Comment on Sami Pihlström, “Naturalism, from a transcendental point of view”

Sami Pihlström's non-reductive naturalism seeks to naturalize the transcendental. His Kantian version of liberal naturalism incorporates an affiliation with Strawson and Quine on perspective “relativity.” His insistence on the irreducibility of the agent perspective, and its inclusion in nature, is arguably right. But this can be achieved more simply by recognizing two points non-reductive naturalists often fail to note. First, physicalism is inadequate not merely to the human but also to the nonhuman world. That world is complex, requires multiple sciences, and includes the mental activity of purposive animals of which we are a remarkably special case. Second, the relativity of our truth claims to human agency is only one instance of the objective relativity of natural systems to one another. Once we recognize these two points, a fallibilist realism can support and be supported by the non-reductive naturalism Pihlström and I both seek.