Philosophical naturalism and scientific method

Abstract

This chapter discusses of the nature of philosophical naturalism and its relation to scientific method. The discussion takes its cue from an interdisciplinary examination of the naturalization of the philosophy of mind by Kievit et al. (Psychol. Inq. 22:67–87, 2011), who employ statistical methods to construct psychometric models of both the identity and supervenience theories of the mind-body relation. For the most part, the focus of the chapter is on methods of inquiry. After a brief discussion of two different attitudes to naturalized philosophy, two well-known views of naturalism in the philosophy of mind are presented and considered in relation to the naturalism of Kievit et al. Thereafter, some limitations of structural equation modelling, which is the authors’ method of choice, are noted, as is the useful but neglected method of inference to the best explanation. Philosophers and psychologists are encouraged to use one another’s methods, to the benefit of both.