# Conspectus on Idealist Naturalism
> Blair Vidakovich (2022)

The argument for Idealism is derived from the Pittsburgh Hegelian
school's famous epithet that the "space of reasons is _sui
generis_". However these followers of Sellars have usually opted to
become what they describe as "expressivists" with respect to
normativity. That is to say, the meaning of a proposition with
normative content is simply an expression of support for, or a
rejection of its meaning.

Huw Price, although technically of Cambridge and Australian ilk, would
not find resistance from the likes of say, Robert Brandom when it
comes to specifying the metaphysical status of a normative
concept. Both would regard moral facts as objects of a dubious
trustworthiness. Indeed, while both avowed 'Pragmatists', as far as
intellectual allegiances go, they have have, in fact, embraced the
Empiricist horn of the traditions contained within Pragmatism.

It is true that the phrase, the 'space of reasons' finds its origin in
Wilfrid Sellars. It may be that Sellars approved of the general thrust
of the full phrase 'the space of reasons is _sui generis_". But the
most consistent and incisive advocates for taking this slogan
seriously have been philosophers like Joseph Rouse, John Haugeland,
John McDowell, and Rebecca Kukla--among others: such as _ from UNSW.

I similarly agree with the spirit of Richard Gaskin's individualist
Idealist rendering of McDowell's _Mind and World_, even if I disagree
profoundly with his understanding of what constitutes Idealism.

The overall upshot of the supposed _sui generis_ nature of the space
of reasons stems from Sellars's belief that the 'Scientific Image' of
the world introduced to the world by the European philosophers of the
Renaissance _develops out of_ the common sense, lay epistemological
perspective of the world.

Now this observation, or conviction that the (Natural) Scientific
Image of the world is, say, an emergent aspect of an ordinary person's
epistemological and experential grasp on the objective world just
means that the Scientific Image develops out of the space of reasons.

The term 'space of reasons' can be rendered more or less
formalistically, but it can be further explained by making a passing
reference to the Early Wittgenstein of the _Tractatus_. Wittgenstein's
picture of his logical atomism was on in which all the irreducible
logical ements would form a complex--albeit static and mechanical--web
of logical linkages and enlightening inferences. The space of reasons
is a metaphor by way of Sellars which captures the spirit of what
Ludwig Wittgenstein was trying to say, while avoiding all of the
significant unpleasant consequences of, say, among other aspects of
Wittgenstein's philosophy, logical positivism.

The space of reasons is a metaphor which images the reasoning agents
within its area as, say, sharing a certain volume of physical space,
and it were as if the agents navigated the structure of their analysis
of some problems, or constucture of some translation (a la Quine), or
generation of some communication for its reception to another volume
of space--or within the space (a la Habermas).

Indeed people like Terence Cuneo have explicitly employed the simile
of a 'web' of facts (which deliberating and reasonsing agents
navigate).

So my argument is that we should assert that the space of reasons is
_sui generis_. I think this is a reasonable assumption or first
axiom. It also does justice to the idea of the democratisation and
broader acceptance of philosophy. It must absolutely be true that, as
the ordinary everyday mundane experience of reality forms the basis
out which the Natural Sciences emerge with their 'disenchanted' (or,
shall we say, with a little more jargon--deflationist?) picture or
framing of the world outside our minds.

From this is follows that the Scientific Image of the world is a
creation from the elements of the space of reasons. You may, at some
stage object that I have mischaracterised the mundane ordinary
experience of the world. Some might say, for instance, that my
understadning of what Sellars called the 'Human Image' of the world is
wildly optimistic. To this I would respond with the observation that
the tendency to oscillate from Hobbes to Rousseau on the question of
politicially, philosophically--perhaps morally (etc.)--unorganised or
uninitiated peoples is based on a myth about the people who existed
outside of Europe at the time of the Renaissance and
Enlightenment--see Graeber's posthumously published book _The Dawn of
Everything_, which, with expert reasoning and eye-opening new
anthropological evidence, powerfully debunks the idea that _any_ human
civilisation at _any_ time existed in permanent states of social
organisation. Perhaps this is the true force of the _sui generis_
nature of the space of reasons.

The conclusion of the argument I am making is that, by analogy to
Kant's division of the human mind into noumenal and phenomenal
processing dimensions--we may be entitled to say Idealism is permitted
because the structure between the (a) space of reasons; and (b) the
Scientific Image of the world is isomorphic with Kant's distinction
between _Practical_ and _Theoretical Reason_.

The components of the space of reasons, and intrinsically value-laden
'logical space' or logical 'web'. While we may reserve the
specification of the structural content of the space of reasons, we
may indeed draw a close analogy between Kant's _Practical Reason_ and
the space of reasons.

By comparison, Sellars's term the _Scientific Image_ maps neatly onto
Theoretical Reason--,e, the mechanical-phenomena processor, the
Understanding. The Faculty of the Understanding is _also_ the very
centre of the phenomenal aspect of the Kantian philosophy of
mind. This 'region' of the 'web' of Kant's philosophy is an
explanation for how the Renaissance mechanical philosophy of the
cosmos is possible, and objective. The noumenal aspect of the Kantian
philosophy of mind, however stands out in stark--and sometimes
antinomial(!)--opposition to the 'Scientific Image' of the Faculty of
Understanding.

In passing, it is perhaps worth observing that Kant's is a philosophy
which practices 'enlightened ecclecticism'. That is, one can imagine
the _Critique of Pure Reason_ as a highly modular philosophy. Indeed
we have seen--most notably Strawson--sever what they considered to be
unpleasant or untenable aspects of Kant's philosophy frmo what they
deemed could be retained. Most notably missing from Strawson's
reassembly of Kant was the noumenal dimension of the person.

Yet am I not drawing favourable parallels between the space of reasons
and Kant's imagined and fantastic noumenal aspect of the mind? Is what
I am advancing seem like the opposite of Strawson--and for that reason
is what I am trying to argue absolutely unacceptable?

I think this is where the analogy between Kant and the more
Wittgensteinian space of reasons ends. We should elect not to adopt
_Kant's_ supplied substance of the purview of Practical Reason.

Let us return to why the analogy between Sellars and Kant was
productive for our discussion. What I have discussed above amounts to
this--if it is true that the space of reasons is _sui generis_ i.e.,it
exists as the human concept of the mind before all other
conceptions--and I argue that it is--then it is as if Kant's story had
been less modular and structured monistically: Theoretical Reason
emerges forth from Practical Reason.

That is: the ordinay, value-laden experience and activity that
everyday people practice with more-or-less reasonable skill and
success is the foundation for the (Natural) Scientific Image of the
world.

If this is true--and I argue that it is--then we are entitled to stand
Simon Blackburn's scathing criticism of Liberal Naturalism in
_Normativity a la mode_ on its head! You will remember that Simon
Blackburn is more-or-less of one mind with the expressivists Brandom
and Price about the metaphysical status of values, meaning, and
normativity in their philosophies of the mind. To Blackburn it is as
if the doubter of the radical deflationism about the role of morality
in human discourse is 'helping themselves' to extra philosophical
concepts in their explanations of Objectivity, Truth, Justice, etc.

WHen conceived according to the narrative I have suggested, to me it
seems as if the expressivists, emotivists, or quasi-realists, in short
_anti-realists_ about normativity, are bizarre ascetics about the
human mind, human morality, meaning--what have you.

Whereas Blackburn would ridicule my position that humans are first
imbued with meaning, and from there learn how to access the concepts
of Natural Sciace, I would regard much of the moral or axiological
anti-realist narratrive about the metaphysical status of human moral
discourse as extreme Scientism.

If the explanation I am offering in favour of Idealism is at all
acceptable, it will also be partly because it is not unamenable to a
philosophical legacy which the expressivists aim to do service
to--Naturalism.

There are many and various ways to define Naturalism. We should
certainly not accept the legacy of W. V. O. Quine on this
topic--primarily because he would probably very much approve of the
efforts of the contemporary anti-realists. Quine would claim that,
given the natural sciences are what they are, Naturalism just meanins
philosophy must never contradict, and must, with as similar method and
metaphysics as possible, deal in philosophical discourse in ways which
are intimately integrated with the Natural Sciences.

Most Liberal Naturalists have attempted to allow discourse about
normativity to be philosophically analysed by relaxing the strength of
shall we call it, "Quinean Naturalism".

I rather agree with Roy Bhaskar's much mroe confident approach to
providing an alternative to Quinean Naturalism. Bhaskar astutely
observes that, formally, all Naturalism amounts to is that the methods
(and, one could even strengthen this claim by adding the _objects_ as
well) of science and philosophy must be the same. Where Quine knuckles
under is by accepting a further substantive premise: that the methods
of the Natural Sciences are to be taken as they are currently given,
and cannot be questioned by philosophy.

Bhaskar's agnosticism about the informativeness about the current
content/substance of the current Natural Sciences is refreshing on
this point. He then proceeds--in _The Possibility of Naturalism_--to
attempt to deduce a Naturalist scientific realist philosophy that is
consistent with the methods of the sciences _however they are to be
conceived_. Bhaskar's position seems to make more sense to me: a
philosophy is a Naturalist one just by virtue of having the same
methods as the Natural Sciences.

I think we should appropriate the term Naturalism for ourselves simply
becase the concepts of the Scientific Image are to be drawn from
elements of its superset--the space of reasons. In this way, we can
say we have an Idealist brand of Naturalism not unknown to the great
Renaissance Rationalists Spinoza, Leibniz, later to be followed in the
Enlightenment by Goethe and Hegel.

_Because_ the space of reasons provides the foundation for the image
the Natural Sciences have of the world, we should regard the elements
of the Scientific Image as _just being_ elements of the space of
reasons. Because the _content_ of the Scientific Image of the world
_just is_ also the elements from the space of reasons, this Idealist
view of the mind can also help itself to the label 'Naturalist'.

The argument only gets stronger once the actual content of the space
of reasons, and, within it, the Scientific Image, is delimited and
specified. In this way it can be exhaustively demonstrated exactly
what the 'method' of this Idealist Naturalism comprises.

# The Assault on Common Sense

There is in some naturalisms a direct route from moral anti-realism,
to an assault on the way ordinary life is to be understood. These
naturalisms are the orthodoxy. Indeed the standard image of naturalism
is one which devalues the understandings of common sense. I want to
defend the actual capacity people display when they reason.

The lack of faith many naturalists display in ordinary, everyday
concerns and wisdoms is a function of a flase model of what the every,
ordinary reasoning agent is.

I want to first give demonstrations of the problem of what the
orthodoxy considers a practical reasonsing person to be. Then, I will
turn to my positions on the matter. Where naturalism and common sense
philosophy intersect, I think the solutions lie. But I can give
priority to 'common sense' where I can, as naturalism has a tendency
to forget Ockham's Razor. But my more thorough explanation for why we
should rank common sense discourse as a first class citizen in our
philosophical projects is that I count meaning--sense-making--as _sui
generis_ in the everyday persons's concept of mind.

We are suffering from a crisis in faith in rationality and compassion
in our society. It is becoming more difficult to wrest back the
ability to communicate the values of critical thinking to whom we lost
it. Ordinary people are desperate for a deeper, more fulfilling
life. Indeed now, more than ever non-philosophers are concerned about
the Good Life, and many have determinate, concrete conceptions of what
that Good Life looks like.

Naturalism arrives on the scene armed ready to discuss and share the
full complement of truth-elucidating weaponry it has. It is hard to
believe, imagining oneself as untrained philosophically, that
naturalists have arrived in the discourse with the intention to play
nice.

Indeed too often naturalism does _not_ think and act in terms of
individualities, multiplicities, or pluralities. Naturalism represents
an Imperialists force in our society, as it very often refuses to
engage in _educational_ discussion, opting to coerce and mock.

Naturalism's creed is that what is, is natural, and whaterver is
non-natural, is not. The concept of naturalism is couterposed to
_super_naturalism. Naturalism might have allied itself with its less
radical "Liberal" Naturalism, but historically, what we have observed
is the dominant orthodox naturalist claim turn and attack its
non-reductionist, non-eliminativist, more 'liberal' critics.

Naturalism might also have attempted to communicate and educate for
others. The tone it set while adducing its 'discoveries' from the hard
natural sciences couild have been conciliatory, and empathetic. BNut,
it has not been so. The ire of philosophical naturalism has not left
any other more 'liberal' or oppositional metaphysics unnoticed.