Overview

The central question of naturalism - the relation of philosophy to science - was one of the defining strands of twentieth-century thought and remains a major source of debate and controversy. Today many argue that philosophy should fold itself into the sciences, especially the natural sciences. Liberal naturalists argue that such scientific naturalism demands reductive and Procrustean conceptions of knowledge and reality. Moreover, many philosophical problems are beyond the scope of the sciences, such as the nature of persons, the normativity of the space of reasons, and how best to understand the peculiar mix of objectivity and subjectivity of ethics and art. The Routledge Handbook of Liberal Naturalism is the first collection to present a comprehensive overview of liberal naturalism, a philosophical outlook that lies between scientific naturalism and supernaturalism. Comprising 37 chapters by an international team of contributors, it examines important cutting-edge topics including: what is liberal naturalism? is metaphysics a viable project? naturalism in the history of philosophy, including Hume, Dewey, and Quine contemporary liberal naturalists such as P.F. Strawson, John McDowell, Hilary Putnam, and John Rawls related kinds of naturalism, including subject naturalism, common-sense naturalism and biological naturalism the bearing of liberal naturalism on contemporary debates in epistemology, philosophy of mind, ethics and aesthetics. Essential reading for students and researchers in all areas of philosophy, this volume will be of particular interest for those studying philosophical naturalism, philosophy of science, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, ethics and aesthetics.

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Mario De Caro is Professor of Moral Philosophy at Roma Tre University, Italy, and regularly Visiting Professor at Tufts University, USA. He has published five volumes in Italian and edited Interpretations and Causes. New Perspectives on Donald Davidson’s Philosophy (1999), Hilary Putnam’s volume Naturalism, Realism, and Normativity (2016) and, with Maria Silvia Vaccarezza, Practical Wisdom: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives (Routledge, 2021). David Macarthur is an Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Sydney, Australia. He has co-edited three collections with Mario De Caro: Naturalism in Question (2004), Naturalism and Normativity (2010), and Philosophy in an Age of Science: Physics, Mathematics, and Skepticism (2012). He is editor of Pragmatism as a Way of Life: The Lasting Legacy of William James and John Dewey (2017).

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