Reasons to act and believe: naturalism and rational justification in Hume’s philosophical project

Is Hume a naturalist? Does he regard all or nearly all beliefs and actions as rationally unjustified? In order to settle these questions, it is necessary to examine their key terms (‘naturalism’ and ‘rational justification’) and to understand the character—especially the normative character—of Hume’s philosophical project. This paper argues (i) that Hume is a naturalist—and, in particular, both a moral and an epistemic naturalist—in quite robust ways; and (ii) that Hume can properly regard many actions and beliefs as “rationally justified” in several different senses of that term.     

敬畏生命是智慧的开端

敬畏是对万物尊严的直观,是对超然性的辨识。犹太-基督教认为,智慧由敬畏推动,敬畏是信仰的前提,是信仰的根源。人们应当接受敬畏的指导。丧失敬畏,就会缺少洞察力。科学主义是失去敬畏的结果。学术界最近对科学主义的讨论,说明人文精神开始崛起。科学主义大概是一种国产货。我们今天应当在世界大家庭的语境中说话或言说。敬畏自然与敬畏生命,二者同中有异。但是,我们所说的敬畏自然,一点也不意味着自然主义。我们反对科学技术的僭越。自然主义恰恰忽视不同于单纯物质的生命。国内学者已经普遍注意到人类道德的关怀应当扩大到人类之外的存在上。     

The Myth of Reductive Extensionalism

Extensionalism, as I understand it here, is the view that physical reality consists exclusively of extensional entities. On this view, intensional entitities must either be eliminated in favor of an ontology of extensional entities, or be reduced to such an ontology, or otherwise be admitted as non-physical. In this paper I argue that extensionalism is a misguided philosophical doctrine. First, I argue that intensional phenomena are not confined to the realm of language and thought. Rather, the ontology of such phenomena is intimately entwined with the ontology of properties. After providing some evidence to the popularity of extensionalism in contemporary analytic philosophy, I investigate the motivating reasons behind it. Considering several explanations, I argue that the main motivating reason is rooted in the identification of matter with extension, an identification which is one of the hallmarks of the mechanistic conception of nature inherited from the founding fathers of our modern scientific outlook. I then argue that such a conception is not only at odds with a robust ontology of properties but is also at odds with our best contemporary physics. Rather than vindicating extensionalism contemporary science undermines the position, and the lesson to be drawn from this surprising fact is that extensionalism needs no longer be espoused as a regulative ideal of naturalistic philosophy. I conclude by showing that the ontological approach to intensional phenomena advocated throughout the paper also gains support from an examination of the historical context within which ‘intension’ was first introduced as a semantic notion.

God,Information, and Complexity: From Descriptive to Explorative Metaphysics

Abstract

Information and complexity have become central concepts in our contemporary worldview. On this background, it is discussed in which sense concepts of information and complexity may apply to theology proper. While the inherited axiom of divine simplicity forbids complexity and plurality as features of divine nature, an argument is developed for the presence of information and complexity in divine life. Three forms of information are proposed as relevant for a contemporary concept of God: Information as difference (Information1), information as form and relational structure (Information2) and semantic information (Information3). It is argued that features of these forms of information must be internal to divine life, if God can properly be said to facilitate and value the complex world of creation, to allow embodied creates to participate in divine life, and to communicate with creatures. In this light, the notion of divine simplicity will have to be redefined as the divine self-identity throughout temporal flux.     

Scientific naturalism: a great truth that got distorted

Scientific naturalism in the generic sense is the doctrine that there can be no supernatural interruptions of the world’s causal processes. This idea, which emerged in Greece in the 6th century BCE, was formulated most adequately in Plato’s theistic version. However, in appropriating Greek philosophy, Christian thinkers first modified and then rejected its naturalism. Scientific naturalism emerged again in the 18th and 19th centuries, but because of ideas retained from the supernaturalistic mechanism that became associated with science in the 17th century, naturalism appeared in a distorted version, one that is inadequate for science itself as well as incompatible with Christian faith or any other significantly religious view. The great truth of scientific naturalism needs to be rescued from this distorted version of it.     

The fantasy of third-person science: Phenomenology, ontology and evidence

Dennett’s recent defense in this journal of the heterophenomenological method and its supposed advantages over Husserlian phenomenology is premised on his problematic account of the epistemological and ontological status of phenomenological states. By employing Husserl’s philosophy of science to clarify the relationship between phenomenology and evidence and the implications of this relationship for the empirical identification of ‘real’ conscious states, I argue that the naturalistic account of consciousness Dennett hopes for could be authoritative as a science only by virtue of the very phenomenological evidences Dennett’s method consigns to the realm of fiction. Thus heterophenomenology, qua scientific method, is incoherent.

Is knowledge a natural kind?

The project of treating knowledge as an empirical object of study has gained popularity in recent naturalistic epistemology. It is argued here that the assumption that such an object of study exists is in tension with other central elements of naturalistic philosophy. Two hypotheses are considered. In the first, “knowledge” is hypothesized to refer to mental states causally responsible for the behaviour of cognitive agents. Here, the relational character of truth creates a problem. In the second hypothesis “knowledge” is hypothesized to refer to mental states causally responsible for the evolutionarily successful behaviour of cognitive agents. Here, the problem lies in the fact that evolution by natural selection is not necessarily conducive to truth. The result does not necessarily amount to eliminativism, however, since the naturalist may consistently reject the condition of truth that lies behind these problems.     

Interaction and bio-cognitive order

The role of interaction in learning is essential and profound: it must provide the means to solve open problems (those only vaguely specified in advance), but cannot be captured using our familiar formal cognitive tools. This presents an impasse to those confined to present formalisms; but interaction is fundamentally dynamical, not formal, and with its importance thus underlined it invites the development of a distinctively interactivist account of life and mind. This account is provided, from its roots in the interactivist biological constitution of life, through the evolution of the dual internal regulatory capacities expressed as intentionality and intelligence, to its expression in self-directed anticipative learning in persons and in science.     

Intentionality,Cognitive Integration and the Continuity Thesis

Naturalistic philosophers ought to think that the mind is continuous with the rest of the world and should not, therefore, be surprised by the findings of the extended mind, cognitive integration and enactivism. Not everyone is convinced that all mental phenomena are continuous with the rest of the world. For example, intentionality is often formulated in a way that makes the mind discontinuous with the rest of the world. This is a consequence of Brentano’s formulation of intentionality, I suggest, and can be overcome by revealing that the concept of intentional directedness as he receives it from the Scholastics is quite consistent with the continuity thesis. It is only when intentional directedness is conjoined with intentional inexistence that intentionality and content are consistent with a discontinuity thesis (such as Brentano’s thesis). This makes room to develop an account of intentional directedness that is consistent with the continuity thesis in the form of Peirce’s representational principle. I also argue against a form of the discontinuity thesis in the guise of the derived/underived content distinction. Having shown that intentionality is consistent with the continuity thesis I argue that we should focus on intentionality and representation as bodily enacted. I conclude that we would be better off focussing on representation and intentionality in action rather than giving abstract functional accounts of extended cognition.

Naturalism,fallibilism, and the a priori

This paper argues that a priori justification is, in principle, compatible with naturalism—if the a priori is understood in a way that is free of the inessential properties that, historically, have been associated with the concept. I argue that empirical indefeasibility is essential to the primary notion of the a priori; however, the indefeasibility requirement should be interpreted in such a way that we can be fallibilist about apriori-justified claims. This fallibilist notion of the a priori accords with the naturalist’s commitment to scientific methodology in that it allows for apriori-justified claims to be sensitive to further conceptual developments and the expansion of evidence. The fallibilist apriorist allows that an a priori claim is revisable in only a purely epistemic sense. This modal claim is weaker than what is required for a revisability thesis to establish empiricism, so fallibilist apriorism represents a distinct position.