Radical Empiricism and Animal Farm Naturalism

Abstract: This article first develops an account of metaphysical thinking as hypothetical or abductive reasoning. As part of this account, it explains disagreements among different schools of metaphysical thought as rooted primarily in temperament, preferences, attitudes and similar practical differences. Second, after explaining the significant similarities between radical empiricism and naturalism, particularly nonreductive emergent naturalism, the article highlights the differences between these theories on the issue of whether reality is independent of experience or always dependent on and related to experience, thought, and language. It then examines two major naturalist criticisms—the claim that reality must be independent of experience because there was reality before any experience and the claim that scientific inquiry presupposes a reality independent of inquirers. Both criticisms are shown to fail in ways that result in naturalism having to take up a stance similar to that expressed by Orwell in Animal Farm —namely, that all realities are equally real but some are more real than others. The article concludes by showing how efforts to avoid this problem turn naturalism into radical empiricism itself.