Philosophy Research Seminar - Dr André Carus (LMU)
| Dates: | 21 April 2021 |
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| Times: | 15:15 - 16:50 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Social Sciences |
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This year we are running all of our research seminars online using Zoom. If you would like to attend, and are not included on our events mailing list, please email Dr Stephen Ingram to request the Zoom meeting details.
Seminars will take place on Wednesdays, and will run from 15.15-16.50, with a 5 minute break between the talk and the Q&A. The Zoom meeting will be available to join from 15.00.
Title: Carnap's Naturalism
Abstract: The Carnap-Quine debate is often portrayed as a contrast between Carnap’s attachment to some residual form of first philosophy and Quine’s more consistent naturalism. This paper examines what is specifically meant by “naturalism” and finds two main components. First, a group of ideas Carnap inherited from Helmholtz and passed on to Quine, which included the close interrelation of science and philosophy (in contrast to German idealism) and above all what Huw Price calls “subject naturalism” — the assumption that human subjectivity is part of nature, permitting “naturalized epistemology.” The second component of Quine’s “naturalism” is a preference for certain traditional doctrines of positivism, e.g. the avoidance of intensions and abstract entities, nominalism, a behavioral basis for logic. One may call these “naturalistic,” but Carnap — on equally “naturalistic” grounds -- regarded them as “philosophical prejudices” that inappropriately restrict scientific inquiry. Finally, a third kind of “naturalism” was explicitly rejected by both Carnap and Quine, the normative naturalism criticized by G.E. Moore in Principia Ethica (with its “naturalistic fallacy”). Carnap’s philosophical architectonic fully integrated this non-cognitivism, unlike Quine’s, with the result that his naturalism was also more consistent than Quine’s.
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This event will run online - contact Stephen Ingram for details on accessing the Zoom meeting.
