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Laudan's Naturalistic Axiology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Karyn Freedman
Karyn Freedman*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
*
†Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto, 215 Huron Street, 9th Floor, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A1.
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Abstract

Doppelt (1986,1990), Siegel (1990), and Rosenberg (1996) argue that the pivotal feature of Laudan's normative naturalism, namely his axiology, lacks a naturalistic foundation. In this paper I show that this objection turns on a misunderstanding of Laudan's use of the term ‘naturalism’. Specifically, I argue that there are two important senses of naturalism running through Laudan's work. Once these two strands are made explicit, the objection raised by Doppelt and others simply disappears.

Type
Science and Values
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 66 , Issue S3: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1998 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers Sep., 1999 , 1999 , pp. S526 - S537
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I wish to thank those who attended the PSA ‘98 session on ‘Science and Values—1’, and in particular Jim Brown, for the provocative discussion which followed the reading of this paper. I would also like to thank Ian Hacking and Cheryl Misak for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

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