Abstract

ESPINOSA BARRIOS, Adrián. Between relativism and empty: towards an interactionist alternative before epistemic naturalism. Andamios [online]. 2023, vol.20, n.51, pp.389-411.  Epub Sep 29, 2023. ISSN 2594-1917.  https://doi.org/10.29092/uacm.v20i51.1012.

Nowadays, naturalism is the standard position in anglo-saxon philosophy. Both the non-acceptance of the existence of metaphysical entities, on the one hand, and to epistemology of aprioristic and normative type, on the other, have resulted in harsh critiques to the role of philosophy as essential description of knowledge. However, the meaning of the term “naturalism” is far from being clear. This results in the postulation of research projects of many different types. In this article, several relevant distinctions are made in order to present the spectrum of naturalistic theories ranging from moderate to radical. Also, it is shown that all naturalistic theories postulate a uniformist thesis involving specific ontological or methodological compromises. Based on these specifications I claim that under the same label of “naturalization problem” four different, though related, research projects are mixed. Next, I conduct a critique of the underlying principles in the extremes of the naturalistic spectrum in order to offer an alternative of interactionist type to the problem in question. Towards the end of the article I propose the outline of an interaction between philosophy and science with a non-reductionist focus, ontologically uniformist, but methodologically pluralist.

Keywords : Naturalism; knowledge; uniformitarianism; interaction.