Everything that exists, including minds, culture and art, is part of one natural world and can be studied with the methods of science.
- +Fits Positivist Epistemology, Critical Realist Epistemology
- –Tension with Interpretivist Epistemology, Phenomenological Epistemology, Post-structuralist Epistemology
Key thinkers: W.V.O. Quine, Daniel Dennett, Philip Kitcher
The longer story
Look, here's the thing about naturalism: it says the world is just one big continuous system, and everything in it—including minds, art, culture—follows natural laws we can investigate. No magic, no separate realm of meaning floating above physics. The same scientific methods that work on molecules work on music. Sounds reductive? Maybe. But it's honest about what we're claiming. When you study audience responses or acoustic properties, you're betting that these things are part of nature, not outside it. The advantage is clarity—no hand-waving about special creative essences. The challenge is explaining how meaning emerges from matter without explaining it away.