Naturalism and Ontology

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There is that range of deep human questions to which a religion typically provides an answer Like a typical religion, naturalism gives a set of answers to these and similar questions". Metaphysical naturalism is an approach to metaphysics or ontology , which deals with existence per se. It should not be confused with methodological naturalism , which sees empiricism as the basis for the scientific method. Regarding science and evolution, Eugenie C. Scott , a notable opponent of teaching creationism or intelligent design in US public schools, stresses the importance of separating metaphysical from methodological naturalism:.

If it is important for Americans to learn about science and evolution, decoupling the two forms of naturalism is essential strategy. I suggest that scientists can defuse some of the opposition to evolution by first recognizing that the vast majority of Americans are believers, and that most Americans want to retain their faith. It is demonstrable that individuals can retain religious beliefs and still accept evolution as science. Scientists should avoid confusing the methodological naturalism of science with metaphysical naturalism. A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism, describes metaphysical naturalism thus: Metaphysical naturalism is the philosophical basis of science as described by Kate and Vitaly "There are certain philosophical assumptions made at the base of the scientific method — namely, 1 that reality is objective and consistent, 2 that humans have the capacity to perceive reality accurately, and that 3 rational explanations exist for elements of the real world.

These assumptions are the basis of naturalism, the philosophy on which science is grounded. Philosophy is at least implicitly at the core of every decision we make or position we take, it is obvious that correct philosophy is a necessity for scientific inquiry to take place. We may therefore be agnostic about the ultimate truth of naturalism, but must nevertheless adopt it and investigate nature as if nature is all that there is. Contrary to other notable opponents of teaching Creationism or Intelligent Design in US public schools such as Eugenie Scott , Schafersman asserts that "while science as a process only requires methodological naturalism, I think that the assumption of methodological naturalism by scientists and others logically and morally entails ontological naturalism".

One should be taught to our children in school, and the other can optionally be taught to our children at home. Once this view is explained, I have found far more support than disagreement among my university colleagues. Even someone who may disagree with my logic or understanding of philosophy of science often understands the strategic reasons for separating methodological from philosophical materialism —if we want more Americans to understand evolution.

However, there are other controversies, Arthur Newell Strahler embeds peculiar anthropic distinctions in the name of naturalism: The naturalistic view is espoused by science as its fundamental assumption. As noted by Stephen Jay Gould: It works the other way around. You first assume these propositions and "then you go to the out crop of rock. Without assuming this spatial and temporal invariance, we have no basis for extrapolating from the known to the unknown and, therefore, no way of reaching general conclusions from a finite number of observations. Since the assumption is itself vindicated by induction, it can in no way "prove" the validity of induction—an endeavor virtually abandoned after Hume demonstrated its futility two centuries ago.

First, nothing in our incomplete but extensive knowledge of history disagrees with it. Second, only with this postulate is a rational interpretation of history possible, and we are justified in seeking—as scientists we must seek—such a rational interpretation. It is the logical principle of parsimony of causes and of economy of scientific notions. By explaining past changes by analogy with present phenomena, a limit is set to conjecture, for there is only one way in which two things are equal, but there are an infinity of ways in which they could be supposed different.

Contemporary naturalists possess a wide diversity of beliefs within metaphysical naturalism. Most metaphysical naturalists have adopted some form of materialism or physicalism. Metaphysical naturalists argue that the scientific facts and theories that we have to explain the origins of the universe provide no evidence for supernatural beings or deities. Though naturalism has not yet been proved, it is the best bet going. One might say that either it has always existed or it had a purely natural origin, being neither created nor designed.

Since nature is all there is, and there was once no life, abiogenesis is implied: They maintain that humanity's existence is not by intelligent design but rather a natural process of emergence. Some embrace virtue ethics and many see no compelling argument against ethical naturalism. One example of an attempt to ground a naturalist meta-ethical system is Richard Carrier 's chapter "Moral Facts Naturally Exist and Science Could Find Them " which was peer reviewed by four philosophers. It sets out to prove a Moral realism centered around human satisfaction.

Alexander Rosenberg has expressed a contrary position that naturalists, in general, have to accept moral nihilism. If any variety of metaphysical naturalism is true, any mental properties that exist are caused by and ontologically dependent upon nature. Metaphysical naturalists do not believe in a soul or spirit , nor in ghosts , and when explaining what constitutes the mind they rarely appeal to substance dualism.

If one's mind, or rather one's identity and existence as a person , is entirely the product of natural processes, three conclusions follow according to W. First, all mental contents such as ideas , theories , emotions , moral and personal values , or aesthetic response exist solely as computational constructions of one's brain and genetics, not as things that exist independently of these.

Second, damage to the brain regardless of how should be of great concern. Third, death or destruction of one's brain cannot be survived, which is to say, all humans are mortal. Stace, however, believes that ecstatic mysticism calls into question the assumption that awareness is impossible without data processing. Metaphysical naturalists hold that reason is the refinement and improvement of naturally evolved faculties. The certitude of deductive logic remains unexplained by this essentially probabilistic view.

Nevertheless, naturalists believe anyone who wishes to have more beliefs that are true than are false should seek to perfect and consistently employ their reason in testing and forming beliefs. Empirical methods especially those of proven use in the sciences are unsurpassed for discovering the facts of reality, while methods of pure reason alone can securely discover logical errors.

Humans are social animals , which is why humanity developed culture and civilization. In terms of evolution, this means that differential reproductive success somehow depended on traits that permit the development and maintenance of a healthy and productive culture and civilization.

Naturalism was the foundation of two Vaisheshika , Nyaya of the six orthodox schools and one Carvaka heterodox school of Hinduism. Western metaphysical naturalism has originated in ancient Greek philosophy. This eventually led to fully developed systems such as Epicureanism , which sought to explain everything that exists as the product of atoms falling and swerving in a void.

Aristotle surveyed the thought of his predecessors and conceived of nature in a way that charted a middle course between their excesses. Plato's world of eternal and unchanging Forms , imperfectly represented in matter by a divine Artisan , contrasts sharply with the various mechanistic Weltanschauungen , of which atomism was, by the fourth century at least, the most prominent… This debate was to persist throughout the ancient world. Atomistic mechanism got a shot in the arm from Epicurus … while the Stoics adopted a divine teleology … The choice seems simple: This was how Aristotle… when still a young acolyte of Plato, saw matters.

Cicero … preserves Aristotle's own cave-image: But Aristotle grew to abandon this view; although he believes in a divine being, the Prime Mover is not the efficient cause of action in the Universe, and plays no part in constructing or arranging it But, although he rejects the divine Artificer, Aristotle does not resort to a pure mechanism of random forces. Instead he seeks to find a middle way between the two positions, one which relies heavily on the notion of Nature, or phusis. With the rise and dominance of Christianity in the West and the later spread of Islam , metaphysical naturalism was generally abandoned by intellectuals.

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Thus, there is little evidence for it in medieval philosophy. The reintroduction of Aristotle's empirical epistemology as well as previously lost treatises by Greco-Roman natural philosophers which was begun by the medieval Scholastics without resulting in any noticeable increase in commitment to naturalism. It was not until the early modern era of philosophy and the Age of Enlightenment that naturalists like Benedict Spinoza who put forward a theory of psychophysical parallelism , David Hume , [31] and the proponents of French materialism notably Denis Diderot , Julien La Mettrie , and Baron d'Holbach started to emerge again in the 17th and 18th centuries.

In this period, some metaphysical naturalists adhered to a distinct doctrine, materialism , which became the dominant category of metaphysical naturalism widely defended until the end of the 19th century. Immanuel Kant rejected reductionist materialist positions in metaphysics, [32] but he was not hostile to naturalism. His transcendental philosophy is considered to be a form of liberal naturalism. In late modern philosophy , Naturphilosophie , a form of natural philosophy , was developed by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling [34] and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel [34] as an attempt to comprehend nature in its totality and to outline its general theoretical structure.

A politicized version of naturalism that has arisen after Hegel was Ludwig Feuerbach , [35] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels 's dialectical materialism , especially Engels's dialectical philosophy of nature Dialectics of Nature. Another notable school of late modern philosophy advocating naturalism was German materialism: In the early 20th century, matter was found to be a form of energy and therefore not fundamental as materialists had assumed.

See History of physics.

In contemporary philosophy , renewed attention to the problem of universals , philosophy of mathematics , the development of mathematical logic , and the post- positivist revival of metaphysics and the philosophy of religion , initially by way of Wittgensteinian linguistic philosophy , further called the naturalistic paradigm into question. Developments such as these, along with those within science and the philosophy of science brought new advancements and revisions of naturalistic doctrines by naturalistic philosophers into metaphysics, ethics , the philosophy of language , the philosophy of mind , epistemology , etc.

A politicized version of naturalism that has arisen in contemporary philosophy is Ayn Rand 's Objectivism. Objectivism is an expression of capitalist ethical idealism within a naturalistic framework. The current usage of the term naturalism "derives from debates in America in the first half of the last century. Currently, metaphysical naturalism is more widely embraced than in previous centuries, especially but not exclusively in the natural sciences and the Anglo-American, analytic philosophical communities.

According to David Papineau , contemporary naturalism is a consequence of the build-up of scientific evidence during the twentieth century for the " causal closure of the physical", the doctrine that all physical effects can be accounted for by physical causes. By the middle of the twentieth century, the acceptance of the causal closure of the physical realm led to even stronger naturalist views. The causal closure thesis implies that any mental and biological causes must themselves be physically constituted, if they are to produce physical effects. It thus gives rise to a particularly strong form of ontological naturalism, namely the physicalist doctrine that any state that has physical effects must itself be physical.

From the s onwards, philosophers began to formulate arguments for ontological physicalism. Some of these arguments appealed explicitly to the causal closure of the physical realm Feigl , Oppenheim and Putnam In other cases, the reliance on causal closure lay below the surface. However, it is not hard to see that even in these latter cases the causal closure thesis played a crucial role. According to Steven Schafersman , president of Texas Citizens for Science , an advocacy group opposing creationism in public schools, [41] the progressive adoption of methodological naturalism—and later of metaphysical naturalism—followed the advances of science and the increase of its explanatory power.

In the context of creation and evolution debates, Internet Infidels co-founder Jeffery Jay Lowder argues against what he calls "the argument from bias", that a priori, the supernatural is merely ruled out due to an unexamined stipulation. Lowder believes "there are good empirical reasons for believing that metaphysical naturalism is true, and therefore a denial of the supernatural need not be based upon an a priori assumption". Topics covered include metaphilosophy , semantics , epistemology , the nature and origin of the universe including a proposal that spacetime may be the ground of all being and a rejection of the logical possibility for any ultimate answer , free will compatibilism , the nature of mind , abstract objects , ontological reductionism , the nature of emotions , the meaning of life , the nature of reason , atheism , aesthetics , morality including ethical naturalism and a recommendation for a science of morality , and politics.

Several Metaphysical Naturalists have used the trends in scientific discoveries about minds to argue that no supernatural minds exist. For instance, Lowder says, "Since all known mental activity has a physical basis, there are probably no disembodied minds. But God is conceived of as a disembodied mind. Therefore, God probably does not exist. There has also been some attempt to extend the programme to mathematical analysis Shapiro ; Wright One query that might be put to this programme is whether the Humean principle and analogous assumptions can really be viewed as analytic definitions.

If they commit us to numbers and other abstract objects whose existence cannot established without them, then they are arguably doing more than definitions should. A related issue is whether the overall neo-Fregean position is properly viewed as realist. From its perspective, the role of abstract mathematical objects in the overall scheme of things seems to be exhausted by their making our mathematical statements true; given this, it might seem better to classify it as a species of irrealism MacBride To complete this discussion of ontological naturalism, let us briefly consider the realm of modality, understood as the subject matter of claims that answer to something more than actuality.

Modality raises many of the same issues as mathematics, but the topic is complicated by the prior question of the content of modal claims, and in particular about whether they quantify over non-actual possible worlds. Whereas there is little dispute about the initial semantic analysis of mathematical claims—they purport to refer to abstract numbers, sets, functions and so on—there is somewhat less unanimity about the possible worlds analysis of modal claims Nolan b. To the extent that modal claims do quantify over possible worlds, the ontological points made about mathematics apply will here too.

Since non-actual worlds do not inhabit our spatiotemporal realm, an ontologically naturalist realism seems to be ruled out from the start. The remaining alternatives are irrealism or non-naturalist realism. The former alternative has been explored in recent years by modal fictionalists Rosen ; Nolan a.

Naturalism and Ontology

The options under the latter heading meet the same epistemological challenges as in the mathematical case: Methodological naturalists see philosophy and science as engaged in essentially the same enterprise, pursuing similar ends and using similar methods. You can practice natural science in just the same way as non-believers, so this line of thought goes, yet remain a believer when it comes to religious questions.

Some think that religious doctrines do make a difference to scientific practice, yet are defensible for all that Plantinga Our focus will be on the relation between philosophy and science, not between religion and science. It is uncontentious that philosophers differ widely in their initial attitudes to natural science. Some philosophers celebrate science, and seek out ways in which philosophy can be illuminated by it. Other philosophers view science with suspicion, and feel that any dependence on science somehow infringes the autonomy of philosophy. However, such temperamental differences need not themselves amount to differing views about the nature of philosophy.

After all, even those philosophers who are suspicious of science will need to allow scientific findings are sometimes of philosophical significance—we need only think of the role that the causal closure of physics was shown earlier to play in the contemporary mind-body debate. And, on the other side, even the philosophical friends of science must admit that there are some differences at least between philosophy and natural science—for example, that philosophers do not generally gather empirical data in the way that scientists do.

If we want to isolate a serious debate about philosophical method, we will need to go beyond initial reactions to science and look at more specific methodological commitments. In order to focus what follows, let us thus understand methodological naturalism as asserting that at bottom philosophy and science are both concerned to establish synthetic knowledge about the natural world, and moreover to achieve this by a posteriori investigation.

Methodological naturalists in this sense will of course allow that there are some differences between philosophy and science. But they will say that these are relatively superficial. In particular, they will argue that they are not differences in aims or methods, but simply a matter of philosophy and science focusing on different questions. For one thing, philosophical questions are often distinguished by their great generality. Where scientists think about viruses, electrons or stars, philosophers think about spatiotemporal continuants, properties, causation and time.

Categories like these structure all our thinking about the natural world. A corollary is that alternative theories at this level are unlikely ever to be decided between by some simple experiment, which is no doubt one reason that philosophers do not normally seek out new empirical data. Even so, the methodological naturalist will insist, such theories are still synthetic theories about the natural world, answerable in the last instance to the tribunal of a posteriori empirical data. Not all philosophical questions are of great generality.

Think of topics like weakness of will, the importance of originality in art, or the semantics of fiction. What seems to identify these as philosophical issues is that our thinking is in some kind of theoretical tangle, supporting different lines of thought that lead to conflicting conclusions. An a posteriori synthetic theory unraveled from a tangle is still an a posteriori synthetic theory, even if no new observations or experimental findings went into its construction. An obvious objection to methodological naturalism appeals to the role that intuitions play in philosophical debate.

Where scientists test their theories against the findings of observation and experiment, philosophers typically test theirs against intuitions. On the face of things, this argues that philosophy uses a distinctively a priori method of investigation. However, this objection is not decisive. One issue is whether intuitions do play a central role in philosophical method. We shall discuss this further in section 2. But even if it is assumed that intuitions are central to philosophy, this is not necessarily inconsistent with methodological naturalism.

For it is not to be taken for granted that philosophical intuitions have a distinctive a priori status. There is also the possibility that they answer in the end to a posteriori evidence, like the kind of intuitions at play in scientific thought experiments. Before we turn to these issues, a prior question is whether philosophical intuitions should be viewed as analytic or synthetic.

While there is an extensive contemporary debate about the importance of intuitions in philosophy DePaul and Ramsey ; Knobe and Nicholls ; Pust ; Cappelen , this question is surprisingly little asked.

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But, whatever exactly they establish, they do not rule out all notions of analyticity that might allow us to press our question. For example, the notion of a statement whose truth follows from logic and definitions will serve well enough for our purposes Papineau ; see also Russell The choice between analyticity and syntheticity poses a familiar dilemma for friends of a priori intuitions. If philosophical intuitions are analytic, then this will plausibly render them a priori , but it will call their philosophical significance in question.

By contrast, if they are synthetic, then they may well be of substantial philosophical significance, but then it will be less easy to understand how they can be a priori. At first sight, this might seem to commit them to the view that philosophy trades in analytic claims. However, as we shall see in the next section, it is by no means clear that all its advocates understand conceptual analysis in this way.

Naturalism

One influential school, however, is relatively explicit about the importance of analytic claims to philosophy. This second stage is likely to appeal to synthetic a posteriori scientific knowledge about the fundamental nature of reality. But the purely analytic first stage, argues Jackson, also plays an essential part in setting the agenda for the subsequent metaphysical investigation. An initial question about this programme relates to its scope. It is by no means clear that all, or indeed any, philosophically interesting concepts can be subject to the relevant kind of analysis.

Still, we can let this point pass. Even if we suppose, for the sake of the argument, that a range of philosophically interesting everyday concepts do have their contents fixed in the way the Canberra programme supposes, there are further objections to its understanding of philosophical method. Let us look a bit more closely at the posited initial agenda-setting stage of the Canberra programme.

Upon closer examination, it is not clear that this makes any essential appeal to analytic knowledge. There is some unique kind that is characteristically caused by perceptions, combines with desires to generate actions, and has causally significant internal structure. The Canberra suggestion is then that, once we have articulated the relevant Ramsey sentence, we will be in a position to turn to serious metaphysics to identify the underlying nature of the F that plays the relevant role.

However, if this is the Canberra procedure, then there is no reason to think of it as appealing to analytic knowledge at any stage. A Ramsey sentence of the kind at issue says that there actually exists some entity satisfying certain requirements there is a kind of state that is caused by perceptions …. Sentences like this make eminently synthetic and falsifiable claims.

It is not a matter of definition that humans actually have internal states that play the causal role associated with the concept of belief. The Canberra strategy thus seems no different from the prescription that philosophy should start with the synthetic theories endorsed by everyday thought, and then look to our more fundamental theories of reality to see what, if anything, makes these everyday theories true. This seems entirely in accord with methodological naturalism—philosophy is in the business of assessing and developing synthetic theories of the world.

Carnap sentences can plausibly be viewed as akin to stipulations that fix the reference of the relevant concepts, and to that extent as analytic claims that can be known a priori.

But this certainly does not mean that Ramsey sentences, which make substantial claims about the actual world, are also knowable via a priori analysis. Note how you can accept a conditional Carnap sentence even if you reject the corresponding unconditional Ramsey sentence. You can grasp the folk concept of belief even if you reject the substantial folk theory of belief.

But this seems wrong. We will want to know about the fundamental nature of belief if we suppose that there is a kind of state that is characteristically caused by perceptions, and so on. That is certainly a good motivation for figuring out whether and how the fundamental components of reality might constitute this state. But the mere fact that everyday thought contains a concept of such a state in itself provides no motivation for further investigation.

In effect, the function of a Carnap sentence is to provide a shorthand for talking about the putative state posited by the corresponding Ramsey sentence. It is hard to see how any important philosophical issues could hang on the availability of such a shorthand. To emphasize the point, consider the everyday concept of a soul, understood something that is present in conscious beings and survives death. This concept of a soul can be captured by the analytic Carnap sentence: Accordingly, this Carnap sentence will be agreed by everybody who has the concept of soul, whether or not they believe in souls.

Yet this Carnap sentence will not per se raise any interesting metaphysical questions for those who deny the existence of souls. Moreover, the Ramsey sentence will pose this metaphysical issue whether or not it is accompanied by some analytic Carnap sentence to provide some shorthand alternative terminology.

Any further analytic conceptual commitments add nothing of philosophical significance. The point generalizes beyond the contrast between Ramsey and Carnap sentences. On reflection, it is hard to see why any purely definitional analytic truths should matter to philosophy. Synthetic everyday truisms can certainly be philosophically significant, and so their articulation and evaluation can play an important philosophical role.

But there is no obvious motive for philosophy to concern itself with definitions that carry no implications about the contents of reality. A particularly clear version of this picture of conceptual analysis is given in Brandom See also Goldman This combination of views is less straightforward. In particular, it seems open to the traditional query: If some claim is not guaranteed by the structure of our concepts, but answers to the nature of the world, then how is it possible to know it without a posteriori evidence?

Yet other philosophers distance themselves from talk of conceptual analysis, but even so feel that philosophical reflection is a source of synthetic a priori intuition Sosa , They too would seem to face the traditional query of how synthetic a priori knowledge is possible. In this context, Timothy Williamson has recently argued that the traditional distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge is less than clear-cut, and in particular that it breaks down in connection with the intuitions on which philosophers rely.

However, it is arguable that this does not so much address as by-pass the underlying question. Empirical studies have indicated that many central philosophical intuitions are by no means universal, but rather peculiar to certain cultures, social classes and genders Knobe and Nichols This variability of intuitions is in obvious tension with their reliability.

If different people have opposed philosophical intuitions, then it cannot be that intuitions of this kind are always true. Timothy Williamson has responded to this challenge from experimental philosophy by suggesting that, while the intuitions of ordinary people on philosophical matters might be unreliable, those of philosophers in particular can be trusted. In his view, a proper philosophical training winnows out mistaken philosophical reactions However, this position still seems to call for a positive explanation of how synthetic philosophical knowledge might be established without a posteriori evidence, even if it is restricted to trained philosophers.

The possibility of such an explanation is not of course to be dismissed out of hand. We will do well to remember that a priori does not just mean analytic. There is no contradiction in the idea of experience-independent access to synthetic truths. After all, until the eighteenth century no modern philosopher doubted that God had bestowed on us powers of reason that would enable us to arrive at perception-independent knowledge of a range of synthetic claims. Even if few contemporary philosophers would still appeal to God in this context, there are other possible mechanisms that could play an equivalent role.

It is not to be ruled out that our biological heritage, for example, has fixed a range of beliefs in us whose reliability owes nothing to our individual ontogenetic experience. Indeed there is a case for viewing certain aspects of our cultural heritage as playing a similar role, imbuing us with certain beliefs whose justification rests on ancestral rather than individual experience.

However, it is one thing to point to the general possibility of biological and cultural mechanisms constituting experience-independent sources of reliable knowledge, another to show that such mechanisms operate within philosophy. Even if there are areas of thought which rest on such foundations, this does not show that the intuitions of philosophers in particular have a similar backing. Moreover, there is arguably direct reason to doubt that they do.

It is not just the intuitions of everyday people on philosophical matter that have a poor track record. The same applies to philosophers through history.

It is not hard to think of deep-seated intuitions appealed to by past philosophers that have since been discredited. A purely mechanical being cannot reason; space must be Euclidean; an effect cannot be greater than its cause; every event is determined; temporal succession cannot be relative.

In the next section we will see that there is reason to suppose that this unreliability is intrinsic to the nature of philosophy. A central feature of contemporary philosophy is the use of intuitive judgements about test cases to test philosophical theories.

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At first pass, this feature of philosophical method might seem to presuppose that philosophy is centrally concerned with analytic claims. Because of this, some naturalist philosophers have advocated a revisionary attitude to philosophical method. Philosophy should turn away from the method of possible cases, and instead engage directly with proper empirical theorizing.

The interesting questions are not about our concepts of names, knowledge, persons and so on, but about the worldly items, if any, that these concepts refer to Kornblith ; Knobe and Nichols However, it is not to be taken for granted that philosophical thought experiments are solely of conceptual significance. Perhaps the intuitions about possible cases are not just analytic consequences of concepts, but substantial synthetic claims about the world.

If this were right, then they would be capable of challenging the kind of synthetic theses that methodological naturalists take philosophy to involve. Here too the scientist imagines some possible situation, and then makes an intuitive judgement about what would happen. But here the theory at issue is not some conceptual claim, but rather an eminently synthetic one—say, that heavier bodies fall faster.

If intuition is to falsify this, then it needs to tell us that there is a naturally and not just conceptually possible situation that violates this thesis—for example, if a big and small body are tied together, they will be heavier than the big one, but will not fall faster. This thought is clearly not guaranteed by concepts alone, but by synthetic assumptions about the way the world works. But this analogy [ 20 ] now highlights a different worry about philosophical thought experiments.

If the intuitions promoted by the thought experiments are synthetic, what reason is there to trust them? As was observed in the last section, there is no obvious reason to suppose that the synthetic intuitions of philosophers are generally reliable, and indeed some historical basis for thinking they are prone to error. Given this, it scarcely seems sensible to assess philosophical theories by their consistency with the immediate reactions of philosophers to test cases.

Once more, methodological naturalism would seem to require a revisionary attitude to philosophical method. However, there is a way of understanding the role of thought experiments in philosophy that evades this worry. Instead of viewing them as designed to elicit authoritative intuitions to which philosophical theories must defer, they can instead be seen as devices which help us to articulate our implicit assumptions when we are threatened with paradox and have difficulty finding a solution.

Recall a point made at the beginning of our discussion of methodological naturalism. Philosophical problems are typically occasioned by some kind of theoretical tangle. Different but equally plausible lines of though lead us to conflicting conclusions. Unraveling this tangle requires that we lay out different theoretical commitments and see what might be rejected or modified.

A useful heuristic for this purpose may well be to use intuitions about imaginary cases to uncover the implicit synthetic assumptions that are shaping our thinking. This can help us better to appreciate our overall theoretical alternatives, and assess which gives the best overall fit with the a posteriori evidence. This perspective on philosophical thought experiments shows why we should positively expect many of the intuitions they elicit to prove wanting.

Perhaps there are contexts outside philosophy where various kinds of a priori intuitions can be relied upon. But if philosophical problems typically arise because we are unsure about what exactly is amiss in the overall set of synthetic claims we bring to the world, then it would seem only to be expected that the fault will often lie in the implicit assumptions behind our thought-experimental reactions.

It is worth noting that this often happens with scientific thought experiments too. But the verdict can also go the other way. But this certainly did not mean that his thought experiment was worthless. On the contrary, it led J. Bell to the derivation of the eponymous inequality whose experimental confirmation ruled out local hidden variable theories.

It is not hard to think of similar philosophical cases. The worth of philosophical thought-experiments does not always require that the intuitions they elicit are sound. We all have an intuition that the person goes with the memories, not the old body, as evidenced by our reactions to the many fictions which trade on just this kind of scenario. But few philosophers of personal identity would nowadays hold that this intuition is decisive in favour of Lockeanism.

Again, consider the intuition that conscious properties are ontologically distinct from physical ones, as displayed in our immediate reaction to zombie scenarios. Here too, few would suppose that these intuitions by themselves decide the case. Still, even those who reject Lockeanism and dualism will allow that reflection on memory-switching and zombie cases has played a crucial role in clarifying what is at issue in the debates.

The evocation of intuitions by philosophical thought experiments is important, not because they provide some special kind of a priori evidence, but simply because they need to be made explicit and assessed against the overall a posteriori evidence. In the previous section we saw that some of the findings of experimental philosophy carry the implication that everyday intuitions are not generally be reliable. Careful experimental probing can helpfully augment traditional armchair methods as a way of identifying the structure of implicit assumptions that drive intuitive judgments about test cases.

Sometimes thought-experiments may be enough. But in more complicated cases systematic questionnaires and surveys may well be a better way of identifying the implicit cognitive structures behind our philosophical reactions. Note that experimental philosophy, even when viewed in this positive light, is at most an addition to our philosophical armoury, not a new way of doing philosophy. For once we have sorted out the intuitive principles behind our philosophical judgements, whether by armchair reflection or empirical surveys, we still need to assess their worth.

That can only be shown by subjecting that way of thinking itself to proper a posteriori evaluation. Methodological naturalism fits more naturally with some areas of philosophy than others. It is perhaps not hard to understand, at least in outline, how work in areas like metaphysics, philosophy of mind, meta-ethics and epistemology might be aimed at the construction of synthetic theories supported by a posteriori evidence.

But in other philosophical areas the methodologically naturalistic project may seem less obviously applicable. In particular it might be unclear how it applies to those areas of philosophy that make claims about mathematics, first-order morality or modality. One possibility would be for methodological naturalists to make exceptions for these areas of philosophy.

It would still be a significant thesis if methodological naturalism could be shown to apply to most central areas of philosophy, even if some specialist areas call for a different methodology. This final subsection will address two issues raised by this suggestion. First, is it reasonable to regard modal claims in particular as comprising a specialism within philosophy? Perhaps mathematical investigation and even first-order moralizing can be regarded as marginal to the core areas of philosophy.

But many will feel that a concern with the modal realm is a characteristic feature of all philosophy. Second, how far do methodological naturalists need to allow that mathematics, morality and modality constitute exceptions to their position in the first place? We need to distinguish here between an interest in claims which, as it happens, have modal implications, on the one hand, and an interest in those modal implications themselves, on the other.

It is uncontentious that most of the claims of interest to philosopher have modal implications. But it does not follow from this that most of philosophy is interested in the modal realm itself. Philosophy is largely concerned with claims about identity and constitution, claims which as it happens will be necessary if they are true. When philosophers ask about knowledge, names, persons, persisting objects, free will, causation, and so on, they are seeking to understand the identity or constitution of these kinds.

They want to know whether knowledge is the same as true justified belief, whether persisting objects are composed of temporal parts, and so on. And so any truths they might establish about such matters will inevitably be necessary rather than contingent, and so carry implications about a realm beyond the actual. This makes room for methodological naturalists to insist that most primary philosophical concerns are synthetic and a posteriori , even if they imply additional modal claims which are not.

Natural science provides a good analogy here. Water is H 2 O. Heat is molecular motion. Stars are made of hot gas. Since all these claims concern matters of identity and constitution, they too are necessary if true. But science is interested in these synthetic a posteriori claims as such, rather than their modal implications. Chemistry is interested in the composition of actual water, and not with what happens in other possible worlds.

Methodological naturalists can take the same line with philosophical claims. Their focus is on whether knowledge is actually the same as true justified belief, or whether persisting objects are actually composed of temporal parts—issues which they take to be synthetic and a posteriori —and not with whether these truths are necessary—issues which may well have a different status. Let us now turn to the second issue flagged above. How far do methodological naturalists in fact need to allow that modality—and mathematics and first-order morality—do have a different status from the synthetic a posteriori character they attribute to philosophy in general?

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