Alex Rosenberg corresponds with Daniel Dennett: On Purpose

Alex Rosenberg and Daniel Dennett in Letter:

Dear Dan,

I have no idea how much interest there might be about disagreements among naturalists between the optimistic ones like you and the pessimistic ones like me. But I know I’d like to be convinced I’m mistaken. And you are probably the philosopher most likely to convince me.

I think we both see the project of naturalism in philosophy as that of squaring science with as much as we can of what Wilfred Sellers called the manifest image—the informed non-scientists’ view of reality and of our knowledge of it, of human thought and action, ethical norms and values. Disenchanted naturalists like me think that we won’t succeed at this project, that natural science undermines most of what people think about these matters, even what scientists themselves believe, outside of their narrow areas of special expertise.

More here.