The origins of this volume lie in a kind invitation from the Tilburg Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science (TiLPS), to deliver their inaugural René Descartes Lectures in May 2008. I was delighted to accept, and presented the lectures under the title ‘Three Themes in Contemporary Pragmatism’ (the themes in question being naturalism, representationalism and pluralism). The lecture series was held in conjunction with a research workshop on pragmatism and naturalism, providing me with a remarkable opportunity to discuss some of my recent work with the best kind of philosophical audience – broadly sympathetic to a considerable extent, yet challenging on many points. I am very grateful indeed to Professor Stephan Hartmann and his colleagues at TiLPS for their hospitality, and for doing me the honour of inviting me in the first place. I am also greatly indebted to the workshop speakers and participants, for their part in making it such a memorable and educational experience, from my point of view.

With the promise of such an excellent audience, I tried to use the lectures to do two things: first, to present what I felt to be the most interesting ideas in my recent work at that time, and, second, to try to think through some succeeding steps (very much work in progress, at that stage). Accordingly, I used the first lecture to present some material that was then recently in print, on the role and significance of representationalist presuppositions in conventional forms of philosophical naturalism.