Naturalism in Scandinavian and American Realism: Similarities and Differences

In this article, I argue (i) that the realism espoused by the American realists and the Scandinavian realists alike is to be understood as a commitment to naturalism, conceived of as the ontological claim that everything is composed of natural entities whose properties determine all the properties of whatever it is that exists, or as the methodological (or epistemological) claim that the methods of justification and explanation in philosophy must, as they say, be continuous with those in the sciences, or as the semantic claim that scientifically acceptable concepts must be analyzable in terms of natural entities.[1] I also argue (ii) that the Scandinavians and the Americans were more alike, philosophically and legally speaking, than one might have thought. For, as we shall see, even though the Scandinavians were primarily semantic and ontological naturalists, and the Americans were mainly methodological naturalists, two of the Scandinavians (Lundstedt and Ross) also embraced methodological naturalism and some of the Americans (Holmes, Cook, and Cohen) also accepted semantic (and, it seems, ontological) naturalism; and even though the Scandinavians were primarily interested in the analysis of fundamental legal concepts, and the Americans were mainly interested in the study of adjudication, some of the Americans were also interested in the analysis of fundamental legal concepts. Furthermore, I suggest (iii) that the commitments to different types of naturalism on the part of these thinkers – both individually and collectively – may explain their respective choice of primary study-object, viz. fundamental legal concepts and adjudication, respectively. Finally, I argue (iv) that the modest version of conceptual analysis practiced by the Scandinavians and some of the Americans does not contradict their naturalism.