Definition of naturalism
I would say naturalism is given if everything that exists can causally interact with each other. Example: If there are angels and they can causally influence us, but we, on the other hand, cannot causally affect them in any way, then we do not have a naturalistic worldview. Causality must always go in both directions and must not be asymmetric. So causality is the crucial key to determine naturalism conceptually.
Comments (50)
Naturalism is best understood as the view that the ultimate constituents of reality are extra-mental entities.
Quoting Bartricks
Maybe it's just a kind of definitional game, but I would distinguish materialism, physicalism, and naturalism, with naturalism being the most general view. That is, immaterialism is only in opposition to materialism, but not in one to physicalism and naturalism.
Quoting Bartricks
Especially the mental entities could be the real ones. Here I am inspired by Galen Strawson:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htZR7ryJEqE
Galen Strawson says that all that is real is the physical. I modify that to mean that everything that is real is the natural. And something is real for me if it can do something, that is, exercise causality.
That's not how they're used, not in philosophy anyway.
Two philosophers can agree that, say, morality exists - and thus is real - yet one might be a naturalist about morality and the other a non-naturalist.
So naturalism shouldn't be used as a synonym for 'real' as that makes such debates misguided by definition.
Nevertheless, I find your definition of naturalism also unsatisfactory, since the ultimate constituents of reality might be mental entities. Keyword panpsychism.
Note too that even if there are some positions that operate to blur the distinction between naturalism and non-naturalism, that doesn't mean that this is not what the terms mean.
Quoting Bartricks
I think the panpsychist would disagree with that. Because:
"Panpsychists believe that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the physical world. An increasing number of philosophers and even some neuroscientists are coming around to the idea that it may be our best hope for solving the problem of consciousness.
[...]
Firstly, panpsychists tend not to think that literally everything is conscious. They believe that the fundamental constituents of the physical world are conscious, but they need not believe that every random arrangement of conscious particles results in something that is conscious in its own right." (Philip Goff - Galileo’s Error)
It may solve the problem of consciousness theoretically but will it be true and how can that be demonstrated?
Quoting Bartricks
Or do you mean that idealism is opposed to naturalism? Because the idealist sees himself as immaterialist, but the panpsychist sees himself as materialist and thus naturalist.
It would be as you say merely theoretical, that is non-empirical, philosophical from almost pure concepts. The question is whether or not you are persuaded by it argumentatively. But I was only concerned here with the understanding of naturalistic. And this understanding could indeed be purely theoretical.
Let's define a material object as an object that has extension.
Let's also stipulate that my brain is an object that has extension.
And now let's stipulate that my brain has mental states.
My brain is now my mind, but it is also a material object.
I take it that we would both agree that my brain is a 'natural' object and thus that - under these circumstances - my mind turns out to be a natural object.
If we now imagine that everything in the universe apart from my brain disappears, then everything that exists is now natural - naturalism is true - and everything that exists is also my mind.
This kind of situation is one with which, I take it, my definition of naturalism would be unable to cope. For I have said that naturalism is best understood as the view that the fundamental constituents of reality are mind-external entities. I agree, but it is easy to fix by simply changing 'mind external' to 'not essentially mental entities'. It would remain the case that everything that exists was also my mind. But what exists - my brain - does not have its mental states as an essential property (for it could cease to have any mental states and yet still have extension). And so what exists could continue to do so without there being any mental entities in existence. This would then permit there to be naturalists who maintain that everything that exists are minds, and immaterialists who maintain that everything that exists is essentially a mind or mental states.
Here I think Chomsky's idea makes a lot of sense. Naturalism is, whatever is achieved by naturalistic inquiry.
By naturalistic inquiry, he has in mind theoretical explanations for certain phenomena of the world. Of course, theoretical inquiry only goes so far. So if we want to learn about things in which naturalistic inquiry makes little progress, or can't say much about, then we read literature or traditional philosophy or the arts.
This does not mean that these other forms of knowing are "artificial" or not natural, just that they don't give theoretical explanations about the world.
The definitions are pretty specific - the natural is what is allowable under natural laws established using the scientific method.
That would imply that there was nothing natural until the scientific method came along. That doesn't seem right.
Do you think the world didn't operate in accordance with scientific principles before there was science? Was there a different set of rules that operated before there were sentient beings?
No, I'm suggesting that since the word 'natural' pre-dates the scientific method, it must then have had a meaning which did not depend on the scientific method, and may well still have the same meaning. For instance, in the days when science was called 'natural philosophy', what did people mean by 'natural' in that phrase? I would also point out that 'natural' is a word used in everyday talk, and I'm sure most people don't think about the scientific method when they use it; they may not even have heard of the scientific method.
I would also point out that your definition is circular:
Quoting T Clark
How can this be a definition of 'natural' if the word 'natural' is in both the definiendum and the definition?
The word "natural" is not the subject of this thread. The subject is "naturalism." I gave several definitions of the word as it is currently used from various web sources. If you want to argue that those definitions are wrong, go ahead. You should provide some evidence for that claim.
Well, it wasn't me that introduced this red herring, was it?
Do you even know what the phrase "red herring" means?
Yes. Do you know what a circular definition is?
Yes. Your criticism of my statement was accurate. Your turn.
LOL. No, I don't engage in philosophical ping-pong just for the sake of it. I concede the field to you. Have a nice day.
I found something that everyone could be happy with:
"There is a widely accepted distinction between ontological naturalism and methodological naturalism. Ontological naturalists maintain, roughly, that natural reality exhausts causal reality: there are none but natural causal entities with none but natural causal powers. Methodological naturalists maintain, roughly, that well-established science is our touchstone for identifying the denizens of causal reality: we have no reason to believe in causal entities and causal powers beyond those recognised by science." (Graham Oppy - Naturalism and Religion: A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation)
You've raised an interesting topic - thank you.
I had forgotten to say here that it is not only about the exercise of causality, but also about the undergoing of causality. So to act and to be acted upon.
This was your definition:
Quoting Bartricks
One could say in addition that naturalism starts from only one ontological genus and excludes all other genus. This one genus would be nature. So there would be only species of the one nature. Corporeality would be one kind and mentality another. But in order to know this, namely that both are species of the genus nature, they must be able to mutually interact causally. Otherwise one of the elements, like the mental, would be extra-worldly, hence extra-natural.
Where causality is concerned, those - such as myself - who believe in non-natural entities, do not thereby disbelieve in causality or disbelieve in the causal powers of non-natural entities.
Your definition would have the absurd upshot than any and all who believe in entities with causal powers are thereby naturalists.
Only with the addition that those entities can causally act on all other existing entities, and in turn can themselves be acted upon by all others. I don't think that's absurd for determining naturalism.
Nothing wrong, but I think my definition is more accurate.
- are nevertheless all naturalists?
You are basing your definition on a misreading of one - one - philosopher's definition. Oppy is not saying what you think he is - he is not making possession of causal powers a defining feature of naturalism. But even if he was - and he isn't - that doesn't mean his definition is orthodox.
Makes sense to me. Very clear and specific. One of the things that bothers me most on the forum is how discussions go off in 20 directions because terms are not defined at the beginning of the thread. That's why I got involved.
Thank you.
The first really says nothing; how can we exclude the supernatural if the definition of the natural is given in terms of excluding the supernatural? If we don't have an independent definition of the natural how can we define the supernatural, in order to know what we are excluding. in other words?
The second suffers from the same problem.
The third just says that nothing outside the universe governs the universe. So, relating this to the first two shows that we are simply excluding the idea that anything outside the universe, referred to as the 'supernatural' even exists, much less governs the universe.
The fourth says this idea is "science-based", but this is circular since science is only equipped to deal with what is "in the universe" due its methodology. There are many, many things within the universe that science cannot deal with, and may never be able to deal with, so the invalid inference here is that since science can only deal with things within the universe, that it can therefore deal with all things within the universe.
I think @spirit-salamander has come up with a workable definition based on the scope of causal effect that entities are capable of and subject to, which seems to cover all the bases.
So, for example, Whitehead's God, who is affected by manifest nature, would be a natural and immanent, as opposed to a supernatural and transcendent, entity.
The selected quote from Oppy does not say as much, though.
The title of the thread is "Definition of Naturalism." At the time I wrote my post, no one had provided a definition of what naturism means in common usage. I gave four definitions from four different sources. Whether or not you like them, I think they represent pretty well what the word "naturalism" means in everyday philosophical speech. There is nothing stopping people from defining a word any way they want. If you want "naturalism" to mean two dogs fighting over a hotdog, ok. At least be clear about that from the beginning.
I like @spirit-salamander's summary also.
Disagree. I thought they were pretty straightforward. That's why I generally look for a few definitions. I find that looking at them together generally gives a better sense of what's up than just one. Naturalism says that reality is natural. Natural means that it is subject to laws that can be validated using the scientific method.
I am not making a claim that naturalism is right or wrong. I think it is a metaphysical position and is neither. I think it can be a useful way of looking at things depending on the situation.
I disagree that naturalism is neither right nor wrong. It is right if it turns out that everything can be exhaustively explained naturalistically and not otherwise. The fact that we may never be able to discover the answer to that question has no bearing on the fact that it is in principle either right or wrong.
This is irrelevant. I gave a definition of naturalism based on it's common philosophical meaning. That is the stated subject of this thread and the one I was responding to. I did not make any judgement except to state that naturalism can be useful. Is it your position that science is not useful?
Quoting Janus
It depends. If a claim hasn't been verified but might be in the future, then it might be right or wrong. If it cannot be verified, even in principle, then is not only not right or wrong, it is meaningless.
You are conflating methodological naturalism with metaphysical naturalism. As I pointed out there is no other way to do science (that we currently know of) so it is not merely a matter of usefulness, but of necessity, even in regard to methodology. And the notion of usefulness is inappropriate in the context of metaphysics.
Quoting T Clark
Firstly how can you currently decide what may or may not be verified in the future? Secondly if metaphysical positions are meaningless then why are we even discussing whether they are right or wrong or useful?
Take the claim that there is a God or some entity that created the universe; that claim may not be verifiable in principle (falsificationists say that even scientific claims are not) but do you really want to say that it is neither true nor false that a God or some entity created the universe?
Oppy at least made a distinction between methodological and ontological naturalism. The latter could also be called naturism. And the former scientism.
@spirit-salamander is the one who made a distinction between methodological and metaphysical naturalism. I think it may be a valuable idea, but it isn't what I was talking about. You didn't make any reference to the distinction in the post I was responding to and I didn't make any reference to it in my definitions, which is what got all this started.
I was just thinking. If my concept of metaphysics is correct, i.e. my emphasis on usefulness rather than truth, then all metaphysics is methodological. I like that.
Quoting Janus
Good point. In general, you can't, but if there is no evidence for a phenomenon, it is not unreasonable to provisionally assume it doesn't exist until evidence is found. Cases in point - the multiverse as an explanation for quantum mechanical phenomena and string theory.
Quoting Janus
Metaphysical positions are not meaningless, hypothetical physical phenomena which cannot be verified, even in theory, are meaningless.
It seems that I misinterpreted this then:
Quoting T Clark
I had thought we were discussing metaphysical positions such as supernaturalism, not "hypotheical physical phenomena". As I understand it metaphysical claims cannot be verified, even in principle, but I don't think that entails their meaninglessness, or their inability to be true or false. That's why I wrote
Quoting Janus
I understand scientism to be metaphysical naturalism, not methodological naturalism; the latter is just science. Are you wanting to make a distinction between metaphysical and ontological naturalism?
That works for me.
Now that I read your distinction and question, I have to think about it again.
This may need tidying up, but Scientism (philosophical naturalism) should be separated from that which says methodological naturalism is the most reliable way of understanding reality, which is unable to comment on that which is yet to be identified.