Naturalism and the First-Person Perspective

• Main Author: Baker, Lynne Rudder
• Format: eBook
• Language: English
• Published: United Kingdom Oxford University Press 2013; Oxford University Press, Incorporated
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: Metaphysics; Naturalism; Perspective (Philosophy); Philosophy of Mind; Philosophy of Perception; Philosophy of Science; Self (Philosophy); reductive naturalism; eliminative naturalism; ontological naturalism; science; nonreductive naturalism; property-constitution; rudimentary and robust stages naturalization; first-person perspective; ontology; essentialism
• ISBN: 9780199914739; 0199914737; 0199914729; 9780199914722; 9780199914746; 0199914745
• DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199914722.001.0001

Many versions of naturalism make the ontological claim that science is the exclusive arbiter of reality. A corollary of this claim of naturalism is that reality is completely describable in “scientific language”—language that contains no tenses or indexicals. If any of these versions of naturalism is correct, then putative first-person facts (as expressed by, e.g., “I am LB,” or “I believe that I am tall”) are either reduced to subpersonal facts or eliminated altogether. This book has three main goals: (1) to show that no wholly impersonal account of reality can be adequate, that apparently first-person aspects of reality are genuine—irreducible and ineliminable—and belong in a complete ontology; (2) to give a detailed non-Cartesian account of the first-person perspective and its contribution to reality; (3) to shape a “near-naturalism” that is more accommodating to reality with us in it than is the reigning scientific naturalism. Along the way, there are discussions of reductive and nonreductive naturalism, personal identity, agency, artifacts, moral responsibility, dispositional properties, and more.