ABSTRACT
Many aspects of recent realist work in the philosophy of science have some affi nities with philosophical naturalism. Realists emphasize that the methods of science are theory-dependent, so that the justifi cation for those methods in any particular application will have an a posteriori scientifi c component. Realist treatments of natural kinds treat the defi nitions of those kinds as at least partly a posteriori, and ‘causal’ or ‘naturalistic’ theories of reference for natural kind terms similarly treat at least some aspects of reference as matters for a posteriori empirical investigation. In a number of papers I’ve been developing arguments to the effect that, properly developed, scientifi c realism dictates a thoroughgoing, anti-foundationalist, anti-reductionist naturalistic approach to philosophical matters. What I propose to do here is to pull together the core of those arguments and to indicate what sort of philosophical naturalism is implied.
