Knowledge and Naturalism

There is an objective difference between one who has knowledge ofsomething and one who does not. This is true in both the occurrent and thedispositional senses of “knowledge” and “knows.” That is,whether or not X has knowledge on a certain point or about a certain matter—knows the English alphabet, for example, the narrative content of Warand Peace, or the date of Robert Kennedy’s assassination—is not a matter of how anyone, including X himself, may think or feel about X and hisconscious or other states.

Knowledge with reference to specific matters is a condition which individual human beings are or are not in. Usually this condition is found in a social context. But if only one person existed it would still be possible for that person to be knowledgeable about some, at least, of the specific matters that concerned him—for example, about reliable sources of food and water in his environment.

Can this objective difference among human beings consist in properties andrelations that fit within a naturalist ontology?

A long tradition of ancient and modern philosophers from Plato, Descartes and Kant to T. H. Green, Edmund Husserl and Hilary Putnam has insisted that it cannot. Others—especially those in the 19th and 20th centuries who insisted upon distinguishing Naturalism from Materialism—have held that it could be. But with the rise and development of the mind/brain identity thesis during the last half of the 20th century, the generous naturalism (as we shall call it)of Dewey, Santayana, Sidney Hook and others has largely disappeared in favor ofa narrower naturalism more commonly and more correctly called “Physicalism” (the older “Materialism”). For it, all distinctively human properties are reduced to strictly physical properties of the central nervous system of the human body or to these plus characteristics of the natural and social setting—or, to nothing at all.¹

In this paper I will try to explain why narrower Naturalism or unqualifiedPhysicalism cannot find a place for knowledge, and specifically for three of itsessential components: truth, logical relations and noetic unity. At this latedate it is hard to say much that will be strictly new on these matters, but,apparently, there is much that needs to be said again. What I shall say abouttruth and logic is practically identical with what Frege said more than acentury ago, though I hold views significantly different from his on how truthand logic fit into the full context of knowing and knowledge.²What I shall say about noetic unity adds little to what has already been said byKant, Lotze and Husserl.

Naturalism is…What?

Before the question about the narrower Naturalism’s ability to accommodateknowledge within its permissible categories can be raised, one has to come tosome understanding of what Naturalism and knowledge are, and thisis difficult to do without begging important questions.

In traditional philosophical terms, Naturalism is a form of Monism. It holds,in some order of interdependence, that reality, knowledge and method each are ofonly one basic kind. That is, there are not two radically different kinds ofreality or knowledge or method. It is fundamentally opposed to Pluralism, andmost importantly to Dualism as traditionally understood (Plato, Descartes,Kant).

In its modern forms, Naturalism further specifies its Monism by reference to the empirical or the sense perceptible. The one type of reality admitted by it is that of the sense-perceptible world and its constituents. All knowledge is, for it, reducible to (or in some manner continuous with) sense perception, and all inquiry essentially involves sense perception, directly or indirectly. Currently, “the sense perceptible” is de-emphasized in favor of “the scientific”—the organization of data around empirically underdetermined hypotheses. But this is understood to constitute empiricalresearch and, hopefully, to yield empirical or descriptiveknowledge.

This leads directly into the current versions of “naturalizedepistemology,” where the emphasis is entirely upon the human being as astrictly physical organism acquiring beliefs in its “natural”environment. The question as to whether Naturalism can accommodate knowing andknowledge is then replaced by the question of whether the various normativeissues that arise with reference to knowledge and belief formation in the courseof human life and scientific endeavors can be replaced by mere descriptionsof actual processes of belief formation. In the famous words of Quine:”Epistemology after being integrated into science throughpsychology still goes on, though in a new setting and a clarified status.Epistemology, or something like it, simply falls into place as a chapter ofpsychology and hence of natural science. It studies a natural phenomenon, viz.,a physical human subject.”³

Knowledge itself,then—and, more weakly, justified belief—is simply belief that is produced in a certain way, for example, in ways that are reliable,ways that tend to produce true beliefs in actual as well as counterfactualsituations that are relevant alternatives to the actual situation.⁴Quine and others hold that epistemology can be appropriately replaced bypsychology. This would yield what is now widely referred to as a”naturalized epistemology.” Hilary Putnam, Jaegwon Kim and othershold, by contrast, that the normative (non-descriptive) element cannot beeliminated from epistemology, and therefore that a naturalized epistemology is impossible.⁵

All of this is now very familiar. But there are problems: problems whichindicate to me, as it has to others, that the issue of the naturalization ofknowledge is misconceived when stated in this way. And first of all, if we aregoing to replace epistemology with psychology we will have to decide whichpsychology will do. In fact, there is no existing psychology for theNaturalistic viewpoint to turn to. There is only an idealization of someadequate theory of human behavior which, supposedly, might at some time beachieved. This will, of course, have to be a “scientific” psychology.But what would that amount to? Could it possibly be a psychology that is notessentially identified in terms of Naturalism itself? Highly unlikely. But thenwe are running in a circle, specifying Naturalism in terms of psychology, butthen… a naturalized psychology.

At present there are many socially identifiable, institutionalized forms of”psychology,” with associated professional organizations, fundingsources and avenues of publication. Research universities in the United Statesrarely ever have only one academic department giving advance degrees inpsychology. So, when the naturalized epistemologist speaks of replacingepistemology with psychology, which department will he go to?

And we might also have second thoughts about normativity being theissue for the naturalization of epistemology. It is, of course, an issue. It is hard to imagine that the only epistemological question to be raised with respect to belief is its occurrence—even occurrence under certain conditions, no matter how fine-tuned those conditions may be. We would still want to know if our belief is “true,” “correct,” “right.” Putnam asks: “Why should we expend our mental energy in convincing ourselves that we aren’t thinkers, that our thoughts aren’t really about anything,noumenal or phenomenal, that there is no sense in which anythought is right or wrong (including the thought that no thoughtis right or wrong) beyond being the verdict of the moment (or of some longerrun), and so on? This is a self-refuting enterprise if there ever was one!”⁶

But let us surrender the point for a moment and grant that epistemology canbe replaced by psychology, the normative by the descriptive. Will it make anydifference with respect to the longstanding issues around the naturalization ofknowledge? Not really. The descriptive/normative contrast has no essentialbearing upon the issue of Naturalism in epistemology. Getting rid of normativitywill not secure the naturalization of epistemology and retaining it will notexclude naturalization. It has seemed to do so only because an importantphilosopher (Quine) in an influential paper set that contrast up as theessential issue, and others, for whatever reasons, accepted his formulation asthe framework of the debate.

On the one hand, a hardy Naturalist such as Dewey might very well insist thatthere is nothing non-natural about normativity.⁷To think so is only to admit another of what Dewey often called “untenabledualisms.” Norms are interwoven throughout human experience and are everybit as “natural” as anything else to be found there. And aWittgensteinian reading of linguistic rules and forms of life could come up withmuch the same point. Only someone who reads “descriptive” (as opposedto normative) in a strongly materialistic or physicalistic fashion would takethe opposition of normative to descriptive to be the issue of naturalism inepistemology. But many Naturalists have not taken “descriptive” in anysuch sense, and certainly science or experimental method does not of itselfrequire them to do so. What, exactly, is so unnatural or non-natural aboutnorms?

On the other hand, let’s suppose we surrender norms—just banish “right” in both its adverbial and its noun forms from our treatment of knowledge and justified belief. What is so “naturalistic” about mere description? A description will be naturalistic only if what it is about—its content, what it mentions—fits into a naturalistic ontology. The issue for Naturalism certainly is not just about normativity. What, for example, would make one think that an adequate description of the formation of belief by means of a reliable process would mention only things that would fit into a naturalistic ontology? Only, I suggest, the prior assumption that the “science” of psychology will, when fully perfected, be appropriately natural—that it will “emerge” from biology as biology from chemistry and chemistry from physics, or something like that. Or, at least, that it will mention nothing “dualistic” or “transcendental” with regard to the physical world.

And this does not even raise the issue of whether or not description as suchcan be understood in naturalistic terms, or whether describing itself is anentirely natural event or fact. A fully naturalized semantics is, once again,just presupposed in the move to “description” without norms. Butwouldn’t the description (of reliable processes of belief formation, etc.)itself have to be “correct,” “right,” “adequate,””justified”? And have we then gotten rid of norms if we simply do notmention them in our descriptions of epistemic processes?

I presume that the age-old discussions in ethical theory pitting Intuitionismand Naturalism against each other (coming into the late 20th Century through theethical Intuitionism of G. E. Moore and developing in the subsequent critique of”descriptivism” by ethical theorists practicing “linguisticanalysis”) must have influenced Quine to frame the issue of naturalizingepistemology in the way he did. But his was a clearly unfortunate choice so faras genuine philosophical progress is concerned.

Invoking ‘Science’

What has just been said with reference to psychology and naturalizedepistemology calls attention to broader issues bearing upon the specification ofNaturalism.

Methodological monism is an enduring aspect of generic Naturalism, and modernNaturalism is often specified simply in terms of an exclusive application ofscientific method in all inquiries. But how can this method support claims aboutthe nature of reality as whole. For example, one might state that the onlyrealities are atoms (quarks, strings, etc.) and derivatives thereof. But how ishe to support his claim? It certainly cannot be derived from any specificscience (physics, chemistry on up) or from any conjunction of specific sciences.And it is not to be derived through any application of experimental techniqueswithin any science.

The Naturalist must then have recourse to that popular but philosophicallysuspect abstraction, ‘science’ itself, which says even less than the individualsciences about the nature of reality as a whole, because says nothing at all. Itisn’t the kind of thing that can say anything, though many individuals—usually, I think, not themselves scientists, and certainly not scientists expressing truths within the competence of their profession—present themselves as speaking for science, and thus as being ‘scientific’ insome extended but still authoritative sense.

John Searle seems to be in this position. He speaks of “our scientificview of the world,” which according to him every informed person with herwits about her now believes to be true. He speaks of a view of the worldwhich includes “all of our generally accepted theories about what sort ofplace the universe is and how it works.”⁸ “It includes,” he continues, “theories ranging from quantum mechanics and relativity theory to the plate tectonic theory of geology and the DNA theory of hereditary transmission,” etc. We might imagine a very long conjunctive sentence—containing the specific theories he has in mind as conjuncts—that would, supposedly, express the “world view” in question.

But this will hardly do what he wants. One thing that will not show up insuch a conjunctive sentence is any claim about reality as a whole or knowledge in general. Such specific scientific theories as those just mentioned—and no matter how many of them we may list—cannot provide an ontology. They never even attempt to determine what it is to exist or what existence is, and cannot by the nature of their content provide an exhaustive list of what ultimate sorts of things there are. Their existential claims are always restricted to specific types of entities as indicated in their basic concepts.

We emphasize the point that to suppose that a given scientific theory orconjunction of such theories provides an ontology constitutes a logicalmistake, a misreading of what the theories say and imply. Those theories, andthe bodies of knowledge wherein they are situated, actually say nothingwhatsoever about the universe or about how it—the whole ‘thing’—works. This is a merely semantical point about the meaning or logical content of the claims or sentences that make up the sciences. It is to be established or refuted by examining, precisely, those claims and sentences. It turns out that they do not even mention the universe, the totality of allthat exists, nor do they say anything about the boundaries of knowledgegenerally. Such matters simply do not fall within the purview of their methodsor findings.

In support of this claim we ask: Could one possibly find the place in somecomprehensive and duly accredited scientific text or treatment, or sometechnical paper, where it is demonstrated or necessarily assumed by the scienceconcerned that all that exists consists of particles or fields or strings—or whatever the proper subject matter of the science is? Would Searle or anyone else be able to mention the name of the physicist who established this as an “obvious fact of physics“?⁹Exactly where in the “atomic theory of matter” is the claim about what”the universe consists entirely of” to be found?

“After all,” Searle rhetorically asks, “do we not know fromthe discoveries of science (italics added) that there is reallynothing in the universe but physical particles and fields of forces acting onphysical particles?” The answer, contrary to his assumption, is “No,we do not.” Again, could he possibly just point out when, where, howand by whom this “discovery of science” was made. Was it made?

Also, before the philosopher can use “the discoveries of science”he must determine what “science” says. But this is to reify science,to treat it as an entity that issues “results.” Science, as alreadyindicated, says nothing at all. Particular scientists do. Unfortunately theyalso make unscientific statements. How can we tell when an individual scientistis making scientific statements, and “science” is therefore speaking,and when they are not? And can a ‘scientific’ statement be false or perhapsillicitly derived and still be scientific?

If a scientific statement can be false or based on logical errors, then ascientific statement may be less than knowledge. How, then, could it be requiredthat we accept such statements as a basis or framework for philosophical work?History shows that statements accepted as “scientific” have been bothfalse and based on logical errors. Is the advocate of Naturalism then one whoworks under an authority that may be and has been wrong? He himself would rarelyif ever have the competence to do the scientific work and therefore must betaking the statements of “science” on authority. But blind authorityis in fact one of the things we would expect Naturalism to stand against.Historically it has done so, and that has been one of its virtues. How can itavoid resting on it, however, if what Searle says is true? And is aphilosopher’s statement about science, a scientific theory or scientist to beautomatically regarded as itself scientific? What can its status be?

The Dilemma of Naturalism

Naturalism staggers back and forth between physicalism (materialism) as a general ontology and first philosophy, and outright physics-ism or scientism (which need not take the form of physics-ism)—often, though not always, trying to derive physics-ism from scientism and then physicalism from physics-ism. This continues up to the present.

In a recent review Patricia Kitcher chides Stephen Stich for”philosophical Puritanism” when he takes Naturalism to hold that theonly real entities are physical.¹⁰Such a position apparently has now led Stich to give up Naturalism “infavor of an open-ended pluralism.” Pluralism, as he takes it, is a positionthat counts as legitimate all properties “invoked in successful scientifictheories.” But for Kitcher, it seems, such “Pluralism,” tied to”successful science,” is just the Naturalism we want. She points outhow “the obvious authorities” on naturalistic epistemology (Quine,Goldman) counsel us to “make free use of empirical psychology” and to”reunite epistemology with psychology.”¹¹Forget physicalism, her point seems to be. A loose scientism is enough to secureNaturalism for us. Indeed, many of the “generous” Naturalists of themid-20th century gathered around Dewey and Sidney Hook (See footnote #1)identified Naturalism precisely with acceptance of science and only science asthe arbiter of truth and reality, and seemed, at least, to accept whatever cameout of the pipe of “scientific inquiry” as knowledge and reality.

But if the points made above about science, even “successful science,” and about psychology in particular, are true, Kitcher’s advice—similar to the advice of a Dewey or Hook—simply cannot be followed. It is vacuous in practice, for there is no way of identifying and accessing the “successful science” which is proposed as defining Naturalism. At most you get “science now,” which is really only “some scientist(s) now.” And certainly no science (including psychology) that was not Naturalistic in some strongly physicalistic or at least Empiricist sense would be accepted as “successful” by those inclined to Naturalism. Then we are back in the circle: Naturalism in terms of science—but, of course, naturalistic science.

For these reasons I take it that the appeal to science cannot serve tospecify naturalism. There are, then, good reasons to be a “Puritan” ifyou want to advocate Naturalism. Naturalism has to be an honest metaphysics; andthat metaphysics has to be “unqualified physicalism” as referred toabove. But then a thinker who would be naturalist would feel pressure to haverecourse to some specific apriori analyses to render his ontologicalspecification of Naturalism plausible. Short of that one simply can find noreason why naturalistic monism with respect to reality, knowledge or methodshould be true: no reason why there should not be radically different kinds ofrealities with correspondingly radically different kinds of knowledge andinquiry. Why should sciences be “unified”? This lack of reason is, Ithink, what made A. E. Murphy conclude long ago, in his review of Naturalismand the Human Spirit, “that the naturalists, who have so much that isgood to offer, still lack and need a philosophy….”¹²

In addition to the difficulty of coming up with such apriori analyses,however, to turn to such inquiry as might produce them would be to break withthe epistemological monism essential to Naturalism and introduce something likea “first philosophy.” This would be discontinuous with the empiricalmethods of the sciences. In showing its right through apriori analysis,Naturalism would simply give up the game.

In specifying what Naturalism is, therefore, one seems to be faced with aninescapable dilemma. Either one must turn to apriori (non-empirical) analyses toestablish its monism, which will refute Naturalism’s basic claim about knowledgeand inquiry, or its claim will have to rest upon a vacuous appeal to”science.”

That might seem to end the discussion about Naturalism as a philosophicalalternative. But there may be a way to keep it going. One could retreat to amere methodological Naturalism and say that scientific method is our onlyhope as human beings. Whether or not we can adequately specify Naturalism orknow it to be true, one might say, the “scientific method” must beexclusively followed for human well being. Naturalism would then be a humane proposal,not a philosophical claim. The proposal would be to assume in our inquiriesthat only the physical (or the empirical) exists and to see if inquiry basedupon that assumption is not more successful in promoting human ends than anyother type of inquiry.¹³ Our taskhere would then be to show that the methodological assumption proposedcontradicts what knowledge itself is, and to insist that it therefore cannot bean adequate methodological assumption, since it will not allow us to understandknowledge itself.

And Knowledge is…What?

But now what about knowledge? I take knowledge in the dispositional sense tobe identical with the capacity to represent a respective subject matter as itis, on an appropriate basis of thought and/or experience. In the occurrentsense it consists in actually representing, at a point in time, therespective subject matter as it is, on an appropriate basis of thought and/orexperience. This is not intended as an analysis or definition of knowledge, butas an initial description of cases which count as knowledge or knowing.

What constitutes an “appropriate basis” will vary from subjectmatter to subject matter, of course, as is generally acknowledged of thecorresponding methods of inquiry. It is, no doubt, impossible to define”appropriate basis” in any perfectly general way, or even to specifyperfectly general necessary and sufficient conditions for having an appropriatebasis. Certainly I will make no attempt to do so here. However, a few things maybe said about the necessary conditions of knowledge and knowing, withoutintending to be definitional or even comprehensive. The challenge to thenarrower Naturalism will be to accommodate these necessary conditions. If itcannot do so it must be false, though it might still offer itself as aheuristic principle of inquiry.

Clearly one necessary condition of knowledge, both in the occurrent anddispositional senses, is truth. This is a necessary component of representinganything as it is. But this necessary element in any sufficient condition ofknowing rules out all known psychologistic or sociological analyses ofknowledge, such as certainty, rational acceptability, warranted assertability,reliability of process, etc., all of which apparently could be satisfiedin conjunction with representations and beliefs that are false. Could, that is,unless truth is simply defined in terms of such psychological orsociological conditions. (Of course certainty, warranted assertability and thelike each have psychological and other interests in their own right.)

We should also note that logical relations will be essentially involved inany case of knowing. That perhaps should be expected because of their intimateassociation with truth. To know one must think, in the sense of activelyexploring the logical interrelationships involved in and with the respectiverepresentations. This is merely to say that the subject matter in question mustbe reflectively and thoroughly conceptualized, and the logical relations betweenrelevant propositions and experiences carefully examined. Knowledge,accordingly, does not simply happen to a person. It is not a passion.

Finally, in order to know one must have a certain broad familiarity with the subject matter itself—have observed it, tested it, informed oneself, thought it through—in ways suited to the kind of subject matter in question. How and to what extent this can and must be done will be determined by the relevant process of conceptualization of the subject matter (and of course by the subject matter itself), which will go hand in hand with observation and experimentation. All of this will produce a certain unity of consciousness that is necessary for there to be knowledge. Knowledge does not come in discrete units. Noetic unity across a complex field of consciousness within one person is required.

The absence of any reference to belief in my statements on knowledgeand knowing will be immediately noticed. The absence is intended, and thoughrare today in discussions of knowledge it is by no means unique in the historyof the theory of knowledge.¹⁴Even such a resolute Naturalist as Roy Wood Sellars specifies the nature ofknowledge without reference to belief.¹⁵

Belief I understand to be some degree of readiness to act as if such and such(the content believed) were the case. Everyone concedes that one can believewhere one does not know. But it is now widely assumed that you cannot know whatyou do not believe. Hence the well known analysis of knowledge as”justified, true belief.” But this seems to me, as it has to numerousothers, to be a mistake. Belief is, as Hume correctly held, a passion. It issomething that happens to us. Thought, observation and testing, evenknowledge itself, can be sources of belief, and indeed should be. But one mayactually know (dispositionally, occurrently) without believing what one knows.

Whether or not one believes what one represents truly and has an appropriatebasis for so representing, depends on factors that are irrelevant to truth,understanding and evidence. It depends, one might simply say, on how rationalone is. Now I do not think that this point about belief in relation to knowledgeis essential to the rest of this paper, but I mention it to indicate that theabsence of any reference to belief in my general description of knowledge is notan oversight. Belief is not, I think, a necessary component of knowledge, thoughone would like to believe that knowledge would have some influence upon belief,and no doubt it often does.

In addition, it seems to me that specification of knowledge in terms of belief is a harmfully tendentious characterization, favoring the naturalization of knowledge. This is because belief has an essential tie to action, and is therefore easily located in the natural world—say as a mere tendency of the physical organism to behave in certain ways. I suspect that it is the almost overwhelming Empiricist—and in that sense Naturalist—tendency of thought in our time that has created the general presumption that knowledge must be some kind of belief. Hence we must here at least question that presumption; and, I believe, when questioned it will not prove to be obvious or, finally, sustainable.

It also should be noticed that on the view here advanced one may know withoutknowing that one knows. Skeptical tendencies are often associated with themistaken view that one has to know that one knows in order to know. And inparticular, one does not have to know that one actually has “an appropriatebasis in thought and experience” in order to have one, and one does nothave to know that one’s representation is true in order to know. It has to betrue, indeed, but we do not have to know that it is true. We “use” itor live it; we don’t “mention” or focus upon it.

Knowing that my representation is true is quite different condition fromknowing the respective objective circumstance to be the case. When I know thatthe book in my briefcase is a copy of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, forexample, what I know is not that my representation of the book in my briefcaseas being a copy of Kant’s Critique is true—though of course I might know that too. What I know is something about that book, namely, that it is in my briefcase. And likewise, when I know that, I may not know that I have an “appropriate basis” for representing it as I do—though I mightknow that too. It is enough that it is true, and that I do I havean appropriate basis for representing it as I do.

Clearly, if I cannot know without knowing that I know, then I can’t know thatI know without knowing that I know that I know. And so forth. This is agenuinely vicious regress. But we often do in fact know things without knowingthat we know, and without even considering whether we know or not. Many familiarcases could be cited.

Essential to knowledge and knowing are, then, at least truth and logical grounding. We know only if our representations in the given case are true and logically non-arbitrary. Essential to logical grounding are logical relations: especially the simple formal relations of implication, consistency and inconsistency. Noetic unity comes in because knowing and knowledge require a larger context of consciousness involving many interrelated states and acts and kinds of states and acts. Our question now becomes: Can truth, logical relations and noetic unity be understood in physicalistic—and in that sense “naturalistic” —terms? Can knowing and knowledge be accommodated within the categories of physicalism, the narrower or “Puritanical” Naturalism?

Truth as “Matching Up”

Truth lies at the heart of knowledge. Knowledge is a condition of the humanbeing that involves truth, for it involves representing its subject matter as itis; and, as we shall also see, much of our knowledge is in the first instanceknowledge of truths.

Truth is also a vital human need, and a major part of what makes knowledgevaluable. It and its opposite, falsity, are solidly at home in the midst ofordinary life. To know what truth is and to be able to recognize it and itsopposite are basic components of ordinary human competence. To find one’s wayabout, to communicate, and to give and receive directions and commands oftenrequires us to identify the truth values of thoughts, beliefs and statements. Infunctioning in normal human relationships, say in a family or on a job, one mustbe able to recognize truth in thought, belief and statement. All of us bear aprimary ethical responsibility to make sure that how we are thinking andspeaking of things is as they are, that is, that our thoughts and words aretrue. Our view of the nature of truth must be compatible with its actual role inreal life. But what is truth?

We first come to know truth—and what truth is—in concrete cases of verification within our physical environment. An infant in its second year of life or earlier develops the ability to look for something and to recognize it—what they are looking for—when it is found. The child at that point is capable of sustaining a specific thought or representation of something and of sorting objects that come before it with respect to whether they are or are not what they are seeking. Close to the same time the “uh oh!” phenomena emerges. The child observes things as not being how they ‘should’ be orare expected to be and verbally expresses the felt incongruity or lack of”fit.” Closely linked with these developments is the ability to thinkof something as being such and such, and the associated capacity to findsomething to be (or to not be) as it is thought to be. This is verificationas a human reality. It is a primary form of knowing in the occurrent sense.

Soon the child learns the utility of lying, or representing things as it knows they are not. At that point it is in position to become truthful or honest, to routinely represent things as it knows them to be. Interestingly, children never have to be taught to lie. At an early age they figure it out quite on their own from their understanding of how thoughts and words do and do not match up with what they are about. This “matching up”—primarily of thought, and well before language is at the child’s disposal—stands clearly before the child and is an essential condition of then learning the use of the words “true” and “false.”

There is, accordingly, nothing esoteric, mysterious or enigmatic about truth(or falsity) itself, though many particular truths have such propertiesand some may even be completely unknowable. It is enigmatic or mysterious onlyfor those who have decided that what it is it cannot be, or who have adopted atheory of mind (or language) and world that makes it either impossible orinaccessible. When what our belief or statement is about is as we believe orstate it to be, when our representation or idea “matches up” to itsobject in the familiar way already indicated by cases, our representation(belief, statement) is true. Truth itself is just this characteristic of”matching up.” When it is absent our representation etc. is false.

Truth and falsity are objective properties of representations. They are objective ways in which propositions differ and resemble among themselves, just as colors (red, yellow, green) and sizes are objective ways in which apples and other things differ and resemble among themselves. To say that they are objective is to say that they do not depend upon what we may think or feel about them. No proposition etc. can be made true merely by believing or favoring it—by one person or a million.

Now since this is so, what we find truth (or falsity) to be in the abundantcases where we can compare beliefs or statements (or, more properly, thepropositions they involve) to what they are about is exactly what truth is inthe cases where we do not or cannot directly compare thought with its subjectmatter. This characteristic constancy is something that truth values share withany object that, like truth, is not produced of modified by cognitive or otherattitudes toward it. For example, thoughts to the effect that a certaincandidate won an election, that the earth goes around the sun, and that Miltonin Paradise Lost really intended to glorify rebellion are cases where wecannot directly verify or experience the truth of the thoughts by comparing themwith what they are about. This inability, however, is due to the nature of theparticular subject matter in relation to our cognitive faculties, not to thenature of representations, truth and reality as such. The truth of a belief orstatement is not created by verification, but discovered by it.Otherwise we could prevent a belief from being true by refusing to verify it.Even in the cases most difficult to verify, truth remains a”correspondence” or “matching up” of the general type webecome acquainted with in the verified cases.

For a thought or statement to be true, then, is simply for its subject matterto be as it is represented or held to be. When we confirm that a hithertounconfirmed belief or statement is true, we do not create the relation(correspondence) it actually has to what it is about, any more that we createthe fit of a wrench to a bolt head by placing the wrench on the bolt head, orthe fit of a door to a frame by setting the door in the frame. The wrench fitsthe bolt head (or does not) even if it is never placed upon the bolt head, and the door fits the frame (or does not) even if it is never placed within it. And, similarly, a representation that is true is true even if it is never verified—by direct comparison with its object or otherwise. Truth is not the same thing as verification or proof, nor is it dependent for its existence and nature upon verification, any more than the fit or “correspondence” of the wrench to the bolt head is or is dependent upon the juxtaposition of the wrench upon the bolt head.

Also, what truth is does not change with time or historical process. It is a certain property or relation-like structure, and as such it is not the kind of thing that can change, any more than grey and yellow or sister or brother can—which is a totally different matter from how we choose to use the words “grey,” “yellow,” “sister,” and “brother.” When philosophers of the last two centuries have suggested that truth—this relation-like structure of correspondence that we all become acquainted with in our early years—is “really” the logical coherence or practical utility of beliefs or statements, etc., their suggestion is no more worthy of serious consideration than would be a suggestion that yellow is really an odor or that being a sister is the same thing as being a seamstress. Those suggestions were in fact based on the assumption that we cannot compare beliefs and statements with what they are about—an assumption that is refuted by the fact that everyone constantly does it.

The Naivety of “Correspondence”

But isn’t this view, as commonsensible as it may seem, simply naive, simpleminded? Hasn’t what we have learned about mind, phenomena, language and culturein the last two centuries shown that we do not and cannot experience such’truth’, can never directly find the fit (or lack of fit) betweenrepresentations and what they are of or about?

To answer this question in any remotely adequate manner would require acritical interpretation of theories of knowledge since Locke. It is, above all,with Locke that we seriously and continuously began to develop theories ofrepresentation (first mental and then linguistic or “symbolic”)according to which our representations actually make it impossible to seewhether our thoughts “fit” what they are about because any attempt todo so would only yield another representation, and so on. This theory has beenthe foundation for many of the major ‘triumphs’ over Naturalism, from Kant andHegel to Putnam and Derrida, as well as the root of the failure of many attemptsat a genuine realist (often confused with naturalistic) theory of knowledge. Itis also what has turned truth itself into an enigma or impossibility for manythinkers, and has led in the last two centuries to the emergence of many wellknown candidates for its office.¹⁶

Still, a few points might be usefully mentioned in response to the charge ofnaivety.

First of all, the anti-correspondence, representationalist theories which nowfill up the recent philosophical past are far from coming together in anadequate account of the mind-world relation or lack thereof. It isn’t as ifthere were now available some solid insight grounding an alternative to the typeof accessible correspondence described above. In fact there is no generallyacceptable alternative to correspondence. There is a series of successivelydiscredited theories from Locke to Hume, to Kant to Hegel (or Fichte) toPositivism and Phenomenalism in their various forms; and then ‘language’ (the”new way of words”) is substituted for way of “ideas” or”experience,” and the old battles fought over again. This time abouthow words tie to the world, and the outcome being a lingo-centric predicamentinstead of a ego-centric predicament. One cannot easily suppose that there is aphilosophically credible alternative to the correspondence theory of truth. Wedon’t have “something better” on hand.

Second, it is a noteworthy historical fact that every significant philosopherup to Kant accepted correspondence or “matching up” as the correctaccount of truth, even in cases, such as Hume’s, where it was inconsistent withtheir overall system. Of course that does not by itself prove that that accountis correct. But it is a historical fact that calls for some explanation.

This fact is, I think, associated with another significant fact: that those philosophers never suspected that thought was somehow linguistic, and that the real problem of truth had to do with sentences and what we do with them. Sentences and utterances do not, in fact, correspond to what they are about, and whatever truth may be as a predicate of them or other linguistic items is certainly open for speculation. What counts as a sentence (etc.) is also obviously relative to a language, and which sentences are true or false will be likewise. No doubt there are many interesting questions to be pursued with reference to sentences, languages, and “truth” as a linguistic predicate. But to suppose that a pragmatic or disquotational or rational acceptability theory of truth, for example, has anything to do with truth as a child comes easily to recognize it and as it is present in the constant experience of adults is simply to mistake or try to substitute one thing for another—of course from deep and powerful philosophical motivations.

These would surely include motivations of an empiricist or naturalistic character. Sentences and utterances, at least, present themselves as public, sense perceptible objects—though the “rules” governing them do not. But a certain version of contemporary Formalism in logical theory actually attempts to pass off the visible shape and arrangement of written symbols as logical form.¹⁷

Third, there remains the fact that we do constantly experience the”matching up” of thought with a subject matter we do not make ormaintain in existence. At least we are strongly impressed that we do when we arenot in the philosophical arm chair: so strongly impressed that only some verystrong philosophical impetus to the contrary could shake us. I think it is thisthat explains the long dominance of the correspondence theory amongphilosophers.

There are two main philosophical interpretations of consciousness that undermine this commonsense impression and the long philosophical tradition. One—the “Midas touch” picture of consciousness, as I callit¹⁸—is the view that to take something as our ‘object’ automatically transforms it in some essential way (possibly even making it ‘mental’). How, exactly, consciousness—or for that matter language, or culture—being what it is, could make a tree or block of ice what it is, or turn something that was not already a tree or block of ice into one, is truly hard to say. We actually know how trees etc. come about, and they are not made by consciousness. One also can safely say that the story about how consciousness supposedly does its transforming and productive work has never been satisfactorily told. The second interpretation plays off of the saying that one cannotescape consciousness—can’t, as it is often said, “step outside of one’s mind.” Certainly, to be conscious of anything one must be conscious. But it does not follow from this that one cannot compare a thought to what it is about and see whether it “matches up” or not. Only confusion could make one think it does—a confusion probably based upon the “Midas touch” picture of consciousness.

Fourth, those who reject the correspondence model of truth do still, itsseems to me, accept it, or at least its essential point, in a certain importantrespect. In advancing their own theories of the relationship between mind (orlanguage/culture) and world they do not seem to me to suggest in any way thatthe truth of those theories about that relationship is in any sense relative.They seem to me to be telling us how things are with that relationshipregardless of how they or any other person or culture may or may not speak orthink of it. They give us the essential truth and the necessary essence of thatrelationship. I believe this to be true of the extreme relativists such as Rortyand Derrida, but also of the more modest ones such as Putnam.

Thus, Putnam states his own view that “truth and rational acceptability—a claims being right and someone’s being in a position to make it—are relative to the sort of language we are using and the sort of context we are in.”¹⁹ But can weimagine him to be thinking that his view of truth and rational acceptabilityhere expressed is relative to language and context? I believe he intends to tellus what is the case with regard to truth and rational acceptability itself,and what indeed cannot be otherwise. That we are always “within” alanguage, he is telling us, is an essential truth that makes “metaphysical realism” a strict and eternal impossibility. And yet he surely is, precisely, a metaphysical realist about our being within a language. The idea that in his discussions of language (mind) and world he is merely reporting on how things go from within a particular language and context which happen to be his does not seriously bother him—as surely it should if his views of truth etc. are, shall we say, true. But that would turn his view intosomething that would be of no general philosophical interest. And he does takephilosophical interest to be of great importance. That is why he wants to be aRealist of some sort, if only an “internal” one. He can’t just join upwith Rorty et. al. and treat truth as whatever can be sustained inyour context. Thus his claim that Quine allows himself a “transcendentalstandpoint” in a certain respect²⁰actually applies to himself, if I am right, with regard to his claims aboutrationality, truth, reference and allied subjects. Here he indeed does take the”God’s eye view.”

Now this is by no means peculiar to Putnam, who is certainly one of the veryfinest of contemporary thinkers. I think it is built into the essential functionof thought and assertion to present things as they are without regard totheir being thought of or spoken of. Thus we have to use special forms ofthought and language to express how things appear to us or are conceptualized byus or our group. If I am right, the simple correspondence indicated above hashad the influence it has had over philosophical tradition and plays the role itdoes throughout human life because that is what really lies at the juncturebetween mind and world where we actually live. I believe no sound reason hasever been given for thinking it does not.

Why Truth Can’t Be “Naturalized”

Suppose, then, that truth in the sense of the matching up of representationwith subject matter lies at the heart of knowledge. Can it be captured withinthe categories of the narrower Naturalism? I believe it clearly cannot. Theargument against it is an old and simple one that has been reworked in manyforms in recent decades.²¹

Suppose that we have an acceptable list of physical properties andrelations. We might take them from physical theory, as the properties andrelations corresponding to the concepts of current physics: location, mass,momentum and so forth. (Who knows what the future or ultimate physics will looklike?) Or, moved by the above doubts about what philosophy can soundly derivefrom the sciences, we could turn to the primary qualities of Modern philosophy,and, for that matter, add on the secondary ones as well: color, odor, etc. Idon’t think we need, for present purposes, to be very scrupulous about the list.Let us agree that whatever goes on such a list will count as physicalproperties, and that narrow Naturalism is the proposal to confine our inquiriesand conclusions to whatever shows up on the list and combinations thereof.

The argument, then, is simply that no such property or combination ofproperties constitutes a representation of anything, or qualifies theirbearer as being of or about anything. The properties of thoseproperties and combinations thereof are not the same as the properties ofrepresentations (ideas, thoughts, propositions, beliefs, statements). If this iscorrect, and if the narrower Naturalism admits only these properties, then thereare no representations in the world of the narrower Naturalism. Truth thendisappears from that world, because in it no subject matter is represented; andhence it can never happen that something “is as it is represented orthought to be.” With truth, knowledge also disappears. The ontologicalstructure of knowledge cannot be present in the world of narrower Naturalism.

Note that my claim is that such physical properties never constitute arepresentation. I say nothing here about representation (mental qualities) not emerging from the physical properties of, say, the human brain. This is not because I think they may so emerge, although some form of interaction between them and the brain surely does happen. Rather, it is because I can only regard talk of the emergence of irreducibly mental properties from the brain or the central nervous system as mere propertydualism cum apologies.²²

Significantly, Hilary Putnam and Daniel Dennett, in defending their own viewsof representation, belief and the intentional, emphatically support the viewthat the physical is devoid of the representational. Putnam asks us to imaginean ant crawling around in a patch of sand in such a way as to trace out “arecognizable caricature of Winston Churchill.”²³“Do the lines thus produced depict or represent Churchill?”Putnam asks. He thinks most people would say it does not. The ant has simplytraced some lines “that we can ‘see as’ a picture ofChurchill.” Putnam’s view is that nothing (in the brain/mind or out) initself is a representation of anything, but is of or about (depicts ordenotes), something other than itself, if it does so, only because we“take it” as depicting or denoting that other thing.

Dennett holds a similar view, and specifically with reference to the statesof human beings, such as beliefs, desires, etc. In the typically”naturalistic” mode he declares his “starting point to be theobjective, materialistic, third person world of the physical sciences,” andholds “that philosophy is allied with, and indeed continuous with, thephysical sciences.”²⁴ LikePutnam (who of course is not a Naturalist), depicting, denoting, etc. is forDennett only a matter of how we treat something. “The intentionalstance” or “intentional strategy,” as he calls it, “consistsof treating the object whose behavior you want to predict as a rational agentwith beliefs and desires and other mental stages exhibiting what Brentano andothers call intentionally.”²⁵The existence of belief, etc. with its intentionality is to be confirmed only bythe success of the intentional stance as a strategy for predicting behavior. Andwhen a better predictive strategy comes along, all the mental clutter of”folk psychology” will go the way of phlogiston and witches. Of courseif that happens they aren’t “really there” now.

For Dennett as for Putnam there is nothing in the brain or out that by itsnature represents something else. There are no “natural signs.” Thereare only human events of “taking as.” And these events of “takingas” also, it would seem, must themselves lack any natural capacity forrepresentation (of what is taken as). Rather they, in their turn, canonly be taken as representing what is taken as intentional states orsystems of the human organism, or what is taken as pictures or symbols. They donot inherently represent them.

Surely there is something wrong here. If we are in a world where nothing isnaturally representative of something else, and we see the lines traced by theant as a picture of Winston Churchill, then our seeing also is not naturally ofthe lines, and of the lines as depicting Churchill. Either there is going to be at some point a “taking as” which does not itself represent anything (even what is “taken”)—which certainly sounds like a self-contradiction and is at best unlike the instances of “taking” featured in Dennet’s explanations—or there is going to be an infinite regress of “takings.” This inclines one to say that unless there are some natural signs—things that refer or represent simply because of what they are—there will be no signs at all.²⁶ But natural signs are, precisely, impossible in the world of strict physicalism—and, for his own reasons, in Putnam’s more generous world as well.

Logical Relations

If narrow Naturalism cannot provide for truth, it also cannot provide forlogical relations. Yet these too are essential constituents of knowledge. Itcannot provide for such relations because they are, precisely, relations withrespect to the truth values of propositions. Here we need only consider simplecases such as the relation of contrariety. Two propositions are logicalcontraries if they can both be false but cannot both be true. For example, Sue’sdress is red and Sue’s dress is blue. If one of these propositions is true, the other must be false. They cannot both be true. But both can be false—if Sue’s dress is white, for example. The relation of contradiction, by contrast, is one that requires two propositions related by it to have opposite truth values, whichever they may be.

These and other logical relations are, like truth itself, objectiverelations. They obtain or do not obtain between propositions regardless of whatany individuals or groups may feel or think about them. Moreover, lawsexpressing the logical relationships and logical character of propositions havea different sense and character from any laws of physical or psychological fact.They are neither hypothetical nor inductive, and have no existential import forsuch facts. They remain valid whether or not any such facts obtain. This becomesclearer if one tries to deduce or prove them from physical, psychological orlinguistic facts or laws. It is not so much that it is not, in fact, done, orthat it cannot be done, as that one cannot even imagine what it would be like todo it.²⁷ These are points whichFrege and Husserl elaborated so effectively in the late 19th and early 20thCenturies that they could hardly be raised for discussion until thephilosophical turn from thought to language and culture was more or lesscompleted in recent decades. But I think they are points which can be made tostand up independently of the correspondence account of truth; and, if so, theyprovide a refutation of Naturalism independent of that account and restingsimply on the nature of the Laws of Logic.

But the centrality of logical relations for knowledge does not just concern the essential involvement of logical relations with truth values. Comparatively speaking, very little that we know we know because we are able to directly examine the respective subject matter and verify the truth of our ideas about it. This little is, of course, profoundly important, both in allowing us to understand what truth is, as explained above, and in providing true premisses from which we may proceed to other known truths by following out logical relations. Finding truths by following out logical relations occurs to an almost fantastic extent by the application of mathematics to various domains—and especially now, when such application is hugely extended by means of computers. In these cases it is knowledge of the truth of the derived propositions that allows us to know that the corresponding state of affairs obtains and that its constituents exist. Here logical relations plus truth of premisses allows us to know unexperienced (and even unexperiencable) existence, rather than the comparison of existence to thoughts about it allowing us to know truths.

Noetic Unity

As logical relations presuppose truth, so noetic unity presupposes logical relations—and more, presupposes a pattern of simultaneous and successive awarenesses that intercommunicates across a wide range of mental states and acts and their objects. The noetic aspect of knowing and knowledge encompasses all of the types of mental states and acts and their ways of coming together that are involved in the individual coming to know or to be in a state of knowledge. Knowledge is something that must be possessed. It is not the same thingas theory. And the possession of knowledge is an incredibly complicated andmessy business, even with such a relatively simple part of knowing as a mereinference.

Thus Kornblith is quite right and makes a crucial point in rejecting purelyapsychological accounts of belief (and knowledge) formation.²⁸These types of accounts simply overlook the noetic requirements of knowledge andlead to what she calls “The Arguments-on-Paper Thesis,” which treatsjustification as merely a matter of the logical relationships betweenpropositions. The various forms of anti-foundationalism draw most of theirammunition from legitimate noetic considerations, and that is their strength:Quine’s famous “web of belief,” Popper’s picture of inquiry as drivingpiles into mud and sand just deep enough to support the bridge, Norwood Hansen’stheory-ladenness of perception, Horkheimer’s distinction between”traditional” and “critical” theory, the currently famous”intertextuality,” etc. etc.

Because the noetic issues are routinely mishandled through ontological mistakes or confusions carried into discussions of them—usually from empiricist or naturalistic assumptions—those who emphasize the noetic (and in a sensethe psychological or even the social) conditions of knowing and knowledge mostoften turn out to be anti-realists. And one may be taken for an anti-realistjust for attempting to do justice to the noetic requirements. About a centuryago Wilhelm Wundt accused Husserl of refuting logical psychologism in thefirst volume of his Logical Investigations and reverting to it in the second volume—merely because the second volume is devoted to issues that are essentially noetic. The opposite of Naturalism, however, is not some form of subjectivism or idealism. Anti-Naturalism does not need to downgrade the ontological status of the empirical world and the empirical self. We don’t surrender realism to defeat Naturalism.

Still, for all the risks, any careful practice of knowing or theoreticalexamination of knowledge (and none have surpassed Husserl’s) must take itsnoetic dimensions into account. That is why philosophers do not write theirarguments on three by five cards and pass them around to each other, and whyeven footnotes (pace Searle) are not a sign of low philosophical quality.²⁹Philosophers produce expository texts, as well as arguments, to express, conveyand evoke a noetic context within which actual understanding and knowing canoccur and arguments be appreciated.

Thus, in his Discourse on Method, Part II, Descartes lays out hisfavored four from among “the great number of precepts of which Logic iscomposed.” All four are clearly noetic principles, from refusing to’accept’ whatever is unclear, to the meticulous review of the steps in theprogression from the clear and simple to the complex but logically derivable. Ofcourse they also presuppose truth and logical relations and an ordered awarenessthereof.

In a more recent philosophical presentation of modern logic, L. S. Stebbingdistinguishes and interrelates inference (the essential noetic structure)and implication (the logical relation), the “therefore” and the”if…then,” as she also puts it.³⁰(She uses the term “epistemic” but clearly means the noetic as hereunderstood.) The “epistemic” conditions of coming to know q onthe basis of p, as she describes them, include: p must be known tobe true, and p must be known to imply q without its being knownthat q is true. She also holds that “although p may implyq when q is false, yet q cannot be validly inferred from punless it is the case both that p is true and is known to be true.”She goes on to discuss the difference between inferring something(“validly”?) and tracing out the logical consequences of a propositionnot assumed to be true or even assumed to be false, as in reductio adabsurdum. Such use of assumptions and logical relations are obviously acrucial part of coming to possess knowledge, though they clearly are notinferences or arguments.

Alvin Plantinga rightly notes that “foundationalism is a normativethesis about noetic structures.”³¹And, of course, the same is true about the many versions of Coherentism,Verificationism, Aufbau projects, Social Constructionism, Externalism,Internalism, and “linguistic rule” theories that have turned up duringthe last century or so.

So, can the noetic be naturalized? It clearly cannot be, because of itspervasive involvement with logical relations. But there is more. The Kantiantheme of the “unity of apperception” turns up here. His primary focuswas upon the unity of a simple judgment and what was thereby presupposed aboutthe mind. That is an important topic in itself, but knowledge and knowing doesnot come in the form of a simple judgement, or two or three of them. It comes inthe form of a vast “web,” to borrow Quine’s word, of judgments,conceptualizations, perceptions, memories, even feelings and sensations, andexperiences of many kinds. Indeed, it is not too much to say, a web of life. To know, we have said, is to represent something as it is, on an appropriate basis of thought and experience. The “appropriate basis” is never just awareness of a few logical relations, and a considerable “background” must be in place before the simplest cases of verification—finding the broom to be in the closet as I thought it to be—can occur.

Now, without logical relations and awareness of logical relations none ofthis could exist. But everything from how rationality functions across the greatnoetic web of the individual self, to the basic nature of creative genius (what wasit about Einstein, after all?), to issues of self-identity are involved innoetic unity. This, I believe, is why it is impossible to lay down generalsufficient conditions of an “appropriate basis.” And before Naturalismcan triumph it would have to provide an elucidation of noetic unity within theframework of Physicalism specified above. This will take more than an argumentthat pain is a chemical process in the brain plus a salute to the future ofbrain science. We will need an “identity thesis” that reducesEinstein’s understanding of physical theory to brain states before it becomesreally interesting.

Summary

We have tried to show why Naturalism must be taken in the form of a “Puritanical” physicalism if it is to be a philosophically significant position, and have presented knowledge as involving at least truth as correspondence, logical relations and noetic unity. We have argued that there is no place for truth or logical relations in a world where the only properties are physical, and therefore that noetic unity is also impossible in such a world. Since it is possible—many things are known and there are people of great knowledge—Naturalism must be false. It cannot accommodate the ontological structure of knowing and knowledge.³²

Notes

1. What might be called “generic Naturalism” has a long history that includes: Classical Naturalism, with figures such as Democritus, Epicurus, Aristotle and Lucretius; Renaissance Naturalism, with Bruno, Campanella and Telesio, and—born too late—Spinoza; Empiricist/Nominalist Naturalism, with Hobbes, Hume, D’Holbach and most of the French Encyclopedists and Comte; 19th-Century Materialistic Naturalism, with Jakob Moleschott, Karl Vogt, Ernst Haeckel, Ludwig Büchner, Herbert Spencer and, it is often presumed, Charles Darwin; Mid-20th-Century (largely anti-Materialistic) Naturalism, with Santayana, Dewey and others; and Late-20th-Century (“Identity Thesis”) Naturalism, which wavers between Scientism and Physicalism, with Quine, David Armstrong, Paul and Patricia Churchland, John Searle, etc.

   To appreciate contemporaryNaturalism for what it is, and the logical nuances that surround it, one has tosee it in this long historical context. The single unifying theme of allNaturalisms is anti-transcendentalism. Their steady point of reference isthe visible world and whatever it contains, which is “Nature” inextension. Nothing “outside” it is to be allowed. This visible worldis held to be self-existent, self-explanatory, self-operating and selfdirecting. Usually though not always it is thought to consist entirely ofprocesses involving only blind force. But what “Nature” is inintension has never been agreed upon among Naturalists. Some look very much likePantheists, and yet others (Santyana, Dewey) reach very far to incorporate”the divine” and all that is humanly unique into “Nature.”(See, currently, the divergence between Searle and, e.g., Paul Churchland orDaniel Dennett on the nature of the the mental.) Thus “self” in”self-existent” etc. only has the negative meaning of”non-other,” i.e., not in virtue of something separate from this thingcalled “Nature.”

   Effective entry into the longstory for use by a contemporary thinker can be gained by starting with thearticle by James Ward, “Naturalism,” in the EncyclopaediaBritannica, 10th edition, vol XXXI, p. 88, and then going on to his Naturalismand Agnosticism, (London: A & C Black, Limited, 1915). W. R. Sorley’s TheEthics of Naturalism (London; William Blackwood and Sons, 1904), especiallypp. 17-21, is also helpful in understanding how Naturalism has tried to distanceitself from Materialistic Naturalism of Vogt, Haeckel, B”chner, etc. A seriesof articles on Naturalism in The Journal of Philosophy from 1945 through1949, easily identifiable by their titles, was evoked by the appearance of Naturalismand the Human Spirit, [Yervant H. Krikorian, ed., (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1944)] and by A. E. Murphey’s excellent critical review of itin that Journal [42 (1945): 400-417]. The outcome of the mid-20th Centurydiscussion is nicely summarized by Arthur Danto’s article,”Naturalism,” in Paul Edwards, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy,vol. 5 (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1967), pp. 448-430. One of theintriguing aspects of the current situation is how Materialism, which wasthought to be dead or something to be avoided for the first half of the 20thCentury, came to life again in association with the “identity thesis”of mind and body and a new Scientism, and led to a reformulation and resurgenceof Naturalism at the end of the 20th Century. Reading Danto’s fine article youwould never have thought it possible.

   For broader, cultural bearings ofNaturalism, see Paul F. Boller, Jr., American Thought in Transition: TheImpact of Evolutionary Naturalism, 1865-1900, (Chicago: Rand McNally &Company, 1969), and John Ryder, ed., American Philosophic Naturalism in theTwentieth Century, (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1994). Returnto text.

2. See for details my paper, “The Integrity of the Mental Act: Husserlian Reflections on a Fregian Problem,” in Mind, Meaning and Mathematics, Leila Haaparanta, ed., (Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994), pp. 198-224. Return to text.
3. W. V. Quine, Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), p. 101. Return to text.
4. Hilary Kornblith, “Beyond Foundationalism and the Coherence Theory,” in Hilary Kornblith, ed., Naturalizing Epistemology, 2nd edition, (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1994), p. 142. Return to text.
5. See Jaegwon Kim, “What is ‘Naturalized Epistemology’?” in Kornblith, ed., Naturalizing Epistemology, pp. 33-55; and Hilary Putnam’s two Howison lectures, published in his Realism and Reason, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), Chapters 12 and 13, under the titles “Why There Isn’t a Ready-Made World” and “Why Reason Can’t Be Naturalized.” Return to text.
6. Realism and Reason, p. 246. Return to text.
7. See the Chapter “The Construction of Good,” in Dewey’s The Quest for Certainty, (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1960) or most any of Dewey’s mature works, such as Human Nature and Conduct, (New York: The Modern Library, 1922) or, perhaps best of all, Experience and Nature, (New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1958). On norms in nature see also Alvin Plantinga, Warrant: The Current Debate, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 72, and the thorough discussion in his Warrant and Proper Function, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), Chapter 11. Return to text.
8. John Searle, The Rediscovery of the Mind, (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1992), p. 85. Return to text.
9. Searle, Rediscovery, p. xii. Return to text.
10. Patricia Kitcher, “Review of Stephen P. Stich’s Deconstructing the Mind,” The Journal of Philosophy, 95 (December, 1998), 641-644, pp. 641-642 . This entire review is actually quite instructive on the problems of specifying Naturalism currently. Return to text.
11. Kitcher, Op. cit., p. 642. Return to text.
12. A. E. Murphey, “Book Review of Naturalism and the Human Spirit,” The Journal of Philosophy, 42 (1945), 400-417, p. 417. This may be the deeper reason why there is now a widespread sense that, in the words of Michael Friedman, Naturalism “has reached the end of its useful life.” See his thorough examination of the current situation regarding Naturalism in his Presidential Address to the American Philosophical Association: “Philosophical Naturalism,” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 71 (1997): 7-37, as well as Barry Stroud’s Presidential Address of the previous year, “The Charm of Naturalism,” [Proceedings and Addresses etc., 70 (1996): 43-55], which emphasizes the lack of anything approaching a consensus concerning the meaning of the term. The volume Naturalism: A Critical Appraisal, Steven Wagner and Richard Warner, edd., (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993) also demonstrates what hard days have now befallen the movement. Return to text.
13. One can also retreat to agnosticism, as seems to have happened with Thomas Huxley and others in the late 1900s. See the article, “Naturalism,” in James Hastings, ed., Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, IX, (New York: Charles Schribner’s Sons, n.d.), pp. 195-198. Also James Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism. Agnosticism about matter has begun to re-emerge in the philosophy of mind in recent years. Return to text.
14. For a quick introduction see the article “Knowledge and Belief,” by Steven Luper-Foy, in A Companion to Epistemology, Johathan Dancy and Ernest Sosa, edd., (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1993), pp. 234-337. Unfortunately, John Cook Wilson is not discussed there. Return to text.
15. Roy Wood Sellars says that “knowledge is the possession of ideas which do disclose the characteristics of the object denoted. In knowing we hold ourselves to grasp the nature of the object, its properties, characteristics…. Knowledge is the disclosure of the characteristics of existence.” Roy Wood Sellars, The Philosophy of Physical Realism, (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1932), p. 106. The entire Chapter IX, “Knowing a Common World,” should be read. Return to text.
16. First Hegel and Kierkegaard, then Pragmatism and Coherence, then several 20th Century options parasitical upon language (verifiability, rational acceptability, disquotational theories, and so forth). Loosening the grip on truth as an objective structure quickly led to loss of an objective and imperious logic. See the ways Hume, Kant, Hegel and Mill abuse the idea of logic, and for later developments up to the present see my “The Degradation of Logical Form,” Xiomathes (1997): 31-52. Return to text.
17. See my “Space, Color, Sense Perception and the Epistemology of Logic,” The Monist, 72 (1989): 117-133, for a critical discussion of this idea. With respect to the linguistic nature of thought, Dennett remarks: “So the argument for a language of thought comes down to this: What else could it be?” [Daniel C. Dennett, TheIntentional Stance, (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1987), p. 35 and see thefootnote on this page.] Well, there are some interesting possibilities as towhat thought apart from language might be, well known in the history of thought,if one can but for a moment escape the grasp of empiricistic Naturalism. Returnto text.
18. See my “Predication as Originary Violence: A Phenomenological Critique of Derrida’s View of Intentionality,” in Working through Derrida, Gary B. Madison, ed., (Evanston IL: Northwestern University Press, 1993), pp. 120-136. Return to text.
19. Realism and Reason, p. 234. Return to text.
20. Realism and Reason, p. 242. Return to text.
21. In the last chapter of his The Intentional Stance, Dennett gives a very helpful presentation of the issues in recent these discussions, from the discussions between Roderick Chisholm and Wilfrid Sellars to the time of the writing of his book in 1987. Return to text.
22. Searle’s position is the clearest case of this. See The Rediscovery of Mind, and the more recent collection of papers, The Mystery of Consciousness, (New York: The New York Review of Books, 1997). I do believe that emergence can be employed as a valid and useful concept in numerous domains, e.g., chemistry, sociology and the arts. But its valid employment requires some degree of insight into why this emerges from that. Such insight is lacking in the case of the brain and thoughts. This is a basic point made by such authors as Thomas Nagel and Colin McGinn. Searle’s “simple solution” to “the famous mind-body problem,” which “in a sense, we all know…to be true” simply refuses to face up to this fact. (Rediscovery, p. 1) Rightly insisting on the irreducibility of mental properties, Searle tries to force them to be natural by assigning them a role in evolutionary theory and claiming that they in some literal sense are present in or on the brain. As to the former point, even Descartes’ could have recognized the function of his mental qualities in survival. Of course he did not think they ‘emerged’ from the brain. But neither Searle or anyone else has given any sense to the claim that they come from or are in or upon the brain. The actual relationship remains totally obscure. Return to text.
23. Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, p. 1. Return to text.
24. Daniel C. Dennett, The Intentional Stance, p. 5. Return to text.
25. Op. cit., p. 15 Return to text.
26. This is the thesis developed in Laird Addis, Natural Signs, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), especially “Part Two.” Return to text.
27. For development of this point with special reference to Quine, see my “The Case against Quine’s Case for Psychologism,” in Perspectives on Psychologism, M. A. Notturno, ed., (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1989), pp. 286-295. And see the lengthy discussion of Psychologism and the Laws of Logic in my Logic and the Objectivity of Knowledge, (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1984), pp. 143-166. Return to text.
28. Hilary Kornblith, “Beyond Foundationalism and the Coherence Theory,” in Naturalizing Epistemology, p. 133. She seems unaware that she is dealing with issues that were thoroughly worked out a couple of times during in the last one hundred years. See my Logic and the Objectivity of Knowledge, pp. 143-166. Return to text.
29. See Searle’s remark to the effect that “philosophical quality varies inversely with the number of bibliographical references, and that no great work of philosophy ever contained a lot of footnotes,” In The Rediscovery of Mind, p. xiv. Return to text.
30. L. Susan Stebbing, A Modern Introduction to Logic, (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961), p. 214-215. Stebbing draws heavily on the three volume Logic of W. E. Johnson, especially Part II, Chapter I, ‘3. Return to text.
31. Warrant: the Current Debate, p. 73. Return to text.
32. For an account that covers much the same ground as this paper, but from within the framework and terminology of Husserl’s strongly realist account of knowledge, see my paper, “Knowledge,” in The Cambridge Companion to Husserl, Barry Smith and David Woodruff Smith, edd., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 138-167. Return to text.