David Macarthur is an Australian philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney who works primarily on skepticism, metaphysical quietism, pragmatism, liberal naturalism and philosophy of art (especially film, photography and architecture).

He has taken up these and other themes in articles on the philosophy of Stanley Cavell, Hilary Putnam, Richard Rorty and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

[5][6][7] Inspired primarily by Hilary Putnam, John McDowell, and Charles Taylor, liberal naturalism attempts to overcome the wholesale Sellarsian elimination or replacement of the manifest image by the scientific image of the world.

In order to achieve this aim, Macarthur defends a metaphysically quietist version of liberal naturalism which affirms the viability and importance of non-scientific non-supernatural forms of understanding, especially concerning persons, language, art, artefacts and their various relations to one another.

In the philosophy of art, Macarthur argues against the view that artworks have a fixed and unique meaning or message.