W.V.O. Quine, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
Naturalism is the thesis that philosophy is continuous with science, that there is no first philosophy independent of the empirical investigation of how science works, and that the apparatus of philosophical argument — meaning, modality, ontology, epistemic justification — must be answerable to what the natural sciences (especially psychology and behavioural science) can in fact deliver.1
The naturalist does not abandon the philosophical questions; the naturalist relocates them within the empirical-scientific framework of which they are part. Philosophy of science is philosophy enough — not because the other questions of philosophy are illegitimate, but because the questions worth asking are those that admit of empirical- scientific engagement, and the questions that do not so admit are typically pseudo-questions whose pseudo-character only the naturalist framework makes visible.2345
At this point let me say that I shall not be impressed by protests that I am using inductive generalizations, Darwin's and others, to justify induction, and thus reasoning in a circle. The I shall not be impressed by this is that position is reason my a naturalistic one; I see philosophy not as an a priori propaedeutic or groundwork for science, but as continuous with science. I 11 This was noted by S.I first urged the inscrutability of reference with the help, pp. 135–137
What matters science discourse structure rather ontology. objects serve as mere nodes in the structure, and this is true of the sticks and stones no less than the electrons, quarks, numbers, and classes. mean, then, to ontology rather another which it can be mapped? I say that it makes sense only relative to proposed translations.Quine in Dialogue, pp. 337–338
But I also expressed, at the beginning, my unswerving belief in external things—people, nerve endings, sticks, 'stones. This I reaffirm. I believe also, if less firmly, in atoms and electrons and in classes. Now how is all this robust realism to be reconciled with the barren scene that I have just been depicting?Theories and Things, pp. 30–31
This takes us back to our innate sense standard perceptual similarity, and innate expectation similars will have mutually similar sequels. In short, primitive induction. Prediction is verbalized expectation. Conditional expectation, when correct, survival value.Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionalist, pp. 466–467
The observation sentences themselves, like ape cries and bird calls, are in holophrastic association with ranges of neural intake. Denotation of determinate objects figures neither association deducing categorical scientific hypotheses. Hence indeterminacy reference; ontology purely auxiliary structure theory.Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionalist, pp. 461–462
Naturalism in roughly the Quinean form is the dominant stance in contemporary Anglophone analytic philosophy, especially in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics. Penelope Maddy's Second Philosophy (Oxford, 2007) and Defending the Axioms (2011) develop a Quinean naturalism in the philosophy of mathematics. David Papineau's Philosophical Naturalism (1993) defends a broader naturalist programme. Barry Stroud's 'The Charm of Naturalism' (1996) mounts a structural critique that the naturalist stance cannot address the traditional philosophical questions about meaning, knowledge, and the world that philosophy was supposed to address. Hilary Putnam's Renewing Philosophy (1992) develops a Wittgenstein-influenced critique of naturalism. The continental-philosophical refusal of the naturalist programme is generally a refusal of the framework rather than an engagement within it. The position remains the dominant stance and the contestation continues.