Normativity concerns what we ought to think or do and the evaluations we make. For example, we say that we ought to think consistently, we ought to keep our promises, or that Mozart is a better composer than Salieri. Yet what philosophical moral can we draw from the apparent absence of normativity in the scientific image of the world? For scientific naturalists, the moral is that the normative must be reduced to the nonnormative, while for nonnaturalists, the moral is that there must be a transcendent realm of norms.
Naturalism and Normativity engages with both sides of this debate. Essays explore philosophical options for understanding normativity in the space between scientific naturalism and Platonic supernaturalism. They articulate a liberal conception of philosophy that is neither reducible to the sciences nor completely independent of themyet one that maintains the right to call itself naturalism. Contributors think in new ways about the relations among the scientific worldview, our experience of norms and values, and our movements in the space of reason. Detailed discussions include the relationship between philosophy and science, physicalism and ontological pluralism, the realm of the ordinary, objectivity and subjectivity, truth and justification, and the liberal naturalisms of Donald Davidson, John Dewey, John McDowell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
- Contents
- Introduction: Science, Naturalism, and the Problem of Normativity
- Part I: Conceptual and Historical Background
- 1: The Wider Significance of Naturalism a Genealogical Essay (Akeel Bilgrami)
- 2: Naturalism and Quietism (Richard Rorty)
- 3: Is Liberal Naturalism Possible?(Mario De Caro and Alberto Voltolini)
- Part II: Philosophy and the Natural Sciences
- 4: Science and Philosophy (Hilary Putnam)
- 5: Why Scientific Realism May Invite Relativism (Carol Rovane)
- Part III: Philosophy and the Human Sciences
- 6: Taking the Human Sciences Seriously (David Macarthur)
- 7: Reasons and Causes Revisited (Peter Menzies)
- Part IV: Meta-Ethics and Normativity
- 8: Metaphysics and Morals (T. M . Scanlon)
- 9: The Naturalist Gap in Ethics (Erin I. Kelly and Lionel K. McPherson)
- 10: Phenomenology and the Normativity of Practical Reason (Stephen L. White)
- Part V: Epistemology and Normativity
- 11: Truth as Convenient Friction (Huw Price)
- 12: Exchange on “Truth as Convenient Friction” (Richard Rorty and Huw Price)
- 13: Two Directions for Analytic Kantianism Naturalism and Idealism (Paul Redding)
- Part VI: Naturalism and Human Nature
- 14: How to be Naturalistic Without Being Simplistic in the Study of Human Nature (John Dupré)
- 15: Dewey, Continuity, and McDowell (Peter Godfrey-Smith)
- 16: Wittgenstein and Naturalism (Marie McGinn)
- Contributors
- Index
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