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| Ernst Haeckel's sea anenomes from Art Forms of Nature (1904) |
Since the Scientific Revolution, two views regarding its relationship to philosophy have flourished. The first was exemplified by Rene Descartes (1596-1650 AD). Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, thought that if we want to ensure that the results of the sciences are trustworthy, then it is necessary for us to prove the existence of God. If there is an all-good and powerful-being, he argued, then we can trust the senses he gave us to arrive at correct conclusions about nature. If we fail to do so, however, then we could not ensure that we are not sleeping, hallucinating, or being deceived by a capricious demon. This possibility, in Descartes' opinion, was enough to make us doubt the conclusions of the sciences and our senses in general. Few philosophers have posed this concern in such theological terms. Many, however, share Descartes' view that the sciences do not stand on their own and require philosophy to provide adequate logical justifications for their methods.
By the middle of the twentieth century, a new view regarding the philosophy-science relationship started to make waves. Contrary to Descartes, philosophers like Ernest Nagel (1901-1985 AD) argued that the sciences need no prior philosophical justification. In his 1955 address to the American Philosophical Association, he stated that
the warrant for a proposition does not derive from a faith in the uniformity of nature, or any other principles with cosmic scope. The warrant derives exclusively from the specific evidence available, and from the contingent historical fact that the special ways employed in obtaining and appraising the evidence have generally been effective in yielding reliable knowledge (Rosenberg, 2000).By this, Dr. Nagel meant that the sciences' historic track record of reliably yielding knowledge is sufficient to justify their methods. Nothing else is needed. This view is called naturalism.
In conjunction with believing that the sciences need no philosophical justification, naturalists make another radical departure from Descartes' view. They believe philosophy ought to be done after, justified by, and integrated into the sciences. For example, when philosophers talk about ontology (the study of what things exist), they ought to first consult the best available physics. If they talk about epistemology (the study of knowledge), they should be steeped in the best available research in psychology, decision theory, and behavioral economics. Any philosophy which makes up non-scientific entities (e.g. Hegel's dialectic and the empiricists' "sense data") or does theorizing on issues like mind, time, and causation without "talking science," the naturalist believes, ought to be viewed with severe skepticism.
If you have taken at least Philosophy 101 and studied some of the great philosophers, then naturalism may be quite shocking. "Well," you may think, "if the naturalist does not engage in creating grand narratives of history like Hegel and Marx did, then what the heck do they do?" Quite a lot, actually. In metaphysics, for example, naturalist James Ladyman deals with issues like how the various scientific theories relate to one another and fit together into a unified whole. This question is not addressed by any particular science, but attempting to answer it requires Dr. Ladyman to be familiar with how the major ideas of science work and relate to one another. This, in a nutshell, is how naturalists approach philosophy.
Another key project which demonstrates how naturalists do philosophy is their use of Darwinism to shed light on philosophical problems concerning meaning and human nature. This is possible because, when Darwin placed man on the tree of life, he made him part of the natural order (a daring attempt was made to do this sooner by Hobbes, but it was largely unsuccessful). By extension, everything which man is and does is also part of the natural order. This allows naturalist philosophers to use research from the life sciences to address philosophical problems involving consciousness, meaning, freewill, morality, and teleology. This has been the approach of many prominent naturalists like Philip Kitcher, Daniel Dennett, and Alexander Rosenberg.
A conclusion which virtually all naturalist philosophers arrive at is that the methods of the sciences are the sole way to gain knowledge about mechanisms of the world in which we live. History (at least the good stuff), archaeology, and anthropology are certainly sources of knowledge about how we got to the present, but only the natural sciences are able to describe chemical bonding and entropy. Other non-scientific "ways of knowing" are viewed by naturalists with great suspicion because they, unlike the natural sciences, have a terrible track record.
Tarot, seances, creation science, tea leaf readings, and the like are either mistaken or unintelligible. It is important to realize, however, that this is a conclusion which has been arrived at by examination of the evidence. It is, to paraphrase James Randi, not a priori. It is a posteriori. If some other method starts to deliver the goods like the sciences do, then this hostility may be revised. Until then, it is ill advised to break out the chicken bones for medical advice.
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