The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism by Quentin Smith - Religion, God, and Theology

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The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism by Quentin Smith

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02-24-2013 , 01:20 AM

duffee

banned

Join Date: May 2012 Posts: 1,218

http://www.philoonline.org/library/smith_4_2.htm

Abstract: The metaphilosophy of naturalism is about the nature and goals of naturalist philosophy. A real or hypothetical person who knows the nature, goals and consequences of naturalist philosophy may be called an “informed naturalist.” An informed naturalist is justified in drawing certain conclusions about the current state of naturalism and the research program that naturalist philosophers ought to undertake. One conclusion is that the great majority of naturalist philosophers have an unjustified belief that naturalism is true and an unjustified belief that theism (or supernaturalism) is false. I explain this epistemic situation in this paper. I also articulate the goals an informed naturalist would recommend to remedy this situation. These goals, for the most part, have as their consequence the restoring of naturalism to its original state (approximately, to a certain degree, given the great difference in the specific theories), which is the state it possessed in Greco-Roman philosophy before naturalism was “overwhelmed” in the Middle Ages, beginning with Augustine (naturalism had critics as far back as Xenophanes, sixth century B.C.E., but it was not “overwhelmed” until much later). Contemporary naturalists still accept, unwittingly, the redefinition of naturalism that began to be constructed by theists in the fifth century C.E. and that underpins our basic world-view today.

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Due to the typical attitude of the contemporary naturalist, which is similar to the attitude expressed by Searle in the previous quote, the vast majority of naturalist philosophers have come to hold (since the late 1960s) an unjustified belief in naturalism. Their justifications have been defeated by arguments developed by theistic philosophers, and now naturalist philosophers, for the most part, live in darkness about the justification for naturalism. They may have a true belief in naturalism, but they have no knowledge that naturalism is true since they do not have an undefeated justification for their belief. If naturalism is true, then their belief in naturalism is accidentally true. This philosophical failure (ignoring theism and thereby allowing themselves to become unjustified naturalists) has led to a cultural failure since theists, witnessing this failure, have increasingly become motivated to assume or argue for supernaturalism in their academic work, to an extent that academia has now lost its mainstream secularization.

THE JUSTIFICATION OF MOST CONTEMPORARY NATURALIST VIEWS IS DEFEATED BY CONTEMPORARY THEIST ARGUMENTS

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The current epistemic situation is in fact even much worse than this. The informed naturalist would say that whatever most naturalists purport to know to be naturally the case (or seem to themselves to know to be naturally the case) is such that its being known entails the being known of naturalism, and therefore that most contemporary naturalists do not know any natural truths. I am not here saying the clearly false statement that (for example) “knowing that the universe is expanding” entails “knowing naturalism is true.” Rather, I am saying that “knowing that the universe is naturally expanding” (i.e., is expanding solely via a natural process, where one’s understanding of “naturally” and “natural” contains an understanding of what I have said about N earlier in this paper)” entails “knowing that naturalism is true.” One reason for this entailment is the following: If I know that the universe is naturally expanding, I know that supernaturalism is false since I know that a thesis logically implied by supernaturalism, that all processes and things constituting the universe are caused or governed by some supernatural reality, is false. Since naturalism and supernaturalism are the only two possible ontologies (see my earlier discussion of N), it follows (from the fact that I know supernaturalism is false and that I know some possible ontology is true) that I know naturalism is true, even if I only know this generally, as some ontology that is not-S is true, where S is supernaturalism. This knowledge need not be occurent; it could be dispositional. The problem with uninformed naturalists is that they know such things as that “the universe is expanding” but do not know such things as “the universe is naturally expanding.” They know certain truths, but they do not know whether they are natural truths or supernatural truths.

The naturalist situation, as viewed by an informed naturalist, is more deserving of sadness than of blame. If naturalism is the true world-view, and a “Dark Age” means an age when the vast majority of philosophers (and scientists) do not know the true world-view, then we have to admit that we are living in a Dark Age. Since we ought to be knowledgeable rather than ignorant, and since we can be more knowledgeable, it follows that we ought to attempt to end the present Dark Age. But exactly what ought we do to “become more knowledgeable in the relevant respects”? According to the informed naturalist, there are four things we ought to do.

FOUR GOALS OF THE INFORMED NATURALISTS

Last edited by duffee; 02-24-2013 at 01:31 AM.

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02-24-2013 , 06:43 AM

zumby

Pooh-Bah

Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 4,277

Three points

1) The driving force behind this paper is the claim that philosophy has become "desecularized" since the 1960s. No evidence is given for this, though he asserts that between of 25-33% of philosophy professors are theists. A recent survey put the amount of theist philosophers at 14.6%, so I'm pretty skeptical about this claim. He also is very unclear about what metric he is using, as although he differentiates between personal and professional theism no figures are given or sources cited. I don't think this massively important or w/e, but worth noting.

2) I'm not sure what is meant by "THE JUSTIFICATION OF MOST CONTEMPORARY NATURALIST VIEWS IS DEFEATED BY CONTEMPORARY THEIST ARGUMENTS"
It doesn't help that he doesn't give any examples of such arguments, but mostly I'm puzzled by this claim as I don't think the sort of arguments proposed by naturalists (that I would endorse) would be possible to be defeated except by proving theism. And Smith goes on to say that "[...]most contemporary theists[...] hold defeated beliefs about the truth-value of naturalism" i.e. just because these unidentified naturalist arguments have been defeated doesn't mean theism is true. This leads nicely on to:

3) I agree with Smith that "The aim is that theism be justifiably reclassified as a subfield of naturalism, namely, as a skepticism about the basic principles of naturalism", apart from the bit about "reclassifying". I already see theism as a denial of naturalism i.e. we all agree that a certain set of things exist (atoms, cars, galaxies, sandwiches etc) and the theist simply adds more things to that set (gods, angels, demons etc). Therefore all this talk about 'defeated naturalistic arguments' leaves me scratching my head. When the supernaturalists prove that demons/goblins/fairies etc exist we'll talk about naturalism being defeated, but until then the null hypothesis holds.

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02-24-2013 , 04:00 PM

uke_master

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: May 2008 Posts: 16,571

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By the second half of the twentieth century, universities and colleges had been become in the main secularized. The standard (if not exceptionless) position in each field, from physics to psychology, assumed or involved arguments for a naturalist world-view;

I wouldn't except someone to be making what seems to be the obvious metaphysical vs methodological naturalism mistake. The standard positions from physics to psychology is methodological naturalism. But the critique in the paper is that metaphysical naturalism has been defeated. If one wants to critique commonly helds views in philosophy departments then sure, but it is a mistake here I think to generalize based on the strength of methdological naturalism in physical sciences at universities.

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