TY - JOUR A1 - Spiegel, Thomas J. T1 - Ist der Naturalismus eine Ideologie? JF - Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie : Zweimonatsschrift der internationalen philosophischen Forschung N2 - Naturalism is the current orthodoxy in analytic philosophy. Naturalism is the conjunction of the (ontological) claim that all that truly exists are the entities countenanced by the natural sciences and the (epistemological) claim that the only true knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge. Drawing on some recent work in Critical Theory, this article argues that naturalism qualifies as an ideology. This is the case because naturalism meets three key aspects shared by paradigmatic cases of ideology: (i) naturalism has practical consequences and implications of a specific kind, (ii) those endorsing naturalism fall prey to a dual deception: having false meta-level beliefs about naturalism as being without alternative, and (iii) naturalism has a tendency towards self-immunisation. The article ends by suggesting we pull naturalism out of our collective cognitive backgrounds onto the main stage of critical discourse, making it a proper topic for philosophical critique again. KW - naturalism KW - ideology KW - worldview KW - Weltbild KW - scientific image KW - metaphilosophy KW - metaphysics Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1515/dzph-2020-0003 SN - 0012-1045 SN - 2192-1482 VL - 68 IS - 1 SP - 51 EP - 71 PB - De Gruyter CY - Berlin ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Spiegel, Thomas Jussuf T1 - Is religion natural? BT - religion, naturalism and near-naturalism JF - International journal of philosophy and theology N2 - In this article I argue that the kind of scientific naturalism that tends to underwrite projects of naturalizing religion operates with a tacit conception of nature which, upon closer inspection, turns out to be untenable. I first distinguish an uninteresting modest naturalism from the more ambitious and relevant scientific naturalism. Secondly I survey three different kinds of attempting to naturalize religion: naturalizing the social aspect of religion, naturalizing religious experience, and naturalizing reference to the transcendent. Thirdly I argue that these projects operate with a conception of nature which is insufficiently clear. I suggest three ways of charitably explicating that tacit conception of what is natural before arguing that neither of these three positions works. Lastly I offer an irenic proposal: we would do good in giving up the scientific naturalism that underlies projects of naturalizing religion in order to embrace Lynne Rudder Baker's recently proposed notion of near-naturalism which allows the naturalist to retain a 'science first' attitude while avoiding problematic, overly restrictive notions of what is natural. KW - naturalism KW - religion KW - near-naturalism KW - liberal naturalism KW - naturalization Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/21692327.2020.1749717 SN - 2169-2327 SN - 2169-2335 VL - 81 IS - 4 SP - 351 EP - 368 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Spiegel, Thomas Jussuf T1 - The Scientific Weltanschauung BT - (Anti-)Naturalism in Dilthey, Jaspers and Analytic Philosophy JF - Journal of Transcendental Philosophy N2 - Different forms of methodological and ontological naturalism constitute the current near-orthodoxy in analytic philosophy. Many prominent figures have called naturalism a (scientific) image (Sellars, W. 1962. “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man.” In Wilfrid Sellars, Science, Perception, Reality, 1–40. Ridgeview Publishing), a Weltanschauung (Loewer, B. 2001. “From Physics to Physicalism.” In Physicalism and its Discontents, edited by C. Gillett, and B. Loewer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Stoljar, D. 2010. Physicalism. Routledge), or even a “philosophical ideology” (Kim, J. 2003. “The American Origins of Philosophical Naturalism.” Journal of Philosophical Research 28: 83–98). This suggests that naturalism is indeed something over-and-above an ordinary philosophical thesis (e.g. in contrast to the justified true belief-theory of knowledge). However, these thinkers fail to tease out the host of implications this idea – naturalism being a worldview – presents. This paper draws on (somewhat underappreciated) remarks of Dilthey and Jaspers on the concept of worldviews (Weltanschauung, Weltbild) in order to demonstrate that naturalism as a worldview is a presuppositional background assumption which is left untouched by arguments against naturalism as a thesis. The concluding plea is (in order to make dialectical progress) to re-organize the existing debate on naturalism in a way that treats naturalism not as a first-order philosophical claim, but rather shifts its focus on naturalism’s status as a worldview. KW - naturalism KW - ideology KW - Dilthey KW - Jaspers KW - scientific image KW - worldview Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1515/jtph-2021-0016 SN - 2626-8329 SN - 2626-8310 VL - 2 IS - 2 SP - 259 EP - 276 PB - De Gruyter CY - Berlin ; Boston ER -