Introduction

Wittgenstein was centrally concerned with the puzzling nature of the mind, mathematics, morality, and modality. He also developed innovative views about the status and methodology of philosophy and was explicitly opposed to crudely 'scientistic' world-views. This chapter divides into four sections, each of which addresses a different aspect of Naturalism and its relation to Wittgenstein's thought. The first section considers how 'Naturalism' could or should be understood. The second section deals with some of the main problematic domains—consciousness, meaning, mathematics—that philosophers have typically sought to naturalize. The third section focuses on the much-discussed topic of animal minds and their relation to the human mind. The final section concerns the naturalistic status and methodology of philosophy itself. The chapter casts a fresh, Wittgensteinian light on many classical philosophical issues and brings Wittgensteinian ideas to bear on a number of newer topics that are a focus of debates.