A thread for William J Murray to unpack the alternatives to “materialism/physicalism/naturalism”

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William has taken exception to the current state of science and its ‘overreach’.

He claims, “IMO, all that is left of materialism/physicalism/naturalism is really nothing more than a hidden (even subconscious) anti-theistic agenda.”

This is a thread for William to guide us in a detailed exploration of the alternatives, their mechanisms, how we might test them and how we might benefit from them.

364 thoughts on “A thread for William J Murray to unpack the alternatives to “materialism/physicalism/naturalism””

  1. Off the top of my head, I would say that an alternative to “methodological naturalism” would be “methodological pragmatism”, which would then have two subsets; personal methodological pragmatism and universal methodological pragmatism.

    This would define science as a methodology for finding “what works” for various purposes in both/either a universally applicable way, and/or in a personally successful way, without assuming or making any metaphysical judgements on the nature of reality.

    “Methodological naturalism” carries with it ideological baggage about what “naturalism” means – which, IMO, for the most part today is just anti-theism.

  3. Perhaps you could provide an example of where ideology has trampled on pragmatism and prevented the development of something useful.

    I can think of several technologies that are underdeveloped (says I), but can’t think how atheistic science can be blamed.

  4. I’ve already provided several examples, in the other thread, where the ideological expectations/narrative of “naturalism” stood at odds with what was later subsumed into an expanded narrative of “naturalism”, and where other supposedly scientific concepts were the extrapolated expectations of the naturalistic narrative that were later excluded.

    Newton, for example, conducted experiments and gathered data. Without having to find “the mechanics” or “the cause”, he noted that there was a regularity to the behavior of matter that could be described with a mathematical formula. He couldn’t explain that finding in terms of the naturalism of the day, and could not explain the mechanics of how it worked.

    Newton, IMO, abandoned the “naturalism” narrative of the day and found something that works (methodological pragmatism) – a mathematical predictive formula. To this day we still don’t know what causes gravity to occur, or what the mechanics are, but we know the formulas work in predicting behaviors.

  5. William J. Murray: Newton, IMO, abandoned the “naturalism” narrative of the day and found something that works (methodological pragmatism) – a mathematical predictive formula. To this day we still don’t know what causes gravity to occur, or what the mechanics are, but we know the formulas work in predicting behaviors.

    You are providing examples of how mainstream science accommodates new paradigms. Gravity, quantum mechanics.

    You have been asked to provide examples of how ideology impedes science. You are providing counterexamples.

  6. We can probably add to the list of science-hindering naturalistic narratives: vestigial organs & “junk” DNA. If we piled up all the theistic narrative miscues, I’m sure they would pile up just as high.

    Which is why I think “pragmatism” is would be a better hammer; it’s not concerned with assertions about reality and extrapolations that are limited thereof, but only about what actually works in experience, whether or not what works can be conceptually integrated into a grand theory of everything or not.

  7. William J. Murray: We can probably add to the list of science-hindering naturalistic narratives: vestigial organs & “junk” DNA.

    Good examples of how the ID community peddles bullshit.

  8. I’ve yet to see you provide an example of where anyone was impeded. Nor do I think that science changed to accommodate Newton. His claims were empirical, testable, verifiable.

    In your proposed framework “universal methodological pragmatism” would mean that is someone was happy they were talking with the dead (or changing their world with their mindpowers) they would be doing science. Is that not so?

  9. Petrushka said:

    You are providing examples of how mainstream science accommodates new paradigms. Gravity, quantum mechanics.

    You have been asked to provide examples of how ideology impedes science. You are providing counterexamples.

    Accommodates after impeding due to ideological narrative, of which there are countless examples, and promotes as science ideological narrative that it later discards. That **is** a description of **impediment**.

  10. William J. Murray: Accommodates after impeding due to ideological narrative, of which there are countless examples, and promotes as science ideological narrative that it later discards. That **is** a description of **impediment**.

    Tell us how theory of gravity was impeded. Provide some names and dates and specifics.

  12. And while you are at it, William, provide us with a specific DNA sequence formerly labeled junk, but which actually has a function discovered by the ENCODE group. tell us what function was discovered by ENCODE and why this function is not disrupted by mutations.

  13. How exactly are the notion of vestigial organs and junk DNA hindering science? We know that not all DNA is functional (although it remains a resource for evolution), but we’re still looking for functions in DNA, nothing is being hindered.

    See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-value_enigma

    Likewise the eyes of blind cave fish are clearly vestigial, unless the designer has a strange sense of aesthetics for fish heads. These are useful concepts and add to our understanding. But they do not prohibit other ideas other than they have explanatory power that bullshit does not.

  14. William J. Murray: Accommodates after impeding due to ideological narrative, of which there are countless examples, and promotes as science ideological narrative that it later discards. That **is** a description of **impediment**.

    Science only accepts stuff when it survives disconfirmation. Expelled!!!!11111111 censorships!

  15. Richardthughes: of which there are countless examples

    Double secret examples, no doubt.

    Gravitation and Quantum mechanics are examples of looking for regularities, finding them, and building models to accommodate them, no matter how counter intuitive.

    Show us how atheistic materialism impeded theories of gravitation and quantum phenomena.

  16. Newton, IMO, abandoned the “naturalism” narrative of the day and found something that works (methodological pragmatism) – a mathematical predictive formula. To this day we still don’t know what causes gravity to occur, or what the mechanics are, but we know the formulas work in predicting behaviors.

    Gee, what did Newton say?

    Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy
    Rule I. We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

    To this purpose the philosophers say that Nature does nothing in vain, and more is in vain when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.

    Rule II. Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes.

    As to respiration in a man and in a beast, the descent of stones [meteorites] in Europe and in America, the light of our culinary fire and of the sun, the reflection of light in the earth, and in the planets.

    Rule III. The qualities of bodies, which admit neither [intensification] nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.

    For since the qualities of bodies are only known to us by experiments, we are to hold for universal all such as universally agree with experiments; and such as are not liable to, diminution can never be quite taken away. We are certainly not to relinquish the evidence of experiments for the sake of dreams and vain fictions of our own devising; nor are we to recede from the analogy of Nature, which [is] . . . simple, and always consonant to itself. We no other way know the extension of bodies than by our senses, nor do these reach it in all bodies, but because we perceive extension in all that are sensible, therefore, we ascribe it universally to all others also. That abundance of bodies are hard, we learn by experience, and because the hardness of the whole arises from the hardness of the parts, we, therefore, justly infer the hardness of the undivided particles not only of the bodies we feel but of all others. That all bodies are impenetrable, we gather not from reason, but from sensation. The bodies which we handle we find impenetrable, and thence, conclude impenetrability to be an universal property of all bodies whatsoever. That all bodies are moveable, and endowed with certain powers (which we call. . . [inertia]) of persevering in their motion, or in their rest, we only infer from the like properties observed in the bodies which we have seen. The extension, hardness, impenetrability, mobility, of the whole, result from the extension, hardness, impenetrability, mobility, . . . of the parts; and thence we conclude the least particles of all bodies to be also all extended, and hard and impenetrable, and moveable, . . . And this is the foundation of all philosophy. . .

    Lastly, if it universally appears, by experiments and astronomical observations, that all bodies about the earth gravitate towards the earth, and that in proportion to the quantity of matter which they severally contain, that the moon likewise, according to the quantity or its matter, gravitates towards the earth, that, on the other hand, our sea gravitates towards the moon, and all the planets mutually one towards another, and the comets in like manner towards the sun, we must, in consequence or this rule, universally allow that all bodies whatsoever are endowed with a principle of mutual gravitation. . .

    Rule IV. In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions collected by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, ’till such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions,

    This rule we must follow, that the argument of induction may not be evaded by hypotheses.
    Gravity

    Hitherto, we have explained the phenomena of the heavens and of our sea by the power of gravity, but have not yet assigned the cause of this power. This is certain, that it must proceed from a cause that penetrates to the very centres of the sun and planets, without suffering the least diminution of its force, that operates not according to the quantity of the surfaces of the particles upon which it acts (as mechanical causes used to do) but according to the quantity of the solid matter which they contain, and propagates its virtue on all sides to immense distances, decreasing always in the dulicate portion of the distances. . .

    Hitherto I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from the phenomena, and I frame no hypothesis; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and afterward rendered general by deduction. Thus it was the impenetrability, the mobility, and the impulsive forces of bodies, and the laws of motion and of gravitation were discovered. And to us it is enough that gravity does really exist, and acts according to the laws which we have explained, and abundantly serves to account for all the motions of the celestial bodies, and of our sea.

    http://www.thenagain.info/Classes/Sources/Newton.html

    Looks like “naturalism” of some kind, in fact, at least as he saw it. Not that I think “naturalism” has anything to do with it per se, but Newton stuck with the principles of “natural philosophy,” as science was called at the time. Unlike William and others who merely complain about science stifling what appears to be indistinguishable from wishful thinking and confirmation bias.

    Glen Davidson

  17. We can probably add to the list of science-hindering naturalistic narratives: vestigial organs & “junk” DNA. If we piled up all the theistic narrative miscues, I’m sure they would pile up just as high.

    And yet broken genes, the coccyx, and goose bumps in humans still exist.

    I guess denial of them would move science to the level of discovery that we find in ID.

    Glen Davidson

  18. Since Newton, science has dealt with relationships between and among phenomena. Quantum theory has extended this to the point that physicists are reluctant to talk about “things” at all. So much for the bias of materialism.

    Material has become regular relationships between phenomena, and science has become the search for regularities.

    How is that to be distinguished from pragmatism?

  19. I guess “countless” is a cousin of infinite, and listing countless examples will take a while.

    Meanwhile, I suppose we’ll have to assume that “countless” discoveries have been impeded by labeling non-functional, non-conserved DNA as junk.

    The fields of evo-devo and gene regulation do not exist.

  20. What are the limits of the natural world? What can it produce? Can ghosts, psi, even a god not be accounted for in terms of a natural world? Can universal intelligence not be accounted for? Could consciousness be a fundamental property of the universe, and if it was, would that not be a newfound aspect of the “natural” world?

    “Naturalism” is a vague, metaphysical concept that is largely defined by local culture. It sets up a system of interpretations and expectations that, as my examples show, can be entirely wrong.

    Why establish such a vague, metaphysical concept at the very heart of science – the method? Why characterize the methodology science employs with biased, a priori metaphysics at all?

    Unlike “naturalism”, “pragmatism” doesn’t carry around truth and reality baggage. It’s not trying to find out what the “truth” is, nor is it advocating a truth, asserting what “reality” is, nor is it invoking presumptive, cultural metaphysics. It only cares about what works, and it doesn’t even identify that which works individually as “inferior to” or “less real than” that which works universally.

  21. Petrushka said:

    Gravitation and Quantum mechanics are examples of looking for regularities, finding them, and building models to accommodate them, no matter how counter intuitive.

    You’re looking right at my point. You just elucidated my point. The question is, can you see my point?

    Counter-intuitive to intuition based on what?

  22. GlenDavidson: I guess denial of them would move science to the level of discovery that we find in ID.

    No ID is fertile, its just that… um… censorhip? Also materialism? The fact we can’t come up with any positive experiments for ID is the NSCE’s fault.

  23. BTW, thanks for starting this thread. That first post of mine came from it, and I don’t think I would have thought of “methodological pragmatism” without this thread.

    What a perfect term! What a perfect, metaphysically neutral framework for scientific research! Makes me wonder, why is there a vague, culturally-dependent, metaphysical assumption inserted into the very methodology of how science is done in the first place??

  25. William J. Murray: Counter-intuitive to intuition based on what?

    Counter-intuitive based on experience with ordinary things.

    For example, things fall down.

    Newton produced a model of gravity, complete with descriptive equations, that demonstrated things do not necessarily fall down. Given sufficient forward motion, they can fall around, rather than down.

    Quantum theory is counter intuitive to our experience that things cannot move from one location to another without traversing the intervening space. It is counter intuitive to our everyday notions of causation, and to our everyday experience of things having definite location and velocity.

    These are not trivial discoveries, and yet they were made without reference to theology. And the counter intuitive models were accepted almost immediately, subject to verification.

  26. Also, unlike “naturalism”, “pragmatism” doesn’t really have any edges or clear definition, common currency or necessarily observer independent value. The consequence of this is we all do our own unique “William Science”, its not repeatable and meaningless accept to ourselves (as evidenced by our exchanges with you)

  27. Mothers are currently not vaccinating their children based on intuition. This is an example of “William Science”, surely? I propose this as our case study.

    They’re not going to let naturalism / physicalism / materialism / reality tell them what’s what! They have their own way of finding “what works” in a “in a personally successful way”

  28. William J. Murray: What are the limits of the natural world? What can it produce?

    William, science deals with regularities, not with assumptions about underlying properties.

    Properties are the result of observation and measurement. Models are statements designed to provide structure to properties. Models change to accommodate new observations.

    Psi and such have been seriously studied for well over a century. When you eliminate fraud and experimental error, nothing is left.

    This doesn’t prove Psi doesn’t exist, but it certainly narrows the possibilities.

    Skepticism doesn’t stop anyone from finding and demonstrating such phenomena.

  29. Richardthughes: Mothers are currently not vaccinating their children based on intuition. This is an example of “William Science”, surely? I propose this as our case study.

    Let’s not forget the parents who send their kids to faith healers in lieu of doctors.

  30. petrushka: Let’s not forget the parents who send their kids to faith healers in lieu of doctors.

    Another great example of “William Science”. William?

  31. Richardthughes: No ID is fertile, its just that… um… censorhip? Also materialism? The fact we can’t come up with any positive experiments for ID is the NSCE’s fault.

    I’m always reassured by the presence of the constant surveillance of the DI by our people, and especially by the threats made that prevent them from publishing their voluminous evidence for design in their own journals.

    It’s not easy to stop science, especially at its beginning. We must have supernatural capacities for preventing ID science. Miracles are everywhere!

    Glen Davidson

  33. GlenDavidson: It’s not easy to stop science, especially at its beginning. We must have supernatural capacities for preventing ID science. Miracles are everywhere!

    Not only can we stop science with our mind rays, we can also stop people from publishing proposals. And apparently we can stop William from listing countless examples where we have succeeded in impeding fruitful research.

    William, perhaps you would favor us a proposal for studying ghosts and psychic phenomena.

  34. Richardthughes: Wow. As I suspected William is so enamored with “Methodological Pragmatism” that he’s posted it over at UD, without any mention of the discussion here of course:

    Our mind rays have extended all the way to UD. William hasn’t been able to publish any examples of research proposals that would be distinguished by methodological pragmatism.

  35. If you feel, personally that ghosts are a good concept, then you just did done a William Science!

  36. William J. Murray: Could consciousness be a fundamental property of the universe, and if it was, would that not be a newfound aspect of the “natural” world?

    Consciousness exists in the world that I experience. I see no reason to doubt it is an attribute of natural phenomena.

    I wouldn’t call it new found.

    And I see no impediments to mainstream science exploring consciousness and making models.

  38. Whenever they bring this crap up, I point out the fact that they’re all functional materialists.

  40. It took Newton, a theist to figure it out. So yeah, you can say the knowledge of gravity was impeded until a theist came along, figuring that God is not hiding under the bed, but in his head.

    Ironic isn’t it? The perps here claim theism is irrelevant to scientific endeavor, irrelevant to prying life’s development secrets, irrelevant to knowing.

    What I wanna know is……where are the godless Newtons?

    petrushka: Tell us how theory of gravity was impeded. Provide some names and dates and specifics.

  41. Whenever Pithy Richard makes an utterance, I say he’s just a closet spiritualist.

    Richardthughes:
    Whenever they bring this crap up, I point out the fact that they’re all functional materialists.

  43. Steve, back then everyone was a theist. So what’s your point? Also, all the discoveries in ye olden times were by men. Care to leap to another idiotic conclusion?

  44. Steve:
    Whenever Pithy Richard makes an utterance, I say he’s just a closet spiritualist.

    Not at all. But do levitate to work or teleport your cornflakes to your mouth? Other than utter unanswered wishes to the sky, how does non-materialism work for you, Steve?

  45. Following links via Uncommon Descent; I see Angus Menuge has been reading my comments and comes up with “methodological realism”. Very good suggestion, apart from the plagiarism. 🙂

    Tom Gilson’s link is worth following to read the comments. Nick Matzke and OlegT address Gilson’s suggestion of “Regularism”.

    What you agree to call what you do to find out stuff about us and the rest of the world is hardly the most important step. Giving imaginary concepts names is the first step to either discovery or delusion. Reification or reality?

  46. RichardHughes is apparently assuming experiential regularities necessarily indicates materialism is true. Considering that the term “materialism” doesn’t really mean much, claiming that people behave as if materialism is true doesn’t really mean much either.

  47. Not at all. But do levitate to work or teleport your cornflakes to your mouth? Other than utter unanswered wishes to the sky, how does non-materialism work for you, Steve?

    How would those be examples of non-materialism? Here, Richard is apparently making the same logical error others continually make; point at something people apparently cannot do, then for no reason at all claim it is supportive of materialism. Similarly, they demand that people do something that apparently they cannot do and insist they do those things to prove materialism false – without ever even defining materialism or explaining why the challenge represents a pivotal condition of materialism.

  48. Methodological naturalism actually is methodological pragmatism. Nothing but that.
    Methodological Naturalism is an empirically grounded attitude of scientists, which is justified in virtue of the consistent success of naturalistic explanations. Naturalistic explanations are fully pragmatic.
    Murray is stumbling on words, not content.

  49. heleen:
    Methodological naturalism actually is methodological pragmatism. Nothing but that.
    Methodological Naturalism is an empirically grounded attitude of scientists, which is justified in virtue of the consistent success of naturalistic explanations. Naturalistic explanations are fully pragmatic.
    Murray is stumbling on words, not content.

    Please refer me to what definition of “naturalism” you are using to draw this equivalence.

  50. As I see it, the two terms carry with them at least some very different expectations and frameworks.

    For example, the methodological pragmatist is unconcerned with the the terms “natural”, “supernatural” and “artificial”. The term “naturalism” specifically puts those metaphysics at the forefront of the scientific paradigm. The pragmatist doesn’t care if a god actually exists or not; doesn’t care if materialism is true or not; doesn’t care about the metaphysical categorizations and interpretations of naturalism, physicalism, theism, materialism, spiritualism, artifice, etc. whatsoever.

    The pragmatist is only concerned with finding what works, however that is defined by the research parameters.

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