Modeling his position on Arthur Fine’s Natural Ontological Attitude, Derek Turner proposed the Natural Historical Attitude. Although these positions share a family resemblance, Turner’s position differs from Fine’s in two important ways. First, Fine’s contextualism is more fine-grained. Second, Turner’s argument for metaphysical agnosticism seems to lead to the implausible conclusion that we should be agnostic about the mind-independence of ordinary objects – a position in tension with Fine’s “core position.” While this paper presents a textual analysis of Fine’s and Turner’s arguments, the conclusions reached here cohere well with some of the best empirically-informed assessments of the historical sciences. Given the diversity of the historical sciences, the fact that many claims in the historical sciences have enough support to be regarded as true, and the implausibility of Turner’s agnosticism, philosophers studying historical science would be better served by embracing a stance closer to Fine’s Natural Ontological Attitude.

德里克·特纳以阿瑟·法恩的自然本体论态度为蓝本，提出了自然历史态度。尽管这些立场非常相似，但特纳的立场在两个重要方面与法恩的不同。首先，Fine的语境主义更加细粒度。其次，特纳对形而上学不可知论的论证似乎导致了一个令人难以置信的结论，即我们应该对普通物体的心灵独立性持不可知论——这一立场与法恩的“核心立场”存在紧张关系。虽然本文对法恩和特纳的论点进行了文本分析，但本文得出的结论与历史科学的一些最好的基于经验的评估非常一致。考虑到历史科学的多样性，历史科学中的许多主张有足够的支持被视为真实的事实，以及特纳的不可知论的难以置信，研究历史科学的哲学家如果采取更接近法恩的自然本体论的立场，会更好。态度。