Getting skeptical about the concept of philosophical naturalism

[Tammuz]

Internet Infidels, once in the distant past the mother-site of this forum, is dedicated to philosophical naturalism. They define it as:

Naturalism is the "hypothesis that the natural world is a closed system" in the sense that "nothing that is not a part of the natural world affects it." As such, "naturalism implies that there are no supernatural entities," such as gods, angels, demons, ghosts, or other spirits, "or at least none that actually exercises its power to affect the natural world." And without miraculous interventions into nature from a spiritual realm, neither prayer nor magick are more effective than a placebo.

I can't help but feel that this has too many unwarranted assumptions. Why should one assume that the world (or the universe, which I think is really what is implied here) is a closed system? How could we possibly test this?

I am getting increasingly skeptical of the natural vs supernatural divide. How do you decide if something is natural or supernatural? Epicurus believed in the gods, but he also believed that they were made up of atoms like everything else. Are the Epicurean gods natural or supernatural?

It makes more sense to me to simply examine the world, and see what we find. If spirits existed, then that would be a fact about the world. Likewise with trolls, elves, dragons, and other creatures of mythologies and folklores around the world.

This thread will partially walk in the borderlands of science and philosophy. Or maybe it won't. We shall see.

 

[Politesse]

I definitely agree that the term "supernatural" doesn't really mean anything; I think it is very much an artifact of the peculiar quasi-Deistic halfway point the academic world found itself in during the Enlightenment years. I do not see how anything real could be reasonably termed anything other than natural. And we're not in the 18th century any more.

 

[Shadowy Man]

I think what is meant is that if something can affect this world then it is by definition part of this world.

Maybe it’s a bit of a tautology to say that the natural world is a “closed system”.

 

[steve_bank]

The foundation of the forum has been Free Thought or Free Thing which has general definitions.

Under Free Thought there can be no supernatural. Anything including gods and ghosts that interact with our reality is by definition natural. The question then becomes what is the evidence of any claim and the ensuing theists debates.

If you see a ghost and it is not a hallucination then there has to be a causal link between the ghost and your brain, even if we can not figure out what the link is.

All is causal even if we can not understand the nature of a causality. That is my view. Unless ghosts manifest under controlled conditions with multiple independent observers I am skeptical.

 

[Politesse]

The foundation of the forum has been Free Thought or Free Thing which has general definitions.

Under Free Thought there can be no supernatural. Anything including gods and ghosts that interact with our reality is by definition natural. The question then becomes what is the evidence of any claim and the ensuing theists debates.

If you see a ghost and it is not a hallucination then there has to be a causal link between the ghost and your brain, even if we can not figure out what the link is.

All is causal even if we can not understand the nature of a causality. That is my view. Unless ghosts manifest under controlled conditions with multiple independent observers I am skeptical.

Ah, so "free thought" is about what we do not think, rather than what we do think

 

[steve_bank]

The foundation of the forum has been Free Thought or Free Thing which has general definitions.

Under Free Thought there can be no supernatural. Anything including gods and ghosts that interact with our reality is by definition natural. The question then becomes what is the evidence of any claim and the ensuing theists debates.

If you see a ghost and it is not a hallucination then there has to be a causal link between the ghost and your brain, even if we can not figure out what the link is.

All is causal even if we can not understand the nature of a causality. That is my view. Unless ghosts manifest under controlled conditions with multiple independent observers I am skeptical.

Ah, so "free thought" is about what we do not think, rather than what we do think

Your quip is better suited to a Zen thread.

For one thing it is about rejecting silly sophistry.

It is about finding true independence and freedom of thought. What the forum has been about.

 

[Politesse]

The foundation of the forum has been Free Thought or Free Thing which has general definitions.

Under Free Thought there can be no supernatural. Anything including gods and ghosts that interact with our reality is by definition natural. The question then becomes what is the evidence of any claim and the ensuing theists debates.

If you see a ghost and it is not a hallucination then there has to be a causal link between the ghost and your brain, even if we can not figure out what the link is.

All is causal even if we can not understand the nature of a causality. That is my view. Unless ghosts manifest under controlled conditions with multiple independent observers I am skeptical.

Ah, so "free thought" is about what we do not think, rather than what we do think

Your quip is better suited to a Zen thread.

For one thing it is about rejecting silly sophistry.

It is about finding true independence and freedom of thought. What the forum has been about.

No, it is about freedom from one specific thing.

 

[Speakpigeon]

I think what is meant is that if something can affect this world then it is by definition part of this world.

Maybe it’s a bit of a tautology to say that the natural world is a “closed system”.

The debate is about what we claim to know. Hardcore materialists pretend they know God doesn't exist. Religious people pretend it does. Well, they both don't know. Pretend you know something you don't is just stupid.

Suppose God came along one morning and showed us what He can do. Suppose He showed us He can change the nature of nature. Make the speed of light equal to 2 c,or 10 c. Or make it infinite. Create a new kind of elementary particle. Remove one. Introduce a new colour. Introduce a new kind of energy. Bid us to suggest any change we could think of to prove He could do anything. Reverse the expansion of the universe? Suppose He did that. What would "material world" mean in this case? It would still work as our material world but it would now also clearly appear to us as the creation of God. First and foremost as the creation of God. The material would be revealed as mere appearance.

The debate is about what we claim to know. Hardcore materialists pretend to know that nature has laws that cannot be changed. Suppose God came along and changed the laws of nature?
EB

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

If you see a ghost

Then you know it can't be a ghost, as they are supposedly "immaterial" and it wouldn't therefore be possible to see it, because sight is predicated on photons bouncing off of "material."

 

[Speakpigeon]

If you see a ghost

Then you know it can't be a ghost, as they are supposedly "immaterial" and it wouldn't therefore be possible to see it, because sight is predicated on photons bouncing off of "material."

Or may be not. Ghosts if they existed wouldn't give a fuck about photons.
EB

 

[steve_bank]

If you see a ghost

Then you know it can't be a ghost, as they are supposedly "immaterial" and it wouldn't therefore be possible to see it, because sight is predicated on photons bouncing off of "material."

Causality, it is either true or it id not. If you reject causality than anything is possible. Something to nothing and nothing to something.

If causality is always true and you see a ghost and it is not imagination or hallucination, then there is a causal link between the phenomena whatever it may be and your brain. We may not undestand what a ghost is or the caisal link, but the assumption has to be causality.

From that there can be no supernatural. If it interacts with our reality it by definition is natural. If someone can recite a spell and a demon appears, then there has to be a natural causdal link.

The original ST series played with the theme. When confronted by an apparent god the trick was to doscover and counter the causal links.

I hate to invoke ST. A line by Spock, 'nothing unreal exists'.


A good example is electrostatics and magnetics. For centuries action at a distance was observed for electrostatic phenomena. Followed by the observation of electric current moving the needle on a compass.

The effects were observed but no explanation of the causal link. The Aether was proposed. The concept of fields followed by QM provided a working model.

Naturalism (philosophy)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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This article is about the term that is used in philosophy. For other uses, see Naturalism (disambiguation).
In philosophy, naturalism is the "idea or belief that only natural (as opposed to supernatural or spiritual) laws and forces operate in the world."[1] Adherents of naturalism (i.e., naturalists) assert that natural laws are the rules that govern the structure and behavior of the natural universe, that the changing universe at every stage is a product of these laws.[2]

"Naturalism can intuitively be separated into an ontological and a methodological component," argues David Papineau.[3] "Ontological" refers to the philosophical study of the nature of being. Some philosophers equate naturalism with materialism. For example, philosopher Paul Kurtz argues that nature is best accounted for by reference to material principles. These principles include mass, energy, and other physical and chemical properties accepted by the scientific community. Further, this sense of naturalism holds that spirits, deities, and ghosts are not real and that there is no "purpose" in nature. Such an absolute belief in naturalism is commonly referred to as metaphysical naturalism.[4]

Assuming naturalism in working methods as the current paradigm, without the further consideration of naturalism as an absolute truth with philosophical entailment, is called methodological naturalism.[5] The subject matter here is a philosophy of acquiring knowledge based on an assumed paradigm.

With the exception of pantheists—who believe that Nature is identical with divinity while not recognizing a distinct personal anthropomorphic god—theists challenge the idea that nature contains all of reality. According to some theists, natural laws may be viewed as secondary causes of God(s).

In the 20th century, Willard Van Orman Quine, George Santayana, and other philosophers argued that the success of naturalism in science meant that scientific methods should also be used in philosophy. Science and philosophy are said to form a continuum, according to this view.

From the wiki page there are many distinct phi;odphird of msturalism.

Despite all the -isms I believe it all boils down to causality and thow you define natural.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

If you see a ghost

Then you know it can't be a ghost, as they are supposedly "immaterial" and it wouldn't therefore be possible to see it, because sight is predicated on photons bouncing off of "material."

Or may be not.

There's no maybe about it. As your endless regurgitation of threads about the same topic demonstrate, we derive information about the external world from our senses. In this case we're talking about sight, which is, simplistically, the process of photons bouncing off of matter into our optic lens and then the information gets processed in the brain, etc., etc., etc. That is how we "see" in regard to anything external. Photons bouncing off of matter.

Thus, if someone is saying that there exists a non-material entity (aka, a "ghost") and that they saw one the other night, that's a contradiction and axiomatically means they were mistaken. They could not have seen a non-material entity in the sense of how we normally use the verb "to see" (ie., in regard to photons bouncing off of material).

Thus, just by claiming they saw a ghost disproves their claim in that regard. And if they happened to have a photograph or video, even better, since no camera has the hard problem of consciousness to contend with and can ONLY record an image if photons have bounced off of material (or if the mechanism is malfunctioning in a discoverable fashion).

So claiming you saw a "ghost" and providing a photograph or video of the same thing you claim to have seen would be conclusive proof that you did not, in fact, see or record any such posited entity.

So we can easily set that element aside and move on to other possible explanations for what you experienced. Such as hallucination due to any number of reasons (e.g., drugs, sleep deprivation, night terror, etc); a trick of light or shadow; brain malfunction; optical nerve malfunction; etc., etc., etc.

Testing for any of those ancillary conditions and coming up equally empty, we could then move on to psychological explanations, such as whether or not the individual making the claim is simply a liar, or prone to exaggeration, or insecure and seeking attention, or young and impressionable, etc.

And since there is no such thing--and can be no such thing--as an absolute degree of certainty, we likewise can remove such sophistry from the equation and factor instead for the only real measure available; for what we refer to, perhaps oxymoronically, as degrees of certainty. And that is merely a consensus; a subjective judgment call based on the nature of the evidence before us.

Pretty straight forward and what you--all of us--do trillions of times every nano-second about literally everything all the time, up to brain malfunction and/or brain death.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Or may be not.

There's no maybe about it.

The world is full of maybes.

As your endless regurgitation of threads about the same topic demonstrate, we derive information about the external world from our senses.

Exactly, and a maybe is just our absence of knowledge. Some state of affair p is possible if I don't know that it is not the case.

We certainly don't know that ghosts don't exist because obviously we can't see the non-existence of a non-existent ghost. So, maybe.
EB

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

The world is full of maybes.

And water is full of water.

As your endless regurgitation of threads about the same topic demonstrate, we derive information about the external world from our senses.

Exactly, and a maybe is just our absence of knowledge.

No, it's not. It's an affirmation that there could exist evidence that something might be the case at some unspecified later date. Iow, it's an unjustified shift of the operant of the evidence to the nebulous condition of an arbitrary chronology. At best it's an irrelevant tautology.

Some state of affair p is possible if I don't know that it is not the case.

Oh, joy, you're once again making the same idiotic "I don't understand how logic works" thread you always make. Have fun once again eating your own tail.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Oh, joy, you're once again making the same idiotic "I don't understand how logic works" thread you always make.

Sorry to see I gave you this idiotic impression. I thought I was making threads showing again and again I'm the only one who understands how logic works.

I guess I should blame my French English for that failure to impart superior understanding.
EB

 

[steve_bank]

Trump considers himself superior intelctualy to all others...

How does 'logic work'?

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

I definitely agree that the term "supernatural" doesn't really mean anything; I think it is very much an artifact of the peculiar quasi-Deistic halfway point the academic world found itself in during the Enlightenment years. I do not see how anything real could be reasonably termed anything other than natural. And we're not in the 18th century any more.

It goes back much further. William of Okham stated that God (supernatural) did not work by a series of direct interventions, miracles. God created nature, secondary causes. (naturalism) God created the matter of the world, created the laws of nature and only rarely works miracles. Similar concepts go back to Plato. (Timaeus). Nature exists on it's own, God, the demiurge simply ordered matter into the world as we know it.

 

[Politesse]

I definitely agree that the term "supernatural" doesn't really mean anything; I think it is very much an artifact of the peculiar quasi-Deistic halfway point the academic world found itself in during the Enlightenment years. I do not see how anything real could be reasonably termed anything other than natural. And we're not in the 18th century any more.

It goes back much further. William of Okham stated that God (supernatural) did not work by a series of direct interventions, miracles. God created nature, secondary causes. (naturalism) God created the matter of the world, created the laws of nature and only rarely works miracles. Similar concepts go back to Plato. (Timaeus). Nature exists on it's own, God, the demiurge simply ordered matter into the world as we know it.

The term supernatural did not exist before 1425, and it did not become commonplace until much later. It's application to anything other than Christian theology is a 19th century phenomenon.