Charles Taylor (philosopher) - Taylor's Critique of Naturalism

Taylor's Critique of Naturalism

Taylor defines naturalism as a family of various often quite diverse theories that all hold “the ambition to model the study of man on the natural sciences.”

Philosophically naturalism was largely popularized and defended by the unity of science movement that was advanced by logical positivist philosophy. In many ways, Taylor’s early philosophy springs from a critical reaction against the logical positivism and naturalism that was ascendant in Oxford while he was a student.

Initially, much of Taylor’s philosophical work consisted of careful conceptual critiques of various naturalist research programs. This began with his 1964 dissertation The Explanation of Behavior, which was a detailed and systematic criticism of the behaviorist psychology of B.F. Skinner that was highly influential at mid-century.

From there Taylor also spread his critique to other disciplines. The still hugely influential essay, “Interpretation and the Sciences of Man,” was published in 1972 as a critique of the political science of the behavioral revolution advanced by giants of the field like David Easton, Robert Dahl, Gabriel Almond, and Sydney Verba. In 1983’s “Cognitive Psychology” Taylor criticized the naturalism he saw distorting the major research program that had replaced B.F. Skinner’s behaviorism.

But Taylor also detected naturalism in fields where it was not immediately apparent. For example, in 1978’s “Language and Human Nature” he found naturalist distortions in various modern “designative” theories of language. While in 1989’s Sources of the Self he found both naturalist error and the deep moral, motivational sources for this outlook in various individualist and utilitarian conceptions of selfhood.