Aikin 2006 Pragmatism Naturalism Phenomenology27642756

Pragmatism, Naturalism, and PhenomenologyAuthor(s): Scott F. AikinSource: Human Studies, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Sep., 2006), pp. 317-340Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27642756Accessed: 04/05/2010 20:50

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Human Studies (2006) 29:317-340 DOI 10.1007/s 10746-006-9026-5

? Springer 2006

Pragmatism, Naturalism, and Phenomenology

SCOTT F. AIKIN Department of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University, 111 Furman Hall, Nashville, TN,

37240, USA

(E-mail: [email protected])

Abstract. Pragmatism's naturalism is inconsistent with the phenomenological tradi

tion's anti-naturalism. This poses a problem for the methodological consistency of

phenomenological work in the pragmatist tradition. Solutions such as phenomenolo

gizing naturalism or naturalizing phenomenology have been proposed, but they fail. As

a consequence, pragmatists and other naturalists must answer the phenomenological tradition's criticisms of naturalism.

Key words: naturalism, phenomenology, pragmatism, science

A good deal of recent work in the pragmatist tradition purports to be

phenomenological in spirit or informed by the insights of phenomenol

ogy.1 In light of the pragmatist tradition's commitment to naturalism and

the phenomenological tradition's overt anti-naturalism, the question is

whether this cross-traditional work is methodologically coherent. A

background question, of course, is whether phenomenology is consistent

with any naturalist program in the social sciences. I will argue here that a

pragmatic naturalism is committed to epistemic and ontological natu

ralism and a broad form of humanism. Phenomenology is relevant to

pragmatism's humanism, but it is inconsistent with pragmatism's episte mic and ontological naturalisms. As a consequence, pragmatists face a

dilemma: either they must reject the essentialist picture of pragmatism as

a naturalism or they must reject the phenomenological tradition as anti

naturalistic. If they take the first horn of the dilemma, pragmatism as a

philosophical method becomes inscrutable. If they take the second horn

of the dilemma, for better or worse, pragmatism becomes methodologi

cally isolated from phenomenology, and in turn, that isolation must be

attended to more carefully. Further, if the dilemma is right, pragmatists should be bound to answer phenomenologists' criticisms of naturalism, as

those criticisms are at least implicitly criticisms of pragmatism. That is, if

the reasons behind the phenomenological tradition's anti-naturalism are right, then pragmatism is an incoherent philosophical program.

318 SCOTT F. AIKIN

Moreover, if the phenomenological tradition's criticisms of naturalism are correct, then naturalists generally are also obliged to respond or revise

accordingly. I conclude with reflections on the possibility of answering these challenges.

Pragmatism and Naturalism

Pragmatism, properly considered, is a form of naturalism. Given Charles S. Peirce's notion of scientific method, William James's work in psy

chology, and John Dewey's talk of organisms and their environments, it seems obvious enough. Not all naturalisms are pragmatisms, though.

Ruth Millikan, Hilary Kornblith, and Daniel Dennett are most certainly naturalists, but are equally certainly not pragmatists (at least not in the classical sense). So pragmatism is one naturalism among many. Let us

consider what constitutes a naturalism first, and then consider what

constitutes a pragmatist naturalism.

Naturalism is a two-part view. The first part is a methodological/

epistemological commitment: that the criteria for acceptable justification and experiment are those exemplified in the natural sciences. This epis

temological commitment is usually taken to be a commitment to either a

form of logical empiricism or a form of a posteriorism, where all justifi cation and experiment is empirical. Meta-epistemic considerations are not ones for the naturalist per se, so there is no basic commitment to foun

dationalism, coherentism, internalism, externalism, or other, but the

normative-epistemic commitment is one that restricts synthetic a priori

justification or thought-experiment. The basic thought is simply that there

is a continuity between the standards for warrant in philosophy and the

natural sciences. This continuity is precisely on the level of epistemic relevance of one form of justification to another - that commitments are

r?visable in light of data from any quarter.2 The second part is an ontological-metaphysical commitment: that all

that is, and every property of what is, is natural. There are no abstract entities like possibilia, mathematical objects, unconditioned laws of

thought, and so on. Metaphysical naturalism is a form of monism: there is

only one kind of thing, namely, things with natural (efficient or material)

properties.3 In turn, all explanation is, in the end, causal explanation.

Teleological explanations without the correlate causal stories are empty. As a consequence, naturalism, given its two constitutive parts, is a com

mitment to the proposition that all things that are (and all of the properties of those things) are to be studied by the methods of natural science.4

Naturalism simpliciter is a two-part commitment: one ontological and one epistemic commitment. Pragmatic naturalism entails a third

PRAGMATISM, NATURALISM, AND PHENOMENOLOGY 319

requirement that I will call the humanistic requirement: that the criteria for

philosophical or scientific significance are the values and purposes of

living human subjects. The relevant data and purposes for theoretical

reflection are the desires, failures, and hopes that naturally arise from

everyday life.

Philosophical reflection that extends beyond or spurns such relevance

to life is arid, dry, and ultimately worthless. Commenting on the classical

pragmatist outlook, Thomas Alexander calls this requirement "the hu

man context of metaphysics" and distinguishes pragmatism in this light from "metaphysics of disembodiment" (1992: 206). Exemplary of this is

James's emphasis on the importance of relevance to human life:

The whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what dif ference it will make to you and me, at definite instants of our life, if this world-formula or that world-formula be the one which is true. (1977: 379)

Further is Dewey's rejection of the assumption that reality is to be

identified with an object of knowledge and the "spectator theory of

knowledge" behind such assumptions (1925/1981: 30). The thought here

is that pragmatist naturalism places an emphasis on the situational

character of inquiry. The situation for inquiry is constituted partly by the

objective causal features of the world that give rise to a problem for an

organism. But additional components are the psychological and cultural

features of the human beings for which there are problems to solve. Sit

uations as situations depend not only on the arrangement of objects in the

world but also on the existential character of the agent thrust amongst them. What will be a problem, what solutions will be viable, what pat terns of inquiry will be appealing depends in part on for whom they are

problems and solutions. It is in this situational confluence of factors that

doubts, questions, and inquiry arise for humans.5

Dewey's humanist naturalism is exemplary. Dewey's explicit argu ments regarding a variety of topics from theology to logic are that

inquirers should limit studies to creative human intelligence and use sci

entific explanations and techniques in those inquiries.6 The methodo

logical requirement for Dewey's analyses and investigations is that

humans are continuous with nature. We may be able to manipulate and

sometimes control portions of the natural world; we are nevertheless in

and of it. Dewey holds that human life is bound up in the processes of

nature, and that human knowledge is something that arises as a natural

phenomenon (1907/1977). The proper attitude of philosophy, then, is the

scientific study of such processes - how human striving arises, its condi

tions for success, and the incidents and causes of its failure. Importantly

320 SCOTT F. AIKIN

the naturalistic requirement further stands as reproof to super-(or anti-) naturalist escapism in the form of humanism, for if we merely reflect on

the theological or metaphysical components of human life without their

natural world correlates and causes, we are merely on intellectual holiday, as there are no clear causal or material ties between what we are con

ceiving and the world around us. Naturalist research programs require that we investigate not only values, but their genesis and means for their

refinement and preservation. As a consequence of this connection between naturalism and

humanism, there is a reciprocal investment between pragmatism and

the human sciences. On the one hand, pragmatism's very method is

posited on fixing belief and policy by the best scientific means, and in

the case of deliberation about human norms and their features,

sociological and anthropological research is indispensable. This, of

course, is on the assumption that research in these fields is continuous

with that in the natural sciences, and there very well may be programs within the social sciences that are decidedly anti-naturalistic. However, it is unclear why many must be so, since empirical research is the

primary source of justification in social science. The acknowledged

qualitative difference between the data in social and natural sciences

does not amount to a break in the continuity between the two pro

grams. On the other hand, pragmatic philosophy offers grounding and

vocabulary of purpose for the sciences. Pragmatic philosophy functions as the reflexive, methodological, and deliberative face of the sciences,

where the goals of inquiry can be articulated. Pragmatic philosophy is not above the sciences, but is a branch of scientific reflection contin uous with the rest of the scientific program.

Given the humanistic emphasis in pragmatism, it is not difficult to

see how other humanistic traditions are taken to be relevant to research

in pragmatism. An important tradition has been phenomenology. Ed

mund Husserl says his phenomenological method will yield an account

of spirit (1965b: 149). The early Martin Heidegger promises a theory of

human being (1927: 53). Maurice Merleau-Ponty wants to capture a

"truly embodied approach to the world."7 These are very promising and potentially fruitful topics to the pragmatist-humanist.8

The question here is whether this relevance to pragmatism's humanism is undercut by a methodological inconsistency: Even though the conclusions of and within the phenomenological tradition are rel evant to pragmatism's humanism, they may not be consistent with

pragmatism's other naturalistic commitments.


Naturalism, Talking about What's Not, and Psychologism

Naturalism and philosophy have a spotty history that is due primarily to

two simple problems. A version of the first goes as follows: Perhaps

you've heard of Pegasus, Bellerophon's flying horse. Pegasus doesn't

exist, so how can we hear about him and all the flying he does? If he

doesn't exist, then we hear about nothing, right? But we do hear about

something: it's just something that just happens to be a nothing. It seems we

have a quandary. It's the old problem of talking about what's not, which

now-a-days gets called the problem of "non-referring terms" or "empty

concepts."

Now, if naturalism's ontological and epistemological commitments

obtain, we have a serious problem, since the only relations that really are

are causal ones. Thinking about something that doesn't (and never did) exist isn't a causal relation, since things that don't exist can't be causes or

effects. Classic responses to the problem, then, have been anti-naturalistic

in the ontological vein, in that some set of non-natural objects (ideas,

possibilities, non-existing objects...) gets posited. This platonism finds its

paradigmatic form in the works of Franz Brentano (1874) and his student

Alexius Meinong (1904). Brentano and Meinong reasoned that since the

aboutness (or intentionality) of an idea is always an about-something, and

somethings require real objects to really be somethings, there is an object that is Pegasus, just not an actually existing one. The problem, though, is

that the realm of all these real-but-not-actually-existing objects gets

overpopulated pretty quickly. Ockham's razor is as good as a butterknife

with this thicket.

Brentano and Meinong's platonistic move here spawned two

movements that strove to save the platonism from the overgrowth. The

first was the Fregean tradition, in which the sense-reference distinction

drastically reduces the need for objects by allowing (a presumably limited set of) senses to mediate reference. The second was the

Husserlian phenomenological tradition. For the phenomenological

tradition, a commitment to referential objects is held at bay (namely, with the epoch?) so that meanings may be analyzed independently. In

both cases, meaning and reference are peeled apart, and the former

becomes the key to the latter. Inquiry into meaning for both of these

traditions is purely a form of a priori conceptual analysis, in which we

clarify the meanings of our terms prior to any empirical research or

work on finding the referents to any of our signs. Further, as a con

sequence of the ontological shift, we have a corollary epistemic shift to

a priorism - we ask ourselves what we are looking for in the world

before we go looking.

322 SCOTT F. AIKIN

The non-referring terms problem has a close cousin in the Fregean and

Husserlian resistance to psychologism. If the psychological laws of

thought determine the validity of the laws of logic and mathematics, then

the modal status and normativity of those laws are in jeopardy. The laws

of logic and mathematics, it is thought, are necessary: they obtain

regardless of which possible world we are talking about. But psycholog ical laws are deeply contingent: our patterns of inference and association

might have been different had some otherwise insignificant feature of the world been different. Further, given that these laws are about right rea

soning, the details of how we may fail to instantiate such reasoning should

be irrelevant to those norms.9 Both the Fregean and Husserlian research

programs are devoted to (a) preserving the modal and normative char acter of those laws and also to (b) some feature of the norms animating our lives: The meanings of our categories are conditions for experience, and as such, must logically precede experience.10 In this respect, the truths

of logic and mathematics do not depend on facts in this world. As a

consequence, both the Husserlian and Fregean traditions are at odds with

naturalism.11

The Standing Argument

What one may call the standing argument among many pragmatists is that the Fregean tradition's platonism is inconsistent with pragmatism's nat

uralism. The argument generally runs that the Fregean platonist strategy in semantics requires a break with at least epistemic (and in some cases,

ontological) naturalism, in that we must appeal to our a priori intuitions to theorize about abstracta, such as senses or logical relations (since they, too, have no causal properties). Pragmatist Fregeans have hidden such

breaks, but insufficiently, since they are easily detected in the kinds of

"Cartesian Dilemmas" they produce.

Joseph Margolis (2002b) has a compelling version of the argument.

Margolis takes Wilfrid Sellars (1963), Richard Rorty (1998), John McDowell (1996), and Robert Brandom (1994 and 2000) to be the central

figures of this Fregean Pragmatist tradition. From this, Margolis argues:

[I]f John Dewey ... is the paradigmatic specimen of a philosophical pragmatist, then neither Frege, nor Sellars (or indeed Donald

Davidson or Richard Rorty or Robert Brandom) can be proper pragmatists, since they all oppose as forcefully as possible any Dar winian account of concepts

- essential to Dewey's conception of

pragmatism (2002b: 118 emphasis in original).


Because Dewey is (at least here) the paradigmatic specimen, it follows

that the Fregean tradition is inconsistent with pragmatism. They may be

pragmatic in the philosophy of language sense, but they are not pragmatic in the classical American philosophy sense, and that's what counts here.

Margolis argues that the markers of the Fregean tradition that make it

inconsistent are specifically its "top down" method that requires us to

take successful linguistic practice as a marker of and model for inten

tionality. (These are explicit commitments in Sellars (1963) and Brandom

(1994).) Because such phenomena of linguistic practice are limited pretty much to us humans, there is a sharp drop-off between us and non-lin

guistic things, such as dogs, cats, raccoons, and muskrats. Margolis believes that the Darwinian naturalist story is one that is gradualistic, so

the sharp drop-off is unacceptable.12 So long as Deweyan naturalism is a

gradualism, the argument goes through.

Phenomenology and Anti-naturalism

The Husserlian tradition was born of the same anti-naturalistic semantics

as the Fregean. Moreover, this anti-naturalism was further bolstered by the thought that naturalism is inconsistent with humanism. The human

istic thought is simply that natural scientific research cannot reveal what is

essential about the human condition, since it is epistemologically limited, and valuationally neutral. As such, many sociological and philosophical

worries are stirred: namely, that the method risks nihilism (Bonner, 2001).

Moreover, such research will invariably suffer from the same psycholo

gism facing naturalism about logic: The question will be whether the norms and values really are what any scientific program would say they are. The epistemic limitation is simply that empirical research has pur

ported blindspots, where some crucial feature of human life may escape detection and reflection. A common argument for this is simply in terms

of the difference between empirical data, which requires quantifiability, and the irreducible qualitative aspects of our lives. Imagine psychological tests requiring the quantification of our passion for our loved ones, or a

normative program in aesthetics based on the cognitive psychology of art

appreciation. The psychologism worry, then, is a challenge to the rele

vance of the data concerning properties of things people take to be

valuable to the things' real value. Perhaps these are bugbears and straw

men, but these are the kinds of things that drive many humanists from

naturalistic research programs. Husserl's phenomenology was itself motivated as a critique of natural

science's pretensions to provide a neutral method and metaphysics.

324 SCOTT F. AIKIN

Husserl said early on that "Science is impersonal. Its collaborator

requires not wisdom, but theoretical talent" (1910-1 l/1965a: 144). Behind this remark lies an old distinction between the notion of a wise

humanism and a science driven by a knack for algorithms and tools.

Husserl later insisted that we philosophers must "turn our gaze from

man's body to his spirit" in order to understand what troubles humans

face (1936/1965b: 49), and he was explicit that "philosophy must

overcome naturalism, or else fall into a barbarism and hatred for all

life" (1936/1965b: 192).13 The extensions of the classical Husserlian phenomenological tradition

are equally anti-naturalistic, and for the same two semantic and anti

psychologistic reasons. Martin Heidegger's early anti-naturalism is clear

in Being and Time (1927/1996), where he argues (i) natural science cannot

capture the 'thingliness" of things (63), (ii) that scientific understanding is

part of the standing prejudice that prevents the authentic asking of the

question of being (4), and (iii) that the features of human being essential

to it are accessible only to humans who reflect in certain ways (that don't

involve lab experiments) (50). In Introduction to Metaphysics, he is explicit about naturalism's semantic failings:

It is perfectly true that we cannot talk about nothing, as though it were a thing like the rain outside or a mountain or any object whatsoever. In principle, nothingness remains inaccessible to sci ence. The man who truly wishes to speak about nothing must of

necessity become unscientific. But this is a misfortune only so long as one supposes that scientific thinking is the only authentic rigor ous thought, and that it alone can and must be made into the stan dard of philosophical thinking. But the reverse is true. (1953: 21)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty's extension of the Husserlian program is simi

larly anti-naturalistic. In Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty

explicitly adopts the same semantic and humanistic lines of argument:

How significance and intentionality could come to dwell in molecu lar edifices of cells is a thing that can never be made comprehensi

ble.... But there is, in any case, no question of any such absurd

undertaking. It is simply that the question of recognizing the body as a chemical structure or agglomeration of tissues, is formed by a

process of impoverishment from a primordial-body-for-us. (1998: 350)

That is, in naturalistic descriptions of meaning, we not only do damage to

those structures as structures of meaning (in that it becomes unclear how

they mean), but we also strip them of meaning altogether (in that they no

longer are intentional). The mind, intentionality, our structures of


meaning must be understood from the inside. Humanism, as it were, is

only for humans, not for naturalists.

Jean-Paul Sartre's existential phenomenology, too, is explicitly anti

naturalistic, particularly with regard to the epistemology of being in Being and Nothingness. His argument runs that Being is the condition for all

revelation, so as a consequence, the being of phenomena cannot be re

duced to the phenomena of being. That is, "the being of the phenomenon,

although coextensive with the phenomenon, can not be subject to the

phenomenal condition" (1956: 9). As a consequence, any a posteriori research into value, essence, or justice will be not only insufficient, but

irrelevant. Moreover, there is the weak idealism that Sartre thinks is a

corollary of the phenomenological method. He agrees that the in-itself

and the for-itself are different modalities of being (as naturalists would

argue), but he turns the dependence relations around. Instead of the

naturalist's move (for-itself depends on in-itself), Sartre argues that the in

itself is conceptually bound to the for-itself; that without the for-itself, the

in-itself is only an abstraction.14

Emmanuel Levinas's ethico-phenomenology is posited on a similar

anti-naturalistic semantics. We can see this clearly in what he, ironically

enough, calls "amphibiology" (1981: 38-39). The presence of the term

"biology" would seem welcoming to naturalist interpretation, but the term refers to the syntax of terms describing lived states. Our lived states

can be described as both active and passive (so, "amphibiology" means

two ways of talking about life). This Levinasian thesis is derived from the

tautology of "apophantic" predication, that is, saying a property of a

thing is also a case of that thing having that property. So: redness red

dens, sound resounds, loudness loudens, greed makes you greedy, etc.

When it comes to living things, lovers love, players play, teachers teach, Socrates Socratizes. And it's here that when we reflect on these state

ments, we see that they, though tautologies, mean something more than

their trivial truths. They are not just trivially true, but true in a deep sense, in that they reveal something about the properties named. What they reveal Levinas doesn't say, but whatever is shown is inaccessible to the

naturalist semantics, since the naturalist's perspective takes such state

ments to be tautologies. If the terms are logically co-extensive (as redu

plicated terms are), how could reduplication be informative? That is, the

naturalist would run the following dilemma with apophantic predication: either the statement is empirically justifiable or it is a priori justifiable. If it is empirically justifiable, it cannot be truly apophantic, because the

reduplicated terms would have to mean different things. If the statement

is a priori, it must be a tautology, because statements like "Socrates

socratizes," if a priori, can only mean that Socrates is identical to himself.

326 SCOTT F. AIKIN

But, phenomenologists contend, especially under the condition of eidetic

analysis, something important is left out. Insofar as subjects are considered

solely in tenns of their corporeality, they are always considered from the

perspective of their passivity (since our corporeality is our medium of

vulnerability to one another). Lovers may love, and pains may pain, but

the naturalistic perspective can attend only to the lovers, not their love; to

the pains, but not their feelings of pain. Something is left out, and for

Levinas this is unacceptable. The naturalists's second alternative is to see

the statements as tautologies, but this renders them without meaning. The

phenomenological perspective is that one is saying something about the

nature of lovers by saying that they love, and this is not renderable by

tautologies. The essences are jettisoned, and from the phenomenological

perspective, this is all for the worse for the intelligibility of science and

human culture. Naturalism requires that we view our bodies and practices from outside, and by doing that, we render them uninhabitable or

unrecognizable from the phenomenological perspective. The bottom line: the phenomenological tradition tracing its method

ological roots to Husserl's solution to Brentano's bloated platonism is

anti-naturalistic. This move is taken by phenomenologists not only for

semantic reasons, but also because it is thought that humanism properly must be anti-naturalistic.

The Dilemma

The dilemma for pragmatist-phenomenologists is one derived from the

standing argument. Margolis captured it as a conditional: If Dewey's

evolutionary pragmatism is the gold standard for pragmatisms, then

Fregean pragmatism is not really a pragmatism. According to the anti

naturalism evident in the phenomenological tradition, the same condi

tional can be applied to Husserlian pragmatisms: if Dewey's evolutionary

pragmatism is pragmatism's gold standard, then Husserlian pragmatism is

not really pragmatism.

By "Husserlian pragmatism," I mean the philosophical current posited on the thought that pragmatism may appropriate the methods and con

clusions of the phenomenological tradition. The current is wide and has

many instantiations. These are exemplary:

Wilshire (1977: 54): "Pragmatism and phenomenology should be

seen as mutually assisting philosophical efforts...."

Rosenthal (1990: 7): "What grounds the human way of being, what

lets the horizon be, is not something other than the horizon, but


rather the horizon emerges as this ground enters into the disclosive

activity of the human. That which regions both reveals and

conceals. As the side facing us, as horizon, it reveals, but even as it

reveals, it conceals, for it is not exhausted in its horizonal relation

to the human."

Colapeitro (1990: 644): "[I]t seems necessary to translate some of

the key figures in contemporary French thought into a more prag matic idiom."

Bourgeois (1996a, b: 381): "[I]f pragmatism's quasi-phenomenolog ical derivation of the essential dimension of cognition... is at all

tenable, then its findings must bring into focus a schema of cogni tion in common with phenomenology's attempts to derive essential

dimensions of cognition in consciousness and in existence, thus

making an overlap obvious."

Sullivan (2002: 203) "... Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology is so

close to both Dewey's pragmatism and to my development of prag matist feminism..."15

Since the standing argument is run from a conditional, we are on the

horns of a dilemma:

Either (a),

we must deny the antecedent, and thereby deny the deep connec tion between pragmatism and naturalism, or (b), we must accept that research done in both the Fregean and the Husserlian tradi tions is inconsistent with the pragmatist program.

I will hasten to point out here that the standing argument is often taken to

be a reason to ignore Fregean work.16 If that is the case, those that ignore the Fregean tradition but appropriate the work of the Husserlian tradi

tion are being flatly inconsistent.17

Let me point out a few dangers. If we deny the antecedent of the

conditional, we may get off the hook with having to tell Kestenbaum,

Rosenthal, Sullivan, Wilshire and the lot that they are inconsistent, and

we may even abjure a lingering commitment to an essence to pragmatism

(that essence being naturalism). But doing so makes the pragmatic method of inquiry inscrutable. How can the Peircian rejection of intui

tionism make sense but against the backdrop of a naturalistic structure of

inquiry? How can Dewey's denial of the culture-nature distinction make

sense? How can the Jamesian metaphilosophy of tough and tender

mindedness have any philosophical bite? Surely, if pragmatist strategies were read as consistent with dualist or transcendental commitments, then

328 SCOTT F. AIKIN

they would lose their force entirely. I propose that if we deny naturalism's

centrality to pragmatism, pragmatism itself becomes unintelligible. That is high price to pay for anti-essentialism, to be sure.18

If we accept the conditional and its antecedent, then we find a meth

odological isolation follows. Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and all

may be interesting, but that does not make them relevant to genuinely naturalist research programs. They may even be humanistic and deep, but that does not make their conclusions and arguments available to the naturalist pragmatist. And this is not just a problem for pragmatists. It is a serious issue for all naturalists. For the scrupulous naturalist, such

conclusions are ill-gotten gains. The phenomenologist's appeals to the

"meanings" of inner feelings, intuitions about their anxieties, the what

it's-like-to-X can have no epistemic weight for the naturalist beyond being verbal reports of current experiential or other mental states.19

The Dilemma is not False

It is often said in pragmatist circles that dilemmas in philosophy derive from false oppositions. That may be true for a majority of dilemmas, but I am unsure that this tactic will get us out of the tight spot we face here.

There are two ways to make the case that the dilemma is false. The first

strategy is to "naturalize" the phenomenological method, to make phe

nomenology more like or an extension of a natural science. The second is to make naturalism more amenable to phenomenology, to make natu

ralism "ontological." I will call the former "naturalized phenomenology" (NP), and the latter "phenomenologized naturalism" (PN). Neither is

effective in avoiding the dilemma.

NP has aprima facie plausibility to it, given the weight Merleau-Ponty gives to his psychological research for establishing philosophical points. For example, take all the data on Schneider used in the account of

embodied sexual subjectivity (1998: 155-160). Naturalist premisses are

used to yield an account of the structure of being. Most phenomenologists used thought-experiments, but Merleau-Ponty used experiments.20

The basic strategy for the naturalized phenomenologist is to argue the

following: The conceptual autonomy of first-personal reflection entails

treating our understanding of ourselves as a distinctive starting point that cannot be reduced to causal relations. Without this self-understanding, a

cognitive science would be incomplete. For example, when we explain a

perceptual experience, we must do so not just on the basis of a causal

psychological analysis, but also on the basis of our lived encounters in the world. An account of perception without the perspective of the perceiving


subject is incomplete. These two styles of understanding can be brought into a reflective equilibrium or mutual accommodation. Thereby, phe

nomenology is naturalized.21 By extension, it is not just the psychology of

perception that is naturalized, but also the lived experience of value,

alienation, politics, and language use. Our first person accounts of all of

them are brought under consideration in sociological, political, linguistic, and anthropological arguments.22 A naturalized phenomenological research program is one that seems beyond question in many discussions

in the social sciences, and is one that seems to dominate a good deal of the

current discussion.

But the argument and the program are based on an equivocation. What is saved as "phenomenology" is no longer a philosophical strategy

or method but the simple requirement that experiments involving Necker

cubes, duck-rabbits, or blind-spot demonstrations (first person reports,

all) are relevant to cognitive science and the enterprise of the study of

mind. If how things seem to subjects is relevant to cognitive science, and if

subjects must report those things by reflecting on them, then there should

be room for that kind of data. The contents to which the method is put are

saved, but the strategy of philosophical inquiry is no longer on the table.23 How that saves phenomenology as a philosophical method is unclear. There

is a long way between the methodological commitment to asking subjects how things seem to them and the phenomenological theory of appear ances. The relevance of the former to natural science does not necessarily

make the latter relevant. That is to say that phenomenology has become, instead of the irreducible starting point for inquiry, a means of eliciting verbal reports from subjects under circumstances already known to have a certain kind of representation associated with it.24 This is certainly no

longer a philosophical version of phenomenology. A second problem looms for NP. Subjecting phenomenological con

clusions to causal explanation (on the assumption that events in con

sciousness are explained by lower-level phenomena) contravenes the

central phenomenological tenet that consciousness is irreducible. To the

phenomenologist, to use anything but consciousness as the primary

explainer smacks of reductionism. If such explanations obtain, then the

question would be why start with consciousness at all? If phenomenology is integrated with the explanatory framework for which all properties are

continuous with those studied by the natural sciences, then the primacy of

consciousness is surrendered. At best, it would be one starting point among many. At worst, if the functional systems of the brain explain the

structure of consciousness revealed in experience, then consciousness

explains nothing by itself. As a consequence, phenomenology would be no different from other current strategies for surveying first-person

330 SCOTT F. AIKIN

experience for explanation. This is certainly a form of naturalism, but I

would hardly call it phenomenological.

Alternately, phenomenological naturalism (PN) is the strategy of un

naturalizing naturalism by reducing scientific and causal-explanatory contents to their phenomenological grounds.25 Versions of this strategy abound. The following are exemplary:

"When one turns to lived experience, one comes to see that though man emerges from nature as a unique part of nature which has the

ability to know... nature for man is constituted by a system of mean

ings" (Bourgeois and Rosenthal, 1979: 331 emphasis added). "In terms of such [transcendental principles of conceptualization], the laws established in a particular science, say (Newtonian) phys

ics, could then be interpreted as regulative principles, i.e., as state

ments of the necessary conditions of the possibility of a particular

conceptualization and objectification of reality which is in the pro cess of being accomplished in a particular sciences." (Siegfried, 1988: 506).

"Nature in its indefinite richness is the foundation for our everyday

worldly natural environment, nature as a system of scientific events

and objects is a reflective abstraction from it/' (Rosenthal, 1990: 3

emphasis added). "The truth of the claim that nature simply is nature as experienced is demonstrated precisely by the world, the world we know and see

all around us. This is the world of experience - and none other."

(Toadvine, 1999: 126).

"Suitably developed, Husserlian, Heideggerian, or Merleau-Pont

yan approaches in phenomenology can accept almost everything the naturalist claims... while restricting those claims to their proper

area, the region of science, which is (transcendentally) grounded on

the more basic region of human bodily experience within what

Husserl called the "lifeworld." (Philstr?m, 2002: 106).26

Given that naturalism is re-defined as a form of abstraction from the life

world, it follows that naturalist method is consistent with phenomeno

logical method, because "naturalism" really means "the phenomenolog ical component of doing science."

But this will not do for two reasons. First, such a method undoes the

naturalist's strategy of explanation, for which features of the social,

psychological, or political have causal explanations. Consequently, such a

naturalism would be one in name only, because its explanations are in

verted (teleology takes the place of causal explanation). Naturalism has


strong materialist-realist ties, and this move makes naturalism strongly resemble idealism.27

Second, it is unclear how a phenomenology of scientific practice re

duces or somehow takes the place of scientific explanation. Cognitive science may be an abstraction from the life world, but it does not follow

from that fact that it is consistent with (or entails) a philosophical method

of analyzing the lifeworld. Moreover, there are many philosophers and

scientists who deny that the natural sciences have this kind of dependence. How, say, does contemporary physics resemble or depend on folk phys

ics, or contemporary astronomy, folk astronomy?28 Nowadays, pretty much in no way. But even were this dependence correct, it would not

imply that phenomenology captures the essence of scientific theories or

methods. The fact that, say, James Watson and Francis Crick's theory of

the structure of DNA arose from circumstances recounted in The Double

Helix does not imply that the theories are expressions of (or entail, or are

materially related to) the scientists' desire for glory, nor does it mean that

the theory is clarified or explained by a phenomenology of ambition.29

But PN requires that it does (remember, it's got to be articulable in terms

of the lived activities of scientists), and that's just a muddle.30

My preceding argument may misconstrue the broader phenomeno

logical strategy, as the analysis of the natural sciences from the phe

nomenological perspective may have two forms - one from the first

person phenomenal perspective, and another from the transcendental

phenomenological perspective. I have shown that the strategy of under

standing naturalism from the perspective of the consciousness of natu

ralists is no way of continuing a naturalist outlook. However, the

transcendental phenomenological perspective on naturalism is not tou

ched by the argument. Husserl's account of the condition for natural

science makes no reference to the specifics of any one subject's con

sciousness, but rather to the original possibility for the transformation of

phenomena (1965a: 85). Here, the question is how it is possible that things in the life world can be theorized, abstracted, and investigated.31

But, again, the move is to replace naturalism with a phenomenological account of the possibility of natural science. A philosophical argument for the foundation of the sciences itself is not one of or continuous with

the sciences, and it seems, it itself is not something that the sciences could

overturn or bring into question. Something that grounds the sciences or

serves as their foundations cannot itself be one of the sciences on pain of

vicious circularity. This is precisely the motive behind the phenomeno

logical strategy of having a theory of science, since ex hypothesi, the

sciences cannot account for their possibility. Phenomenology, here, is a

method of revealing primitive facts from which the sciences proceed

332 SCOTT F. AIKIN

according to their own logics. Phenomenology is necessary, because

without it the sciences would be unintelligible. They would be actions

without explanation or intelligence. Without the transcendental ground

ing, the sciences would be incomplete. At worst, they would be distortions

of the proper method of inquiry (as the psychologism objection holds). So

on the one hand, phenomenology must take naturalism and the sciences

that constitute naturalism as its subject matter. And on the other hand, naturalism needs transcendental phenomenology for it to be intelligible.32 But surely a methodologically idealistic foundation for natural science is

itself no naturalistic philosophical attitude. This would be a confusion of a philosophy of science with a science. The most this strategy can yield, then, is another phenomenological argument along side of (if not against) naturalism, not a PN.

A Deeper Issue Lurks Here

Insofar as pragmatists are naturalists, pragmatists cannot make use of the

conclusions derived from the Fregean or Husserlian traditions. If prag matists deny their naturalism, their own pragmatist tradition crumbles

into unintelligibility. If pragmatists remain naturalists, then they must be

methodologically removed from the Fregean and Husserlian traditions.

For the most part, pragmatism's removal from the Fregean tradition is

almost complete. John McDowell and Robert Brandom (Margolis' earlier

examples) are players in non-classically pragmatic philosophical circles, not in the current classical pragmatist conversation. But the hot and

heavy flirtation between pragmatists and phenomenologists continues.

Recent attempts to duck the dilemma have failed: if pragmatists natu

ralize their phenomenology, they retain the aspects of phenomenology relevant to natural science, not the philosophical method; and if prag

matists phenomenologize their naturalism, they forego the causal objec tive in naturalist explanation.

I propose that a deeper issue lurks here. If pragmatism is a humanist

naturalism and if phenomenologists are right that humanism and natu

ralism are inconsistent, then a contradiction lies at the heart of the

pragmatist program. But that follows insofar as the phenomenologists are

right, and I am unsure of whether they are.

First, naturalism is not necessarily the strong reductionism phenom

enologists take it to be. Sidney Hook, for example, in "Naturalism and

First Principles" outlines a clear pragmatic humanism on anti-reduc

tionist naturalist grounds (1961b: 63). Moreover, many non-pragmatist naturalists have non-reductive stories: take Jerry Fodor on beliefs (1975),


Ruth Millikan on norms (1993), John Post on value (1987). Neither

pragmatist naturalism nor naturalism simpliciter is necessarily reduc

tionist in a way that implies elimination, so the phenomenologists merely

flog straw men and frighten themselves with stories of bugbears when

they speak of anti-humanist naturalists. Whether there is any need for

phenomenological method in the wake of anti-reductionist naturalism is

an open question. Certainly the singular primacy of reflection on the

nature of consciousness must be surrendered, but it is unclear whether

this would completely undo phenomenological method or the conclusions

it yields. The issue whether phenomenology and the natural sciences have

genuine possibilities of reconcilement at all remains open. I've argued here that reconciliation between the two programs ends with the sub

stantive elimination of one: either phenomenology is made philosophi

cally impotent in its service to the sciences or the sciences are

de-naturalized by their phenomenological appropriations. The human

sciences, those devoted to studying the norms of human life and

exchange, are on the wedge here, too. Surely, the study of linguistic

pragmatics relies on the priority of our first-person take on the meaning and place of certain speech acts, and the philosophical anthropologies of

the variety of human actions also regularly rely on that same priority. The

question is whether that priority is irreducible or whether it is one starting

point among many in the area. It seems, from the logic of the situation

with pragmatism, that phenomenological programs in the social and

human sciences face a similar dilemma.

Second, the thought that pragmatism is incapable of a complete humanism is a close cousin to the long-standing thought that pragmatists have no sense for tragedy. Pie-eyed Pollyanna is the Pragmatist, or so the

story goes. But this is simply inaccurate about the spirit of pragmatism. Meliorism does not a Pollyanna make. Sidney Hook (2002) is paradig matic of the pragmatist tradition's appreciation of the deep valuational

tensions in tragedy; his meliorism is an explicit account of how prag matism is an approach that not only dissolves false disagreement but is a

method of understanding real moral and political disagreement. In these

contexts, pragmatism is a medium for understanding the tragic aspects of

our lives, and meliorism makes sense only when we understand that it is a

response to the tragic (2002: 88). In fact, pragmatic meliorism, instead of

hiding from the tragic, is the only thing that makes sense in the face of the

tragic.

My worry is that pragmatists often turn their backs on their naturalist

method because they may think it insufficiently deep or dark or heavy when it comes to moments of deep value conflict, and a complete humanism needs those components. Further, other naturalists may feel

334 SCOTT F. AIKIN

the same tug from the phenomenological tradition. But those thoughts are simply wrong. Moreover, they lead us to philosophical alliances that

simply should not be. In fact, given the phenomenological tradition's

arguments, it seems that pragmatists (particularly those intimate with the

phenomenological tradition) have a task before them: either fashion a

new pragmatism no longer devoted to inquiry continuous with natural

science, or answer the traditional phenomenological criticisms of natu

ralism. I, most certainly, prefer the latter.

Acknowledgements

Thanks go to Charlie Hobbs, Jeffrey Jackson, Lenore Langsdorf,

Joseph Margolis, Marc Freumont-Meurice, David Roberts, Aaron Sim

mons, Robert Talisse, the audience at the 2002 meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, and the anonymous reviewers at Human Studies for comments on earlier drafts of this

paper.

Notes

1. See Victor Kestenbaum (1977), Bruce Wilshire (1997), John McDermott (1986), James Edie (1987), Sandra Rosenthal (1990 and 1996), Vincent Colapeitro (1990), Patrick Bourgeois (1996a, b), John Stuhr (1997), Thomas Jeannot (2001), Shannon Sullivan (2002), and Charles Hobbs (2003).

2. See W.V.O. Quine's "Epistemology Naturalized" (1969) for an outline of the rel

evances. For recent pragmatist versions of the commitment, see: Murphy (1993:

157), Baeten (1996: 413)7Rosenthal (1996: 200), and Capps (1996: 635; 2000: 161). 3. For pragmatist endorsements of this component of naturalism, see: Dewey (1925/

1981: 18), Randall (1944: 357), Buchler (1990), Baeten (1996: 409), Margolis (1999: 226), and Rosenbaum (2002: 66).

4. For explicit versions of this two-part account of naturalism, see Plotkin (1998: 88)

and Kim (1993). 5. See: Dewey's Logic: The Theory of Inquiry and also Peirce's claim that desire creates

classes (CP 1.205). See also: Rosenthal (1990 and 1996), Murphy (1993), and Capps (1996).

6. See, for example, A Common Faith, which is an explicitly naturalist interpretation of

religious language, or his genealogy of philosophy in The Quest for Certainty. 7. Langer (1989: xi). 8. The commitment here to "humanism" should be read as a term stipulated to denote

a methodological commitment to research relevant to the human perspective.

Importantly, this is a different notion from the "humanism" criticized by the

phenomenologists and post-structuralists.


9. For example, modus tollens is valid and should constrain us, even if we, as a species, are inconsistently capable of following it as a rule of inference. See the Wason

selection task as a case where even well-educated people are inconsistent at applying and following what they recognize as right rules of reason (Wason and Johnson

Laird, 1972).

10. See Husserl (1970: 98) for the contrast in epistemic as opposed to modal terms.

Further, see Husserl's distinction between Gegenstand, so wie intendert ist (objects as

intended) and Gegenstand, welcher intendiert ist (the objects intended) (104). The

point there is to contrast those objects dependent on intentionality and those

independent in character. See Dougherty (1979) for an extended discussion of

Husserl's anti-psychologism. 11. Phenomenology was particularly posited on addressing what seems, from the

humanist perspective, the inevitable consequence of psychologism: reason's alien

ation from itself. For Husserl, the only way to keep this problem at bay was to reject naturalism. (1965a: 79). See Busch (1979) for a discussion of the connection between

anti-psychologism and humanism for the phenomenological tradition.

12. I am unsure how important gradualism is to a Darwinian theory of minds.

Moreover, I am very sure that any evolutionary theory that downplays the tre

mendous difference between our speech acts and the barking of dogs is equally

irresponsible. Daniel Dennett (1991, 1995) and Stephen Jay Gould (1983) are nat

uralists who abjure gradualism and moreover emphasize the important differences

between human and other animal intentionality, so perhaps the gradualism is to

blame here for Margolis' argument. However, the larger issues still rule the day in

that the Fregean tradition's attitude toward intentionality (which finds its way into

the analysis of speech acts as paradigmatic) still risks running afoul of naturalism.

13. See Heelan (1983: 208) for a discussion of the wider phenomenological suspicion of

"scientific barbarism."

14. Sartre's ontology is posited on the distinction between two kinds of existents -

subjective conscious being and the being of phenomena. The former's being is one

that is for-itself, in that consciousness not only points to what it is consciousness-of,

but it also points to itself as the actuality of consciousness. The latter's being is in

itself, in that phenomena are nothing more than themselves. Sartre's idealism is

weak in the sense the phenomenon of the in-itself is a conceptual dependent on the

for-itself, but its being is not. Strong idealism would require that the being of the in

itself also be dependent. 15. For further examples, see: Kestenbaum (1977), McDermott (1986: 14), Edie (1987:

24), Rosenthal (1996), Stuhr (1997: 72; 182), Wilshire (1997: 99), Jeannot (2001: 1

2), and Sontag (2002: 60). 16. Moreover, sociologically, it seems that a majority of scholars of classical phe

nomenology and its contemporary proponents see naturalism as something anathema: see a (relatively) recent issue of Research in Phenomenology devoted to

"the future of phenomenology" (2000, volume 30). Not one article even mentions

cooperation or continuity with the natural sciences.

17. An earlier version of this argument can be found in Kessler (1978: 111): "While

Husserl's philosophy leads in the direction of the transcendental ego constituting the meaning of all experience, James's philosophy leads in the direction of the

body." 18. Equally surely, some (I won't name names) have embraced unintelligibility, but that

is a refutation in itself.

336 SCOTT F. AIKIN

19. For example, Hook's take on Heidegger's question of being in An Introduction to

Metaphysics (1961a: 147). A question for the naturalist: what inferences does the

heroic feeling we feel when doing ontology entitle?

20. Merleau-Ponty's uses of scientific results are often overlooked, given his critique of

the natural sciences. However, Spiegelberg (1965), Kessler (1978) and Bourgeois

(1996a and b) have noted the overlap. 21. See: V?rela et al. (1991), Thompson et al. (1999), Wood (2001) and Philstr?m

(2002). 22. Don Ihde (1986), Maxine Sheets-Johnstone (1999) and Evan Selinger (2004) pro

pose experimental phenomenology as an application of phenomenological analysis to various experiences in need of further explanation and investigation. These

experimental ph?nom?nologies then work in tandem with social scientific research

programs. A further extension of this outlook is Mauro Gr?n's (2003) proposal that

the connection between the sciences and phenomenology (especially a phenome

nology of Nature's Otherness) should yield not only results for the sciences, but also

for policy. 23. See Bourgeois (1996b: 389) for a similar distinction between the content of phe

nomenology and the phenomenological method. The point here is that NP only saves the former, not the latter. For a discussion of the philosophical price paid for

the restriction, see Zahavi (2004: 340): by abandoning the transcendental elements

of phenomenology, naturalization renders phenomenology philosophically impo

tent. Wood shares similar worries that such a strategy threatens to make phe

nomenology redundant (2001: 80).

24. The phenomenology left, then, would only be an account of experiences in empirical

consciousness, but no longer an account of the structures of subjectivity. Cf. Zahavi

(2004: 356) and Overgaard (2004: 371). 25. In essence, the strategy is a bit of philosophical turnabout-as-fair-play. From the

phenomenologist's perspective, the naturalist reduces the realm of appearances to

the natural world of causal relations. The phenomenologist returns the favor by

reducing the realm of the natural world to the realm of appearances.

26. For further recent versions of PN, see: Heelan (1983: 209-214), Rosenthal (1996:

401-403) Wilshire (1997: 99), and Margolis (1999: 230 and 2002a: 8). 27. Philstr?m (2002, 107) notes this consequence, and takes it to be a case for an

alternative to naturalism that is neo-Kantian, culturalistic, and transcendental in

spirit. Surely, then, this is no way to save naturalism. Wilshire, note, postively

embraces the mantle of idealism and seems willing to accept the consequences (1997:

99). 28. The difficulties of such reductions are noted in Kiesel (1997) and Str?ker (1997).

29. Anthony Steinbock criticizes the possibility of such a program as "idiosyncratic

phenomenology" (1997: 128).

30. It should be noted here that my argument proceeds from the phenomenological

naturalist premise that naturalism is a modification of the lifeworld and that sci

entific theories are articulable in terms of specific features of lived experience. The

question, then, is what features of lived experience are relevant for phenomeno

logical analysis of some theory or other. Surely the standards for relevance would

not simply be so lax that any feature of a theory's genesis is relevant (hence, the

problem of ambition), but it is hard to see how PN offers a principled restriction.

31. Harvey (1989: 43) notes that Husserl's account of science is not itself one of the

sciences, but rather lays the philosophical foundation for science.


32. See Harvey (1989: 225): "[W]ithout naturalistic realism, transcendental phenome

nology is empty and without initial subject matter, while without a transcendental

phenomenological idealism, naturalistic realism is blind, absurd, and depleted of

meaning."

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