We seem then, to be left with two positions – or two domains – that are, at the same time, irreconcilable as well as indispensable to each other.
The first of these corresponds to the worldview that results from strict disciplined scrutiny. It is the “world of nature”. It is explainable and sometimes predictable. It is causally (or otherwise ontologically) contingent on its context and environment; it is available to our senses.
This worldview, however, is seemingly unable to explain most of the phenomena that are arguably necessary for the conduct of society and make science possible. It is unable to explain reference that is not contextually determined, and as such, it is unable to account for non-arbitrary categorical norms, or for semantics. In virtue of being unable to account for value and prescription beyond context, it is unable to account for good or bad, but most importantly for worse or better, and as such it is unable to account for progress.
On the other hand, we have what would seem to be the domain of non-contextual reference. It allows for the explanation of everything that naturalism does not, but seems to be unsupported by both empirical and philosophical matters.
These circumstances, this apparently “indispensable” marriage between immanence and transcendence, has led to a convergence of thought in both analytic philosophy and the philosophy of the social sciences. The position, for general purposes, can be appropriately called “indispensability” and includes that which in analytic philosophy has been increasingly referred to as “liberal naturalism” or “Broad scientific naturalism” (i.e. Putnam 2010, 2002; De Caro and McArthur 2010, 2004). It has been established for some time now as “critical realism” in the philosophy of the social sciences and social theory (i.e. Sayer 2000; Bhaksar 1989; Archer 1995). The general position that unites these different authors seems to result directly from the addressed discussion. They commit themselves to the strongest possible rendering of naturalism,
In more elaborate terms:
1) They all hold that the worldview that results from the strictest scrutiny, naturalism, is unable to account for features of reality that are “indispensable” for the possibility of science, or for the conduct of society. Amongst these requisite items, or phenomena they count:
- Norms and/or all sorts of normative notions, including “ineliminable epistemic
values” such as “coherence”, “universality”, “rationality” etc., as well as political, ethical or moral “values”, “realities” or “universalities” (MacArthur 2010; Putnam 2010, 2002).
- “Truth” understood in realist terms as reference to an “intransitive dimension”
(Sayer 2000; Bhaksar 1989)
- “Concepts”, “semantics”, “meaning”, and/or “ordinary language”, understood
as the whole vocabulary we have for describing the world of human agents (Putnam 2010).
2) They all understand this troublesome collection as “natural”. Not of the same ontological nature as the object of study of the natural sciences, but “natural” nonetheless. This domain, which is identical to that which we have been referring to as the domain of reference, corresponds to the object of study of the social sciences, and therefore to a “second nature”.
The circumstances that led to this convergence are particular. “Liberal naturalism” stems from a need in analytic philosophy to locate these troublesome items in order to avoid the embarrassing circumstances of having science being organised upon non-
scientific assumptions (see De Caro and MacArthur 2004). “Critical realism” results from the need to provide philosophical grounding for a discipline as inherently reflective as sociology (Sayer 2000; Bhaksar 1989). The result is similar: both camps assume an objective framework of reference in order for social science to conduct its work. However, they must remain agnostic as to which references hold true and which ones hold false. Philosophy, already relegated to an under labourer for the sciences, is now placed under the social sciences as well, as epistemology becomes the subject matter for these.
A very useful philosophy obtains as it allows for the scrutiny of both “nature” and “social nature” without the burden of circularity. Philosophy is rendered as a necessary evil that allows for this ontological distinction between the subject matter of the sciences and that of the social sciences.
This compromise, however, is also problematic. For example, a naturalist perspective allowed Fuller (2002) and Rouse (1987) to identify politically problematic circumstances in one of the least politically vulnerable sites, namely the scientific establishment. The problem found is not one of ontology, but rather one of authority: the authority of the value determinations and the prescriptions of a determined site or agent (A) to have material consequence upon the circumstances of another site or agent (B) legitimised upon a assumptions (X) whose account and/or explanation is troublesome in regards to the results of (A)’s practice.
The liberal naturalists and the critical realists fall into a fallacious conservatism. They find naturalism to question the way we understand science, society and even language. Because the source of such a position is actual science, actual society and actual language, they assume naturalism to be self-defeating, and thereby, look back to
held in order for these to remain “intelligible”. They then subscribe to these assumptions in order for this to be so.
They fall, ironically, into the naturalistic fallacy, and into an unwarranted sort of conservatism in result. This is they are claiming that things should be a certain way because they already are that way. Putnam (2002) for example, holds the following:
Each and every one of the familiar arguments for relativism (or contextualism) with respect to ethical values could be repeated in connection with these epistemic values. Rather than accept those arguments in either case, what we need to do is recognise that both ethical values and epistemic values are indispensable to our lives. […] Indeed, the demand that we accept only what we can give a reductive account of would, […] eliminate only value-talk, but talk of reference as well as talk of causality, talk of counterfactuals, and much besides. Something indeed is wrong here, but it is reductionism (alias “naturalism”) that is wrong and not value talk (Putnam 2002: 132).
In so many words, they are claiming, as many have before them, that if the produce of strict and disciplined scrutiny is challenging the way we understand the world, it must be the scrutiny which is wrong and not the way we understand the world. After all, it is from this world we so comfortably understand that scrutiny came to be in the first place. They are then denying the possibility that there is something to be found on the other end of strict naturalism. The matter of “indispensability” is better understood when placed on its head. All significant social and philosophical changes proceed from a departure point. All philosophy proceeds from previous philosophy and all society proceeds from society as well. The circumstances of arrival must necessarily be different to those of departure, hence the change. In this sense, if one connects to the history of science, or rather, to the history of scrutiny in general, the negative component of naturalism, that which challenges the way in which the world
is currently understood, is more adequately understood in the way Quine (1969a) did, namely, as the opening for a way forward. Against Quine (1995c) however, everything suggests this new way will provide a very different understanding of science and society.
In summary, against Putnam (2002) if it is the case that naturalism (and therefore science) is challenging the ways we understand science, society and language, then it is most probably the case, considering that science has proven once and again to lead into positive outcomes, that it is not science and naturalism which are wrong, but rather our current understanding of science, society and language.