Naturalism And The First Person Perspective

This book investigates the limits of scientific naturalism. It has three goals: (1) to show that no wholly impersonal account of reality can be adequate to all phenomena; (2) to formulate a nonCartesian account of the first-person perspective; (3) to develop a 'near-naturalism' that accommodates the world of our encounters and interactions.

This text investigates the limits of scientific naturalism. It has three goals: to show that no wholly impersonal account of reality can be adequate to all phenomena; to formulate a nonCartesian account of the first-person perspective; to develop a 'near-naturalism' that accommodates the world of our encounters and interactions.

Naturalism is the reigning creed in analytic philosophy. Naturalists claim that natural science provides a complete account of all forms of existence. According to the naturalistic credo there are no aspects of human existence which transcend methods and explanations of science. Our concepts of the self, the mind, subjectivity, human freedom or responsibility is to be defined in terms of established sciences. The aim of the present volume is to draw the balance of naturalism’s success so far. Unlike other volumes it does not contain a collection of papers which unanimously reject naturalism. Naturalists and anti-naturalists alike unfold their positions discussing the success or failure of naturalistic approaches. "How successful is naturalism? shows where the lines of agreement and disagreement between naturalists and their critics are to be located in contemporary philosophical discussion. With contributions of Rudder Lynne Baker, Johannes Brandl, Helmut Fink, Ulrich Frey, Georg Gasser & Matthias Stefan, Peter S.M. Hacker, Winfried Löffler, Nancey Murphy, Josef Quitterer, Michael Rea, Thomas Sukopp, Konrad Talmont-Kaminski and Gerd Vollmer.

This book celebrates the research career of Lynne Rudder Baker by presenting sixteen new and critical essays from admiring students, colleagues, interlocutors, and friends. Baker was a trenchant critic of physicalist conceptions of the universe. She was a staunch defender of a kind of practical realism, what she sometimes called a metaphysics of everyday life. It was this general “common sense” philosophical outlook that underwrote her famous constitution view of reality. Whereas most of her contemporaries were in general given to metaphysical reductionism and eliminativism, Baker was unapologetic and philosophically deft in her defense of ontological pluralism. The essays in this book engage with all aspects of her unique and influential work: practical realism about the mind; the constitution view of human persons; the first-person perspective; and God, Christianity, and naturalism. Common Sense Metaphysics will be of interest to scholars of Baker’s work, as well as scholars and advanced students engaged in research on various topics in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of religion.

Arguing for the compatibility of phenomenology and naturalism, this book also refashions each. The opening chapters begin with a methodological focus, which seeks to curb the "over-bidding" characteristic of both traditional transcendental phenomenology and scientific naturalism. Having thus opened up the possibility that the twain might meet, it is in the detailed chapters on matters where scientific and phenomenological work overlap and sometimes conflict – on time, body, and others – that the book contests some of the standard ways of understanding the relationship between phenomenological philosophy and empirical science, and between phenomenology and naturalism. Without invoking a methodological move of quarantine, in which each is allocated to their proper and separate domains, the book outlines the significance of the first-person perspective characteristic of phenomenology – both epistemically and ontologically – while according due respect to the relevant empirical sciences. The book thus renews phenomenology and argues for its ongoing relevance and importance for the future of philosophy.

Jonardon Ganeri presents a ground-breaking study of selfhood, drawing on Indian theories of consciousness and mind. He explores the notion of embodiment and the centrality of the emotions to the self, and shows how to harmonize the idea of the first-person perspective with a naturalist worldview which encompasses the normative.

This book offers a serious take on the social-environmental crisis that our world suffers from today. In the first section the authors look at ethical responsibility in relation to the natural environment, whereas in the second section they examine ethical responsibility in the cultural and social environment. The third part includes papers devoted to the philosophy of Paul Ric (1913-2005), written by Ric scholars. The essays focus on ethics and the natural, social, or cultural enviroment in Ricoeur's thought. Half of the essays are in English; the other half are in French and German. (Series: Eco-Ethica, Vol. 5)[Subject: Religious Studies, Christianity Studies, Philosophy]

Collected essays showing how social psychology illuminates epistemological problems, focusing on issues of self-knowledge and the nature of human reason. The book features specific examples of sceptical problems and also includes two entirely new essays. It will appeal to pyschologists as well philosophers.