PHIL 250A Scientific Philosophy: Quine
How do we do philosophy? What method should we use? Should we use subjective insight as evidence, or "pure" rationality (if there is such a thing), or empirical data? Or maybe something else altogether, like religious epiphanies? "Naturalistic" philosophers like Quine argue that our data should be empirical. This is also called the "scientific" approach to philosophy and dates back to Aristotle. However, contemporary naturalistic philosophy is alive and well. In fact, it is arguably one of the most important and influential schools of contemporary philosophy, affecting the fields of (at least) philosophy of biology, philosophy of physics, ethics, philosophy of mind , epistemology and the philosophy of art. In this course, we take a careful look at Quine's contemporary naturalism. Prerequisite: None