Ernest Sparks

Naturalism is NOT a theory at all, but rather a policy. Wait for a naturalistic explanation for any phenomenon, it says. If a cause is needed that transcends known theory, then any candidate is going to be declared "natural". The naturalist will not accept a praeternatural entity, unless it can THOROUGHLY and SATISFACTORIALLY explain the causal connection that determines the phenomena as outcome. God unexplained doesn't satisfy this requirement very well. "God did it" dismisses a phenomenon ,rather than providing an explanation. The immediate demand is "how" God can do it. Lacking this, the naturalist elects to wait for an explanation that allows for definitive understanding. If God turns out to be the only conceivable answer, then God becomes a "natural" agent, replete with required details. Methodological naturalism is a choice about what to do; metaphysical naturalism is a decision never to accept something like God as a blanket resolution of questions.

Starboy

You are putting words in my post. When an historian makes a historical claim in a professional capacity they must be able to back it up with evidence or they must state it as opinion or speculation. In their private lives they can believe anything they wish.

That is an area I know something about. Please cite an example.

Without evidence to support a claim that an entity exists, I fail to see why claiming that it only exists “in the minds” of the claimants is inconsistent with a scientific or naturalistic point of view. Especially if the claimed entity is extraordinary. Even you would adopt this position if the claimants where followers of a religion that you thought was baseless.

Yes you are right they are qualified. The question is, qualified for what? Even so arguments from authority are not very convincing. Who cares if they are qualified, does their work have any merit? Not just do you think their work has merit, but does the scientific community as a whole think their work has merit. If they are only published by religiously oriented publications and are only cited by religiously oriented scientists, it is not a very convincing display of sound science. Sound science is published and cited whether you believe in it or not. That is because it is useful to the program of science and it is not there to push a religious or political agenda. As far as I can tell ID is not science but a hope. It is a thinly veiled attempt to make god useful to the scientific endeavor. What the religious don’t get is that science has “been there, done that” and guess what? The answer is no.

luvluv, now you are being amusing. You may refer to me as sir. I am guilty as charged of having little respect for the enterprise of philosophy. As to the claim as to whether I have a philosophy, let us see.

1a1 – leaves out scientists and engineers.
1a2 – scientist have one but not doctors, lawyers and theologians.
1a3 – Even better, theologians are philosophers if they get four years of seminary.
1b1 & 2 - ???
1c – something approaching what I studied so long ago.
2a – almost everyone.
2b – Arm chair realists.
2d – something studied long ago.
3a – circular definition
3b – very vague and broad.
4a – again, everyone is a philosopher

Okay luvluv, everyone has a philosophy, except maybe scientists, engineers, doctors, lawyers and theologians without four years of seminary. I claim to be a scientist so I guess that leaves me out. I understand that this is a severely busted definition, but that is the problem with philosophy, not even philosophers can agree on what it is. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy doesn’t do much better. You can take your pick of definitions and it either matters or it doesn’t.

You seem to think that philosophy is important to this discussion, if so the burden is upon you to support that claim or drop it. I have always maintained that the brand of naturalism that I espouse is science. It is an endeavor that to this day philosophy has been unable to come to grips with. Why would that make anyone think that philosophy is important to this discussion?

Starboy

Starboy

oops

RichardMorey

Starboy:
As a scientist, I can attest to the fact that parsimony is used in science - I can even cite several articles in my own field, cognitive psychology, to back that up. It is used as a guide, especially with mathematical models of phenomena. The model with the least number of parameters, all things being equal, is seen as probably being the better model. This is just a guide, and scientists realize that parsimony is not the end all of science; but it is used.

As for science being a philosophy: science is an endevour that is based on a particular epistemological viewpoint. I believe science does indeed fall under definition 3b. Of course it is broad, but given the history of natural philosophy (what we now call science) science belongs squarely in the philosophy. You cannot discount a definition just because if is broad. "Life" has a broad definition, but that doesn't stop me from saying that my fish belongs in the category of living things.

luvluv, however, doesn't seem to be willing to back up her "opinions," which is just fine, but makes me wonder why [s]he's here. Don't say it if you aren't willing to back it up, regardless of whether it is merely "opinion" or not.

As to infidels.org's mission statement, I agree with you to a large extent, luvluv. Call me old fashioned and logical positivist, but I think most, if not all metaphysical assertions are bunk.

Starboy, you live in Tallahassee? I got my undergrad at FSU two years ago. PM me if you feel like it; I'd be interested in knowing what you do there.

luvluv

Starboy:

There are historians who believe in things like the Resurrection and the miracles of Christ (for example) and they do back it up with evidence. As I said, the explanation for the birth of Christianity that involves the smallest number of independant assumptions is the Resurrection. Because of a philosophy of naturalism which says that "miracles cannot happen", many historians rule this out and opt for a less parsimonious explanation. But this philosophical opinion that "miracles cannot happen" cannot be justified scientifically, so in the end these historians are ruling out the Resurrection on the basis of pure philosophy. I dont intend to argue for the Resurrection here, I'm just using it as the most outstanding example. There are historians who back up supernatural claims with evidence.

I'm going to refer you to Richard Morey on that one. In my understanding, parsimony played a large role in the development of the theories of relativity and continues to be a tool used by string theorists, quantum loop theorists, and various and sundry theorists of different persuasions as they search for a TOE. Parsimony and mathematics is about all they have to go on right now, until they can build supercolliders the size of, oh say for instance, the solar system.

I bet you thought for a few seconds about how not to use the word "philosophy in that statement. What you just said amounts to "I can justify this by inference" which you previously said you could not do. So which is it? Can naturalism be supported by inference or not? And if not, then why not add the words "in my opinion" to statements that you cannot prove?

Stop the presses here, my good man. I am not making an argument from authority.

You said that all scientists who appeal to supernatural entities are either unqualified or dead. I was just telling you that wasn't true. I didn't ask you to believe anything they said.

luvluv

RichardMorey:

I am a "he." What statements would you like me to back up?

RichardMorey

Thanks. All you said about the mind was that you came to the opinion that it wasn't explainable via "naturalism" was "reading."

There must have been a great argument that caused you to come to that conclusion; Penrose perhaps? We can talk about that argument. If you just have a "feeling" that it is not explainable via "naturalism," wouldn't you say that isn't good enough? If we are going to have beliefs, we should have more than that.

And when you say "mind" do you mean consciousness in particular? Certainly there are parts of what we would call the mind that are already explained to a large extent, for instance, emotional reactions to stimuli are caused by chemicals.

luvluv

RichardMorey:

I didn't get into details because I did not want to turn this thread into a discussion about the mind, except as to illustrate the main point. Penrose is a good place to start, and perhaps we could resurrect the Penrose article at the bottom of the page if you want to discuss that there. I suppose my opinion has been formed by the general failure and inadequacy of all the propositions made to date, and also from a general feeling that the entire enterprise is the result of misplaced hubris. The notion that emotions ARE chemicals, for example, is just reductionism gone to seed. Chemicals are involved in emotions, but there really isn't an adequate way to reduce emotions down to chemicals. Why do certain stimuli cause the release of certain chemicals and not others? Why don't the happy chemicals spill out when I find out my wife is cheating on me? Would it be a desirable state of affairs if they did? Etc.

With all due respect, I can base my beliefs on anything I want to base them on. A large part of my belief that the mind will never have a naturalistic explanation is just a feeling. It's not much different from my belief that the Eagles will win today. Would you like me to back up that claim, too? My belief that there will never be a naturalistic explanation for the mind is not a foundational belief, and I think it's perfectly fine to have non-foundational beliefs that are just hunches. At any rate, we all do have such beliefs, so what's the point in objecting to them?

Oxymoron

Penrose is a mathematician. As a psychologist he is out on a limb, so it is a terrible place to start.

Your questions re chemicals are pretty naive and show a total confusion as to the chasm of qualitative difference between mind and brain. The brain is ridiculously simple in concept and ridiculously complex in implementation. The mind's "mystery" is the result of the complexity, and nothing more.

Sorry luvluv, but that's one of the biggest crocks I've read since subscribing to II. You can assert whatever assumptions you like about the mind, etc, but I utterly defy and deny your ability to know the future ("My belief that there will never...). And then you attempt to back out of justifying that kak by calling it a "hunch" or "non-foundational".

Starboy

There are quacks and incompetents in any field, history and science are no exceptions. The scientists I was writing of were what you referred to as “good” scientists. And yes I am aware of historians that put a very religious slant on their work, but alas they cannot be considered fair and unbiased since they to not apply the same level of fervor and commitment to validating the claims of other supernatural religions as they do with their own preferred religion. In the case where an historian did that, they became atheist. As such a rational person can’t take religious historians that fail to treat all religions fairly, or leave religion out of their work entirely, seriously. This also applies to scientists.

As I said before, it can be used to concoct explanations, but the final arbiter of any scientific question is the result of experiment on nature. Any person that criticized a theory because it violated the principle of parsimony just doesn’t get science. The only instance where it can be applied is when two theories predict the exact same phenomena. But what usually happens in that case is the theories are then understood to be equivalent in some sense, and work may result showing that one theory is simply a different representation of the same underlying constructs and interactions. The interesting thing is that the more complicated theory may not be discarded, but may be used in those cases where its application to specific situations is simpler than that of the other theory.

Besides if parsimony was sufficient, why bother building supercolliders at all? Theoretical science without experimental science IMO would be no better than philosophy.

That is very funny luvluv. You may not believe this but I had to look up the definition of philosophy to determine if your claim had any merit. It is something I don’t consider as having any use whatsoever. It is as useful as the word “truth”, another product of philosophy. Yes I know, logic is a part of philosophy, and yes it is very useful, but like all the good parts of philosophy it has been absorbed by another areas of study, in this case mathematics and the mathematicians have been doing a much better job of understanding and expanding it then the philosophers ever could. As far as I can tell philosophy is a smorgasbord of conflicting ideas with no method for selecting one over the other, even after invoking parsimony. And luvluv, even the philosophers recognize that science works using a method of reasoning that they do not understand and refer to as induction. So yes, in a broad sense you can label science as a philosophy if you wish, but it is a philosophy that philosophers don’t get, and it would appear that the religious struggle with it as well.

Starboy