NATURALISM(S)
Elena Yrigoyen
The term ‘naturalism’ is employed today in philosophy and human sciences in many ways, both positive and negative, to designate a position or an attitude from which to appreciate human beings with regard to all other living beings, and to study everything relating thereto. We can distinguish between modern naturalism (or a use of the term to denote European Modernity), and a set of contemporary naturalisms that, despite sharing common assumptions, differ on many aspects.
1. Modern naturalism
Today, the work by the anthropologist Philippe Descola (2012) proposes the term “naturalism” to designate how, in the early 17th century, European Modernity instituted the nature/culture dichotomy, as well as the divide between humans and other living beings. Humans are conceived as exceptional beings (J-M. Schaeffer, 2009), who abandon their “natural” condition by means of their linguistic or symbolic –in a broad sense, “cultural”– capabilities. Naturalism is thus conceived as the gradual formation of a “great divide”, as Bruno Latour put it in We Have Never Been Modern (1993). In other words, naturalism refers to the construction of “nature” and “culture” as two autonomous regions, ultimately opposed to each other due to the scientific revolution in the 17th century and the and the advent of anthropology as a discipline 19th century (Descola, 2012, p. 102 et seq.).
Thanks to Descola’s work, however, in a branch of modern thinking, modern naturalism is conceived more specifically as the outcome of an individual process in which the card of “humanity” or “non-humanity” is dealt. In such a process, what is similar to ourselves is conceived as “human”, and what is not, “non-human”. Thus, to the modern European human being, what characterises humankind, what makes humans consider themselves as different and to establish a rupture with respect to what is ‘other’ or ‘non-human’, was the soul, the spirit, the mind or consciousness (our “interior” selves). Moreover, what does not characterise their human-ness, what makes them belong to the non-human, are material or bodily aspects (“physicality”). Unlike modern Europeans, in other parts of the world different perspectives are held, namely three forms of conceiving and relating the human and the non-human which I will name ‘analogism’, ‘totemism’ and ‘animism’ (Descola, 2012, p. 190). This allows us to relativize and place in historical perspective the European understanding of sharing: in other words, naturalism.
Most of the criticism against this notion of “naturalism” has come from anthropology. In particular, Viveiros de Castro (2010) or Tim Ingold (2016), with whom this issue is hotly debated today.
2. Contemporary naturalisms
Contemporary naturalisms can be conceived as different ways of endeavouring to overcome or to abandon the modern naturalist framework, that is, the nature/culture divide and the disconnection of human beings from other existing beings. Therefore, they all share three overarching premises: the Darwinian theory of evolution, the continuity of species -human beings among them- and how human beings’ forms of social life are anchored in physical and biological processes (Chouchan, 2011). From this point, however, different paths arise that can be observed in the means chosen to abandon or overcome this framework.
We may encounter reductionist naturalisms: those proposing a monism of what is “natural” or of the “material” as a result of eliminating the “cultural” or “mental” extremes. This line is presented as a set of superficial claims or epiphenomena on a truly determinant basis: “nature”. When reflecting on the mental aspects, this reductionist naturalism or monism has been called physicalism or eliminative materialism (e. g. Churchland, 1979). In the case of reflecting on the “cultural” sides, we may speak of socio-biology, in which sociocultural facts are explained and eliminated in favour of a genetic grounding: it is argued that it is the genes that determine the human species’ overall sociocultural behaviour. Wilson, in his work Sociobiology. The New Synthesis (1975) is considered the main advocate of this idea. Nonetheless, he has discussed and refined his position reflecting on the degree of independence of cultural transmission with regard to genetics. At present, though not uncontested, one representative of this reductionist line is Dawkins (1976).
However, other naturalisms also exist that explore non-reductionist strategies to overcome the modern dualist framework. Outstanding in this line is the biological naturalism of John Searle (1992). From this viewpoint, consciousness is dealt with as a biological phenomenon that, as so many others, cannot be reduced to any physio-chemical process, but can be explained in terms of causal relationships with such processes. He therefore re-formulates the classical idea of causality, replacing it with “intentional” or “emergent causality”: mental states are caused and emerge simultaneously by and from physio-chemical processes. Critiques to this notion of causation are many: two examples (Kim, 1993; Pérez Chico, 1999). To these must be added antinaturalist criticism, proceeding largely from phenomenology: Rizo-Patrón (2014), despite neuro-phenomenological attempts to make these compatible, such as Gallagher & Zahavi’s famous book The Phenomenological Mind (2008).
In the reflection on socio-cultural aspects, biological naturalism has found supporters: both in the work of Searle (1997) himself, and in that of Jean-Marie Schaeffer (2009), reflecting on social and cultural events as part of human beings’ biological identity. The nature/culture dichotomy remains, but only as a heuristic or methodological divide used to “give a (fuzzy) translation of the difference between that which concerns the somatic sphere and that which pertains to the exo-somatic sphere, in other words, [to refer] to the problem of the stratification of human reality” (Schaeffer, 2009, p. 222). Thus portrayed, naturalist monism refutes the claim that everything is “natural” by aiming to respect the specificity and irreductibility of all levels (cultural, social, mental, physio-chemical, etc.) of human reality, which, in global terms, is “biological”. It therefore proposes a model for two-way interaction between them: every level has causal capacity over the others, that is to say, no level should be conceived as a manifestation, surface or appearance of another.
Any reflection made on the ontological plane has its corresponding epistemological reflection, that is, a reflection on where the natural sciences (and their relationship with the humanities and philosophy) belong in the study of human beings and their relations to other beings. Here the path of naturalism forks again, offering a choice between a reductionist or a non-reductionist position: if, from an ontological angle, we consider that social, cultural and mental facts can be reduced to physio-chemical and/or genetic bases, then the epistemological position will defend the view that the natural sciences have the last (or only) word when it comes to studying human reality. In general, as we are dealing with a philosophical position, this naturalist reflection arises with the relationship between the sciences and philosophy: from Quine’s well-known article, “Epistemology Naturalized” (1969), that, in turn, re-interpreted the approach taken by Hume in his A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), the issue discussed is the pertinence and fecundity of a philosophical reflection on the mind or conscience, in a debate confronting mainly philosophical naturalism and phenomenology, as stated earlier.
Lastly, this ontological reflection is also linked to an ethical-political reflection, in which attempts to overcome the disconnection between human beings and other living beings have come hand in hand with environmental ethics. Catherine Larrère in this respect refers to the “quarrel of naturalisms” (2011). Since the 1970s efforts have been made to overcome the idea, rooted in Kantian humanism, that human beings -possessing self-conscience and subjectivity- hold rights and duties with respect to their equals, thus excluding from the equation all other animals and plants. To overthrow this mindset, environmental ethics follows at least two major strategies: to extend intrinsic moral value to the remainder of living beings as ‘living beings’, which according to Larrère is the path taken by bio-centrism; or to extend it also to physiochemical entities, such as water, as well as to ecosystems or living and non-living entity complexes in constant relation to one another, as in eco-centrism.
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