American Naturalism Jo Ann Boydston, director emeritus of the Center for Dewey Studies at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and her husband Don, have endowed a Library of Philosophical Naturalism as part of the Center for Inquiry libraries. Such important figures as John Dewey, George Santayana, Sidney Hook and Richard Rorty have defended the philosophical view that all events can be explained using a natural framework without resorting to mystical or supernatural definitions. The following articles describe the relevance of naturalism in its historic and present-day contexts.—EDS.

The American Naturalist Tradition Peter H. Hare

or American naturalists, nature con- sists of everything there is. Nothing is

"outside" nature. Whatever exists is no more or less an aspect of nature than any-thing else. Furthermore, nature is, to one degree or another, objective, which means that it has characteristics the con-tent of which is not determined by our opinions of them—nature may be studied and known. Crucially, human beings are part of that knowable nature. American naturalists reject any dichotomy between nature and human beings. Human life, including its purposes, goals, meanings, values, and ideals, is wholly natural.

Naturalism in the American tradition is not reductive or mechanical material-ism or physicalism. Nor is it a scientism that holds that anything real is describ-able in the language of the natural sci-ences. Though it is a philosophy of experience, its processive concept of experience is broader and richer than that found in British empiricism. American naturalism also rejects empiricism's sepa-ration of facts and values; values are regarded by naturalists as fully aspects of nature.

Having characterized American natu-ralism, let me next sketch my conception of the entire sweep of American philoso-phy from Colonial times to the present. In

Peter H. Hare is professor of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo. This paper was read at the grand opening of the Jo Ann and Don Boydston Library of Philosophical Naturalism on November 1O, 1995.

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"American naturalists reject any dichotomy between nature and

human beings. Human life, including its purposes, goals,

meanings, values, and ideals, is wholly natural."

my view, the history of American thought can best be understood as the progressive and cumulative development of natural-ism. In other words, this ever-evolving naturalism is the "spirit" of American philosophy. Obviously, in these brief comments I cannot present a convincing case for this conception of our philosoph-ical history, but let me give a few exam-ples of what I have in mind.

The Enlightenment naturalism found in Cadwallader Colden, Franklin, Jeffer-

son, and others was enriched in the nine-teenth century by German and British idealism—the concept of experience in American naturalism was much broad-ened by wrestling with idealism; the same sources contributed process logic to American naturalism. As is widely recog-nized, Darwinian biology also enriched American naturalism; to mention still another example, medieval logic enriched Peirce's naturalism. In the twentieth cen-tury, the close study of Aristotle enriched the naturalism of John Herman Randall, Jr., C. I. Lewis's naturalism was enriched by lifelong study of Kant. Marxism enriched the naturalisms of Roy Wood Sellars and Marvin Farber. W. V. O. Quine's naturalism has been enriched by Rudolf Carnap's linguistic philosophy, Alfred Tarski's philosophy of logic, and Pierre Duhem's philosophy of science. Finally, let me mention the work of Murray Murphey. The version of natural-ism found in his most recent book would not have been possible without detailed and painstaking examination of diverse types of recent analytic philosophy.

Where, you may ask, does pragmatism fit in this picture of ever more enriched naturalism as the spirit of American phi-losophy? I suggest that "pragmatism" is a helpful way of calling attention to various interconnected features that have super-vened on American naturalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But I believe that it is seriously misleading to suggest that pragmatism is the chief American claim to importance and distinc-tiveness in world philosophical history.

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Instead our claim should be to have devel-oped over many generations the most enriched naturalism—and what is usually called "American pragmatism" is a signif-icant aspect of that enriched naturalism.

Now, if the conception of the American philosophical tradition that I have sketched is roughly correct, it has impor-tant implications for how we should go about fostering further development of American naturalism. It implies, I sug-gest, that we should not get uptight about what appear to be alien types of philoso-phy in our midst. We should encourage the most thorough discussion of "foreign" ideas that for one reason or another attract the attention of our American colleagues. We should do this confident in our belief that the temper of American culture has always been such that immigrant ideas sooner or later enrich American natural-ism. "Hang loose!" is my advice. Don't spend a lot of time fretting about the pos-sible demise of American naturalism. I'm not suggesting that we not scrutinize imported ideas. The most significant enrichment emerges from dialogue between imported and domestic ideas.

I recognize that my advice will be diffi-cult for some naturalists to accept. During the quarter century in which various forms of imported eliminitivist analytic philoso-phy had much institutional power in American academe, many naturalists were unfairly treated. This unjust treatment caused understandable bitterness and resentment. Although these feelings are understandable, hypersensitivity to any philosophy deeply critical of American naturalism has unfortunate consequences. Year after year of intense preoccupation with Richard Rorty, for example, is—at the very least—distracting. Shortly after Rorty's book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature was published in 1979, it was quite adequately shown that Rorty's so-called pragmatism was radically inconsistent with the pragmatism of American natural-ism and not a genuine threat. But today hypersensitive naturalists continue refut-ing Rorty. Rorty, who enjoys cleverly bait-ing his critics, encourages this pointless activity. Neglect is what Rorty's philoso-phy now calls for, in my view.

I urge that we take the "long view" of the Rorty phenomenon. I predict that fifty years from now when historians look

The Boydstons

back at this period in American philoso-phy they will consider that Rorty played a significant role only because the discus-sion of his charming prose stimulated useful clarification of the character of American naturalism. The American nat-uralist tradition is too resilient and resourceful to be seriously threatened by Rorty. In the long run, Rorty is enriching the tradition he is laboring to discredit.

Let me explore another possible reason for the unproductive breast-beating among American naturalists. Many American naturalists today seem deeply disappointed that we have no giants on the contemporary scene of the magnitude of Aristotle, Spinoza, Peirce, or Dewey. They take that lack to indicate that the tra-dition is in crisis—in danger of being superseded. It strikes me as especially ironic when Deweyan naturalists bemoan the lack of such giants. Recall that no one better explained the resources and promise of "social intelligence" than Dewey. Deweyans should recognize that since World War II philosophical advances have usually been accomplished by legions of philosophers working more or less connectedly on a problem. What could be more appropriate for an American naturalist than to recognize that philosophy is a social product? Instead of decrying the absence of "great" philoso-phers, American naturalists should do everything they can to nurture the lively exercise of "social intelligence" in the widest and most diverse intellectual com-munity—confident that sooner or later the upshot will be the further enrichment of naturalism. The "genius" of the American philosophical temper is, and has always been, its capacity to respond creatively to

foreign influences so as to enrich natural-ism. That naturalistic genius does not depend on superstars.

An important part of nurturing social intelligence in the philosophical commu-nity should be encouraging philosophers to explore developments in the empirical sciences that have philosophical rele-vance. For example, work in the cognitive sciences should be encouraged. Often American naturalists dismiss cognitive science—protesting that it is based on an erroneous metaphysics. To be sure, cog-nitive scientists often make foolish meta-physical pronouncements, but that does not rob their empirical work of philo-sophical significance. Recall that Peirce, James Dewey, and Mead eagerly explored the empirical inquiry of their day, however philosophically inadequate that scientific work was. Wouldn't they advise us not to be intimidated by legions of clever and well-funded scientists who enjoy from time to time jeering at profes-sional philosophers while propounding their own philosophical views disguised as empirical science?

Lots of other work needs to be done by naturalists, and the Department of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo has often been central to that work. As the members of my gradu-ate seminar in contemporary naturalism know, there are diverse frontiers of natu-ralism. For example, exciting things are going on in the philosophy of mind. Michael Tye has worked out with impres-sive analytic rigor a naturalistic theory of mind. Hilary Kornblith is well known for his pathbreaking work in naturalized epistemology. James Gouinlock has ad-vanced naturalism in moral philosophy. Arnold Berleant and Peter Manicas are contributing importantly to naturalism in aesthetics and the philosophy of science, respectively. And I hardly need to men-tion all the things that Paul Kurtz is doing and has done to further the cause of natu-ralism. Indeed, I like to think that since Marvin Farber taught Wilfrid Sellars at Buffalo in the early 1930s no institution has contributed as much to the American naturalist tradition as the State University of New York at Buffalo. In the decades to come the Center for Inquiry Libraries will, I'm confident, add much to Buffalo's contribution to the tradition. •

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