Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy
Naturalism and the Sciences of Rationality: An Integrated Philosophy and History
Duration: 2016 - 2020
Code: FFI2016-79923-P
Principal Investigator
Summary
Naturalists object to “armchair” methods, claiming that science provides better resources for philosophy. Anti-naturalists claim that we have a priori knowledge, point to naturalistic fallacies, or assert that naturalism is circular or trivial. Such arguments are essential to the self-understanding of philosophy. Yet, they have become unnecessarily abstract and aporetic. Rationality, again, has often been viewed as philosophy’s proper province. However, over the last century formal as well as empirical disciplines such as logic, statistics, cognitive science, or economics have radically reshaped our understanding of rationality. The naturalist will view this as evidence for his position. However, the project will show (1) that influences have not been unidirectional, i.e. that philosophical inputs (e.g., about theories, concepts, methods, and aims) have been essential to emerging scientific accounts of rationality and (2) that scientific influences on philosophical accounts of rationality require critical reflection before they can support versions of naturalism. The project thus aims to overcome the naturalistic tendency to minimize or eliminate the distinctive role of autonomous philosophical thinking, and to show that such thinking is better understood as determining the scope, limits, and potentials of scientific accounts of reasoning or rationality. From this, a critically refined and restricted naturalism concerning rationality can emerge.
