Kantian Naturalist writes a thought-provoking response to my Thomas Nagel and the “Quartum Quid” post and Eric Anderson responds. Kantian: The problem here is whether ‘naturalistic teleology’ collapses into reductive naturalism or design realism. Rather than treat naturalistic teleology as a quartium quid, it is a tertium quid. The first two, “chance” and “necessity” are not different ontologies (contra Peirce, maybe?) but tightly integrated aspects of a single ontology, Epicureanism, or reductive naturalism. (It must be remembered here that it was Epicurus’ addition of chance to the deterministic system of Democritus that saved atomism from many of Aristotle’s criticisms — just not all of them!) So here, then, are the ontological options: (1) reductive naturalism (Epicureanism, “chance” + “necessity”) (2) … Continue reading Eric Anderson Responds to Kantian Naturalist Re the “Quartium Quid”