Naturalism, Physicalism, and Materialism

Catalog description

Both within academic philosophy, but also in the broader culture, philosophy is often criticized as being a pointless enterprise given the successes of modern science. Some philosophers respond, explicitly or implicitly, to such criticisms by arguing that philosophy can be, or at least their philosophical methodology and theories are, closely allied to the scientific method or to scientific results. They often call themselves naturalists, physicalists, or materialists. Their opponents argue, for at least some domains, that attempts to do philosophy in this vein fail. Such opponents are sometimes labelled non-naturalists. We will attempt to make sense of the various methodological and substantive issues supposedly at stake in these debates and consider the arguments for and against various competing approaches to these matters. This a graduate seminar open only to Philosophy PhD students. The 2 unit option is only for Philosophy PhD students beyond the second year. Maybe repeated for credit.