegel’s Aesthetics. Because we are conscious of them as such, the article argues, our ends are never simply given to us and must be determined, which means working them out collectively. But this makes dependency a structural feature of human life, as attaining the right relation to our ends means finding ourselves through the eyes of others instantiating our lifeform. Grounding these Hegelian insights in a naturalistic understanding of organic norms, we see that we should not oppose the self-transparency afforded by rationality to the opacity of animal drives. The article concludes that the mark of rationality is not the capacity to transcend or control animal instinct but that we can be problems to ourselves. Spiritual life is just natural life: natural life finding itself problematic.

Одиночествующий ум, или Опыт экзистенциаль­ной философии сознания

This article is a review of Ben Lazare Mijuskovic’s book Consciousness and Loneli­ness: Theoria and Praxis (2018). The problem of the dividedness of the contemporary philosophy into the two different traditions has recently become apparent. This is evidenced by the growth of a number of investigations aiming to embrace contemporary thought in its wholeness. Among such studies is the new work of American philosopher Ben Lazare Mijuskovic. He attempts to defend the human microcosm from the threat of its neglection by philosophical naturalism. However, it is not only Mijuskovic’s anti-natu­ralistic position that is interesting. He also provides an in-depth analysis of such an Exis­tenzial of the human life as loneliness. The rich philosophical material drawn by the author is an indisputable merit of the study. However, this same merit also constitutes a problem. Mijuskovic’s arguments are reduced to a mere repetition of the philosophical ideas of the past and are thus unable to undermine contemporary naturalism. Meanwhile, the parts of the study in which the phenomenon of loneliness is discussed are the most interesting part of the book. Mijuskovic discusses loneliness as the feeling of loneliness per se and does not replace its phenomenological analysis by an economical investigation or by an evolutionary explanation. The author’s recognition of the significance of the content of conscious experience leads him to a disagreement with naturalism and to the acceptance of the position of substance dualism along with its known shortcomings. It seems that such a move is not at all necessary. In order for the content of our conscious experience to become significant, there is no need to exaggerate the ontological autonomy of the very conscious experience. It is always possible to commit to «weaker» ontological views without abandoning the scientific worldview and common sense.

Restoring Catharine Macaulay’s Enlightenment Republicanism?

Can Catharine Macaulay’s enlightenment democratic republicanism be justified from the point of view of contemporary naturalism? Naturalist accounts of political authority tend to be realist and pessimistic, foreclosing the possibility of enlightenment. Macaulay’s utopian political philosophy relies on belief in a good God, whose existence underpins the possibility of moral and political progress. This paper attempts a restoration of her optimistic utopianism in a reconciliation, grounded in a revision of natural law, of naturalist and utopian attitudes to political theory. It is proposed that the coevolution of language, moral law, and conscience (the disposition to judge one’s own actions in the light of moral principles) can be explained as solutions to the kinds of tragedy of the commons situations facing our ancestors. Moral dispositions evolved, but, in the light of its function, law is subject to rational critique. Liberal democracy plausibly offers the best prospect for developing rationally justifiable law.

Aesthetic Value and Aesthetic Judgment

Contemporary aesthetic naturalism integrates various scientific approaches into the common effort to provide an explanation of the main topics of aesthetics on the basis of empirical methods or in line with available evidence. Although these approaches have recently achieved very relevant empirical and theoretical results, contemporary aesthetic naturalism still does not solve the traditional hard problem of naturalism as such, that is the explanation of value in scientific terms. Firstly, I analyse the possible responses to this hard problem, showing that aesthetic value, particularly in the version of artistic value, remains outside the scope of current empirical approaches to aesthetics. Then I propose that this apparently strong philosophical limitation can be easily reduced to an ordinary epistemological limitation if aesthetic naturalism accepts to improve the interaction with art criticism, the discipline in the humanities characterised by a privileged access to the historical and social reasons that justify aesthetic judgments.

Naturalism without a subject: Huw Price’s pragmatism

ABSTRACT Huw Price has developed versions of naturalism and anti-representationalism to create a distinctive brand of pragmatism. ‘Subject naturalism’ focuses on what science says about human beings and the function of our linguistic practices, as opposed to orthodox contemporary naturalism’s privileging of the ontology of the natural sciences. Price’s anti-representationalism rejects the view that what makes utterances contentful is their representing reality. Together, they are to help us avoid metaphysical ‘placement problems’: how e.g. mind, meaning, and morality fit into the natural world. By combining subject naturalism and his own ‘global’ version of expressivism with Robert Brandom’s inferentialism about content, Price proposes a pragmatist ‘anthropology’ as a replacement for substantively metaphysical approaches to placement problems. In this paper I argue that Price’s project cannot succeed, and that this shows something important about what form pragmatism ought to take. Price’s view doesn’t work because no subject naturalist vocabulary is sufficient to describe any assertional practice; there is no way to connect his expressive-functionalist explanations to the practices and concepts which are their subject – nor, even, to the human subjects who are the focus of a philosophical anthropology. I close by suggesting how we might improve on these shortcomings of Price’s pragmatism.

ANCORA SU WITTGENSTEIN. INTORNO A SCIENZA E FILOSOFIA

The paper presents several reflections on the way Wittgenstein interpreted the relationship between philosophy and science. Particularly, this contribution highlights (a) how Wittgenstein’s criticism is not directed at science as such, but rather at the presumption that philosophy is and behaves as science (or as a science); and, consequently, (b) how Wittgenstein’s polemical target is what he sometimes defines as “metaphysics”. In fact, according to him, metaphysics arises precisely when (1) conceptual investigations are addressed with factuality, and when (2) in philosophy a certain theoretical attitude based on the search for the general and on reductionism is accepted. On this background the paper discusses (c) the connection that Wittgenstein’s philosophy holds, on the one hand with contemporary Naturalism and, on the other, with the most recent critiques of philosophy as conceptual analysis. The conclusions suggest that Wittgenstein’s thought, insofar as it maintains the distinction between norms, rules, reasons, etc . and facts, causes, etc ., can hardly be matched with contemporary Naturalism and its reductionism without being tempted by the sublimations typical of the various forms of Platonism.

Aristotelian Necessity

AbstractAt the center of contemporary neo-Aristotelian naturalism is the thought that we can account for a great deal of ethics by thinking about what is needful in human life generally. When we think about practices like promising, virtues like justice or courage, and institutions that serve to produce, maintain, and help to reproduce well-ordered social life we can make some headway we consider the sense in which our topic makes some forms of human good possible and even, in some cases, actualizes the very good made possible thereby. G.E.M. Anscombe introduced this kind of thinking about ethics, which Philippa Foot named ‘Aristotelian Necessity'. In this essay, I take a hard Look at Anscombe’s work on the topic, and then consider her later insistence that crucial aspects of ethics could not be understood in these terms.

What should the idealist critique of naturalism be? Hegel, Smithson, and liberal naturalism

ABSTRACTIn this journal, Robert Smithson argues that considerations stemming from Kantian and post-Kantian idealism undermine naturalistic arguments that seek to debunk elements of the ‘manifest image’ in favour of the ‘scientific image’. The idealist tradition, on this view, holds that philosophy’s task is to uncover and clarify the principles and norms which underlie different forms of inquiry, and is thus well placed to dispel the apparent ‘placement’ problems that stem from the collision of our ordinary worldview with contemporary philosophical naturalism. Smithson also argues that this idealist critique of naturalism is preferable to the Liberal Naturalist critique of naturalism. In this response, I argue that Smithson’s view contains a gap which the naturalist can exploit to evade idealist critique, but that a Hegelian idealism contains no such gap, making it the better idealist choice. Further, I argue that that Hegelian idealism is itself plausibly a version of liberal naturalism.

Transformations of Gender and Race in Maria Riddell’s Transatlantic Biopolitics

Maria Riddell’s Voyages to the Madeira, and Leeward Caribbean Isles (1792), offers new understandings of the mutability and hybridity of race, gender, sex, and nation in the eighteenth-century British Atlantic colonies. By foregrounding Riddell’s engagements with natural history, this article places botanical and zoological classificatory systems in conversation with her depictions of how white women colonists and enslaved African labourers utilized the natural world. In addition to the ideas of contemporary naturalists, such as Linnaeus, Leclerc, comte de Buffon, and Smellie, Riddell’s work is also situated in relation to that of Erasmus Darwin, Edward Long, and Janet Schaw. At a time of significant political revolutions, Riddell’s travel narra tive affords insight into implications for the Caribbean colonies and their function as an environment of sociobiological transformation. While eighteenth-century writing often represented the West Indies as a site of biological and social degeneration, this essay shows that they were also depicted as a site of improvement and a sphere of knowledge-making that produced hybrid identities, knowledges, and cultures.

The significance of mycological contributions by Lothar Becker

Warning Readers of this article are warned that it may contain terms, descriptions and opinions that are culturally sensitive and/or offensive to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. Silesian-born Lothar Becker spent two periods in Australia, during which he made observations on a range of natural history topics, including fungi—a group of organisms rarely noticed by contemporary naturalists. Becker compiled notes, sketches and collections of Australian fungi that he sent to Elias Fries in Sweden for identification. Unfortunately, this material has not survived, but Becker’s accounts of his time in Australia, especially that published in Das Ausland in 1873, contain remarkable first-hand observations, including some on exotic fungi. Becker’s article is one of the earliest stand-alone analyses of the affinities of the Australian mycota. Remarks on the use of fungi by Aboriginal peoples of south-eastern Australia are particularly significant, due to inclusion of a word presumed to be from Aboriginal language and the suggestion of gendered roles in the collection of edible fungi.

Religious naturalism: The current debate

AbstractThis paper provides a survey of contemporary religious naturalism. It presents reductive and non‐reductive versions of religious naturalism, and some arguments in favour of this naturalistic perspective. Finally, it discusses three crucial demarcation issues that contemporary religious naturalism faces.

Nauka o kamieniach i jej źródła w cyklu kazań Nuptiae Agni Antoniego Węgrzynowicza

This article centers on the literary achievements of preacher Antoni Węgrzynowicz (1658-1721) from the collection Nuptiae Agni . Gody Baranka apokaliptycznego… (Krak.w 1711) – „Nuptials of the Apocalyptic Lamb” (transl.) – in which there are, among other things, a series of conceptual sermons – refer to the fragment of Apocalypse 21, 19-20, relates to the twelve precious stones being the foundations of the Heavenly Jerusalem, traditionally associated with the names of the apostles. The author presents spiritual content, ingeniously built on knowledge of natural sciences regarding the properties of precious stones, derived from the writings of past and contemporary naturalists, from encyclopedic texts, biblical commentaries, baroque symbolographic compendia, and specialized literature for church speakers. The article discusses these sources of knowledge and seeks to present the writing strategies used by Węgrzynowicz concerning the study of precious stones.