Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 12:37:16 -0500
Subject: Re: [HAB:]  Naturalism


I still don't know what it meant by the term "naturalism" in all of 
this.  "Naturalism" has a number of meanings and has a history as a 
philosophical weasel-word that covers a range of possible philosophical 
positions.  Are we debating materialism here, emergent properties, or 
something else?  While all of human nature has a biological basis, that 
basis is far too abstract, speaking philosophically, to account for human 
behavior in historical and social context.  Part of our biological nature 
is self-definition through sociocultural formation.  Our bare physical 
architecture can only explain abstractly our behavioral proclivities.  This 
has been a tenet of dialectical materialism for a century and a 
quarter.  Why are we debating this, again?

At 08:52 AM 11/5/2004 -0800, Gary E. Davis wrote:
>The more I recall the issue emphasized by Daniel
>earlier this week, the more I want to focus on it in a
>big way.
>
>But what's wrong with naturalism in the first place?
>IS this just the same as quite properly objecting to
>biologism in, say, understanding Habermas's assertion
>of "anthropologically deep-seated" aspects of the
>lifeworld? Is interpretive suspicion about
>anthropological deep-seatedness basically to wonder
>*how are we* to understand anthropological
>deep-seatedness, if NOT biologistically? Is the
>objection basically a call for a discursive How To?
>
>What, then, is biologism that makes it problematic to
>say that human nature is biological?
>
>John Searle and others argue quite well that the mind
>is what the brain does. On that basis (given proper
>explication), a naturalization of phenomenology may
>gain tenability. Habermas's sense of "weak naturalism"
>accords with that, I would argue.
>
>Just to get clear on what the presumed (but
>undiscussed) problem of naturalism is, what's wrong
>with saying that human nature is "real", in some sense
>of epistemological realism?
>
>Given the tenability of evolutionary
>psychology---which quite a few investigators take
>seriously---why *can't* such a discursive formation
>validly understand the "and" of a weak naturalism and
>epistemological realism? Is Habermas's work in
>principle averse to some kind of evolutionary
>psychology?
>
>What's wrong with claiming that our ontological
>condition is biological?
>
>Gary



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