An alternate look at Naturalism

This view is forcefully elucidated by the British chemist, Peter Atkins and quoted by Jerry Coyne, here: 

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com...and-faith/

Third, were purported paranormal phenomena ever to be authenticated, they would devastate the whole structure of science, for most of them strike at two of its great foundations, the conservation of energy and causality.

The above  (brief) quote has to be one of the daftest things I've come across. The idea that it would break science is utter nonsense. It was causality in particular which started my search for explanations, an outcome should have a cause. It led to a validation of reincarnation, which is surely an expression of the laws of conservation of [some type of] energy.

Indeed. We now have to marry what we’ve learnt in this thread with the movement’s historical call for increased funding for scientific research. 

Perhaps the next step would be for laird, kam or valmar (or anyone!) to describe what they consider ‘natural’ (ie within nature) before we ponder further that which lies outside it?

Regardless of whether or not someone can find something daft which has been said about naturalism and the supernatural, it seems pretty clear that scientists themselves do not follow these proscriptions in their practice of methodological naturalism. The 'supernatural' can and has been studied (e.g. parapsychology or the study of every other explanatory gap formerly attributed to "God") all along.

I suspect that what lies outside it is not proposing a novel agent, but the anthropomorphizing of that agent.

Linda

[Laird]

I think there are several questions being asked in this thread:

1. What, under the label "supernatural", is currently excluded a priori from scientific investigation by the widely-accepted, mainstream prescription of "methodological naturalism" - and the ancillary question: what, under the label "natural", remains?
   
2. Should this - or, indeed, anything that can potentially be studied scientifically - be excluded a priori from scientific study?
   
3. How defensible is the distinction between the "natural" and the "supernatural" in which "naturalism" is assumed to be synonymous with reductive physicalism and materialism, and can a broader definition of "natural[ism]" be defended? (the question, paraphrased, of the OP)
   

There seems to be general agreement that the answer to #2 is, roughly, "We shouldn't exclude a priori anything that can be studied scientifically from scientific study - and that includes anything and everything that has effects that we can detect".

Re #1, there seems to be denial from some quarters that methodological naturalism excludes a priori from scientific study anything that could be studied. What can one say in response? Kamarling and I have supplied copious evidence that this cannot be reasonably denied. Linda raises the field of parapsychology as evidence that methodological naturalism is not always followed in practice by working scientists - and yet this is the exception that proves the rule: as anyone who has hung around this community for long enough comes to realise, for scientists (especially ones just getting started out) to get involved in parapsychological research is to kiss their careers in mainstream science goodbye, essentially because they are seen by the mainstream as having abandoned methodological naturalism; they have become, as the hardcore "skeptics" - mainstream scientists among those skeptics - would describe them, "pseudoscientists" or "woomeisters", etc.

I haven't even tried to address #3 so far, and on that topic all I'll say for now is that the definitions and scope of these terms are context-dependent, and that in some contexts, sure, a broader definition of "natural" might be defensible.

So, after all of that: malf, this accusation of yours is rather strange, and seems to be confusing or conflating or muddling up questions #1 and #2. If you want to reframe it in that light then please go for it:

If one posits something that is outside the pervue of methodological naturalism, it seems disingenuous to criticise it for rejecting what you posit.

[Laird]

In looking around the web on this theme, I found this interesting article, Can Science Test for the Supernatural?

Here's an excerpt:

Some naturalists deny that science can ever be used to test the existence of God and others affirm that science can test for the supernatural and that those tests have all turned out negative.  Still others, like evolutionary scientist Donald Prothero, appear to hold both views at the same time.  Consider the quotes below from Prothero’s book Evolution.

Prothero first suggests that scientists “cannot consider supernatural events in their hypotheses.”  Why? Because “once you introduce the supernatural to a scientific hypothesis, there is no way to falsify or test it.”  He adds that scientists are not allowed to consider God or miracles (i.e., the supernatural) because they are “completely untestable and outside the realm of science.”  All right, it seems that Prothero is firmly in the camp of those who say that science cannot say anything about the supernatural.

But in the very next paragraph in his book, he completely reverses course.  Prothero explains, “In fact, there have been many scientific tests of supernatural and paranormal explanations of things, including parapsychology, ESP, divination, prophecy, and astrology.  All of these non-scientific ideas have been falsified when subjected to the scrutiny of scientific investigation. . . . Every time the supernatural has been investigated by scientific methods, it has failed the test.”

Huh??  Is your head spinning like mine?  Prothero first claims that science cannot test the supernatural and then he says that science has tested the supernatural.  Which is it?  It can’t be both.

I suspect there’s a big difference between what methodological naturalism doesn’t exclude, and what some loudmouths want to exclude (e.g. String Theory “not even wrong”, parapsychology “woo”). Personally, I’m not even remotely interested in the latter.

Linda

[Laird]

Personally, I’m not even remotely interested in the latter.

Did you mean by that, "Personally, I’m not even remotely interested in excluding the latter"?

In looking around the web on this theme, I found this interesting article, Can Science Test for the Supernatural?

Here's an excerpt:


Huh??  Is your head spinning like mine?  Prothero first claims that science cannot test the supernatural and then he says that science has tested the supernatural.  Which is it?  It can’t be both.

What I think he has in mind is the things that have been tested were never outside the natural  Whereas, the truely supernatural is beyond what our instruments and experiments can observe or test.

P.S. After skimming the article the short list of things bears out what I thought Prothero had in mind.

[Laird]

What I think he has in mind is the things that have been tested were never outside the natural  Whereas, the truely supernatural is beyond what our instruments and experiments can observe or test.

Who knows what he has in mind? I haven't read the original book nor seen the quotes in context. It would seem strange to call something "supernatural" when you really meant "natural" though. In any case, the article uses that author only as an example - as a warning to be on the lookout for this sort of prevarication more generally.

Who knows what he has in mind? I haven't read the original book nor seen the quotes in context. It would seem strange to call something "supernatural" when you really meant "natural" though. In any case, the article uses that author only as an example - as a warning to be on the lookout for this sort of prevarication more generally.

Prothero or the author of that article are using the word supernatural colloquially.

[Laird]

Did you mean by that, "Personally, I’m not even remotely interested in excluding the latter"?

Oh, I see now - by "the latter", you didn't mean the latter item in parentheses, i.e., parapsychology, you meant "what some loudmouths want to exclude".

Well, to the extent that parapsychology limits itself to non-supernatural explanations (and some parapsychologists believe that it can, at least for some phenomena), it conceivably could be compatible with methodological naturalism. To the extent that it doesn't, then nevermind the loudmouths: it's conventionally the case that parapsychology is incompatible with methodological naturalism.