Naturalizing pragmatism

A naturalizing move

The question for this chapter is what kind of rational warrant the mind/brain might have for believing mysteries, for that which it can never fully understand. In the tradition of Chomsky's linguistics and in conformity to how relevance theory conceives of itself, both linguistics and pragmatics are parts of cognitive psychology. However, in our accounts of semantic content, we are dependent on philosophy, on the manifest image. Psychological theories of representation are not extricable from philosophical analyses of key concepts. Conversely, both philosophical psychology and epistemology, to the degree they construct theories, should be consistent with the results of science, however distinct the method of inquiry. In fact, inextricability is obvious from the histories of both behaviourism and cognitive science.

To naturalize an area of inquiry is to investigate it using the methods of natural science. Chomsky proposes that naturalization be without any metaphysical connotations (Chomsky, 2000: 76). Citing Baldwin (1993), he notes that this differs from Dennett's ‘metaphysical naturalism’ in which certain metaphysical assumptions, for example, forms of Platonism, are excluded as not consistent with his view of natural science. To the degree that naturalization is successful, the domain is transformed from that of common sense as elaborated and clarified by philosophical inquiry and becomes part of Sellar's scientific image of humanity. In psychology, naturalization has consisted of transforming folk psychology and its terminology, through philosophical psychology, to psychology as a special science. Such progression is normal in the history of science.