Category: Fight for Our Philosophy

The John Templeton Foundation spends lavishly—and sometimes questionably—in order to oppose naturalism in philosophy.

A balanced approach toward the problems we face will demand the best of science and philosophy.

Anti-naturalism comes in two flavors, and both may be reactions against a truly irresistible scientific naturalism.

In a world of wicked problems, philosophy must function in a more engaged and interdisciplinary way.

What does the Templeton Foundation spend its money on? Here are eighteen examples.

No, philosophy does not compete with science. To the contrary, neither is complete without the other.

If philosophical naturalism is as important as secular humanists think it is, we need to be ready to rise to its defense.

In the preceding issue, Part 1¹ of this three-part symposium in print took a think-tank approach, emphasizing naturalism’s implications for education and public policy. In Part 2, we turn in a more critical direction.

The history of Western philosophy can be presented in a number of ways. It can be told in terms of periods—ancient, medieval, and modern. We can divide it into rival traditions (empiricism versus rationalism, analytic versus Continental) or into various core areas (metaphysics, epistemology, ethics). It can also, of course, be viewed through the critical lens of gender or racial exclusion, as a discipline almost entirely fashioned for and by white European men.

What I’m about to write is against everything I was taught in college and seminary, where I earned three master’s degrees and then pursued PhD studies for a year and a half in fields related to the philosophy of religion (PoR).

I certainly share our editor’s sense that academic philosophy is in bad shape, and his concern for the future of our discipline. But his diagnosis—that, in what he sees as a kind of culture war in our profession, the side that appeals to “awe and transcendence” seems to be winning—strikes me as way off the mark.

Are secular humanists obliged to sign up to naturalism? Should we define humanism (or secular humanism, as some prefer to call it in the United States) as involving a commitment to naturalism? Many humanists often define humanism that way, of course.

Who cares about philosophy, anyway? You must, because you have one.

Philosophy is always going to be the default home of nonnaturalists and antinaturalists. Since no other discipline will take them seriously, they gravitate toward philosophy and find each other.

Philosophical naturalism comes in different flavors, but it is essentially the idea that nothing supernatural affects events in the world around us –– or perhaps that nothing supernatural even exists.

Why is there anything, rather than nothing at all? The German philosopher G. W. Leibniz, co-discoverer of calculus, called it “the first question that should rightly be asked.”

During the past two decades, an attack has been waged in the United States against both methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism.

Naturalism is obviously a philosophical view. It is a view about what is, about how to inquire and what to inquire into, and about what we can meaningfully talk about. Moreover, because of these features, naturalism is also a view about how to do philosophy.