The Cognitive and Ontological Dimensions of Naturalness
Debates about naturalness go far back into the history of philosophy – just think of the famous (yet somewhat morbid) metaphor of cutting nature at its joints, harking back to Plato's Phaedrus. The same is true of a whole range of related topics, with the problem of projectibility in the philosophy of science standing out in particular. Whereas, according to a famous line of argument by Nelson Goodman (Fact, Fiction, and Forecast, 1955), we use some predicates in our arguments (e.g., being green), we do not do so with other predicates, sometimes called "gerrymandered" (e.g., being grue). We may refer to the former as projectible predicates, while the latter are non-projectible ones. As there is no obvious criterion in sight for distinguishing these kinds of predicates, however, this seems to undermine the justifiability of our reasoning practices. Now, it seems plausible to assume that projectible predicates are precisely the ones that refer to natural entities. This, however, raises the question of the criteria of naturalness – and this is where the workshop takes off.
An interesting proposal comes from recent cognitive research. It was developed by Peter Gärdenfors and is based on geometric properties of cognitive representations. In a nutshell, his idea is that natural properties and concepts are convex regions in conceptual spaces. It has proved fruitful, not only in explaining the behavior of cognitive agents, but also in constructing artificial agents. It explores the issue of naturalness from a pragmatist and instrumentalist design perspective. However, the philosophical foundations of the approach provide room for controversy. According to Gärdenfors, natural properties and concepts are internal, cognitive entities. But current analytic metaphysicians such as David Lewis, who has been a key figure in shaping the debate over naturalness, are typically more concerned with the structure of external reality – Lewis would probably have dismissed Gärdenfors’ account as psychologistic. There thus seem to be two distinct dimensions of naturalness, namely a cognitive and an ontological one – which raises the question of the relation between the two. One central aim of the workshop is to bring together proponents of both camps in order to get to the nature of this relation.
Abstracts (In alphabetical order)
Author: Dr. Verónica Gómez Sánchez
Title: No thought without magnets
Abstract: According to the Lewisian doctrine of reference magnetism, representation/reference relations do not only depend on how representations are deployed by their users, but also on the degree of naturalness of the represented entities. The main thesis of this talk is that any viable reductive account of reference will have to presuppose a version of reference magnetism. My first goal is to make this thesis precise, and to refine and generalize a line of argument for it sketched in Sider (2011). My second goal is to work toward a positive characterization of the connection between reference and naturalness. I argue that, while one familiar way of drawing this connection is problematic, there is a promising alternative which avoids a number of standard objections in the literature. This alternative allows for a unified account of reference, while vindicating the idea that naturalness plays a more important role in determining reference for natural kind concepts than it does for other concepts.
The contributions will be published in a special issue of the journal Philosophia. The deadline for the first manuscript is August 2023, for the revised manuscripts end of 2023.