Beyond Description

The contributors to this volume engage with issues of normativity within
naturalised philosophy. The issues are critical to naturalism as most
traditional notions in philosophy, such as knowledge, justification or
representation, are said to involve normativity. Some of the
contributors pursue the question of the correct place of normativity
within a naturalised ontology, with emergentist and eliminativist
answers offered on neighbouring pages. Others seek to justify particular
norms within a naturalised framework, the more surprising ones including
naturalist takes on the a priori and intuitions. Finally, yet others
examine concrete examples of the application of norms within particular
epistemic endeavours, such as psychopathology and design. The overall
picture is that of an intimate engagement with issues of normativity on
the part of naturalist philosophers - questioning some of the
fundamentals at the same time as they try to work out many of the details.