What is naturalism? Towards a univocal theory (original) (raw)
Related papers
On the Prospects for Naturalism
Metaphysics or Modernity?, 2013
Contemporary naturalism has two components. The first is ontological, and says, roughly, that all and only what the sciences say exists, really does exist. The other is methodological, and it says that only scientific explanations are legitimate explanations. Together these commitments promise a coherent picture of the world that is nicely integrated with an attractive epistemology. Despite the obvious appeal of naturalism, I would like to sound a note of caution. First, I would like to argue that naturalism's ontological commitment cannot be vindicated. Not, that is, that it is false; rather, I argue that any attempt to show that it is true presupposes that it is not. Second, I argue that methodological naturalism is false. But, again, the problem is not straightforward. I will not claim that there are gaps in the explanations offered by science, such that the scientific project would be incomplete without emendation. Instead I argue that the goodness of an explanation depends, in part, on how the event to be explained is described, and that, some events, under some descriptions, call for non-scientific explanations.
Methodological Naturalism in the Sciences
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 2020
Creationists have long argued that evolutionary science is committed to a dogmatic metaphysics of naturalism and materialism, which is based on faith or ideology rather than evidence. The standard response to this has been to insist that science is not committed to any such metaphysical doctrine, but only to a methodological version of naturalism, according to which science may only appeal to natural entities and processes. But this whole debate presupposes that there is a clear distinction between the natural and the supernatural, and thus that naturalism is a meaningful doctrine. I argue that this assumption is false. The concepts of the natural and the supernatural are in fact hopelessly obscure, such that the claim that science is committed to methodological naturalism cannot be made good. This is no victory for anti-naturalists however; explicitly supernaturalist theories, such as Creationism, can be ruled out of scientific consideration as a priori incoherent, given that they presuppose for their intelligibility that there is a meaningful natural-supernatural distinction. This is not the case for standard scientific theories however, as they are not explicitly naturalistic theories; they do not postulate natural or physical entities or processes as such.
The 'Natural' in Methodological Naturalism
Philosophia: International Journal of Philosophy, 2024
A common assumption about how to do science is that it requires methodological naturalism. However, specifying what natural means is not as easy as it initially appears. In this paper, I examine the validity of methodological naturalism in light of the various ways by which the term 'natural' can be understood: a) natural as material, b) natural as physical, and c) natural as created by God. One major reason that methodological naturalism has currently taken center stage is that it is utilized to criticize the scientific legitimacy of Intelligent Design theory. Thus, when relevant, these different understandings of what natural means are examined in light of how successful they are in precluding the theory of intelligent design from becoming a legitimate scientific theory. I conclude by noting that none of these various meanings of natural, when deployed in support of methodological naturalism, are successful in regarding ID theory as unscientific.
Naturalism as a Philosophical Paradigm
Philo, 2009
i develop the conjecture that "naturalism" in philosophy names not a thesis but a paradigm in something like thomas Kuhn's sense, i.e., a set of commitments, shared by a group of investigators, whose acceptance by the members of the group powerfully influences their day-today investigative practice. i take a stab at spelling out the shared commitments that make up naturalism, and the logical and evidential relations among them. i used to think it was pretty much a waste of time to try to sort out philosophical talk of naturalism. i couldn't really discern a single, univocal formulation of naturalism, and i saw no particular reason to expect one to exist. Moreover, none of this seemed to matter. though sympathetic to the philosophical temperament of self-professed naturalists, i found that i could express all the philosophical theses i really cared about without using "naturalism" or any of its cognates; and, in the arguments of self-professed naturalists, little or nothing of philosophical importance ever seemed to turn on the precise formulation of naturalism. i suspected that talk of naturalism in philosophical discourse was playing a purely rhetorical role. i have since changed my mind. My mistake, as i'm now inclined to see it, was to assume that (i) professions of naturalism are merely, or mainly, expressions of commitment to a th e sis, indeed to a sin g le thesis, and that (ii) clarification of naturalism would require c o n c e p tual an alysis. But there are attractive alternatives to these assumptions. We can suppose in their place that (i') professions of naturalism are (usually) expressions of allegiance to something like a philosophical p arad ig m in thomas Kuhn's sense of "paradigm", something therefore m ultid im e n sio n al, and that (ii') proposed elucidations of this paradigm are therefore e m p iric al h yp o th e se s in the psychology and sociology of philosophy. let me flesh this out a little.
Philosophical Naturalism and Methodological Naturalism: Strange Bedfellows?
This essay argues that philosophical naturalists who draw epistemic support from science for their worldview ought to set aside methodological naturalism in certain historical sciences. When linked to methodological naturalism, philosophical naturalism opens itself to several problems. Specifically, when joined with methodological naturalism, philosophical naturalism can never be scientifically disconfirmed but will nearly always be confirmed, no matter what the empirical evidence. Theistic-friendly “God hypotheses,” on the other hand, can never be scientifically confirmed—again, no matter what the evidence—but are routinely said to be disconfirmed. Methodological naturalism not only leads to this self-serving dynamic, but does not appear to serve a meaningful epistemic purpose in the contest between philosophical naturalism and theism and so, for these reasons, ought to be set aside.
2009
Naturalism" has been used as a means to distinguish the scientific from the non-scientific. Methodological naturalism emphasizes the fact that only natural entities can be employed in scientific theories. Metaphysical naturalism goes beyond this and affirms that only those things that are naturalistic are real. In fact, naturalism is the product of two more fundamental notions: the canon of reality and the scientific method. Since neither of those can be defined in an unambiguous and unchanging manner, naturalism also is fundamentally blurry. There is therefore no hard-and-fast distinction between the category of naturalistic and that of non-naturalistic; they blend together in a complex manner, even if, in particular cases, with respect to particular entities, they are functionally quite distinct. Resumen "Naturalismo" se ha usado como un medio para distinguir lo científico de lo no-científico. El naturalismo metodológico da énfasis al hecho de que sólo pueden emplearse entidades naturales en teorías científicas. El naturalismo metafísico va más allá de esto y afirma que sólo las cosas naturalistas son reales. De hecho, el naturalismo es el producto de dos nociones más fundamentales: el canon de la realidad y el método científico. Puesto que ninguno de aquéllos puede definirse de una manera inequívoca y inmutable, naturalismo mismo también queda fundamentalmente borroso. Por consiguiente no hay ninguna distinción dura la categoría de naturalista y la categoría de no-naturalista; ellos mezclan juntos de una manera compleja, aun cuando, en casos particulares, con respecto a las entidades particulares, ellos sean funcionalmente bastante distintos.
Is science really what naturalism says it is?
In spite of the relevance of a scientific representation of the world for naturalism, it is surprising that philosophy of science is less involved in the debate on naturalism than expected. Had the viewpoint of philosophy of science been duly considered, naturalism could not have overlooked the established lesson, according to which there is no well-defined recipe for what science must or must not be. The present paper addresses some implications of this lesson for (some forms of) naturalism. First I will question the very significance of the distinction 'ontological vs. epistemic naturalism', by defending a conceptual priority of the latter over the former. Then I will focus on the implications of this priority for naturalization strategies, claiming that these strategies underestimate the normativity of scientific theories themselves. Finally, on the basis of the above points, I will have a critical look at an especially ‘aggressive’ variant of naturalism, according to which all epistemic facts are natural facts.
The Rise of Naturalism and Its Problematic Role in Science and Culture
The Nature of Nature: Examining the Role of Naturalism in Science, 2011
It is worthwhile reflecting on how philosophical naturalism rose to its contemporary place of hegemony not just in the sciences, but in the academy in general. It was not always so. The institution of the university was an invention of medieval Christianity and modern science itself was birthed out of a Judeo-Christian worldview, a truth that has been lost in the current landscape of whiggish tales about the backwardness of the Middle Ages and the “warfare” between science and religion that supposedly began with the Enlightenment. A corrective is in order. I will begin with a concise reflection on the very possibility of rational explanation in the context of naturalism, arguing that it is a woefully deficient context for the scientific enterprise both metaphysically and epistemologically. I will then develop a historico-philosophical etiology of the rise of naturalism and correct a variety of egregious historical misconceptions, all by way of a general argument that the current ontological and methodological foundations for the pursuit of scientific truth are misconceived, counterproductive, and in dire need of reconstitution on transcendent grounds.
The Many Inadequate Justifications of Methodological Naturalism
Organon F
Contrary to proponents' claims, methodological naturalism is not metaphysically neutral. Consequently, its acceptance as a practice requires justification. Unfortunately for its advocates, attempts to justify it are failures. It cannot be defended as a definition, or a self-imposed limitation, of science, nor, more modestly, as an inductively justified commitment to natural causes. As a practice, it functions not to further scientific investigation, but rather to impose an explanatory straitjacket.