The term "naturalism" is vague and bordering on being meaningless

[Tammuz]

Among atheists, skeptics, humanists, freethinkers, etc, the term "naturalism" , or more formally "metaphysical naturalism" or "philosophical naturalism", is quite a popular term. For example, physicist Sean Carroll wrote:

I am an atheist, although I prefer "naturalist" because it seems like a more constructive and forward-looking term.

The Internet Infidels, which I think originally spawned this forum, or at least one of its predecessors, wrote:

Invariably people want to know why we define ourselves in terms of naturalism instead of better known terms like atheism or nontheism. Simply put, naturalism represents a broader philosophical position about what sorts of things do and do not exist. Atheism, the position that there (probably) are no gods, is simply an incidental consequence of naturalism. As such, atheism is merely a position on the existence of one kind of supernatural being; unlike naturalism, atheism does not offer a complete worldview. In a society dominated by theism, the view that there is a single personal god outside of the natural order, it is not surprising that nonbelief is most widely known in terms of the negation (or at least absence) of theism. But since it is merely through historical accident that Western theism has become a particularly tenacious belief, the popularity of that belief is no reason to define oneself in contrast to it. Had some other form of supernaturalism come to dominate Western tradition, we would be no less determined to contest it.

Consequently, we define ourselves in terms of a thesis about the overall nature of reality, and thus in opposition to all positions incompatible with that thesis. We take to be false all claims about the existence and features of an otherworldly, transcendental domain "above" or "beyond" the natural world, but nevertheless somehow able to interact with it. Insofar as a religion is a belief system that affirms the existence of the supernatural, naturalism entails that all religions are equally false. Thus the Secular Web aims not only to critique the truth of particular religious claims, but the truth of any and all religious claims. Animism, the belief that even inanimate objects like rocks and rivers are interpenetrated by nature spirits active in human affairs, is in principle no less fair game for skeptical critique than the doctrines of major world religions.

The main problem with the term "naturalism" as I see it is that there is no coherent definition of "supernatural", and hence no coherent definition of "natural", at least as far as I can tell.

Imagine if we lived in the LOTR universe, for example. It seems the only criterion for "supernatural" is what doesn't exist in our universe.

I think a more sensible approach is to simply focus on what exists, and what doesn't exist, as far as we can tell, rather than to try to categorize things into categories that have no clear definition and no obvious utility.

 

[rousseau]

I think a more sensible approach is to simply focus on what exists

Isn't this a good description of exactly what naturalism should mean? Rather than debating the supernatural, we start from the assumption that only phenomena interior to the universe is knowable, and therefore relevant to us?

I recall a few years ago proposing a step further, called 'enlightened naturalism'. Where we consciously direct our attention to how the natural world works, and use our newfound understanding to boost meaning in our lives.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I think a more sensible approach is to simply focus on what exists, and what doesn't exist, as far as we can tell, rather than to try to categorize things into categories that have no clear definition and no obvious utility.

It must be true that nothing unnatural exists. If it's real it's natural. Period. If gods and demons and spirits and souls were real they must be natural.

Things "supernatural" are clearly not natural becauae they are not known to exist. Mabe the arguments for such things are natural, but the objects themselves cannot be.

 

[abaddon]

In common usage (the usual basis of definitions), supernaturalism has never meant "what doesn't exist".

Nor are supernatural entities necessarily outside of nature or the universe. Nor are they necessarily imperceptible or undetectable.

Ghosts are generally considered supernatural too, though they're occasionally visible and audible and now-and-again they break stuff.

What the ghost-believer means by "the supernatural" is "doesn't obey the laws of nature like fully material things do".

Same with God-believers. Whether the god's in or out of the universe, he's "supernatural" for not being constrained to obey physical laws the way our material bodies are.

That's probably the only criterion: not subject to the same laws as fully physical things.

 

[bilby]

In common usage (the usual basis of definitions), supernaturalism has never meant "what doesn't exist".

Nor are supernatural entities necessarily outside of nature or the universe. Nor are they necessarily imperceptible or undetectable.

Ghosts are generally considered supernatural too, though they're occasionally visible and audible and now-and-again break stuff.

What the ghost-believer means by "the supernatural" is "doesn't obey the laws of nature like fully physical things do".

Same with God-believers. Whether the god's in or out of the universe, he's "supernatural" for not being confined to physical laws the way our physical bodies are.

That's probably the only criterion: not subject to the same laws as fully physical things.

I agree. But the fun part is that the physical laws we have uncovered imply that all of the influences on physical things at human scales are necessarily physical things themselves - we not only know all of the interactions that occur between the scale of atomic nuclei and solar systems, but we also know that this set of interactions is complete at that scale. Quantum Field Theory might be wrong, but it cannot be wrong enough to allow for an unknown interaction by which the supernatural could influence (or be influenced by) human beings or their environment.

So we can, rather unexpectedly, state with as much certainty as we can make any statements outside pure mathematics, that any and all supernatural conjectures involving humans are false.

There are no ghosts, no afterlife, no interventions by gods, no observation by gods, no supernatural phenomena experienced by human beings.

Any claims to the contrary are, necessarily, claims that Quantum Field Theory is not just wrong, but massively and disastrously wrong. And it's the best tested theory in the history of science. It's not that badly wrong - we have checked.

Asking "is it possible that unknown flaws in Quantum Field Theory could allow for the possibility of the supernatural?" is directly analogous to asking "is it possible that unknown flaws in Gravitational Theory could allow for the possibility of rocks that fall upwards?". The answer is "No"; And remains "No" despite the fact that Newton's Gravitational Theory turns out to be wrong - and as a result has been superseded by Einstein's Relativity.

Some philosophers like to interject at this point that it's impossible to prove that these theories are correct - which is true, but irrelevant. It's impossible to prove that the Moon isn't made of cheese, but that doesn't mean that suggesting it might be isn't batshit crazy.

All suggestions of supernatural phenomena are at least as batshit crazy as suggesting that the selenotyroic* hypothesis is viable.

ETA: I am sure there's a joke here somewhere that relies on confusing naturalism with naturism, but I can't seem to uncover it.












*From the Ancient Greek 'Selene' = 'Moon goddess', and 'Tyros' = 'Cheese'.

 

[Politesse]

Among atheists, skeptics, humanists, freethinkers, etc, the term "naturalism" , or more formally "metaphysical naturalism" or "philosophical naturalism", is quite a popular term. For example, physicist Sean Carroll wrote:



The Internet Infidels, which I think originally spawned this forum, or at least one of its predecessors, wrote:

Consequently, we define ourselves in terms of a thesis about the overall nature of reality, and thus in opposition to all positions incompatible with that thesis. We take to be false all claims about the existence and features of an otherworldly, transcendental domain "above" or "beyond" the natural world, but nevertheless somehow able to interact with it. Insofar as a religion is a belief system that affirms the existence of the supernatural, naturalism entails that all religions are equally false. Thus the Secular Web aims not only to critique the truth of particular religious claims, but the truth of any and all religious claims. Animism, the belief that even inanimate objects like rocks and rivers are interpenetrated by nature spirits active in human affairs, is in principle no less fair game for skeptical critique than the doctrines of major world religions.

The main problem with the term "naturalism" as I see it is that there is no coherent definition of "supernatural", and hence no coherent definition of "natural", at least as far as I can tell.

Imagine if we lived in the LOTR universe, for example. It seems the only criterion for "supernatural" is what doesn't exist in our universe.

I think a more sensible approach is to simply focus on what exists, and what doesn't exist, as far as we can tell, rather than to try to categorize things into categories that have no clear definition and no obvious utility.

It makes sense to me, as long as you consider the supernatural/natural divide to be a cosmological belief in and of itself. The "naturalist" is telling you that they believe in the meaningfulness of this system, but only consider the tip of the iceberg thus posited to be "real". I can understand that, without knowing what they personally consider to be natural or not; one expects vague cosmological terms to have some degree of ambiguity in expression. If someone tells me they believe in a heaven, I may have no specific idea of what they expect its properties to be, and maybe they don't either even, but I have the gist of what they mean nevertheless.

 

[Bomb#20]

In common usage (the usual basis of definitions), supernaturalism has never meant "what doesn't exist".

True; but it's perfectly possible for a word in common usage to be meaningless -- the people who commonly use a word don't have to mean anything coherent by it, even when they think they do.

What the ghost-believer means by "the supernatural" is "doesn't obey the laws of nature like fully material things do".

Case in point. Yes, that's pretty much what most of them would probably say they mean by it. But what the heck do they mean by "laws", "nature", and "material"? Press them on that point and they'll be reduced to circular definitions and/or raging contradictions. And the same goes for most ghost-nonbelievers.

Same with God-believers. Whether the god's in or out of the universe, he's "supernatural" for not being constrained to obey physical laws the way our material bodies are.

Let's do an experiment. What the heck do you mean by "physical"?

That's probably the only criterion: not subject to the same laws as fully physical things.

So when you have a statement that says what things do, and there's something that doesn't do that, please explain what the criterion is for whether that statement is "a law that not everything follows" or "wrong".

Tammuz is correct.

 

[Bomb#20]

Quantum Field Theory might be wrong, but it cannot be wrong enough to allow for an unknown interaction by which the supernatural could influence (or be influenced by) human beings or their environment.

To quantify the degree of wrongness that would take, in order to compare it with the degree of wrongness there might be in QFT, you'd have to have a definition of "supernatural". Got one?

So we can, rather unexpectedly, state with as much certainty as we can make any statements outside pure mathematics, that any and all supernatural conjectures involving humans are false.

But that would mean such conjectures are wrong. They're not even wrong.

Asking "is it possible that unknown flaws in Quantum Field Theory could allow for the possibility of the supernatural?" is directly analogous to asking "is it possible that unknown flaws in Gravitational Theory could allow for the possibility of rocks that fall upwards?". The answer is "No"; And remains "No" despite the fact that Newton's Gravitational Theory turns out to be wrong - and as a result has been superseded by Einstein's Relativity.

Those aren't analogous at all. Of course it's possible that unknown flaws in gravitational theory could allow for the possibility of rocks that fall upwards. That's an active area of experimental research. According to CERN's website, physicists do not yet know whether antimatter falls up or down*.

http://alpha.web.cern.ch/node/248

According to CERN's measurements, gravitationally, an antihydrogen atom weighs somewhere between +110 and -65 times the weight of a hydrogen atom. Yes, current theory says it weighs +1 so it falls down; but there's a reason theoreticians ask experimentalists to test their predictions.

(It may of course be an engineering impracticability to construct enough antioxygen and antisilicon to make a rock, but if so, that would hardly be gravitational theory doing the disallowing.)

(* Some might be surprised that 90 years after antimatter was discovered, we still don't know whether it falls up. The problem is that it's incredibly hard to make electrically neutral slow antimatter. So the effect of gravity on an antiparticle is either swamped by electrical forces, or else only operates for a few nanoseconds before the antiparticle hits a particle and annihilates.)

 

[bilby]

To quantify the degree of wrongness that would take, in order to compare it with the degree of wrongness there might be in QFT, you'd have to have a definition of "supernatural". Got one?

I quoted one, with the comment "I agree", as the opening remark of my post.

So, yes, I have got one - it's the one abaddon presented.

That's probably the only criterion: not subject to the same laws as fully physical things.

 

[Bomb#20]

I quoted one, with the comment "I agree", as the opening remark of my post.

So, yes, I have got one - it's the one abaddon presented.

That's probably the only criterion: not subject to the same laws as fully physical things.

Well then, same questions I asked abaddon: what the heck do you mean by "laws" and "physical"?

 

[bilby]

I quoted one, with the comment "I agree", as the opening remark of my post.

So, yes, I have got one - it's the one abaddon presented.

That's probably the only criterion: not subject to the same laws as fully physical things.

Well then, same questions I asked abaddon: what the heck do you mean by "laws" and "physical"?

Physical - comprised only of those components described by the Standard Model of particle physics:



Law - A statement that accurately describes (and therefore predicts) what is observed to occur under specified conditions.

So to be supernatural, an object must either be comprised of substances other than those described by the Standard Model; or must behave in ways not predicted by their prior behaviour under the same conditions; or both.

No such objects exist, but it's fairly easy to imagine them, as long as you are allowed to wave your hands a lot.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

So to be supernatural, an object must either be comprised of substances other than those described by the Standard Model; or must behave in ways not predicted by their prior behaviour under the same conditions; or both.

No such objects exist, but it's fairly easy to imagine them, as long as you are allowed to wave your hands a lot.

Supernatural objects don't behave scientifically, they behave superscientifically. As yet, however, no one has been able to unravel the laws of superscience, which explains our inability to make predictions about the behavior of supernatural objects and forces.

See how easy that was?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

double post

 

[Bomb#20]

Well then, same questions I asked abaddon: what the heck do you mean by "laws" and "physical"?

Physical - comprised only of those components described by the Standard Model of particle physics:

When scientists used the word "physical" back in the 19th and early 20th centuries, before the standard model existed, they evidently meant something different by "physical". How did you acquire your understanding of the term?

View attachment 27267

So you'd classify "dark matter" and "dark energy" as nonphysical?

Law - A statement that accurately describes (and therefore predicts) what is observed to occur under specified conditions.

So to be supernatural, an object must either be comprised of substances other than those described by the Standard Model;

So that would be, what, 95% of the universe, then?

or must behave in ways not predicted by their prior behaviour under the same conditions; or both.

So every radioactive nucleon in the universe is supernatural. At some point it will decay; and "It is not decaying" is a statement that accurately describes its prior behavior under the same conditions.

No such objects exist, but it's fairly easy to imagine them, as long as you are allowed to wave your hands a lot.

How do you know no such objects exist? You're asserting there are no gravitons. Show your work.

 

[Juma]

A very central piece of bilbys first post in this thread is this specification on what scale we are talking: "on a human scale"
If there are "unknown forces" that gods and ghosts uses then these forces must work "on a human scale".
We know (as sure as we know anything and surer than most we know) that there are no unknown forces "on a human scale".

 

[Bomb#20]

A very central piece of bilbys first post in this thread is this specification on what scale we are talking: "on a human scale"

The thread topic is whether the term "naturalism" is vague and meaningless. The question I asked bilby was what he means by "laws" and "physical". Are you proposing that what those words mean depends on scale?

 

[bilby]

A very central piece of bilbys first post in this thread is this specification on what scale we are talking: "on a human scale"

The thread topic is whether the term "naturalism" is vague and meaningless. The question I asked bilby was what he means by "laws" and "physical". Are you proposing that what those words mean depends on scale?

Of course what 'physical' means depends on scale. Dark matter and dark energy might as well not exist for all the effect they have at human scales; The same is true of most quantum phenomena. It's perfectly possible to have an excellent understanding of physics at one scale, while being completely unaware of the physics at other scales - which is why Newton was able to develop an extremely accurate theory of universal gravitation, and a number of important and useful laws of motion, without accounting for either relativistic or quantum effects.

If we needed to grasp the details of every smaller (or larger) scale before we could make accurate predictions at our own scale, it would be effectively impossible to do any science at all, and we would still be staring at rocks in Olduvai Gorge.

 

[Bomb#20]

A very central piece of bilbys first post in this thread is this specification on what scale we are talking: "on a human scale"

The thread topic is whether the term "naturalism" is vague and meaningless. The question I asked bilby was what he means by "laws" and "physical". Are you proposing that what those words mean depends on scale?

Of course what 'physical' means depends on scale. Dark matter and dark energy might as well not exist for all the effect they have at human scales;

In the first place, that's a bizarre theory of linguistics. It's rather like saying, now that we realize in opposition to all previous expectation that distant galaxies are accelerating away from us, that "attraction" now means "pushing apart" at the largest scales, and only means "pulling together" on more human scales. In normal speech, we'd say we discovered that at large scales galaxies experience gravitational repulsion rather than gravitational attraction. When things are different in unfamiliar domains, we typically say different things about them, instead of saying the same things while meaning something different. Why on earth would something's lack of effect on us change what the word "physical" means?

And in the second place, dark matter has a huge effect at human scales: according to current theory, dark matter is what made galaxies coalesce. No Milky Way Galaxy, no humans. Likewise dark energy, if it turns out to be a manifestation of the same phenomenon as the other kind of gravitational repulsion, cosmic inflation. No inflation, no humans.

The same is true of most quantum phenomena.

But there are lots of quantum phenomena at human scales. Lasers, atomic bombs, digital cameras...

It's perfectly possible to have an excellent understanding of physics at one scale, while being completely unaware of the physics at other scales - which is why Newton was able to develop an extremely accurate theory of universal gravitation, and a number of important and useful laws of motion, without accounting for either relativistic or quantum effects.

If we needed to grasp the details of every smaller (or larger) scale before we could make accurate predictions at our own scale, it would be effectively impossible to do any science at all, and we would still be staring at rocks in Olduvai Gorge.

Sure, but what's that got to do with language? Why would you need to grasp the details of every smaller or larger scale in order to know what you mean by a word?

Let's imagine ourselves in 1899. I ask what you mean by "physical" and, presumably, you say "comprised only of those components described by Newtonian physics and Maxwell's laws". Physics was widely conceived at the time to be just about finished -- all that supposedly remained was to add precision to known constants, account for a few anomalies like radioactivity remote from normal human experience, and locate the planet Vulcan that would account for Mercury's odd movements.

But then somebody discovers space-time curvature and everybody stops looking for Vulcan. So what happened there? Did Einstein discover a "nonphysical" "supernatural" effect? That's what the 1899-bilby definition would imply. Back in 1899, did "physical" perhaps mean one thing at human scale and a different thing at Mercury scale, and then English changed to make "physical" subsequently mean the same thing "between the scale of atomic nuclei and solar systems"? (Even though it apparently still means something different exactly at the scale of an atomic nucleus, in order for us not to have to classify radioactivity as "supernatural".) Or did English-speakers go right on meaning the same thing by "physical", and merely find out the laws of physics are different from what we thought they were?

Imagine 1899-you subsequently went on to experience 20th-century physics progressing in a different direction. Imagine this weren't a QFT/GM world at all, but one where radioactivity and Mercury and scientifically repeatable observations of ghosts capturable by Ghostbusters-style electrical traps were being explained by some entirely different laws that Newton's were also a close approximation to -- laws that allow for ghosts, afterlife, interventions by gods, and observation by gods. Would 1920-you go on insisting that physical means "comprised only of those components described by Newtonian physics and Maxwell's laws", and declare ghosts and gods to be supernatural, and claim we live in a world with a natural part and a supernatural part? If you would, why would you do that? Why would you categorize observable objects based on whether they follow Newton's incorrect claim about what the world does? Why would you insist F=GMm/r^2 is a law ghosts "are not subject to", instead of simply discarding Newton's so-called "law" as outdated science? That's not what real-you does back in the real world, where it was Einstein who showed Mercury doesn't follow Newton's "Law". Heck, that's not even what imaginary-you were doing back in 1899. After all, Einstein wasn't the first to refute Newton. Newton's theory of light had been refuted fifty years earlier by a bunch of Frenchmen, and 1899-you were accepting Maxwell's laws. 1899-you wouldn't have been rejecting Maxwell and calling optical diffraction "nonphysical", merely because it didn't match the otherwise extremely accurate theory of light Newton had developed, would you?

"The supernatural" is impossible because it's conceptually incoherent. The idea that "the supernatural" is impossible because of what we know about how the world works amounts to the premise that "the supernatural" would be a viable theory if only the world worked differently; i.e., the premise that the world would have laws that the world doesn't follow; i.e., the premise that when the facts do not fit our theory it makes sense for us to keep our theory anyway. But that doesn't make sense. It's unscientific. "The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact."

 

[Tammuz]

I think a more sensible approach is to simply focus on what exists, and what doesn't exist, as far as we can tell, rather than to try to categorize things into categories that have no clear definition and no obvious utility.

It must be true that nothing unnatural exists. If it's real it's natural. Period. If gods and demons and spirits and souls were real they must be natural.

Things "supernatural" are clearly not natural becauae they are not known to exist. Mabe the arguments for such things are natural, but the objects themselves cannot be.

That is a rather circular definition, and not the one typically employed. For example, the Internet Infidels are open to the notion that naturalism may be falsified:

As defined by Paul Draper, naturalism is "the hypothesis that the natural world is a closed system, which means that nothing that is not a part of the natural world affects it." Thus, "naturalism implies that there are no supernatural entities"—including God.

Thus something that is not part of the natural world but still affects it would falsify naturalism, by this definition.

The devil is in the details, though. Ghosts would affect the natural world, indeed even reside in the natural world. Yet they are typically considered supernatural.

 

[Copernicus]

I think that "natural" and "supernatural" are perfectly clear in the context of a philosophical dualism in which reality is split between two distinct domains--the physical and the spiritual (or "occult"). Those two domains can interact causally with each other, so phenomena in the physical world can have supernatural causes and vice versa. So a spiritual being such as a god can perform miracles in the physical world, and events in the physical world can cause effects on spiritual beings. A "naturalist" then would be someone who rejects that concept of dualism and believes that there is just one "natural" domain. All things that happen, including all mental phenomena, therefore have physical causes. Conventional dualism holds that at least some mental activity takes place independently in the spiritual realm.