, the naturalistic philosopher (by my lights) can agree that “she’s more likely to get inspiration from something like the lines of thought actually pursued by her best predecessors than from straw positions created by incompetent exegesis”. To that extent she will bother to try to get Descartes (or whoever) right. So long, of course, as the effort is worth the pay-off in helping her with her first-order problems. I don’t know, however, whether Maddy sees things quite like that, and I wasn’t claiming in my aside that she did. |