Full Naturalism: The Objectivity of Subjective Points of View

Abstract In this article, I provide an account that rejects the claim that there is a fundamental dichotomy between our subjective mental domain and the objective external world. I will work with the premise that both belong to a single cohering set of natural processes, following what I will call full naturalism. Full naturalism accepts that subjective mental phenomena are intrinsically natural phenomena. This includes any epistemological repercussions for naturalism itself, which becomes partly dependent on subjective points of view. The article will apply the notion of full naturalism to an influential view within the cognitive and neurosciences, which I call conceptual dualism. Though this view accepts naturalism, it maintains a conceptual separation between a mental and a natural domain. In contrast, I develop an interpretation where subjective points of view and their worlds become extended, intertwined configurations. Some relevant ideas can be derived from fields like phenomenology. However, to develop this more in the direction of full naturalism, I discuss an approach to early animal evolution that provides a way to understand such intertwining processes at a more basic level. In this way, having a subjective point of view can be cast as a specific, evolved biological phenomenon.