Second Philosophy: A Naturalistic Method 1st Edition by Penelope Maddy (PDF)

Description

Many philosophers these days consider themselves naturalists, but it’s doubtful any two of them intend the same position by the term. In this book, Penelope Maddy describes and practices a particularly austere form of naturalism called “Second Philosophy”. Without a definitive criterion for what counts as “science” and what doesn’t, Second Philosophy can’t be specified directly – “trust only the methods of science!” or some such thing – so Maddy proceeds instead by illustrating the behaviors of an idealized inquirer she calls the “Second Philosopher”. This Second Philosopher begins from perceptual common sense and progresses from there to systematic observation, active experimentation, theory formation and testing, working all the while to assess, correct and improve her methods as she goes. Second Philosophy is then the result of the Second Philosopher’s investigations.Maddy delineates the Second Philosopher’s approach by tracing her reactions to various familiar skeptical and transcendental views (Descartes, Kant, Carnap, late Putnam, van Fraassen), comparing her methods to those of other self-described naturalists (especially Quine), and examining a prominent contemporary debate (between disquotationalists and correspondence theorists in the theory of truth) to extract a properly second-philosophical line of thought. She then undertakes to practise Second Philosophy in her reflections on the ground of logical truth, the methodology, ontology and epistemology of mathematics, and the general prospects for metaphysics naturalized.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “The book is excellent: the thesis is refreshing, the presentation clear and forthright, the argumentation careful, the research thorough and informed. It contains a wealth of material that should appeal to far more readers than those of us who are already susceptible to second philosophy. It presents the best exploration and defence of naturalism I know of.”–Michael Liston, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews About the Author Penelope Maddy is UCI Distinguished Professor of Logic & Philosophy of Science and of Mathematics at the University of California at Irvine.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Penelope Maddy’s *Second Philosophy* is a very interesting essay in “natural-born naturalism”, or what was once more clumsily called “the spontaneous philosophy of the scientists”. The author’s suspicion of metaphysics old and new runs deep enough to launch a book-length conceit where a character, the “Second Philosopher”, is set afloat on a Neurathian boat that only takes on board the philosophical devices necessary to defend a contemporary scientific picture of the world and, more specifically, a picture taken over from experimental psychology of how the biological mind of a biological organism is able to know “abstract” truths such as those of logic and mathematics. Many professed naturalists, philosophers and scientists alike, are rampant “Platonists” about logic and math: they never found a mathematical equation epitomizing a province of the natural world they didn’t like, and consequently view any attempt at what Huw Price calls “subject naturalism” as highly suspect.Maddy’s Second Philosopher has a lighter heart and a more skeptical eye than the Leadfoot Logicist: though she draws on the views of Frege to portray facts about the objective structure of the world as motivating a slightly watered-down “primitive logic” which captures that structure in a way intellectually susceptible to the insights of genuine evolutionary theory and developmental psychology, the idea of an Objective World in the hands of “supervenience” theorists and suchlike detracts, she argues, from a small-r realism which will capture the essential fact of science’s explanatory adequacy while following the insights of “deflationism” about truth — the idea that the concept of truth has a few important uses in the way we talk about people’s utterances (“What Jim said is true”) and that’s that — out to their rational conclusions. Like her comrade-in-arms Mark Wilson, Maddy is completely convinced of the primacy of the “scientific image of man”, just a little unsure about what that, truly spoken, will be given the many twists and turns actual scientific research takes.Intellectually honest and stimulating.

⭐A must read for anyone interested in naturalism.

⭐

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