Naturalism and the Intellectual Legitimacy of Philosophy

Abstract

There is a worry about the intellectual legitimacy of philosophy. Although the sciences have a progressive history, with later theories largely building on earlier ones, and a tremendous amount of agreement within the scientific community about the approximate truth of current theory, philosophy is different. We do not see a progressive history of philosophical theorizing, and there is little agreement within the philosophical community about which theories are even roughly correct. This not only encourages a certain skepticism about the possibility of philosophical knowledge, but a real question about whether the activity of philosophical theorizing is intellectually legitimate. It is argued here that there are features of a naturalistic methodology in philosophy which have the resources to respond to these concerns