Reading Group: Stroud, "The Charm of Naturalism"

Stroud poses what he calls 'restrictive naturalists' with a dilemma. Here it is in the case of colour (he also poses it for ethics, maths and logic):

"Exclude coloured objects in general from the world, and you are in danger of losing the capacity to recognise perceptions of and beliefs about the colours of things. Include coloured objects, and the contents of those perceptions and beliefs no longer go beyond what is in the natural world." (30).

His point seems to be that a 'restrictive naturalist' cannot account for the contents of our beliefs about those things that such a form of naturalism seeks to exclude from the world (e.g. colours). If colours are allowed to be in the natural world, then we no longer have a 'restrictive naturalism' but an 'open-minded naturalism'. And that, he thinks, wouldn't be a substantive version of naturalism at all. Everybody would count as a naturalist if that was what naturalism was.

Before I say what Stroud's case is, and what I think is wrong with it, I want to mention an astonishing claim he makes about naturalised epistemology. This is his claim that, unless some version of ontological naturalism is already in the picture, then epistemological naturalism lacks any significant content:

"Even [ontological] supernaturalists like Plantinga, Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, and others would still count as "naturalized epistemologists" in at least one current sense that has been given to that phrase. Epistemology has been said to be "naturalized or naturalistic" as long as it tries to explain only how human beings do in fact arrive at their beliefs rather than how they ought to arrive at them. If that is enough to make an epistemology naturalistic, then virtually every philosopher in history has been a naturalized epistemologist. They have all been concerned to describe and understand the human condition as it is, to see and explain how we actually get all the knowledge we've obviously got." (24)

It's pretty obvious where this goes wrong. First, Stroud slides from 'belief' to 'knowledge'. Naturalised epistemologists describe how we get beliefs, Descartes et. al. describe how we get knowledge. The difference, it needs hardly be said, is significant. But, second, the fact that Descartes et. al. seek to, "explain how we actually get all the knowledge we've obviously got" is not yet enough to qualify them as naturalized epistemologists even on the interpretation of the view that Stroud discusses. For that view maintains that epistemologists should not be concerned with questions of how we ought to form beliefs. But the suggestion that this was not part of Descartes' project is very much in need of argument.

The passage that I have been criticising occurs in a relatively peripheral part of the paper, which is in the main concerned with ontological naturalism. I mention it because I think it is a particularly clear instance of a slip that occurs later on.

So, back to the main dilemma. In particular, to the first horn. Here's what Stroud says about the case of colour:

"Since he [the 'restrictive naturalist'] holds that there is no such fact as an object's being coloured, he cannot specify the contents of those perceptions and beliefs [the ones of/about colours] in terms of any conditions that he believes actually hold in the world." (29)

Here's the general point:

"What human beings think, feel, and care about must be fully expressible somehow within the restricted resources available in the naturalist's world." (27)

Stroud seems to think that once we have eliminated the problematic entities we will not be able to give an account of the contents of our beliefs about those entities. But he seems to assume that such contents would need to be accounted for by facts which, let's suppose, are true propositions. But, surely, nobody thinks that contents should be understood as truths, rather they are truth-conditions. As such, beliefs can have contents that concern things that don't exist. If Stroud were right, then an surely an argument could be mounted to the effect that there must be phlogiston, since we have phlogiston beliefs.

What has gone wrong, it seems to me, is that Stroud has once more slid from talking about beliefs to talking about knowledge. The content of a belief is a truth-condition, the content of knowledge is a truth. Exactly the same slide occurs in the discussion of ethics where error theory is not mentioned as a possibility for the naturalist to take. (He presupposes the falsity of expressivism as an alternative account of the content of ethical beliefs. But we can grant him for the sake of argument). The same happens in the case of maths and logic, where the presupposition of knowledge is made explicit.

But perhaps error theories are ruled out because his is a 'regressive transcendental argument', one that presupposes knowledge then argues that such and such conditions must hold, i.e. there must be colours, etc. Perhaps it is reasonable to presuppose so much. Even still I want to dig my heels in, for Stroud doesn't give us any reason to suppose that other accounts of content are unavailable.What the naturalist requires, on Stroud's way of setting things up, is an account of content that allows us to have knowledge that appears to refer to things (better, kinds of things) that do not really exist. Obviously the plausibility of any such story will depend very much on the domain under discussion. But it seems to me that this should be taken as a challenge for the naturalist to take up rather than, as Stroud wants to suggest, a reason for thinking that naturalism is bound to fail.

Abusive Comments & the Project

As promised in my last comment to the previous post, I have deleted further abusive comments. I have turned on comment moderation in order that this shouldn't happen in the future. It is reasonable to criticise the project, it is not reasonable to enter personal attacks on project members. Any such abuse will not be tolerated.

Let me take this opportunity, however, to respond briefly to the most significant criticism, that we have failed to take naturalism seriously. The explicit aim of the project is to investigate the nature of transcendental philosophy and, subsequently, to look into the relation between it and philosophical naturalism. The fact that the title is, "Transcendental Philosophy and Naturalism" should not mislead one into thinking that we will divide our three years equally between the two. To pick an arbitrary precedent, nobody would criticise Devitt & Sterelny's, Language and Reality for having more to say about language than reality. The structure of the project was clear at the time of funding application, subsequent approval, and throughout the duration of the project.

However, this unequal division of the project's time should not be assumed to involve a bias towards transcendental philosophy. For one thing, one of the project members (me) is highly sceptical about the ambitions and coherence of transcendental philosophy. But more importantly, the fact that we are spending most of our time looking into the nature of transcendental philosophy simply doesn't entail, or even suggest, that the investigation will conclude with a positive evaluation of it. One recurrent theme in our previous workshops and seminars has been the thought that transcendental philosophy is committed to claims that it cannot justify even by its own lights. This is, in fact, my tentative judgement. It must be stressed, however, that this is not a 'project judgement', and I probably differ from other project members on this score.

The project only ever proposed to turn to naturalism in the third year (in fact, however, the workshop on normativity ended up, in large measure, concerning the resources of naturalism to offer an account of normativity). To repeat the aims of the project, the first two years were to be spent looking at transcendental philosophy in an effort to see what criticisms of philosophical naturalism might be drawn from it. This we have done. The purpose of the third year is to see whether these criticisms hold any water. It is by no means our presumption that they will. Neither are we, the project organisers, responsible for making any dogmatic presuppositions about what naturalism is, in such a way as to preempt any conclusions. It is for precisely this reason that we are holding a workshop on the nature of naturalism.

The value of the project will be judged not only by the events that occur within the three years, but also on the publications that appear subsequently. It certainly cannot be judged from our websites alone. I hope that those who have participated in our events have found them profitable and I look forward to their contributions in the future.

Naturalism in Question

New term, new reading group here at tpn towers. This term we'll be reading (bits of) de Caro and Macarthur (eds.), Naturalism in Question. More details soon.