The ‘traditional’ objections to a wholly naturalistic metaphysics, within the modern Western philosophical tradition, involve the vexed notions of freedom and consciousness. But there is, I think, a much deeper and more interesting line of criticism to naturalism, and that involves the notion of intentionality and its closely correlated notion of normativity.
What is involved in my belief that I’m drinking a beer as I type this? Well, my belief is about something — namely, the beer that I’m drinking. But what does this “aboutness” consist of? It requires, among other things, a commitment that I have undertaken — that I am prepared to respond to the appropriate sorts of challenges and criticisms of my belief. I’m willing to play the game of giving and asking for reasons, and my willingness to be so treated is central to how others regard me as their epistemic peer. But there doesn’t seem to be any way that the reason-giving game can be explained entirely in terms of the neurophysiological story of what’s going on inside my cranium. That neurophysiological story is a story of is the case, and the reason-giving story is essentially a normative story — of what ought to be the case.
And if Hume is right — as he certainly seems to be! — in saying that one cannot derive an ought-statement from an is-statement,and if naturalism is an entirely descriptive/explanatory story that has no room for norms, then in light of the central role that norms play in human life (including their role in belief, desire, perception, and action), it is reasonable to conclude that naturalism cannot be right.
(Of course, it does not follow from this that any version of theism or ‘supernaturalism’ must be right, either.)
William J. Murray,
Yes, as I tried (unsuccessfully) to explain to “Gregory” it is best not to have lots of different definitions bandying about. Much better to settle on one and let people say, without hedging, Yes or No to it. He didn’t want to give a definition, however, being from someplace better than the U.S. and all. But if naturalism is, as you nicely put it, “a big foggy arena” (perhaps serving as a proxy for atheism) it’s main purpose will be to come in handy for use in equivocations.
[Edit: Of course, having a floating mess rather than a proper definition works out nicely for semi-anti-naturalist wannabees too. They can always claim to be non-naturalists, even though, compared to my own more stringently anti-naturalist views, they make nearly everything a chemical process. And it’s symmetrical: they’re just utilizing their nearly meaningless anti-term as a proxy for proudly proclaiming their theism.]
petrushka,
That’s a great bio-feedback skill to have, petrushka.
From that wiki article:
Ooh, tell me a story, baby … a nice … long … exciting … story ….
…
…
My current favorite teller of tales
petrushka,
That’s interesting. Did you try making it go back up, too?
BTW, regarding definitions, The SEP notes this:
Different contemporary philosophers interpret ‘naturalism’ differently. This disagreement about usage is no accident. For better or worse, ‘naturalism’ is widely viewed as a positive term in philosophical circles—few active philosophers nowadays are happy to announce themselves as ‘non-naturalists’. This inevitably leads to a divergence in understanding the requirements of ‘naturalism’. Those philosophers with relatively weak naturalist commitments are inclined to understand ‘naturalism’ in a unrestrictive way, in order not to disqualify themselves as ‘naturalists’, while those who uphold stronger naturalist doctrines are happy to set the bar for ‘naturalism’ higher.
The moral is, there’s no point asking anybody whether or not they believe in naturalism, unless you’re willing to explain what you mean.
William,
I used the Wikipedia definition of naturalism on another thread:
…and also the Wikipedia definition of ‘supernatural’:
William:
Not if you use the Wikipedia definition or something like it.
Any kind of solid evidence for a phenomenon that transcends the physical. For example, if scientists discovered that one prayer consistently caused amputated limbs to regrow, while a slightly reworded version never did, I would very seriously question my naturalism.
walto,
There’s a guy in my office who does that. It always makes me think of Mort from the Bazooka Joe comics.
ETA: The Onion reveals the lower half of Mort’s face.
Haha!
Bruce,
But the fact that a belief can be expressed to a community of speakers doesn’t mean that it must be expressed to them. It retains its aboutness even if we choose not to defend or express it to others.
That’s where my distinction between “ought-ifs” and “free-floating oughts” comes in. I think we can say that “you ought to express yourself using standard language if you want to be understood“, but I see no way to argue that “you ought to express yourself using standard language”, full stop, as an objective fact independent of physical reality. The latter would pose a problem for naturalism, but the former doesn’t.
keiths,
Do you know the old article by A. McKinnon, “‘Miracles’ and ‘Paradoxes’”? He argues that, strictly speaking, evidence for the supernatural is impossible. The idea is that if, to be a miracle something must “violate a natural law” there are two possibilities–either natural laws are absolute or probabilistic. If the former, something like
A. Whenever conditions X, results Y must follow
and there’s an instance in which X happened and Y didn’t, then A couldn’t be true (because it requires absolutely no exceptions).
On the other hand, if laws are like
B. In 99.99999% of the time when conditions X, Y follows
and there’s an instance in which X but no Y, B isn’t actually violated. So, he concludes, in either case there can be no actual violations if it’s really a law. Now, he concedes there can be incredible coincidences and we might want to even call them “miracles”–but such a miracle can’t provide evidence of the supernatural in his view because there’s no actual violation of a natural law.
It’s a clever little paradox, I think.
One other question, do you mind, in that wiki definition, the use of “nature” in the definition of “naturalism”? It makes me want to know what’s meant by “nature” there.
Keith:
Can I thought like “He believes I don’t know he is lying when he says he believes John Doe is telling the truth” be even thought without language? So it is not the expressing part that is important, it is the existence of the shared language which in turn allows one to have such thoughts.
Now that may not be KN’s point at all, but it is how I understood part of what he is saying.
I have seen the exchange between you and walto on this and I don’t have anything to add, especially when it comes to language, where I am not comfortable at all with the philosophical arguments.
By the way, I notice you always address me by name but I never give you the same courtesy. I should probably fix that, and did above, but I may not be consistent (out of carelessness, not by intent).
If I can substitute physicalism for naturalism, then I suggest reviewing the SEP article which defines the term as it is commonly used by modern philosophers and then gives several problems for it: qualia and intentionality are two main examples.
Another approach is to look at why many philosophers are physicalists: the SEP argues that is rational to be a physicalist because the success of physics. SEP mentions causal closure of physics and the success of methodological naturalism (as defined there). I would add conservation of energy, which prevents non-physical entities form affecting the physical world. Read the article for details needed to assess this argument for physicalism.
It seems very unlikely conservation of energy will be falsified. But it is true that at one point Bohr thought a certain experiment meant that quantum mechanics only made sense if conservation of energy was true on average but maybe not in particular events. He was proved wrong. But it was a considered possibility and that would have been a problem for some philosophical arguments for physicalism.
If you read the SEP article, I am sure you will enjoy this paragraph:
I’ve omitted the following text which qualifies this somewhat. And obviously the truth of the above is not an argument against physicalism, just a comment on the view of many intelligent people who have thought about this issue as part of their professional lives.
Well, we can see the problem at hand.
If “science” = “methodological naturalism” = that which is available to consensual, reliable, repeatable quantification, and “naturalism” holds that the only kind of valid evidence = scientific evidence, then nothing can ever prove a naturalists position wrong or in error.
It’s a tautological system. One cannot prove X exists unless the proof conforms to the naturalist test, and if it conforms to the naturalist test, it is necessarily naturalistic. IOW, if I could prove supernatural X exists using the only methodology naturalists consider valid for gathering evidence, X wouldn’t be – couldn’t be – supernatural.
That’s another way of putting McKinnon’s point, William. I think it’s important to use a definition that doesn’t have that consequence.
keith said that if somebody grew an arm back after saying a prayer he’d be satisfied that naturalism was false, and that makes sense to me on some level, but I wouldn’t know how to generalize anything like that myself. I imagine that It’s easy to add epicycles so that no event can work as a disconfirmation of the theory.
Bruce,
Right, but the language doesn’t need to be shared. You could come up with your own private Esperanto to express such thoughts. We usually don’t bother, preferring to use our native (shared) language, but that’s a matter of convenience, not necessity. The norms don’t matter — just the expressive capability of the language, whether private or shared.
Either way, the “ought” of “you ought to express this belief using this language” is not a free-floating ought. It’s a conditional ought, as in “you ought to express this belief using this language if you want others to understand“, or “if you want to understand it.”
Don’t worry about it. I’m not consistent either. Plus, ‘keiths’ is starting to feel like a second name. I also like the implied plurality, and have used it to tweak UDers: “My name is Legion: for we are many.”
I also posted for a while as ‘beelzebub’, but that’s another story.
walto,
I was a bit more careful than that:
walto:
You can rescue any hypothesis by the addition of ad hoc assumptions.
Scientists solve the problem by counting ad hoc assumptions against a theory. My Rain Fairy hypothesis explains the weather perfectly — whatever happens, the Rain Fairy did it — but scientists prefer meteorology because it requires far fewer assumptions. It predicts more with much, much less.
William,
That’s a poor definition of methodological naturalism. It allows for the testing of supernatural hypotheses, while methodological naturalism does not.
Robert Pennock offers a better definition:
William:
The problem is easily avoided by rejecting methodological naturalism, as I do. Then what matters is whether hypotheses are testable, not whether they’re natural. Things like the prayer experiment I described above are then perfectly capable of causing me to question my (philosophical, not methodological) naturalism.
It’s just that the experiments never give the kind of slam-dunk results that you often get when testing physical theories. The evidence for the supernatural is extremely thin, so I am a (provisional) naturalist.
You’re overgeneralizing. Plenty of naturalists, including me, think that methodological naturalism is a mistake. If we uncovered strong evidence for the supernatural, like limbs regrowing in response to particular prayers, then I’d predict that many self-proclaimed methodological naturalists would suddently find themselves reconsidering their position.
It all depends on the evidence, William, and so far the evidence for the supernatural is sparse and pitiful.
walto,
I haven’t read McKinnon’s paper, but if I understand your summary, he’s saying that there’s no principled way to distinguish between the following scenarios:
a) we think X is a law;
a violation of X is observed;
therefore, a miracle happened;
versus
b) we think X is a law;
a violation of X is observed;
therefore, X wasn’t really an absolute law after all.
If we can’t distinguish between those scenarios, then we can never conclude that a violation of physical law — a miracle — has happened.
If that’s what he’s saying, I would respond by saying that natural laws are never certain. They’re hypotheses, albeit extremely robust ones that have withstood many attempts at falsification.
We will undoubtedly come up with new laws, and we will also discover that some putative laws really aren’t laws at all, as happened with Newton’s second law, which is really just an approximation that is good enough under certain conditions.
When we observe an apparent violation of a physical law, and having ruled out observation errors, we have a choice to make: is it a miracle, or were we wrong about the physical law in question?
I think it depends on the phenomenon in question. If there’s an alternate explanation that requires just a few tweaks to an existing theoretical structure, then it probably doesn’t make sense to cry “Miracle!” Better to tweak the laws slightly and proceed to test them with experiments designed to sensitize the difference.
On the other hand, if the tweaks would be massive or highly arbitrary, and a supernatural explanation appears to be better, then that is the way to go. The ‘best’ explanation should win, where ‘best’ is a function of comprehensiveness, predictive accuracy, and a minimum of arbitrary assumptions.
In the case of my ‘prayer for amputees’ example, I think the supernatural explanation would be superior, and so I would provisionally go with that. There would be alternate explanations available — there always are — but I think they would be less plausible.
For example, we could hypothesize that the limb regrowth was due to some weird interaction between the biology of regeneration and the sound waves associated with the specific prayer, but it seems pretty implausible that the tissues would respond to those exact sound waves and not to the sound waves associated with a slightly different prayer.
The upshot is that there are principled ways to decide whether it’s more likely that a law has been violated or whether we were simply wrong about that law.
I don’t see how the “Prayer making limbs grow back” example – given that it was tested and found reliably repeatable – would show anything other than a naturalistic phenomena in play. Let’s face it, if a few scientists did it and a limb grew back, but nobody could repeat the experiment, so what? It could be some kind of hoax.
But even if it occurred once, so what? There’s no physical law that prevents such a thing from happening, just as there is no physical law that prevents inorganic materials from turning into self-reproducing life. There’s no physical law that prevents the road in front of you from turning into purple taffee via a mass random quantum fluctuation.
If the experiment was repeatable, then one may not understand how mind manipulates the matter/energy or how it stimulates regrowth – which would something to study – but that would just be a new field of naturalist science, something “fringe” scientists have been claiming for hundreds of years.
How would one differentiate between a new area of science to study or a quantum-fluctuation fluke and the “supernatural”? What example of “the supernatural” can anyone here give that couldn’t be described under naturalism as a quantum fluctuation, large-number chance fluke, or just a new field of biology/energy research? The arm growing back after prayer can be called a chance fluke, a quantum fluctuation of matter, or a new field of scientific research.
It seems to me that naturalists always point to something that, in their mind, would be something never reported to have occurred and they are confident will never occur as “evidence” of something “supernatural”, but unless such reports are repeatable under scientific conditions, they are dismissed. If they are repeatable, they are no longer supernatural by definition, and if they are not – hoax, delusion or fluke.
Where would you have to read or hear about a “supernatural” event to even believe such an anomaly even occurred in the first place, much less feel compelled to find a way to work it into your belief system?
I think naturalists are about as able have their faith in naturalism “disproven” as any religious zealot – everything that doesn’t fit can be explained away or “apologized” away. Christians have an inscrutable god; naturalists have hoaxes, hallucinations, fraud, flukes of chance and quantum anomalies. They all have ways to explain away that which doesn’t fit their worldview.
So that Gregory won’t get a case of the vapors, I’ve responded to walto’s most recent Plantinga comment on the Plantinga thread itself, here
When I was an atheist/materialist, I wondered if my view was falsely tautological; only accepting evidence of a particular kind, the kind of which could never contradict my worldview. I thought long and hard about this very thing after my wife was faith healed; I thought about all the other things that had occurred in my life that I had dismissed via materialist apologetics (hoax, fraud, delusion, hallucination, fluke, anomaly).
I asked myself, if there is a category of real things that is not amenable to scientific study (in the consensual-reliable sense), but real nonetheless, how would I access it? How would I know I had accessed it? Would it be useful? In what sense would such things be “real”? In what sense could I prove to myself, at least, that such things existed and were real? Would I really be open to accepting such things?
I have Geoffrey Miller’s book The Mating Mind which makes a persuasive argument for a sexual-choice element in the evolution of braininess. I did start putting together some links (I came across an excellent blog by a young English palaeontologist with several relevant posts which I regret not bookmarking as I can’t, for the moment, find it again) for an OP but decided I hadn’t sufficient time or pretension.
Now if hotshoe has pretensions…
You left out philosophical realists, William.
I have eliminated the N**** word from my vocabulary, precisely because it carries so many different connotations it no longer carries any common or universal meaning; it’s positively misleading.
I use and define reality as anything of which we can demonstrate or infer the existence by any repeatable method, however indirect. Outside this category may reside all sorts of stuff that we can imagine or is beyond our capacity to imagine.
Of course the moment someone proposes a paranormal something, they find themselves in a difficult dilemma. Either this “something” is invisible to all human efforts at detection, in which case it de facto does not exist (isn’t real) and the proposed something is simply imaginary. Or the proposed something can have a real attribute (the ability of a poltergeist to propagate sound waves, for instance) and we can test it.
You can’t, of course: if you mean “real thing” as I mean “real thing”.
Not much point in asking these hypothetical questions without solving the initial conundrum you pose yourself
Indeed. Such a result would not confirm causality, only concurrence. For a human adult to regrow a severed limb might require all sorts of biochemical processes that are impossible for those circumstances. Nonetheless, I can envisage that techniques might be developed in the future to culture or otherwise stimulate regrowth (I don’t know but I guess pluripotent stem cells could be involved) so violation of the physical laws of the universe may not be required.
I responded to William before reading this. But you would need to flesh out (!) the observations and establish a causal link between observation of limb regrowing (How fast? How often? Universally successful? How many voices? What language?) and uttering of prayer before drawing any conclusion. And, rather than pratting about looking for the explanation, why not get the treatment delivered to all amputees tout de suite?
ETA why not
Keith,
I assume you mean that, once you know one language, you could come up with another, private language. If so, you would agree that you do need to have learned one language in a society first. (If I need evidence for that claim, then there is this from Wikipedia on feral children:
Given that, I see the question as: Could one come up with a private language which is not subject to norms as was one’s socially-learned, first language?
I don’t know the answer and I don’t know enough linguistics or philolsophy of language to argue about it.
Alan Fox said:
Please note the dichotomy Alan has set up, saying either:
1. “something” is invisible to all human efforts at detection, in which case it de facto does not exist (isn’t real) and the proposed something is simply imaginary
or
2. something can have a real attribute (the ability of a poltergeist to propagate sound waves, for instance) and we can test it [scientifically, I would assume, consensual-reliable – WJM].
Whether or not this is a valid dichotomy is if “All human efforts at detection” = “consensual-reliable scientific testing”.
Alan has also restated the tautology I pointed out earlier; if one defines only that which the consensual-reliable scientific method validates as “real”, then only naturalistic phenomena (that which is amenable to such testing) can be real by definition.
IOW, the supernatural cannot be proven – in fact, under Alan’s view, it is a tautological fact that the supernatural cannot be said to be real or to exist. If you can’t demonstrate the phenomena via consensual-reliable scientific methodology, it doesn’t exist except as “imagination” or delusion. If you can, it is by definition within the naturalist paradigm.
Of course, Alan is obviously conveniently defining “all human efforts at detection” to be “the same as”, the scientific method, because humans have been detecting, through their efforts, all sorts of supernatural phenomena for thousands of years; however, Alan tautologically dismisses such efforts and detections as “non-efforts” and “non-detections” because they don’t meet his definitional criteria.
Which is fine, but the take-home point is: there is no way to prove to Alan that anything supernatural exists, because the only doorway open to prove it would make that thing non-supernatural by definition.
I’m glad you see the problem so clearly, William. We could indeed all be ants crawling on the sidewalk, oblivious of the Empire State building looming above us. What can you do?
I don’t agree with the “=” in science = methodological naturalism but I do accept that the assumption of methodological naturalism is some part of how scientists work.
From that assumption, the success of physics, and the inclusion of causal closure and conservation of energy in that successful physics, many philosophers accept physicalism (I’m avoid naturalism and sticking with supervenience physicalism as per the SEP).
Since that philosophical conclusion required the a posteriori success of physics and its inclusion of principles like conservation of energy, I don’t see how it be classified as a tautology.
I see your points about the type of evidence sciences demands as part of the more general discussion of epistemology which KN’s OP was also part of. If knowledge requires justifiability, what constitutes valid justification?
To answer this question, I think one needs norms like testing by controlled experiment, repeatability, consistency with other knowledge, openness to consensual review and criticism, principled discussion of one’s own views and their evidence. The justification for these types of norms could very well include pragmatic success in achieving human goals related to some aspects of living (eg growing food, preventing illness, keeping warm, particpating in internet discussions).
I see the existence and justification through pragmatic success of these norms as reasons to conclude that science is NOT an enterprise where evidence is defined arbitrarily, which is what I understand you to be claiming.
Alan Fox asks:
Well, you can’t do anything, because if phenomena exists in reality that is not amenable to scrutiny by consensual-reliable methodology (even though for you, by definition, such phenomena is not real), even if you experience it, you will just use naturalist apologetics (hoax, fraud, delusion, hallucination, fluke, anomaly) to account for it and go along your merry naturalist way.
I, on the other hand, do not define “exist”, “real”, or “reality” that way, so there are all sorts of things I (and others) can do since I do not require consensus-reliable scientific explanations or justifications, nor am I bound to such interpretations.
And Uri *really* is bending those spoons with the power of his mind.
Guffaw.
Examples?
As an aside, I’m not erecting any barriers or insisting on any limits, just asking the question. If something has absolutely no manifestation in reality how can you infer that it is real rather than being a figment of your (or anyone’s) imagination?
What do you mean by “absolutely no manifestation in reality”?
I don’t completely understand this, I don’t think. If we rule out the amended (scientific) theory because of too many ad hoc assumptions, where are we? We’ve got a “naturalistic” theory that has been shown by your lights to be no good, and nothing to replace it. Does that make it acceptable to say that something is supernatural?
It’s here that I think McKinnon says that it doesn’t actually make sense to claim that something is a miracle–either we were wrong about the law or we’re wrong about the existence of the contrary event. But either way, there’s nothing supernatural because, well, this paradox doesn’t allow it.
The opposite of “any manifestation, whatsoever”. Any causal chain that can be demonstrated or inferred, however indirectly.
Can you provide proof that you’ve spoken to the dead? No? Then that would be what “absolutely no manifestation in reality” means.
Demonstrated or inferred how? Scientifically?
No limits. But “demonstrated” might give you a clue. Demonstrability would involve some sort of observation, however indirect..
Comment moved (with replies) to guano.
Bruce S said:
Scientific evidence isn’t defined “arbitrarily” any more than testimonial evidence is defined “arbitrarily”. It’s definitional; it’s a category of data/information. If it’s not repeatable by everyone else doing the experiment, it’s not scientific evidence.
The question is, if you hold reality to be defined by that kind of data, then naturalism cannot be shown to you to be false. Period.
I don’t think the “norms” critique of materialism is interesting. If one is satisfied with feelings-based or physics-produced thoughts, impulses and sensations as the basis for their “oughts”, the critique is at an end. If someone finds chance & physics unpalatable as the ultimate cause of their oughts and beliefs, they should turn to theism. It’s the only alternative.
As I said, it’s a conundrum. As a pragmatist, I don’t worry overmuch.
Then it’s as easy as investigating some supernatural or paranormal field and making a good faith attempt to see if it works for you. Remember, what we’re talking about is something that is not, by definition, consensual-reliable.
Let’s say it’s magic. Investigate it. Try out a spell. See if it works for you. Let’s say it’s a Ouija board. Give it a good-faith effort. Psychics. Faith-healing. Etc. IOW, if such things are supernatural by definition, they will only work in a way that is not subject to consensus scientific validation/scrutiny. Each may only work in a relatively reliable way for certain groups or kinds of people, but never so much as to be “provable” in any scientific sense.
Now, you can’t build mass-market computers (or sell mass-market spells or remedies) that way, but we’re just talking about whether or not there exist reality content that actually exists but doesn’t work in a scientific-consensual way.
Take faith-healing. That’s something that has apparently worked in my experience. Being cured of cancer is a real-world manifestation. I’ve also seen and interacted with spirits/ghosts and have manifested objects out of thin air. I’ve seen psychic phenomena occur – people knowing things they have no way to know. I’ve known things I had no way to know.
If you say, “Well, okay, let’s go to the faith healer then, they don’t charge anything – don’t even accept donations – so, what can it hurt?” This, after my wife was diagnosed with cancer that was likely going to be terminal. After she had already survived one bout with cancer. Her mother died at an early age of the same cancer. You go to the faith healer. You then go back and demand more tests before you’ll start chemo. The tests come back negative – all the cancerous tumors are gone, all the blood work comes back clean.
If you brush it off with, “wow, what a coincidence”, then there’s nothing that can penetrate one’s tautological concept of reality.
After I asked those hard questions about my own materialist views, I decided to try these things out – a real, good-faith effort, to see if there was anything to any of it. Many of those things worked for me. I then struggled to find a worldview that would accommodate the kind of stuff that started happening around me.
This is just wrong.
Science can, and does, study singular events. It is the methods and their effectiveness, rather than the data, that must be repeatable.
In different times and places, I’ve given examples of what we would need to begin to show that the”paranormal” could interact with our reality. If such interactions were to occur, we should see a discontinuity, a violation of the physical properties of this universe. There are ways to formulate tests. As yet, we have no candidates for testing.
Let’s be a little more specific 🙂
But no. There is a real element in all this. If faith healing happens, someone gets healed. That’s a real, observable, hopefully repeatable, phenomenon.
If (using Keith’s example) a prayer was discovered that miraculously caused the limbs of amputees to regrow, I’d be much more concerned to use it as widely as possible for the benefit of all amputees than working out how it worked. We could worry about that later after healing all amputees.
Why not? Wouldn’t the opportunity for everyone who is sick to get healed be a wonderful thing?
I’m very pleased for you and your wife that her cancer disappeared. It’s a shame that so many people do get sick and die. It seems a bit random, arbitrary, unfair. (My niece died aged 35 from cancer. There were a lot of people praying for her, hoping and believing she would get better.)
Yes, this has received plenty of coverage and is somewhat off-topic.
What you have here is the concurrence of whatever you went through that you refer to as “faith healing” and your wife’s recovery from cancer. Now if you could only repeat it. Too late for my niece but there are many other sufferers who could benefit.
It’s an anecdote. Remission from cancer happens. It happened to me. After my cancer diagnosis and treatment, I was given a rather low chance of survival. Nine years on, I’m fine.
Alan,
Not much use in having a conversation about this when you require that I provide what amounts to consensual-reliable evidence for that which definitionally doesn’t meet that criteria, and utilize naturalist apologetics (hoax, fraud, delusion, hallucination, fluke, anomaly, imagination, misconception, misunderstanding) to dismiss what occurred.
You’re asking me for evidence not-A that is also A, and doing exactly what I said materialists/physicalists/naturalists do when presented with something not-A. As I said, the supernatural cannot be proven to you if you require naturalistic evidence of it.
But what occurred? You’ve presented me with the anecdote of your wife’s remission from cancer. I have no reason to disbelieve the events broadly as you describe. Remission from cancer is observed, though rarely, and possible causal factors are being studied. I read that a boost to the immune system is one theory that may lead to the development of a cure.
What have I (pragmatic realist BTW, n*****ist is a most ambiguous term. It suggests an amateur field biologist to me – I’d call Alfred Russel Wallace a naturalist) been presented with, apart from an anecdote, albeit one with a welcome outcome.
Alan said.
Alan, I’m not trying to prove anything to you. IMO, that’s the key difference between natural and supernatural methodology; you can prove the natural to others. You can only prove the supernatural to yourself.
In order to do so, I had to first dismiss my requirement that ALL of what is real must meet the naturalist requirements of evidence, and stop dismissing everything that didn’t fit that worldview with dismissive materialist apologetics.
That wasn’t the only occurrence of faith healing I’ve experienced, and as I’ve outlined, certainly not the only occurrence of the supernatural.
Let’s call natural phenomena category A, verified by evidence type A. The supernatural is category B. Evidence type A cannot verify category B phenomena. You are asking for type A evidence for category B phenomena.
I experience category B phenomena. I’ve utilized various type B evidence metholdologies to test out that phenomena. As a pragmatist, I found ways of utilizing category B phenomena (the supernatural) to my benefit, accomplishing that which stymied my prior category A worldview and practices.
Naturalism led to a failed, bitter, isolated criminal life. Supernaturalism led to a prosperous, happy, good-citizen good-neighbor life full of family & love. If my supernaturalist techniques and my upward spiral is nothing but a long set of bizarrely coordinated coincidences accompanied by halluciations and delusions … well, that’s fine with me. Whatever works.
I don’t have any problem with you believing whatever you want, and I congratulate you on these improvements. But the “led to” there isn’t really fair, is it? First of all, it suggests a….”naturalist” causation relationship when all you’ve really got is a correlation (and not a very good sampling either–one guy, one change). Secondly, it seems to make an accusation. Although you say you don’t care what anybody else believes, this kind of statement quite baldly suggests that anybody who does share your sort of anti-naturalism (mine is better, BTW, but that’s a whole nother story) is destined to a life of crime, misery, etc. It’s not really a live-and-let-live stance at all, it seems to me.