@article{Spiegel2020,
  author    = {Spiegel, Thomas Jussuf},
  title     = {Is religion natural?},
  series = {International journal of philosophy and theology},
  volume    = {81},
  journal   = {International journal of philosophy and theology},
  number    = {4},
  publisher = {Routledge, Taylor \& Francis Group},
  address   = {Abingdon},
  issn      = {2169-2327},
  doi       = {10.1080/21692327.2020.1749717},
  pages     = {351 -- 368},
  year      = {2020},
  abstract  = {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.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{Spiegel2021,
  author    = {Spiegel, Thomas Jussuf},
  title     = {The Scientific Weltanschauung},
  series = {Journal of Transcendental Philosophy},
  volume    = {2},
  journal   = {Journal of Transcendental Philosophy},
  number    = {2},
  publisher = {De Gruyter},
  address   = {Berlin ; Boston},
  issn      = {2626-8329},
  doi       = {10.1515/jtph-2021-0016},
  pages     = {259 -- 276},
  year      = {2021},
  abstract  = {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.},
  language  = {en}
}