Macarthur, David. Review of Jack Ritchie's UNDERSTANDING NATURALISM. NDPR (November 2009).

Ritchie, Jack. Understanding Naturalism. Cheshire: Acumen, 2008. Naturalism is the current orthodoxy within Anglo-American philosophy, an outlook that shapes the way philosophers understand the mission and problems of philosophy. But what is naturalism? This is not an easy question to answer although the general outlines of an answer are clear. Naturalism wants to make philosophy properly responsive to the successes of modern science (rather than traditional philosophy) in providing fruitful explanations and extensive knowledge of natural phenomena. It also wants to make sense of the human condition in non-supernatural terms. Ritchie takes these two tasks to align so that making philosophical sense of ourselves and our world is best approached by looking to science, and only science, for guidance. But how is one to go beyond a general attitude of admiration for science or chanting such vague slogans as "Philosophy is continuous with science" and "There is no first philosophy"? Ritchie's clearly written, well-exampled and engaging book is an attempt to answer this question by distinguishing various kinds of naturalism within the landscape of contemporary scientific naturalism and by providing an overview of some of the most prominent naturalistic projects and programs over the past 50 years concerning knowledge, ontology, science, mind, meaning and truth. Collected volumes have covered this ground before but this is the first book that I am aware of to do so from a single point of view . . . Read the whole review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=18045.