I’ll intervene on this conversation started by S. Joshua Swamidass as my guess is he’s going to mangle terms & then claim mastery over them, as he has done in the past on the topic of ‘methodological naturalism’ (MN). Paul Nelson (of micro-/macro- distinction) has posted here in the past & has done a fine job of staying more neutral, scholarly and welcoming to discussion than most IDists at the DI. It would be welcome for Nelson to clarify, re-iterate or to add any points here that Swamidass might not wish to address at PS, or in case the naive scientism cum MN lobby grows too loud there.
This is one of those topics where in my view Swamidass scores quite low in credibility and coherency (much like I score in biology! = P). This makes sense because he has little training and doesn’t seem to have done much personal reading in philosophy, social sciences or humanities. Paul Nelson, on the other hand, did a PhD in the philosophy of biology. So if Swamidass starts to try to out-philosophize Nelson, things could get hilarious quickly, as they have in the past, e.g. with Jonathan Burke, who discovered predecessors to GA -> GAE that Swamidass missed & had to add at the last minute.
Let’s see if Swamidass is ready to learn if the term ‘methodological naturalism’ is really a sword he wants to fall on or not. So far, it has been. Nelson, as do I, rejects MNism, & not just as a misnomer.
In the highlighted thread, we see Swamidass ask Nelson for clarification on a topic that Swamidass has obviously done a little bit of armchair talk with buddies about, but hasn’t actually got into the main course yet. Swamidass insists, “For the record, I think MN is legitimate, but that debate is a separate issue.”
Swamidass keeps repeating the same clumsy and imprecise language, then insisting there is nothing to debate about it. He continues to use a word duo (M+N) that he says he thinks is ‘wrong,’ yet without making any attempt to get beyond it. Why not? If he has to hear it 20 times before he understands it, then despite his proficiency in biology & computation, that might be what he needs in order to learn in other fields, such as philosophy. MN is not simply ‘legitimate’ or ‘illegitimate;’ it is rather an expression of ideology about the way (natural) science is done, i.e. its methods. That Swamidass doesn’t realise the inherent bias in the way he is framing the conversation explains much about why people communicating about ‘origins’ topics don’t understand each other.
The reasons Swamidass won’t debate are because, 1. He doesn’t have an original place to stand that was not already taken first by others who likely know the field better than he does, 2. Debate for Swamidass seems always to quickly turn into a kind of non-mainline Christian evangelical apologetics, similar to the BioLogos model, at least how he frames his ‘Empty Chair Confessional’ scenario, as if he were the Science Pope. And when you can’t evangelize evangelcalism to your opponent, or claim A&E as your own in front of them, then the game is up, and, 3. He’s trying to promote peace when there is no peace, using inciting arguments (re: MN) & doing so while flying the confessional banner of the very community that has been among the most protesting & agitating & stubborn & backward (consistent biblical literalistic bigotry & anti-science misunderstanding) in the conversation. And yet he hasn’t yet issued a word of apology for even the METHOD he is using, which comes right out of the same fundamentalist-creationist playbook that caused the problems in the first place and which in his own way, he exacerbates even while ‘scientifically’ preaching peace.
Mature catholic and orthodox Abrahamic monotheists have no need for the highly ideological, scientistic ‘peace’ that Swamidass would sell them on the way down the road to further separation of theology/worldview & human life.
“1. Using God as an explanation is disallowed by MN in scientific work.”
Technically speaking, that comes closer to ‘methodological anti-supernaturalism’ (ASN) than to promoting a naturalism-only approach to methods used in natural sciences. The latter would require a positive signification that Joshue doesn’t adequately provide, which is why the DI produces books like “The Nature of Nature.” It is difficult to figure why Joshua doesn’t understand that MASN does not = MN. Yet he keeps repeating it. One could write it down to a kind of narrow thinking required to ‘do biology’ that may make it difficult to explore other fields of thought respectfully and on their own terms, & thus to try to better understand than just dictating standard-fare (most often, but not always, atheism-driven) MN to philosophers.
Anti-supernaturalism is a different position from pro-naturalism. Methodological naturalism is still a type of naturalism. Swamidass can’t seem to come to grips with or allow his own English language to reflect this in his thoughts. So instead he might pause to ask why philosophers, not to mention social scientists and humanities scholars rather widely, reject the ideology that Swamidass thinks he is defending by simply calling it ‘good science’. We don’t want Swamidass’ naturalistic ideology hidden behind the term ‘methodological,’ yet Swamidass insists we must accept it or be negatively counted.
Sorry Swamidass, ideology is not just automatically ‘good science’ because a PhD in biological computation with a medical degree says it is & encourages others on a soapbox to echo him.
2. Wrong based on answer to 1.
“3. The idea was to discuss an intelligent designer rather than God, design rather than creation, and remove references to Scripture. In fact this was all an attempt to abide by MN.” – Swamidass
How can Swamidass get this so wrong? Is it because he is fixated on MN as a personal ideology he holds as a natural scientist? I have asked Joshua in the past to clearly articulate what a non-naturalist natural scientist looks like & he has avoided answering as if a plague were chasing him. In other words, in his ideological incoherence, he claims both to reject naturalism & accept naturalism at the same time. And now having been caught doing this, doesn’t wish for it to be pointed out. It would be better if Swamidass could learn his error openly & move forward with a clearer message. I believe Paul Nelson could help him do this.
First, it’s an Intelligent Designer, capitalized, if one has a proper sense of Divine Names. C’mon, Paul, don’t just peter out on this – take it head-on! Yes, the DI won’t talk about the Intelligent Designer as part of the ‘theory,’ which is rather minimalist in the end anyway, definitely not a ‘design revolution’. IDism in short: information, therefore mind & therefore a better chance of divine Creation than according to an atheist worldview. Apologetics. Yet Swamidass doesn’t seem to realize how using & promoting the ideology of MN, actually furthers the atheism he somewhat vaguely claims he is against. And the problem is that he can’t just up his science-talk in giving an answer to this because it is not a ‘strictly scientific’ observation or problem he is facing. Pushing harder the wrong way isn’t a good choice. So, when Swamidass gets off his high Science horse, we may actually be able to have a better conversation that takes the ideology of MN more seriously than Swamidass currently does, perhaps just because he can’t see the other side.
4. Facepalm.
“5. Consequently there has been a shift in ID. Rather than work within MN, more and more ID proponents want to get rid of MN in questions of origins.”
No, IDists have been consistently anti-MN since the beginning of the Movement. I’ve been following it since @2002. “In questions of origins,” one of the problems is the scientistic attitude Swamidass brings to the table in contrast with Nelson. Then Swamidass has the gall to ask: “How would you rewrite your narrative in a way that could be common to us?”
I realise the guy deserves some slack, but how about Swamidass making an attempt to rewrite his non-mainline ‘narrative’ in a way that doesn’t particularly privilege the ideology that he holds in the conversation? It would be more productive to instead open up the conversation even to people who patiently, consistently & faithfully reject the scientistic ideology of MN. If Swamidass is unwilling to even consider that it is he who might be misperceiving things, perhaps due to his philosophical immaturity & loose use of concepts & terms, progress with Nelson might indeed take place, which could be good for the future of ‘the conversation.’
One of Nelson’s flaws, of course, is his trust in the work of Stephen C. Meyer, whose definition of ‘history’ leaves more than a lot to be desired. I was quite surprised at what I discovered at Cambridge where Meyer wrote his dissertation & don’t think they appreciate being linked as Meyer & the DI likes to advertise. Let’s leave Meyer out of this & listen to what Nelson has to say.
I’d pick Nelson over Swamidass when it comes to MN. And of course Steve Fuller has gone perhaps even further than Steve Dilley, who Nelson recommended to Swamidass, in exposing MN. Whether or not Nelson can finally get through to Joshua on this topic is another issue. Sometimes more attempts is all it takes.
Nelson wrote that: “MN is the current dividing line because the ID community is united by the bare proposition that “intelligent design is empirically detectable in nature.” In order for design to be detectable, of course, it must have some observational or empirical content which does not reduce ultimately to physics. That’s intelligence as a distinct cause, issuing in distinct effects. MN forbids appeals to intelligence (i.e., as a basic or fundamental constituent of reality). There’s the conflict.”
Here’s where Nelson starts to go off the rails. 1) It’s Intelligent Design, not intelligent design’. The detectability of divine Intelligence, as Phillip Johnson & Charles Thaxton, along with Olsen & Bradley believed & believe. 2) Design is already ‘detectable’, but it is not the end goal simply to ‘detect’ some kind of thing (ontology). Rather, IDism is about implications, the implication of a Mind beyond matter. Good natural science and social science can & do already “appeal to intelligence”. I was speaking with a design theorist & reading a design thinking paper recently. But that’s not ‘Intelligent Design Theory’ and never will be. 3) Science is not a ‘forbidding’ field or discipline. Nelson himself couldn’t see a coherent, clear, valuable ‘Intelligent Design Theory’ even recently, in his own words. The IDists simply have provided no strictly scientific evidence of the instantiation of what they call ‘Intelligent Design’ and instead depend on probabilism & sciency apologetics, the latter much like the earlier ‘creationist’ movements.
So, in the end Swamidass is right about at least this: “The issue is divine intelligence, and the attempt to recognize design without considering the designer (neither approach works in science).” Biology differs considerably from theology & theological biology isn’t welcome; it’s intentionally schismatic. Yet Swamidass is otherwise wrong to suggest that ‘science’ is & only ever can be ‘naturalistic,’ so it’s a rather small & narrow view he is espousing, in the name of Science.
At least S. Joshua Swamidass might learn the difference between philosophy and ideology from Nelson in this conversation. He may then come to realize he’s been foisting a figment of his own imagination that needn’t have been constructed. Then again, he may just shrink back into typical disciplinary language that wreaks of natural scientism, ideological naturalism, biologism & reductionism again. Whatever he does, because I’m calling him out on it here and he doesn’t like being called out away from PS, Joshua will likely deny it all or just ignore it in public because he can’t seem to figure any other way out of the philosophical corner he’s pained himself into than to blame the messenger. Sad to see such an ethically-challenged scientist.
Properly understood, ‘methodological naturalism’ denotes ideology, not ‘good science.’ If Nelson would go further than he has in the past and acknowledge this, a different, likely better conversation would open up. The problem is that Swamidass hasn’t yet shown he’s ready to travel that road. Maybe Nelson will help him get there towards meeting next year with his former ‘hero’ (as Swamidass once briefly called) Behe.
I don’t see the scope and details of my personal education is on topic. Even if it somehow were, it is not something that I would share on the internet.
I am not sure how to interpret “voices”, but if you mean that people can adopt assumptions in ways they think appropriate to the situation, then I agree that people do that. Two examples of what I mean:
1. Based on his public postings, Joshua S adopts a naturalistic worldview as a precondition for participating in his scientific community (which is MN as I understand it). However, he is a deeply religious person in how he conducts the rest of his life.
2. It is a standard anti-global skepticism argument in analytic epistemology to separate the contexts of taking a position as a philosopher versus taking a position as part of living everyday life. Tnen one argues that global skepticism can only be entertained in a philosophical context.
ETA: For 1 on Joshua, I don’t understand whether your OP is saying (1) he cannot do that (because those two sets of assumptions cannot be separated), he is should not do that, eg because a Christian scientist should not do science that way, or (3) that he does not understand the nature of MN and the arguments about it, and until he does, he is wrong to follow it and to support is at his forum, or (4) something else.
Thanks for the rest of your post and the papers you suggest. I will look at the one you thought might speak best to me, but I suspect that even then I will find the understanding the primary literature to be beyond my knowledge of the subject matter.
ETA: I’d be interested in more on why you discount de Vries’s arguments.
Alan, to phoodoo:
Not true. “Water electrolyzes into hydrogen and oxygen” can be tested even if you have no idea of the mechanism involved. You simply electrolyze water and see if hydrogen and oxygen are produced.
Flint,
Agreed. And here’s how you use science to falsify one such claim:
The claim is that the YEC God exists. That’s a supernatural claim. Science shows that the claim is false.
A supernatural claim has been falsified by science.
Of course each fully-formed person must face these issues. I don’t think the public education system of a secular country is the place for this journey to start. Instead, it starts with the family and with any private religious instruction selected by the family.
It seems consistent with MN to me for scientists working in the humanities to treat people according to how they are, which includes their religious beliefs.
But perhaps Postman was commenting on the moral status of contemorary media or their contents, or of society or certain types of people. If so, I would see that as philosophy, not science. In no way is that meant to impugn its validity or importance.
keiths:
Flint:
The point I’m making is more basic.
Consider the hypothesis that the world was created last Tuesday. That claim is true if and only if the world was created last Tuesday, and false otherwise. We may never know whether the claim is true or false, but that doesn’t change the fact that the claim has a definite truth value.
Hence my disagreement with your statement:
I would correct it as follows:
I know that some of the people I am describing are Baptists, because my neighbors never tire of telling me that their god is an essential part of nature, and they regard all of creation as their god’s work. Their god created the world, it says so in Genesis. He created the earth and the sky, the sun and moon, the plants and beasts of the field, etc. etc.
What I’m not agreeing with is Keiths contention that if someone claims anything was created by the god, that claim THEREFORE becomes a supernatural claim. And if their god created all of creation, there cannot be any claim that is NOT supernatural in Keiths sense.
My take is, if science can investigate it, it’s not supernatural. No matter what the Baptists or creationists may say.
I am going to repeat to you, as I said to Gregory. My Baptist neighbors tell me that all of creation was created by their god. Not just the earth. They can put on a blindfold, spin around three times, point at random, and CLAIM that their god created whatever they’re pointing to. Accordingly, according to your position, every conceivable claim is a supernatural claim. Now, either these blanket claims are not supernatural claims (and you say they are), or else there cannot be such a thing as a non-supernatural claim.
But hey, if you wish to say that science cannot help but support or refute supernatural claims because that’s the only kind of claim my neighbors’ beliefs allow, great. Science is investigating the supernatural. Satisfied?
So you would say that it’s not really possible for any statement to be meaningless, that all claims have a truth value. The question of whether the Christian god can create a rock so heavy He can’t lift it has an answer that has a truth value. Saying “this statement is false” has a truth vale. Kewl.
I regard last Tuesdayism as a carefully constructed illustration of the vacuity of untestable religious claims. Including the claim that at least one of all these thousands of gods exist. To me, this is semantic noise.
keiths,
Hmm! Apples and oranges. Have weekend guests, will pick up when have time.
But how to test it?
#metoo 🙂
Flint,
That doesn’t follow from anything I’ve written.
I’m saying that it is possible for a statement to have a definite truth value even when it is unknowable, as in the case of Last Tuesdayism.
Flint,
Let’s take this step by step. We both agree that this is a supernatural claim:
After all, you wrote:
Agreed so far?
This place has no purpose and we (well me, and I’m guessing Lizzie) aren’t anti-theist per se.. It’s just somewhere where those who want to can present ideas and have them discussed. I’ve not seen Mung anywhere else in the blogosphere. I’ll drop him a line.
Alan,
You can’t. That’s the whole point.
keiths,
That is indeed the point. ???
Well, Flint already picked up on my use of language; The YEC god is imaginary but the action of conceiving such an entity is real.
Yet you object when I say that you have a theistic view of truth.
And part of human nature.
BruceS,
Because your theology/worldview is part of the conversation, since you are speaking.
1.
It is interesting that you think this. Why? Because “Joshua S.”, as you call him, has explicitly told me that he rejects a “naturalistic worldview”. Can you explain to me why you think that is? He just doesn’t think MNism counts as an ideology, but rather only as a methodology.
And of course, S. Joshua Swamidass himself is welcome to ‘clarify’ (this is always an on-going ungrounded process for Joshua, it seems) what he actually means on this topic here, since he has done so in the past. My guess is that Swamidass won’t directly face me here for anything other than provoking me or to make statements that largely avoid the main issues. It really is a story how Joshua fails to ‘get it’ regarding SSH, yet won’t admit a shortcoming in a way that would help him to ‘situate’ & shrink ideological MNism, rather than continuing to proselytize it like a scientistic evangelical (or evangelical scientismist, which the scientists themselves intuitively understand is problematic). Joshua has simply chosen an unnecessary pathway and will ultimately get to a point where he realizes he needs to turn back. What else needs saying?
I see no “precondition for participating in [any] scientific community” being that only ideological naturalism is required, even before starting to ‘do science’. Why do you (appear to), BruceS?
2. Eh? Anti-global skepticism? Yes, I’m against the growth of irreligious, superficial, anti-wisdom, anti-religious ‘skepticism’ (of everything except for the ideological skepticism on which the whole game is rigged). LOL!
Philosopher of everyday life not allowed? Everyperson as philosopher denied? Objectistic & scientistic thinking disguised as sociological rules placed from outside by ‘liberalization-oriented’ educators, on what people might or should ‘believe’, think & imagine?! Or is that just materialistic, naturalistic, narrow thinking nonsense, that wisdom-seekers can easily avoid & put aside?
Re: your ETA, closest to (3). Still having nothing to do with ‘the nature of’, but rather *everything* to do with ‘the character of’ ideological MNism (& also MASN, which nobody here has touched because most support it) because we are talking about a sociological, social psychological, anthropological &/or cultural studies (culturology) phenomenon. This is why your thoughts here, along with KN’s, often ring to my ears of dastardly-sounding ‘dehumanisation.’ Just adding more sweet, sticky syrup, BruceS, won’t fix this.
BruceS,
Great. So, since you’re an adult, you’ve faced them. What have you concluded? Do you have a position, or a position of positionlessness? What worldview position do you best (wish to) represent?
‘Starts with the family’ is common across the spectrum & ‘secular country’ is a far too broad brush stroke, something like saying ‘governed country’. I raised India already. Russia. Brazil. Indonesia. Both Koreas. Take your choice & discover your ‘secularistic’ (not just secular) presumptions don’t hold.
However, surely you’ll agree that ‘the theological/worldview journey’ is sometimes not started by families, or started badly or in an unhealthy way. Won’t you? Ignorant or ideologically biased anti-‘religion’ parents, do of course exist & deprive their children of any more inspiring or indeed ‘humanizing’ upbringing than ‘rationalism’ & ‘naturalism’ & ‘pragmatism’ & such ideological things. What to do then? Leave theology/worldview out of school as if there is no ‘education’ or ‘knowledge’ possibly transmitted about it ‘in public’? Just leave out of public education entirely what the effects of ‘secularization’ & ‘naturalizing’ of ethics, politics, religion, economics & ultimately language & thinking actually means, & the dehumanizing narrative is based on? Schools, in that case, fill a role to educate students about something monumentally important that their parents may for whatever reason, have left out. That would be a sign of a more mature humanity to agree education is both missing & needed.
The reality of theology/worldview massively impacts a person’s actions, community, attitude, and understanding of origins & purpose in life. Why try to hide this as ‘impossible’ to discuss in a public setting, even when people are given the possibility to either opt-in or opt-out?
Of course a question is…what do you mean by supernatural? How does one effectively distinguish between a supernatural claim and a natural one? Why not scrap the dichotomy and just talk about whether claims are true or not.
newton,
You are still stuck with your problem of accepting multi-verses theory as science but not accepting supernatural inquiry as science. Its a hypocritical view.
Welcome back Jackson. Absolutely agree about dropping dichotomies but claims aren’t true or not. They are more or less accurate.
Alan Fox,
He used singular, you used plural. They don’t reference the same thing. Notice “the dichotomy”?
Please don’t haphazardly pluralize others’ language as a dialogue style.
keiths:
Neil:
Of course I object, since it isn’t true. The fact that theistic claims can have truth values hardly means that all truth is theistic.
Hi Jackson,
Above or beyond nature. The YEC God definitely qualifies, since it is claimed to have created nature.
By referring to the definition above.
Because the natural/supernatural dichotomy is a useful one, and both words are well-established parts of the language.
These are all useful (but distinct) dichotomies:
keiths,
Are there any other dichotomies with ‘nature’ or ‘natural’ than ‘supernatural’ that are “useful ones” in your opinion, or is that the only “useful one”?
Putting ‘scientific’ against nothing but its opposite as a ‘dichotomy’ won’t get very far. How about a different dichotomy with ‘science’ or ‘scientific’?
Gregory,
“Natural vs artificial” is also useful, though “natural” means something different in that context.
Ah, ok, so ‘natural vs. supernatural’ is only one possible ‘dichotomy,’ yet there are others as well, like ‘natural vs. artificial’. That makes sense.
Yet, wait, what’s this? ‘Natural’ carries different definitions in different contexts!? Let’s hear more about this. Why & how does the definition of ‘natural’ change, and into what, when it is paired with ‘artificial’ instead of with ‘supernatural’ as a ‘dichotomy’?
And what about, say, ‘natural vs. cultural’? Is that not also a valid, ‘useful’ and much discussed ‘dichotomy’? Or what about ‘natural law’ vs. ‘positive law’? Is that not also a ‘valid dichotomy’? Surely those terms, ‘cultural’ & ‘positive’ should not be outlawed in ‘origins’ conversation, or should they be?
Alan Fox,
Who then would pay to maintain it & why, if it “has no purpose”?
Maybe your outward expression sometimes displays nihilism (in addition to apatheology) – is that another option?
Sharing my personal journey is something I reserve for face-to-face encounters with friends. I will say that that this book is next for me, in case it interests anyone else:
https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/explaining-evil-four-views/
I will say that my personal worldview is currently close to some form of liberal naturalism,
https://www.academia.edu/6549862/Putnams_liberal_naturalism
I don’t know what you are getting at by raising those other countries. Are you saying they also claim to be secular and so the term is too broad to be useful?
For me, a secular education cannot privilege a particular religious approach as being the correct one. That does not mean it cannot include courses on world religions.
There certainly are cases where the state should overrule choices made by parents for their children, for example when these affect the child’s health. But I don’t think the state should overrule the type of religious education a family chooses. I think any adult the Five Eyes countries has many opportunities to encounter all aspects of religious beliefs and that many people take advantage of this to challenge and change the beliefs there were raised with.
I agree with the first sentence and I don’t think it is impossible to discuss how worldviews influence. That’s a different question from whether I personally choose to discuss my autobiographical details with people I do not know in public forums.
I have looked through the first four chapters on his co-authored book “Naturalism” (NDPR review here). I don’t think the final chapter is relevant for MN. The first four chapters dealt with arguments I’d seen before in phil of mind and science and so were an easy read for me.
I don’t subscribe to what they call strict naturalism, which is reductionism of some sort. As I said upthread, some variant of what they call broad naturalism makes more sense to me. But they mainly dealt with the uninteresting ideas of Searle and Nagel; much more interesting would be to see them deal with the views of a subtler and deeper thinker like Putnam.
Now how does this apply to MN? For me, the “naturalism” in MN connotes broad naturalism, not strict naturalism. I tried to make this clear upthread by saying that for practical purposes in science, MN means consistency with fundamental physics, and not reducibility of any sort to physics.
Re-reading your posts in this light, I suspect that you are criticizing a view of MN that takes the relevant naturalism as strict. I would agree with that criticism. I suspect that you are using methodological anti-supernaturalism for what I would call MN with broad naturalism. Similarly, your use of “methodological humanism” upthread I take to mean you think MN alone is wrong because it assumes strict naturalism. Again, I would agree with that. So if I understand you correctly, then we do not disagree on the substance, only on how to understand the naturalism of MN.
ETA: Re-reading the de Vries paper, I see that he too takes the naturalism in MN to be strict. So I would disagree with that aspect of his paper.
But I think his basic arguments still go through if we take the naturalism in MN as broad. Successful scientific communities exclude explanations which are inconsistent with fundamental physics, and Christian scientists can participate in such communities while still living a Christian life.
I think MN is the same is adopting the ideology of broad naturalism while participating in a scientific community but possibly rejecting as an approach to living one’s life. As I read his posts, so does JS*.
Do you think the answer is no, that is, one cannot adopt an ideology that way? If so, why (is it for the reasons that de Vries disagrees with, for example)?
I don’t understand this sentence, in particular what you mean by the phrase “being that”.
I’m taking broad naturalism as an ideology and M(B)N as the adoption of this ideology solely in the context of doing science. Based on looking at their practices, one concludes that successful scientific communities follow MN when evaluating proposed explanations. I see that as a “precondition” only in the sense that is has worked and continues to work, not as something that is specified outside of science and which cannot be changed.
That reference to context in epistemology was meant in the sense described by SEP at the following link. It does not seem to be the same as what you are referring to in the rest of your post.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism/#Con
——————————-
* You do not like Joshua S. I don’t want to spell out his full name, nor use simply his first name, and I have criticized for Dr Swamidass or Swamidass. So JS is my choice for this post.
I have not gone back to read the thread, but based on when I last looked, I would agree that the posts in that thread, including JS’s, do not have the right understanding of M(B)N. I also have not seen anyone draw the distinction between broad and strict naturalism in the context of MN in that thread.
I hope that my previous post will help to make clear my views regarding MN, MAS, and the nature of M(B)N when applied to the sciences you mention. In particular, I think those sciences can use scientific concepts of mental causation and human or animal agency (including teleology) as part of theorizing under M(B)N. They can also contribute to the philosophical conversations of free will, morality, and intentionality, although those topics remain primarily philosophical in my view, as does full examination of the metaphysics of teleological causation, mental causation, and free will.
What about consciousness? I think the cognitive sciences can study that. Whether they will develop an explanation which is accepted as complete, well, that’s a hard problem to answer. Too soon to say. In particular, I don’t think the standard philosophical arguments covered by Goetz and Taliaferro (Nagel, Mary the scientist, p-zombies) succeed in claims they eliminate all possibility of such an explanation.
I’ve never been called dastardly before, at least not to my face. But I will admit to a sweet tooth.
Gregory:
Does that actually surprise you? I thought you were a native English speaker.
Again, I thought that you, as a native English speaker, would understand this. The very first definition that Google returns:
The natural vs artificial dichotomy is useful, but not for discussions of methodological naturalism. No one is trying to declare artificial things as off limits to science.
First the multiverse is scientific conjecture , not scientific theory.( “In everyday speech, theory can imply an explanation that represents an unsubstantiated and speculative guess, whereas in science it describes an explanation that has been tested and widely accepted as valid”. )
And many scientists voice your concerns
“As one slips down that slope, more and more must be accepted on faith, and less and less is open to scientific verification. Extreme multiverse explanations are therefore reminiscent of theological discussions. Indeed, invoking an infinity of unseen universes to explain the unusual features of the one we do see is just as ad hoc as invoking an unseen Creator. The multiverse theory may be dressed up in scientific language, but in essence it requires the same leap of faith.”
I would accept an investigation into your skywriting God. People study the efficacy of prayer in resulting recovery, which could be a proxy for the supernatural. If you were in charge, how would you scientifically inquire into the supernatural?
Archeology comes to mind.
BruceS,
Have you looked at either of the Macarthur and De Caro books (Naturalism in Question and Naturalism and Normativity)? They defend a version of non-reductionistic, non-scientistic naturalism that they call “liberal naturalism,” with roots (they claim) in McDowell and Putnam. There is certainly something about liberal naturalism that I find deeply attractive and compelling. I certainly consider myself a liberal naturalist!
At the same time, I worry that liberal naturalist criticisms of strict naturalism or scientific naturalism are predicated on a caricatured understanding of the sciences. Sellars remarks upon “the philosopher’s characteristic ignorance of the science of his day (as opposed to the science of yesterday, with which he is notoriously well acquainted)”, and I worry that even strict naturalists like Quine and Armstrong are better acquainted with the science of their respective yesterdays than they are with the science of their own time.
So I suppose I would characterize my own approach as using cybernetics and its descendants (e.g. general systems theory, complexity theory, developmental systems theory, and autopoiesis) to broaden scientific naturalism to the point where it can accommodate the insights of liberal naturalism with regard to purposiveness, normativity, and agency.
KN,
But why, when MN already allows for inquiry into purposiveness, normativity and agency?
First, why do you call it science.?
The distinction I was making — between scientific or narrow naturalism and liberal or broad naturalism — is a distinction between types of metaphysical naturalism. That’s a separate issue from methodological naturalism.
My research has led me to a detour — hopefully a productive one — into the history of psychology and the rise of philosophy as anti-psychologism. I’m now reading From Soul to Mind: The Emergence of Psychology from Erasmus Darwin to William James. One of the many fascinating points made there is that 19th-century positivism became the dominant legitimizing ideology of Victorian intellectuals in large part because it declared a truce between science and religion.
I think it’s a nice question to consider whether methodological naturalism is popular for much the same reason.
Duplicate of following comment.
KN,
Right, but I thought you were responding to this point of Bruce’s:
KN:
I think it is. Modern-day “accomodationists” (e.g. Eugenie Scott) like MN because it confines science and religion to their own magisteria where they can’t trample each other’s feet.
That makes sense to me.
I did say “some form” of liberal naturalism and I cannot be more specific.
I do have the De Caro books, but I got them when I was reading Putnam, and I only looked at one or two papers in them related to whatever topic Putnam had puzzled me on at the time.
I think Putnam understood contemporary science and math, at least up to the 70s — he tried his own interpretation of QM as I recall and of course he had a part of solving one of the Hilbert problems.
I am going to go out on a limb and speculate that Gregory is not an accomodationist.
Science can also uncontribute, as well.
Mele and others have already done a thorough job debunking Libet’s finger-twitch results as settling the metaphysical status of free will.
This new work throws doubt on the basic assumptions of the experiment:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/09/free-will-bereitschaftspotential/597736/
Atlantic is paywalled now, but you can also find plenty of blog post summaries, eg
That was a fascinating read, but is it really something the free-will supporters should cheer about? Yes, it seems to show that the perception of making a decision does not happen after the brain activity is recorded, but it also explains the decision making in terms of neuronal activity. If peaks in background noise of neural activity is what triggers a decision in the absence of an external criteria to determine when to move your finger, then it’s still what goes on in the brain that determines the decision.
Libet left unanswered the question of what caused the neural activity that (he thought had shown) was later perceived as a decision by de subject. Schurger’s results seem to explain that in purely neuronal terms. Even if we actually perceive the act of making a decision in the exact moment the brain made it, it’s still the brain, and not some woo-woo soul thing that made the decision. Am I missing something?
What does making a decision mean?
Can you make a decision in the absence of motive, and if so, what is the point?
If you make a decision based on motives, what is it the causes the motives?
If you choose between conflicting motives, so what?
dazz,
What you’re missing is that not all free will proponents are dualists.
Believers in naturalistic free will are unperturbed by the fact that decisions originate in the brain.