Davidson’s Meta-Normative Naturalism

Metaphysical Naturalism, Semantic Normativity, and Meta-Semantic Irrealism

Semantic discourse-discourse employing notions like meaning and truth-gives rise to questions about the semantics, metaphysics, and epistemology of such notions: What sort of metaphysical commitments does semantic discourse (as ordinarily used) involve? Does such discourse commit us to the existence of semantic properties and facts? If so, are there such properties and facts?

Is Naturalism Normative? The Function of Epistemic Norms Within Naturalized Epistemology

The topic of the paper is the problem of normativity within naturalized epistemology. The question I pose is whether naturalism can be conducted as a normative enterprise or whether it is merely descriptive as traditional epistemologists maintain. If they are to be faithful to their philosophical presuppositions naturalists cannot deliver traditionally understood substantive account of normativ...

Cultural Naturalism

Culture can be viewed as the means by which a society can live in its surroundings by acquiring and consuming free energy. This naturalistic notion assumes that everything can be valued in terms of energy, hence also social changes can be described as natural processes that are influenced by the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. This universal law, when formulated as an equation of motion, reveals tha...

Positivism, Naturalism, and Anti- Naturalism in the Social Sciences

Quining Naturalism

Scientific naturalism is a metaphysical doctrine, a view about what there is, or what we ought to believe that there is. It maintains that natural science should be our guide in matters metaphysical: the ontology we should accept is the ontology that turns out to be required by science. Quine is often regarded as the doyen of scientific naturalists, though the supporting cast includes such gian...