Review: Realistic Rationalism by Jerrold J. Katz

Abstract

Naturalism, whether as an ontological doctrine (that there are only natural objects), an epistemological thesis (that knowledge is only of natural objects), or a methodological claim (that knowledge can be attained only by investigating natural objects), was a "fundamental mistake," according to J. Katz, whose goal in this book is to formulate and justify "a new version of traditional realism and rationalist philosophy" (xvii). For Katz, philosophy is not just a second-order discipline of conceptual analysis with no role in the finding and systematizing of facts about the world, as naturalism and empiricism would have it, but also a first-order discipline with its own questions about the world.