Philosophical Naturalism and Scientific Method

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Notes

¹Despite its separatist conception of philosophy, classical empiricism's prescriptions for the conduct of inquiry have exerted a palpable influence on psychological science (e.g., the attraction of operational definitions, the heavy use of Fisherian statistical procedures, and the steadfast neglect of theory by the publication manual guidelines of the American Psychological Association).

²The major debate between realists and empiricists in contemporary philosophy of science pivots around Bas van Fraassen's (1980) constructive empiricism and his criticisms of scientific realism. This debate, and other debates between realists and antirealists, have been widely ignored by psychologists.

³An important part of Quine's philosophical motivation for adopting naturalism is his scepticism about a priori knowledge. He famously argued that it is impossible to draw a sharp distinction between truths of meaning, or analytic truths, which are known a priori, and truths of fact, or synthetic truths, which are known a posteriori.

⁴The Canberra Plan is so called because many of its early proponents were philosophers associated with the Australian National University in Canberra. Frank Jackson and Philip Petit are prominent among them.

⁵A sceptical philosopher might argue that much psychological knowledge is superficial and far from the truth, and that it, therefore, ought not to seriously constrain philosophical theorizing about the mind. I think there is something to be said for this view, but it needs to be argued for on a case-by-case basis with a detailed examination of the epistemic credentials of the knowledge claims in question.

⁶Despite the sophistication of structural equation modeling, a number of authors have raised doubts about its use of fit indices in model selection. Barrett (2007) and McDonald (2010) are two recent expressions of concern about the difficulties in determining the fit of structural models to data.

⁷I don’t mean to suggest that we should subscribe to Bennett and Hacker's Wittgensteinian view that empirical considerations do not bear on the process of conceptual analysis. Sytsma (2010) is a recent discussion and demonstration of the relevance of empirical investigations to conceptual analysis.

⁸In this commentary, I have assumed but not argued for the tenability of scientific realism. I think that a form of inference to the best explanation provides us with the best argument for scientific realism but that its justificatory force is modest. See Psillos (1999) for a general justification of scientific realism in terms of inference to the best explanation, and Boyd (1996) for an argument to the best explanation that justifies a realist understanding of scientific methods.

⁹It might be thought that because Laudan is a critic of scientific realism, his normative naturalism sits uncomfortably with the naturalistic realism adopted in this commentary. However, as Capaldi and Proctor (2000) pointed out, Laudan is not an antirealist, and he does not believe that his position refutes scientific realism. Many scientific realists will find Laudan's normative naturalism, or something like it, congenial to their philosophical outlook.