Naturalism

W.V.O. Quine's 1969 essay "Epistemology Naturalized" fundamentally shifted philosophy by arguing that questions about knowledge should be answered by psychology and neuroscience, not armchair reasoning. This was radical: Quine essentially said philosophers should stop asking "How can we justify our beliefs?" and start asking "How do humans actually form beliefs?" His move transformed epistemology from a normative discipline into a descriptive science, sparking decades of debate about whether philosophy was committing suicide or finally growing up.

Naturalism faces an embarrassing difficulty: it struggles to explain why anything is right or wrong, good or bad. If we're just atoms following physical laws, where do moral obligations come from—and why should we care about them? This isn't just academic hair-splitting; it affects real debates about whether we can ground human rights, ethical behavior, or even rational thought itself in a purely natural worldview. Some naturalists bite the bullet and accept moral anti-realism, while others scramble to naturalize normativity through evolution or social contracts.

Not all naturalists believe the same thing, and the distinction matters immensely for practice. Methodological naturalists simply commit to using scientific methods without making claims about what exists—many religious scientists fall into this camp. Metaphysical naturalists go further, insisting that nature is all there is, ruling out souls, gods, and ghosts as real entities. You can use naturalistic methods to study prayer's effects on healing without believing prayer actually reaches a supernatural being.

Your thoughts are about things—you can think about Paris, unicorns, or tomorrow's lunch—but brain states are just electrochemical patterns that aren't inherently "about" anything. This "aboutness" (intentionality) has proven devilishly difficult to explain in purely physical terms. Philosopher Jerry Fodor spent decades trying to naturalize mental content and ultimately concluded it might be impossible, writing that if intentionality can't be naturalized, "so much the worse for naturalism." The jury's still out on whether consciousness and meaning can be fully captured by neurons and synapses.

Natural selection gave naturalism its most powerful tool by showing how apparent design could arise without a designer. Before Darwin, even skeptics struggled to explain the exquisite fit between organisms and environments—the eye seemed to demand an engineer. Evolution by natural selection dissolved this argument, providing naturalists with a mechanical explanation for biological complexity that required no purposes or intentions. As Daniel Dennett put it, Darwin's insight was "universal acid" that ate through traditional assumptions about meaning, purpose, and human specialness.

Embracing naturalism changes how you approach life's biggest questions—instead of seeking cosmic purpose, you construct earthly meaning through relationships, projects, and values. When facing illness, you trust evidence-based medicine over prayer (though you might appreciate prayer's psychological benefits). When making moral decisions, you look to human flourishing, empathy, and social consequences rather than divine commands. This isn't necessarily bleaker; many naturalists report profound wonder at being self-aware stardust, temporary patterns in the universe that somehow wake up and contemplate their own existence.