Naturalism and Scientific Practices: A Concluding Scientific Postscript

Naturalism is the dominant philosophical stance in North American philosophy today. Many philosophers explicitly identify themselves as naturalists, whose philosophical work is closely aligned with the natural sciences. Yet the best evidence for the dominance of naturalism comes from those philosophers who profess to be its opponents. These critics often make very significant concessions to naturalism. They hasten to accept a broadly scientific understanding of the world. They also often disavow any philosophical constraints upon scientific inquiry. Many even express these sentiments by accepting ‘naturalism ’ as a label for their own views: they oppose “radical ” versions of naturalism, but do so by defending a more tolerant, inclusive version of naturalism. My response to this apparent triumph of philosophical naturalism echoes the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the triumph of Christianity in 19th Century Europe. Nowadays we all of us indeed are Christians. But with this, what have we all become, I wonder; and what has Christianity become by the fact that we all of us as a matter of course ar