Naturalism and the Human Condition: Against Scientism

128 Pages·2001·1.39 MB·English

by  Frederick Olafson

NATURALISM AND
THE HUMAN CONDITION
Naturalism and the Human Condition: Against Scientism is a clear and com-
pelling exploration of why naturalism, or what is otherwise known as the
“scientific world-view,” misrepresents what we really are as human beings.
Frederick Olafson offers up alternative ways of thinking about the human
condition that have long been unrecognized by naturalists. Avoiding the
metaphysical, he presses us to take a closer look at our human sense of being
in the world, and shows that in its attempt to investigate human conscious-
ness and intelligence, naturalism can only be understood through the very
conceptual models that it rejects. Tracing the history of naturalism and its
opponents, and drawing on a wide range of sources, including Heidegger,
Merleau-Ponty, Husserl and Sartre, Olafson skillfully exposes the problems
inherent in naturalism and raises some vital questions. The central chapters
of the book discuss the implications of this on three main areas of the phil-
osophy of mind: perception, language and brain-function.
Naturalism and the Human Condition is a vital contribution to the natural-
ist debate, showing that the way in which we understand ourselves as human
beings has real consequences for all of us. It will be essential reading for all
students of the philosophy of mind and language, and anyone interested in
the debates about naturalism and scientism.
Frederick A. Olafson is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University
of California, San Diego. He is the author of Heidegger and the Philosophy of
Mind and Heidegger and the Ground of Ethics.

NATURALISM AND
THE HUMAN
CONDITION
Against scientism
Frederick A. Olafson
London and New York
First published 2001
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.
© 2001 Frederick A. Olafson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Olafson, Frederick A.
Naturalism and the human condition: against scientism/Frederick A. Olafson.
p. cm.
Includes index.
1. Philosophical anthropology. 2. Philosophy of mind. 3. Naturalism. I. Title.
BD450.O43 2001
146—dc21 2001019301
ISBN 0-203-16477-6 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-25902-5 (Adobe eReader Format)
0–415–25259–8 (hbk)
0–415–25260–1 (pbk)
FOR CHANTAL

CONTENTS
Preface ix
1 Naturalism in historical perspective 1
2 Naturalism, dualism, and the natural attitude 10
3 The rejection of the given and the eclipse of presence 24
4 The substitution of language for presence: or words
as things 46
5 What does the brain do? 65
6 Human being as the place of truth 84
Conclusion 105
Notes 109
Index 113
vii

PREFACE
This book is my attempt to justify to myself and to any one else who may be
interested the hunch that has informed most of my work in philosophy.1 The
hunch is that, in a quite fundamental way, naturalism gets things wrong. In
saying this, I am not making the familiar charge that it undermines religion
and morality, although that may well be true. My thesis is rather that natur-
alism is confused and mistaken in the principal philosophical claims it makes.
Since naturalism is once again in the ascendant, at least among philosophers,
this seems a good time to lay out what is wrong with it.
The philosophical resources on which I draw for this purpose come mainly
from the literature of phenomenology and especially existential phenomenol-
ogy, but I try to avoid using the technical jargon of this or any other school
of thought any more than I have to. The line of argument developed in this
book is, however, heavily derivative from what I have learned from such
thinkers as Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty and others as
diverse as Edmund Husserl and Jean-Paul Sartre. Since I am not interpreting
their texts but reconstructing their arguments and adapting them to an intel-
lectual situation they never had to deal with directly, I have not felt the need
to make an express acknowledgment whenever I draw on the work of one or
another of these thinkers. Nor have I felt any obligation to conform my views
to those of any of these philosophers when they seemed problematic to me in
one way or another.
In one respect, the way I propose to go about this task may appear to be
open to question. There are many philosophers and scientists who have con-
tributed to contemporary naturalism and correspondingly many differences
in the way they argue their case. It is, therefore, important to make it clear
that this book is not a study of their work or of the literature that has grown
out of it over the past several decades. Instead, I have tried to pull out of ita
number of large themes and strategies of argument; and these essays are best
regarded as independent critical reflections on those themes. In proceeding
in this way, I have not wanted to evade a general responsibility to charac-
terize naturalism fairly and accurately; and I am prepared to be judged by
how well I have succeeded in that regard. I have, however, tried to avoid tying
ix